san juans critters

lamont · Post by **lamont** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 1:33 pm

so, i was looking for candy striped shrimp under anemomies and i only found a bunch of these tiny reddish shrimp with yellow highlights, any idea what those are?

i also found something that looked like a tiny snake. it moved through the water very snake-like with a very long body and small head. about 6-8 inches long... anyone with a guess?

Burntchef · Post by **Burntchef** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 1:35 pm

pic??

GillyWeed · Post by **GillyWeed** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 1:39 pm

Yeah... I was going to ask that too..

lamont · Post by **lamont** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 2:30 pm

no camera on these dives =(

Sounder · Post by **Sounder** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 2:39 pm

Sandlace (for the snake)?

Grateful Diver · Post by **Grateful Diver** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 2:57 pm

Cheng and I saw several candy-stripe shrimp on the second dive. Unfortunately, although I got several pictures none of them came out good enough to bother keeping ... those little guys have a knack for jumping up underneath an anemone so all that came out in the picture was a piece of colorful, striped body part.

I'm wondering if the snake like thing you saw mightn't have been a quill fish. Valerie and I saw one at Cove 2 a few months back. Check out the pics toward the end of this photo show and let me know if that's what you saw ...

http://photoshow.comcast.net/watch/rv8ym2xQ

I'll have my photo show from yesterday's dives up tomorrow or Wednesday. Tech 2 class starts tonight, and I'm gonna be on a hectic schedule for the next couple of weeks ... so everything else gets done as time permits.

Had two really nice dives ... and one very mediocre dive ... yesterday. Vis was great for this time of year.

Lu Jac's runs a great boat ... we had a ball.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

lamont · Post by **lamont** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 9:24 pm

Grateful Diver wrote: I'm wondering if the snake like thing you saw mightn't have been a quill fish. Valerie and I saw one at Cove 2 a few months back. Check out the pics toward the end of this photo show and let me know if that's what you saw ...

That might be it. I thought it was more cylindrical and less ribbon-shaped than that quillfish, but I mostly saw it from the top profile.

thelawgoddess · Post by **thelawgoddess** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 2:24 am

the only shrimp i saw was this guy - i think he is called a dock shrimp. i have a couple more photos of him, but this was the best one of the three. he was predominantly red with bright blue spots/dashes arranged in lines down the body. (i believe he is bigger than the ones bob and cheng are talking about - the shrimp i found in anemones in bonaire were tiny.)

Grateful Diver · Post by **Grateful Diver** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 7:10 am

Here's a photo of a candy-stripe shrimp that I took on an earlier San Juans trip ...

What Lamont was describing was most likely a broken-back shrimp (heptacarpus kincaidi) ...

http://paulsim.myphotos.cc/Photo%20Page ... /kinka.htm

... there were lots of them out there.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

thelawgoddess · Post by **thelawgoddess** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 7:30 am

pretty! it looks like those candy-stripe shrimp are not as small as i thought, but what beautiful colors!

Grateful Diver · Post by **Grateful Diver** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:38 am

thelawgoddess wrote:pretty! it looks like those candy-stripe shrimp are not as small as i thought, but what beautiful colors!

Most of the ones we saw on the second dive were quite small ... less than an inch. That's one reason none of my pics came out.

Ironically, I never saw the one in the picture I posted above ... didn't even know it was there until I downloaded the pics from the camera to the laptop ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

thelawgoddess · Post by **thelawgoddess** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:42 am

Grateful Diver wrote:Ironically, I never saw the one in the picture I posted above ... didn't even know it was there until I downloaded the pics from the camera to the laptop ...

i love photos like that! except ... i've never had one that was so cool it looked intentional. perhaps your camera has a mind of its own ...

Tangfish · Post by **Tangfish** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 10:01 am

That's a great shot of the candy stripe shrimp Bob, love the colors.

