I did a solo dive around the outer end of the new jetty at Rapid Bay in the afternoon. I took this photo which features an unsharp and tiny juvenile pipefish, Stigmatopora sp., across the adult Rhino pipefish’s head: –
The two are easy to spot. There is one at about upper centre, facing upwards and the other one, less sharp, is at lower right, oriented horizontally.
Here is a cropped version of the same photo: –
But there are probably others in frame that are smaller and so unsharp that nobody can be sure.
In a similar situation, I don’t know what pipefish species the ones in this photo are: –
They are clearly Genus Stigmatopora, but they coud be S.argus, narinosa or nigra, or even something else in the Stigmatopora species complex.
Here is a cropped version of the same photo: –
On another topic, I took this photo of an 11-armed sea star during my Rapid Bay visit: –
Not exactly armless, these 11-armed sea stars are voracious predators. I didn’t feel comfortable taking any photos of about 5 of these lying dead or dying, probably dead as none were moving, on the decking of the jetty post dive. But a small huddle of young adult fishermen – the only people except me on the jetty at the time because the tide was out – had removed them from their 2 to 3 crab nets to stop them stealing the baits within. The baits were whole heads of mulloway, and I did get underwater photos of those.
Do we call this cruelty to mobile invertebrates?