(Bonus) Observation of the Week 2016-12-09
This Southern Pygmy Leatherjacket, seen by richardling in Australia, is our Observation of the Week!
“One of my mother's favourite possessions is an elderly green Tupperware container, brittle with age,” recalls Richard Ling. “When I was four, and the container was new, I cut holes in its lid so I could keep caterpillars in it. From infancy I'd been taught to treat nature with respect and kindness, and caterpillars were living things that needed air to breathe, so what could be more sensible? This rather reduced the container's value for storing lettuces, but mum didn't mind. To her it stores memories of my early childhood spent as an ‘amateur naturalist.’ Whenever she puts new tape over the holes, she remembers me wandering about the garden minutely inspecting every beetle, every spider, every ant trail, every worm, however tiny.”
Richard continues to be enthralled by nature, and is especially taken by the biodiversity of the underwater world. “It's like having Africa just offshore,” he says. “Step off pretty much any coastline of Australia and you can get the same thrill. Today you might be engulfed in a swarm of huge kingfish, or meet a three metre shark round the next corner, or stumble across a sleepy turtle, or hear whales passing nearby...if big fish don't show today, you'll still find astounding smaller creatures, with a much higher density than on land, and never seen by most people.”
“In my dreams I'd...have infinite air, infinite camera battery, and infinite camera storage capacity. I expect scientists are working on those last three.”
The Southern Pygmy Leatherjacket that Richard photographed is endemic to Australia, and grows to about 3.5 in (9 cm) in length. Not a strong swimmer, by day it drifts among sea grass and other plant life, slowly undulating its fins. And by night, which is when Richard photographed this one, it (adorably) bites onto a piece of algae to keep itself from being swept away by the current.
“I am very grateful to the ‘Fish Down Under’ project members who introduced me to iNaturalist and got me involved,” says Richard. “I am really excited by the iNaturalist idea and it matches my own interests incredibly well. I have long uploaded my photos to Flickr and tagged them taxonomically, and helped others identify their own, and iNat has really taken that aspect of Flickr and distilled it down to its purest form, then somehow populated it with taxonomic experts. It's exactly what I've been looking for.”
- by Tony Iwane
- Please check out Richard’s awesome photos on his Flickr page.
- Videos! Here’s one showing a pair chilling on the sea floor, and another depicting their courtship and spawning behavior.
- We take underwater photos for granted nowadays, but it hasn’t always been that way. The Western Australian Museum has a short video and article showing the history of underwater photography. Really cool!
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