Photographer Videographer youtube.com/channel/UCxuNmcZโฆ
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๐ฆ Thor amboinensis takes its name from Ambon, far out in the Moluccas โ yet here are three, on Safaga's house reef, tails raised like small flags. One anemone can keep several: a shared home of tentacles, and pearls of light between. #ThorAmboinensis #Safaga #RedSea
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๐ป Spiny lobsters under a ledge. Each can rasp a sound, sliding a pad at the base of its antennae over a ridge โ stick, slip, like a bow on a string. Grunts are named for theirs: teeth grinding in the throat. A quiet ledge, full of voices. #spinylobster #grunt
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Groove after groove, a brain coral at Shaab Sheer holds the years it took to grow. Light pours into the folds, small fish drift over them, and nothing asks to be anywhere else. #braincoral #ShaabSheer #Safaga #RedSea
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๐ชธ In Egypt's northern Red Sea, dolphins line up at certain corals to rub their skin against them. This one at Tobia Kebir takes a piece along, and rises with it from the sand into a ceiling of light. #dolphin #TobiaKebir #Safaga #RedSea #bluewater
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๐ Waves at the surface bend sunlight into bright, wobbling lines on the bottom. Optics calls them caustics, from the Greek for burnt. Here they fall through gaps in a reef overhang at Shaab Sheer, Safaga, onto white sand. #caustics #ShaabSheer #Safaga #RedSea
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๐ A coral hind holds its ledge at Gamul Kebir, blue spots on red, and waits. Over 80 % of what it eats is small fish, mostly sea goldies, taken in one rush up from the bottom. A few metres on, the reef top is a cloud of orange anthias in the light this shallow reef is known for.
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๐ซง Out of the deep blue, mouth wide, then overhead so close its wing blocks the sun. The Maldives is home to the largest known population of reef mantas in the world, a whole nation of them gliding past the atolls. #mantaray #maldives #mantas #underwater #bluewater
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๐ง Manta rays have the largest brain of any cold-blooded fish, both by weight and for their body size. They take their time with life too: mantas may live at least 50 years. And no stinging spine in the tail ๐ Just wide wings over the reef and the light coming down from above.
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๐ค Upside-down jellyfish were the first animals without a central nervous system seen to sleep: they pulse slower at night, and kept awake, they are sluggish the next day. This Cassiopea, in full daylight at Shaab Sheer, is up and swimming, frilly arms pointed at the sun.
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๐๏ธ Eye of the sea is one of the blue blanquillo's common names, and it fits: this tilefish cruises high above the reef and picks its prey off the bottom by sight. Adults live in monogamous pairs, and this one over Shaab Claude soon had company.
#eyeofthesea #blueblanquillo
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๐ชธ On a table coral, tan is living tissue, bright white is recent loss, and brown is older dead skeleton under algae.
Which is exactly why this table at Ras Abu Soma carries all three at once: a brown band through the middle, white at its ends, living coral round it.
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๐คฏ Octopus skin carries both colour cells and tiny muscles that raise bumps, so texture and pattern can change together.
Which is exactly why this one goes from smooth dark brown to white-flecked and knobbly like the rock around it.
#octopus #dayoctopus #octopuscyanea
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๐ The reef tore open the forward hull of the Salem Express and knocked in her bow door, flooding the car deck within minutes.
Which is exactly why the hallway ends in daylight: the front of the ship is open to the sea.
#salemexpress #wreckdiving #safaga #redsea #shipwreck
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๐ Odonus niger can reach about 50 cm including the tail but rarely goes past 30, according to DORIS.
This one swims left to right over the sand at an unhurried pace, showing the full length of its body.
#odonusniger #triggerfish #redtoothedtriggerfish #divelife
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A sea turtle is cold-blooded ๐ข, so it keeps to wherever the water itself lies warm.
which is exactly why this one holds the lit water over the reef instead of the cooler open blue behind it.
#seaturtle #cheloniidae #coldblooded #coralreef #diving
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๐คฏ Thysanozoon flatworms can lift off the reef and travel by waving their whole flat body, edges rolling like cloth in a breeze.
This gold-dotted one does exactly that, sailing up through the water with its white rim rippling.
#flatworm #thysanozoon #polycladflatworm
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๐ Arabian monocle bream carry numerous dark spots along their sides, set so close they read as stripes.
This school shows it clearly โ silver flanks with rows of dark spots, moving together over the reef.
#arabianmonoclebream #scolopsisghanam #monoclebream #reeffish #reeflife
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๐ Nudibranchs cross open rubble on a single muscular foot, gill plume raised and rhinophores out to sample the water ahead.
This one is mid-crossing at the house reef, orange gills fanned above a black-and-white body.
#nudibranch #seaslug #nudibranchia #coralreef #scubadiving
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๐ชธ A table coral is one colony โ thousands of polyps sharing a single plate on a stalk.
On this Shaab Sheer plateau those plates sit in a garden that itself runs a kilometre, each table keeping its own sky of water.
#ShaabSheer #tablecoral #Acropora #Safaga #coralcolony
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๐ Holacanthus means a cheek full of spine โ every rock beauty carries a blade on the gill cover.
Which is exactly why this yellow-and-black adult can hang on an isolated sponge boulder, pick, and then cross the sand.
#rockbeauty #holacanthus #pomacanthidae #caribbeanreef
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