Coming face-to-face with a cray and some spineless wonders Coming face-to-face with a cray and some spineless wonders

Our expedition team is back from the Three Kings Islands and ready to answer your questions about what they found and to show you some of the specimens they collected to help build their understanding of the marine environment. The blog has been a fantastic chance to follow their discoveries but now you can meet them face to face and talk to them about their preliminary findings about marine life in the Three Kings. In the few days since the team got back on dry land they've already identified that one of the fish they found is likely to be a new species. So who knows what tomorrow will bring. You can meet four of the team - including University of Queensland PhD student Libby Liggins and one of the expedition's photographers Richard Robinson - tomorrow at 11am at the Auckland Museum. There are some more details of the session below and we've also got some more underwater footagREAD MORE...

During a dive they’ve always got their head hidden under the Sargassum seaweed as they fossick for interesting shapes and colours to photograph. Here are some small – and not so small – creatures that Malcolm captured caught on camera. Starting at the big end of the scale – this crayfish came wandering out to meet Malcolm and kept coming until it actually bumped into his camera!

Ready for my close-up: this crayfish came close enough to Malcolm's camera to bump into it — Ready for my close-up: this crayfish came close enough to Malcolm’s camera to bump into it

This warty wobbly blob is the size of a tennis ball – and it’s a wandering anemone. You see anemones all the time in rock pools around New Zealand, and they are stuck in one place. When they sense danger they retract into a small ball, and when they are relaxed and feeding they wave their tentacles around in the water. This guy, however, can get up and move around! It may not be the fastest kid on the block, but it can shift from one place to another.

Warty wobbly blob AKA a wandering anemone

It's too cold for coral reefs in the Three Kings but just right for these cup corals — It’s too cold for coral reefs in the Three Kings but just right for these cup corals

And these little jewels are cup corals. It is too far south and too cold at the Three Kings to get coral reefs like you do in the tropics, but
there are lots of lovely solitary corals, such as these orange beauties, which I think look a little like dried apricots.

2 Responses to “Coming face-to-face with a cray and some spineless wonders”

Darryl Torckler
April 11, 2013
Nice to see your images hot out of the camera Malcolm, look forward to seeing more images from the Kings trip.
Anne Cawley
April 11, 2013
How deep did you dive?
What is sargassum seaweed?how deep is it ?
Have you seen any new types of seaweed or fish?