by Barry Brown | Feb 25, 2016 | Reef, Science
Hello friends, I have a fun Caribbean reef scene for you all today with a Golden Crinoid being the main subject. I rarely see these prehistoric looking creatures any more and if I do they are usually the all black ones, these orange ones are super hard to find. Crinoids are marine animals that make up the class Crinoidea of the echinoderms (phylum Echinodermata). Crinoidea comes from the Greek word krinon, “a lily”, and eidos, “form”. They live both in shallow water and in depths as great as 6,000 metres (20,000 ft). Sea lilies refer to the crinoids which, in their adult form, are attached to the sea bottom by a stalk by Barry Brown | Dec 4, 2015 | Aquaculture, Reef, Science
Good morning friends, I know long time right??? Well as I mentioned in my last blog on wednesday we had one crazy week here at Substation, I ended up doing eight dives in three days leaving ZERO time to blog! Friday the waves were so big that we could hardly get the sub in or out of the water and diving was horrible due to poor visibility. Saturday we got the hardest and longest rain of the year, so much in fact that we were unable to take the car anywhere or leave the house, it was fantastic! Because of all the rain I was unable to my weekly mountain bike ride on the trails so my neighbor and I ended up doing a two hour road ride to Vaersenbaai and back. by Barry Brown | Nov 20, 2015 | Fish, Reef, Science
Hi friends, I have a rare, very large sea urchin called a Tretocidaris bartletti (A. Agassiz) for you all today that was found this year by the Smithsonian scientists on the little island of Klein Curacao. This urchin was not only crazy colorful it was huge!! This thing was so big it wouldn’t even fit into a big white utility bucket, I ended up carrying it by hand back down to the reef where I took these photos of it walking around in the sand. These urchins range from North Carolina through the Caribbean between 140-625 meters, that’s 459-2050 feet, that’s quite a difference in depth.
