Day 175

Happy Lunar New Year!

That's right, it's the new year. According to the lunar calendar, anyway. Unlike the Chinese New Year, which is the same thing but in China, the Korean lunar new year is called "Seollal" and revolves more around the family than the animal of the year. I'm heading into Seoul tomorrow, so hopefully I'll bea ble to get some photos of festivities. I have a wonderful three-day weekend, which I have spent sleeping, cleaning, cooking, and sorting through photos from Fiji. Enjoy!

FIJI
PART TWO


It's been over a month since I returned from Fiji, but I'm still going through the photos.  This is not because I have too many photos, but simply because I am lazy.  Almost every photo requires color correction to get rid of the overwhelming blueness.  Fortunately, I think the results were worth the wait!

Up first, a very cool creature called the Striped Surgeonfish (Acanthurus lineatus).  It mainly lives alone or in small groups, and feeds on plankton and algae.  It also goes by several other names, including Clown Surgeon, Pajama Clown, and Clown Tang.  (Heads up: tangs, surgeonfishes, and unicornfishes are all in the same family, Acanthuridae.  Say it.  Fish names are fun!)

I dunno, it doesn't really look much like a surgeon to me.

Closer-up!  Hard to believe there's fish this brightly colored!

Looking down from the top.  It's not a very wide fish; most fish of the Acanthuridae family are very thin.

Here's another, less exciting Acanthuridae called the brushtail tang.  It's not a very pretty one.

The grey fish in the back is the tang.  The two in the front are called lemon butterflyfish.

In the same family is the brightly-colored Sailfin Tang, shown below.  This was one of the hardest pictures to color-correct because no matter what I do, it looks artificially colored.  It's just so bright!

The color-corrected version...

...and the original, unaltered photo.

Zebrasoma desjardinii, what a cool scientific name!

While the stripes are the most prominent feature, there are also some spots if you look closely.
And how cool is that eye, with the black stripe running right through it?

Enough of the surgeonfish, time to move on to another very cool animal: the wrasse!

Front and center!  Ignore the reef-destroying whale-creature in the background.

This gorgeous fish is called the Sixbar Wrasse, Thalassoma hardwicke.  They have six black bars on their backs, and their faces... well, see for yourself.

Check out that coloring.  It looks like somebody took a rainbow fish and grabbed it with black ink on their hands.

Close-up time.  Simply incredible.

Each sixbar wrasse has five streaks pointing away from its eye.  Most of the streaks are pink
but the front-facing and rear-facing streaks tend to have an orange tinge to them.

This is one of my favorite fish.  It looks fake!

Gorgeous.

Juvenile sixbar wrasses are bluer, and the black bars get darker as they mature.  This little guy is getting there!

Awww, look at the baby!

And one more mature sixbar to leave you with.

Another cool wrasse is the threespot wrasse, Halichoeres trimaculatus.  This is a less-colorful female.

Subtle coloring, but mostly white.

The male of the species has stronger coloration.

Not a great photo, but salvageable.

Close-up!

This cutie is the striped puffer, Arothron manilensis.  It's also known as the narrow-lined toadfish, which is a much less attractive name.  Puffers are popular in the aquarium trade because they non-aggressive, easy to not kill, and have a surprising amount of personality for a fish. They have sharp teeth that grow throughout their lives, and their diet consists mainly of hard-shelled foods that keep their chompers in check.  They're fun for divers and snorkelers because they don't move very quickly!

Just chillin' and eatin'.

How these guys swim with those tiny fins is a mystery to me.

This was an unusually pale specimen.  It's not bad coloring, he's just very white!

Same guy.  Check out those bright yellow eyes!

That tail is unusually large for a puffer.

This is a different specimen, maybe even paler than the first one, but with a more normally-sized tail.  Cute though!

Here's a small puffer, gently gliding through the sand.  They're not very scared of people.

Here's a few butterfly fish photos:

Chaetodon ephippium, the saddleback butterfly fish.

They mate for life, and are never far from their partner!  Cute!

Same couple.

Here's (what I'm 90% sure are) a few juvenile saddleback butterfly fish:

D'awww, so cute!

So petite.  I love 'em.

A moorish idol, like that one in Finding Nemo:

Zanclus cornutus, it's the only species in the Zanclidae family.  All alone.  :(

Last on the list for today is the Melanurus Wrasse, Halichoeres melanurus.  This is a seriously cool little rainbow fish.  Sadly, they're a bit hard to capture and I've only got one photo.  (Although a few more might turn up as I continue to go through the pictures--fingers crossed!)  It's very similar in appearance to the Ornate Wrasse; the major and most easily recognizable difference between the two is the black tip of the tailfin on the Melanurus Wrasse, whereas the Ornate Wrasse's whole tailfin is colored.

So pretty!

A nice close-up.  See the black tip of the tailfin?

Stay tuned for more crazy ocean creatures in the near future as I continue to wade through the sea (har har) of photos!

Cheers,
Ashton