This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme, guest hosted by Cathy at Between the Lines is ‘Your Favorite Places.’ See more responses here.
The ocean is one of my favorite places. I love snorkeling and every swim is different, the conditions and the things I see. Here’s a sample. Captions on the photos.
This week’s Sunday Stills color challenge, guest hosted by Susanne at Cats and Trails and Garden Tales, is ‘Jade Green.’ See more responses here. Just the two this week, in part because of inclement weather and power outages.
Top is an underwater view at Two Step, a popular snorkeling spot in South Kona. Second is some dappled light in the greenery at Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden.
A couple of urchins here. A familiar and quite common Red Pencil Urchin, and a Diadema Savignyi Urchin. The latter one is rare in Hawaii and looks a lot like the Long-spined Urchin, but is distinguished by the striking blue lines on its test.
I saw this man, down on the rocks below Upolu Airport, collecting Opihi. Opihi is the Hawaiian word for limpets, and they are a prized food for the locals. Gathering them though is not an easy task. For one thing, it takes place at the water line. Opihi pickers are guaranteed to get wet and have to take great care not to get washed out to sea. One or two seem to disappear every year.
The Opihi also have to be taken while they are feeding and relaxed. Otherwise they will be so firmly adhered to the rocks that no amount of prying will loosen them.
This was one of three octopuses I saw together recently. I think this one and one of the others were looking to mate, but my presence was spooking them. So I backed off and they did indeed appear to be going to mate, but none of my photos turned out as I was then too far away!
I spotted this small Pacific Day Octopus on the move and it quickly headed for a spot to settle down. The place it chose was just below a head of coral, which was occupied by an Arc-Eye Hawkfish. The hawkfish didn’t move, but didn’t look happy with its new neighbor.
The idea of The Numbers Game is to enter a number into the search bar of your computer and then post a selection of the photos that turn up. This week’s number is 225. Captions are on the photos. You can see more responses here.
This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful.’ See more responses here.
Also posted for Becky’s Squares: Shadows. See more responses here.
Graham's Island 