Saturday, March 26, 2005 - a morning we will never forget..
WOW!! The dives have been incredible as of late. Sharks, eagle rays, nudibranchs, blah blah blah. BUT, the most exciting dive for me was on Saturday morning at Mixing Bowl. We originally went there to say hey to a little seahorse, but by the end, we were swimming through an underwater blizzard of sponge gametes.When we first jumped in the water we noticed 2 male barrel sponges 'smoking' and one female barrel sponge pumping out millions of eggs nearby. By the end of the dive, most of the barrel sponges in the area were erupting like volcanoes. We even watched a large sponge start to pump out its gametes right before our eyes (as well as little Nathan the seahorse who lives only a few feet away). It was all over in a couple of hours, so we were very lucky to be on Bloody Bay Wall that one morning a year when this all takes place!
posted by Rod @ 11:50 AM
7 Comments:
That looks very very cool. Great pix! Glad your camera is still working. (Or are you using another one now...?) Your timing that morning was pretty amazing.
BTW - how can you tell the gender of a sponge??
Aw, neat-o! Kudos for taking all the great pictures.
Gender ID is based solely on the appearance of the gametes. The females blow out chunks of large white clumps while the males look like they are smoking...
You snooze you lose, bra.
Where did Don and Nancy take off to?
Craig - email P.Villas and get my email address off of Sabine please..
Hi Rod! What a fantastic experience. You are so lucky to have been in the right spot at the right time....WOW. What happens to all those little fertilized sponge zygotes, I wonder? I'll have to read about it -- probably they float around for a long time being eaten by all kinds of creatures, and the very lucky very few finally settle down and become sponges. So cool to have seen the hammerhead shark too! KD
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