In addition to a new 'garden' of 'sea whips' standing as tall as I am at 130', on a recent dive Todd and I saw this amber-colored life form at about 90'. I haven't had the chance to look it up.
The seafloor lifescape changes over the years. There are distinctively different life regimes at 10', 30', 90', 100' and so on. And over the years they have changed as oxygen levels in the waters change for complex and incompletely-known reasons. We haven't seen a sea slug for at least a year, for instance, whereas they used to be the most common life form at about 40'. And whereas the garden of sea whips used to reside around 100', now there is a new one between 130' and 140'. If I could dive more regularly, I'd like to begin a systematic survey, but that simply isn't realistic.
Below, the best photo we have so far of a 'sea whip'. This is the life form that stood in a colony at 130'-140' last time, some as tall as I am.
No comments:
Post a Comment