Fair warning: this is going to be a fairly low-key diary with a bunch of blurry underwater photos. Just so you know. All photos are by the author who holds copyright (such as it is).
One of the things about biodiversity is that there is a lot of it under our noses that very few people notice. The Daily Bucket series is an excellent attempt to bring the natural world around us to everyone's attention.
The undersea world seems especially exotic but, if you live near the coast, there is a whole bunch of amazing life just a few inches below the surface. The following pictures were all taken on Sunday along the jetty at St. Andrews State Park in Panama City, Florida. The water clarity wasn't the best so I focused my attention on life on the rocks themselves.
The jetty consists of large numbers of immense pieces of limestone, piled up in an irregular fashion. The rock provides substrate for a wide variety of living things, animals and algae. In the picture below you can see several sea urchins in the lower left and an area that they have grazed bare above. A similar area can be seen in the background on the right. A thick layer of various kinds of algae covers the ungrazed area as well as some orange stuff
Which is revealed to be some kind of encrusting sponge.
These plant like structures are actually colonies of filter-feeding animals, probably a hydrozoan (a relative of the Portuguese Man O'War - but harmless) or possibly a Bryozoan (moss animal).
Here's a closeup showing the individual animals as blurry patches of white.
Here's a simpler animal - a small sea anemone, nestled in the algae
Some areas are coated in barnacles or the remains of ex-barnacles. Can you spot the fish in this picture?
The most conspicuous fishes on the jetty are these wrasses. It appeared to be breeding season. Wrasses frequently have complicated mating systems in which individuals start out their lives as females and (sometimes) end up turning into males later on.
Here are two males - apparently displaying at one another
And a male and a female (almost out of sight at the bottom)
A number of tropical species make their way from the southern Gulf and make an outpost here. Most do not survive the winters. This Beaugregory damsel fish is one of the most common and colorful. I did see a very large Angelfish on Sunday but it was too deep for a photograph.
In previous pictures you may have noticed small fish sitting on the rocks. These are a species of blenny. They live in holes on the rocks and are present on the jetty in enormous numbers. They were quite bold this time which allowed me to get some pictures (getting them in focus was quite a challenge). Personally I think they are one of the most adorable animals in existence.
I hope the cloudy water and 'soft focus' didn't put you off and that this gives you an appreciation for the diversity that exists in a very ordinary spot at the edge of the sea.
My apologies to kossak kristina40 who lives in Panama City. I said I would contact her the next time I went snorkeling. However this was kind of a last minute decision and I wasn't sure I was even going to go until that morning.