Marine life photography at Plymouth’s National Marine Aquarium by Loveday Trinick-Rowe

I have been a bad blogger for a while now and now I intend to make an effort again…

I’ll start back with a photo of an anemone porcelain crab (neopetrolisthes maculatus). 

This crab usually lives in anemones, like a clownfish and just like a clownfish the crabs benefit from living there as the anemone protects it from predators. In turn the anemone is kept clean by the crab. Most of the time they just sit in pairs on the top of the anemone and whilst they do not live in an anemone with a clownfish, they do have a similar protection for the stings and can retreat further behind the tentacles if threatened.

These crabs have massive claws for their body size but these are not used for catching food. Instead they use bristle like mouthparts called setae to sift plankton from the water. They can be seen waving the delicate fan-like structures through the water and eating the caught food. The claws are used to defend their home from any intruders.

As well as being very photogenic, it is also very easy to photograph as it sits still!

I have done a post on cuttlefish before but I found these photos and thought I would use them. They show cuttlefish breeding and egg laying. Cuttlefish have some of the best and fastest colour changing ability in the natural world. They can use this for camouflage to great effect but it also gets used for attracting a mate. The male can alter his appearance, instantly becoming stripy like a zebra.

If this display is suitably impressive, the female will allow the male to get closer and the pair embrace. During this embrace a small packet is passed to the female which she then uses to fertilise the eggs. When lain, the eggs are quite large and are coloured black. This black colouration comes from the cuttlefishes own ink which helps them camouflage into the surroundings and hopefully stops . . . → Read more → Cuttlefish Laying Eggs

Groupers are fantastic predators and are usually found lurking on coral reefs. This is a red hind grouper and, when fully grown, can reach about 70cm long. They also sit still a lot on the bottom making them one of the easiest fish to photograph.

Groupers are usually very big fish and can engulf almost any prey they come across. There are even reports of very large groupers eating small sharks. The red hind grouper tends to eat crabs, small fish an maybe the odd octopus as they patrol their territories on the reef. They feed by suction; just by opening their mouths they can suck most prey in and hold on to it using rasping teeth before swallowing their food whole.

They are territorial and very defensive of their patch. Usually there is a male grouper, who started life . . . → Read more → Groupers

Not many fish are good parents. Lots of them spawn into the water and that is the end of their involvement. Some will lay eggs, some will even look after those eggs until they hatch. Few show the level of care that the male bangaii cardinal (Pterapogon kauderni) shows to his offspring. They are mouthbrooders; the male will hold the fertilised eggs in his mouth for the entire time till they hatch. Even once they do hatch, he will allow the fry to stay in his enlarged lower jaw to keep them safe, only spitting them out when they get too big. The individual in this photo has a mouth full of eggs.

Because the male will keep these eggs in his mouth he cannot feed for the entire time he has them. The female will stick around to help . . . → Read more → Parental Fish

This is a mantis shrimp and it is one of the most surprising animals I have ever seen. Their eyesight is some of the best we know of and capable of intercepting infrared, ultraviolet as well as use polarised light and the visible light we see. The eyes are mounted on stalks which can move independently so they can see all around.  They also display highly complex behaviours and have even shown a capability to remember and recognise other mantis shrimps that live close-by.

This mantis shrimp is very small as it is only young but some species can grow up to 30cm. This is quite scary when you see the claws they have! Different species have different claws but they split into two groups; spearers and smashers. As the names suggest, one is good for spearing their prey with . . . → Read more → Amazing Mantis Shrimp

I like to take photos where something amazing is happening and I especially like ones that show interactions between different animals. This photo shows one of my favourite interactions; cleaning.

There are many animals which remove dead scales and parasites from others in a process called cleaning but few of these are as characterful as the bluestreak cleaner wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus). This little fish lives on coral reefs, usually in pairs of adults with several juveniles. Each group live in one, usually distinctive, area of the reef and spend all day cleaning other fish.

In this photo the cleaner wrasse is busy in the gills of a porkfish. The porkfish co-operates entirely with the cleaner and allows inspection of the whole body. The wrasse will remove anything which it finds edible, for example, dead scales or parasites, although on occasion . . . → Read more → Cleaner Wrasse

These photos are of some common clownfish eggs and juveniles (Amphiprion ocellaris). The juveniles are only around one centimetre long but are already perfect miniature adults. Clownfish lay eggs and the young hatch from them after only around seven to ten days. During that time the males care for the eggs, fanning them to keep them clean and aerated and removing any dead ones.

This photo is of the eggs when they are quite close to hatching. They are so well developed at this point that you can see the eyes of the baby fish. The struggle with this photo was to wait for the male to be out of the way, he spends all his time tending the eggs and a shot without him was tricky!

Clownfish are wonderful animals and were obviously made famous by the film Finding . . . → Read more → Clownfish Eggs and Babies

We have a fantastic common lobster named Lenny. Despite the male name, Lenny is a girl and to prove it she has produced eggs! Lenny is one of my favourite animals. She is beautiful and fascinating to watch. Her amazing blue colour is a surprise to many people as most of the time they see them red. The red colour develops when they are cooked in boiling water. This heating causes a protein in their shells to break down, releasing a carotenoid pigment which shows up red. During this cooking process the lobster is alive, it is a little barbaric.

Lenny is on her own for the very good reason that she would fight any company given to her. They are solitary animals which inhabit caves. They venture out for food and return often to the same cave for many years. Because she is on her own it is . . . → Read more → Laying Lobster