Some more of this species from
SACRED trip to Port Victoria.
Snorkel at Point Pearce, from memory.
Most fish in frame are adults of this species (Please ignore the Blackspotted Wrasse mid-background).
Tide on rise in late AM - high energy beach. Found on mid shore. Beach is composed of coarse, loose, well-rounded, and waterworn rocks. Minimal sand at shoreline and lots of sea wrack at backshore.
Home for a largish Hermit Crab - see https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/204245142
Probably the largest specimen I've seen ... need a biggish helmet shell for its home.
Limited image quality but in all photos the same school of adolescent or small adult pike is present. They were moving NE against the outgoing tide and stayed quite close to the cliff base terrain.
More of these, a common inhabitant of this rocky shoreline.
End of dive, we're usually greeted by some of these blennies.Today was no exception.
For these 2 images the SUBJECT fish is the adult, but please note that there is a small juvenile facing camera to R of the adult.
(On this roughly 2 hours dive from new jetty to outer old jetty including all of the eastern arm of the T section and the "grid " in about 10m depth alongside that section, I saw the greatest number of blue devils I've ever seen for the location. Ranging from small juveniles to large adults. Within the past decade or so there has clearly been considerable recruitment of the species on site. Can but guess why, as I've been saying in some of my observations from some earlier dives here. Possibly the increased protection of nearby populations-Rapid Head Green Sanctuary Zone in particular-,possibly ocean warming, possibly both, and perhaps there are other reasons yet to be considered.,eg the collapse of much of the inshore section of the old jetty has prevented recreational fishers from having shore access to the outer old jetty, and perhaps anthropogenic reduced predation eg by over extraction of many likely predator species such as Snapper and Harlequin Fish).
In these images the same two large adults are shown interacting, probably a territorial tiff given the "kissing " action of one in the 3rd image.
I nominate the nearer of the two as the SUBJECT individual for this series (the individual ideally should be specified for any inat observations where images include more than one individual, because every individual has unique facial markings. Therefore an individual can be tracked over time, in similar fashion to leafy seadragons and probably other species eg? Harlequin Fish).
See also next submission with the sponge as subject.