Grateful Diver · Post by **Grateful Diver** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 10:18 am

Comcast finally decided to let me have my photo show ... here's a taste of what we saw on Sunday ...

http://photoshow.comcast.net/watch/BV4vj4gh

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

thelawgoddess · Post by **thelawgoddess** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 12:07 pm

nice, bob - you sure saw a lot of colorful things i don't remember seeing!

gcbryan · Post by **gcbryan** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 2:45 pm

Nice pics. I love those PS King Crabs.

lamont · Post by **lamont** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 3:10 pm

Grateful Diver wrote:
thelawgoddess wrote:pretty! it looks like those candy-stripe shrimp are not as small as i thought, but what beautiful colors!
Most of the ones we saw on the second dive were quite small ... less than an inch. That's one reason none of my pics came out.

Ironically, I never saw the one in the picture I posted above ... didn't even know it was there until I downloaded the pics from the camera to the laptop ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

I've got two of those photos from different dives:

i've still never seen a candy striped shrimp while i was diving...

nwscubamom · Post by **nwscubamom** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:33 pm

My first thought when I heard about your 'snake like' fish is the Longfin Gunnel. They are very much at home in the San Juans and they look and move very much like little snakes. Their body proportions are slightly different than other gunnels.

Colors are often reds, although this one is more brownish.

Could this be what you were describing?

- Janna

lamont · Post by **lamont** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 10:33 pm

nwscubamom wrote:My first thought when I heard about your 'snake like' fish is the Longfin Gunnel. They are very much at home in the San Juans and they look and move very much like little snakes. Their body proportions are slightly different than other gunnels.

Colors are often reds, although this one is more brownish.

Could this be what you were describing?

- Janna

i don't think so... really this thing was like an 8-inch long wire (about 16 gauge or thinner) and was pretty difficult to spot because it was so rail-thin.... *very* squirmy as well and swam through the water like a snake with multiple s-shaped curves to its body... it didn't look gunnel-like at all...

nwscubamom · Post by **nwscubamom** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 10:50 pm

If it was in the water column, and not down on the bottom habitat, then yes, likely it was a Quillfish!! Color was silver then? No real markings, and it was all by itself as opposed to being in a school of other fish?

- Janna

lamont · Post by **lamont** » Tue Jul 17, 2007 11:15 pm

nwscubamom wrote:If it was in the water column, and not down on the bottom habitat, then yes, likely it was a Quillfish!! Color was silver then? No real markings, and it was all by itself as opposed to being in a school of other fish?

- Janna

Well it was swimming off the bottom, but only by about 6 inches or so -- it did stay off the bottom the whole time I watched it though. I don't recall the color so some kind of translucent/white/silver/grey is consistent with what I recall. And it was diving solo, no buddies anywhere...

Quillfish sounds like the best guess then!

It was in the daytime, too, which the interweb indicates is unusual for a sighting...

thelawgoddess · Post by **thelawgoddess** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 10:03 am

i think lamont was just narc'ed and tripping on some kelp.

LOL.

seriously, though - now i'm really curious what he could have seen!

also, could someone remind me what dive #2 was? i can't find the map i wrote all of that on - i have #1: swirl, and #3: south of lime kiln point ... help?

Grateful Diver · Post by **Grateful Diver** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 10:49 am

It was the west side of (somethingorother) island ... wish I could remember the island, cuz that was one of the best San Juans dives I've ever done.

I just logged it as "damned if I know" ... and dive #3 as "Boring Bay" ...

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

gcbryan · Post by **gcbryan** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 11:29 am

If it was south of Lilm Kiln it was probably one of the dives off San Juan Country Park which would match Bob's description of "Boring Bay".

Lamont's description does sound like a Quillfish however they are usually deep during the day and come up at night. The one I saw was reasonable deep and I saw it at night when some books saw it should be near the surface...I vote for Quillfish!

thelawgoddess · Post by **thelawgoddess** » Wed Jul 18, 2007 11:38 am

gcbryan wrote:If it was south of Lilm Kiln it was probably one of the dives off San Juan Country Park which would match Bob's description of "Boring Bay".

i already got that one - i'm looking for dive #2, which was not "boring bay" or "south of lime kiln" ... and seemed to be the best dive of the three! i can't find the map i wrote them on - i'm sure it's somewhere. cheng also wrote them down, so maybe she remembers ...

what's a quillfish?