Tag Archives: Remoras

The Numbers Game #91

A Green turtle, with a slender remora on its shell, checks out the photographer
A Green Turtle gets up close and personal. Notice the Slender Remora along for the ride.

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 213. Captions are on the photos. You can see more responses here.

A green turtle says hello

A Green turtle, with a slender remora on its shell, checks out the photographer

I was snorkeling yesterday, when I looked up and saw this green turtle coming towards me. It was near the surface and heading up so I thought it might be about to take a breath. Instead, the turtle, which was quite small, leveled off and kept coming my way.

Usually, in the water, I have a bit of zoom on my camera since that’s often needed. In this instance, I zoomed out and found myself leaning back to keep the turtle in the image. It came within a foot of me and I thought we were going to butt heads, but at the last moment it stopped, veered, then swooped down and away.

It wasn’t until I got home and processed my photos that I noticed the slender remora on the turtle’s shell, behind its head. Remoras, which don’t harm their hosts, attach themselves by means of a sucker disk on their heads, so what can be seen on this turtle is the underside of the fish.

I don’t change my desktop image often, but the top photo makes me so happy I popped it up immediately, so I’m posting it in response to Clare’s monthly Share Your Desktop challenge (see more responses here).

A green turtle swims by