Northwest Dive Club

Nice pix, Looks like a pretty successful courtship. Have you checked back to see if he is egg sitting?

I love the male greenlings in breeding plumage -- they look like dark, starry nights! The courting dance is fun to watch, too.

Dusty2 wrote:Nice pix, Looks like a pretty successful courtship. Have you checked back to see if he is egg sitting?

Yes, I did return to the nesting site and now there are eggs to watch. I hope they make it.

I feel like such a voyeur...wait a minute, I'm saying that like it's a bad thing. Never mind!

Well, I did dive at the time of Spring Equinox, found the eggs but no massive spawning by sea pens.
I went again few days later, eggs were still present and two weeks later, on full moon there are still
some sea pens with eggs.

Wow -- This may sound stupid, but I had no idea that sea pens had eggs!

Wow. Wow. Wow.

OK, in Bonaire marine biologists and other observers have timed the spawning of different corals and sponges, and get it down to within a night or two. It is fun (for critter geeks and those who don't mind swimming in invertebrate sex) to time your trips so as to Chase some very unique photographic opportunities. Jan, it sounds like you are doing that right here in our own cold, green waters! Kudos to you, even though you missed the spawning.

For you critter geeks out there (and perhaps for another thread) I wonder what unique opportunities are available to us here that we should calendar and plan for?!? Many of us that are doing REEF surveys or observing marine life beyond "oh look, it's a fishie" are doing hundreds of dives anyway, might as well plan intentionally for seasonal photographic and observational opportunities!

Thanks again, Jan - as LCF so often says, you are truly a treasure!

Very cool! Last year I took a photo of a Sea Whip that showed off it's eggs. Didn't know what it was at the time but found out later. Not sure if this link will work but the photo is at if you want to see it. The eggs are orange!

I found one of the many perpetrators guilty of messing up the visibility these days.
And nights. On recent night dive at Langley :



and that is just one of the crabs, there were more than dozen of them milling about
with their bellies exposed. I am really bad videographer, but this clip shows the eggs being released :
http://jankocian.smugmug.com/Underwater ... &k=PqJNbt2

Awesome information Jan, saw one of these last night at Edmonds, doing exactly this.

And now from the lives of anemones - little bit out of the normal

Every time I open this thread I learn... Thank you.

Oh, Jan, I am so darned jealous . . . that last picture is the lovely portrait of metridiums that I keep trying to get, and can't pull off! Lovely photo.

Thanks Tom, Lynne.
Returned to Deception Pass, but visibility and currents were not cooperating on Friday the 13th ...
Silty ten feet viz and currents going every way but slack for the entire 62 minutes

Spawning going on at force in the waters around Whidbey :

Jan, do you have ANY idea what an incredible treasure this thread is? The things you manage to capture boggle my mind, and the amount I have learned about the life in the water here from your stunning photos and captions is just fantastic. Thank you SO much; don't EVER stop doing this!

(BTW, your name was mentioned multiple times at the Milton Love lecture last night )

THANK YOU for confirming what I saw at Keystone on Saturday! I saw a female releasing her eggs. There were also a ton of plumose anemones and gumboot chitons spawning as well as nudibranches laying eggs. Spring is in the air...er... water.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

I'll say it again, every time I open this thread I learn.

Thank you.

Very, very much.

Well, thank you for your kind words. However, I am thankful to many of the experts,
who did all the hard work collecting the important data I like to include on my photo
pages. For example, all these pages of Red sea cucumbers spawning would be just
photos of what we all see on our dives. But Dr. Ron Shimek provided me graciously with
so much interesting information, that I hope five pages of cucumbers are not too boring ...

Cool! I saw some sea cucumber eggs floating around at Cove 2 in the shallows a few weeks ago, and was wondering what they were. I was thinking flourescent green styrofoam or something.

Pete, who is not only the voluntary up-keeper of the Keystone access trails, but he also explores the outer edges of the underwater park and finds more interesting stuff for us to see. He also updated the map of the park. Still, be careful about the currents, map or not, they can be tricky

And more on local critters. In researching the common Blood star behavior, I discovered that
they are not exactly what I thought they were :easy to indentify sea stars. Got to start looking
much closer ...

It was a busy weekend for the invertebrates at Keystone

Out of mud they crawl

Nice find!