About a month ago I travelled to the remote reaches of the tropical western pacific Ocean to visit the magical island of Palau. In addition to seeing howBiota Palau makes captive raised coral beauties,也是最出色的visit to the national clam farm, there was a respectable amount of diving with lots of coral spotting involved.
The reefs of Palau are amongst the healthiest I have ever seen with lush coral growth that varied by habitat, but afforded plenty of cool coral encounters. The semi-enclosed lagoons with very shallow water is where an unusualMontiporacould be found.
它大的不规则结节看起来确实像Montipora Meandrina, but in deeper water this coral grew into a plating shape that hasn’t been well documented for this coral, if it is in fact aMontipora. Also, it was super cool to see a huge grown out帕沃纳frondifera, not as green as the ORA Mint Pavona, but definitely much bigger, and living in direct bright sunlight.
On the first访问Niko Bay, Biota Palau headman Tom Bowling showed me this fantastic spot where normally deeper water corals can be seen at snorkeling depth. This shaded shallow water reef ledge was a paradise of LPS corals including tons of叶叶in many different colors, as well as some more seldom seen species.
Two colonies of spiny cup果皮definitely stood out, one for being solid green and another for having green mouths but a mostly ghostly grey body. Of course it was definitely cool to see帕劳-astreain Palau!
This unusual species is virtually absent in the marine aquarium hobby, looking very much like the lovechild of aPorites和Stylophora珊瑚,有灰色的棕色树枝,具有明显的蓝色灰色息肉。在另一端,泡沫珊瑚在水族馆的爱好中非常普遍,在某些礁石上遇到它们也就不足为奇了,但是一个具有中途分支增长形式的殖民地值得得到聚光灯。
在其他一些单独的潜水中,非光合柔软的珊瑚和石质珊瑚比比皆是。一种特别令人惊叹的固体橙色菌株Chironephthya引起了我的注意 - 这些珊瑚不适合重力站起来,因此最常被视为从壁架和洞穴中垂下来,而这种压力对于它的鲜艳橙色很有趣,几乎像大息肉的殖民地一样明亮树突叶.
The thin branching purple stony ‘thing’ is not a true coral but a hydrocoral,STYLASTER SANGUINEUS。This species was seen on a variety of dive sights across many environments, but it grows most dense and luscious in overhangs and shaded area with good water flow, often right alongside a pretty species ofDendronephthya具有深红色的尖端和鲜艳的息肉。
最终,一直沿着尼科湾的坡度往下走,那里的隐秘珊瑚很多。在深处,可用的有限光的质量值必须接近污水池,每个珊瑚都被扁平并伸展以捕捉尽可能多的光。
Freaky瘦肉, rarely seenParaclavarina完全不同的圆盘珊瑚是奇怪的珊瑚,这些珊瑚占据了庇护所更深的部分。在这个栖息地中,尽管只有50英尺深,但光线还是很黑的,但是看到不经常在家庭水族馆中生长的珊瑚使潜入这个昏暗的黑暗栖息地是值得的努力。