Kessil

Day at California Academy of Sciences.

I took my sister and my nephew there, it was also my first time, I took a throng of pictures, not all of them are great though :( they were kind of making speed up my time at each spot. I could have spent hours at a few of the displays. Anyways here are some photos :)

Jellies
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elenfers

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Feather duster
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Clown Tang
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Flamboyant Cuttlefish
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No idea but it was nice enough to get in front of my lens
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Wrasse of some sort really pretty!
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My nephew standing in front a cave view
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Lionfish, this one weirded me out a bit, cause I was at a weird angle and it looked like it was swimming outside of the display, then I noticed it was a half sphere, it made for a nice photo.
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Some nps
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Etc:
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Surface shots
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My camera is a Canon T3i, Most shots were with a 50mm lens fs 1.8 and the macro shots were with a Raynox dcr-250 attached to the 50mm.
 
For anyone wanting to start taking Macro Photos this video got me started and really inspired. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqRn3at0H60
 
Thanks Rich! You should have a picture guide on the site, so I can try and find all the fish I took pictures of, or you should be there on weekends so you can answer my questions :p
 
Im there on Sundays...
:D

I think they are working on mobile apps for animal ID. Totally different department though.
 
Awesome! I'll schedule a trip to be there on a Sunday :) I just made my camera start saving raw files instead of just jpegs. I am ready for round two, maybe rent a zoom lens also.
 
treylane said:
Whoever destroyed the caribbean reef tank, has A LOT OF EXPLAINING TO DO....

You mean the tank that was almost completely taken over and smothered by the tenacious and unfightable without nuking it from space Erythropodium? That tank badly needed a restart and will be massively cool in the next year or so.
 
treylane said:
Whoever destroyed the caribbean reef tank, has A LOT OF EXPLAINING TO DO....

That was me, although I would say I saved the Caribbean display, not destroyed it.

Besides huge carpets of invasive Erythropodium coral (which grows up the base of and smothers gorgonians), the life support and flow in this tank were really inadequate. Gorgonians did not grow well. Stony corals didn't either. Lots of nuisance algae. Palythoa grew well, as did the Erythropodium, but that was about it. I ripped apart the tank and bleached the fiberglass rockwork to kill all the Erythropodium. Most of the changes that went into this are behind the scenes and you will not see their impact until a year or two from now when the tank looks better than it ever did before.

For reference, I shot this video about a month before we tore the tank down. In all honesty I did not consider it adequate for a reef exhibit at a modern public aquarium. We know how to make reef tanks look way better than this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3u4eYhJ7pY

PS The Palythoa are all behind the scenes and will go back in soon.
 
Erick said:
Wrasse of some sort really pretty!
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Hi Erick, this is Halichoeres pictus or "Rainbow Wrasse" from the Caribbean. I have been searching far and wide for photos of this fish in aquariums but it seems they are just incredibly rare in the trade (although not in the wild). They are among the smallest Halichoeres in the Caribbean; that male in the second shot is probably only 4 or 5 inches at most.
 
Next time I go I'll be spending a lot more time in front of the big tank and taking a ton more photos. Thanks for the info!
 
Thales said:
Im there on Sundays...
:D

I think they are working on mobile apps for animal ID. Totally different department though.

Be cool if they hooked up with Google Googles so you simply snap a pic (uh, yah, S I M P L E :lol:) and it hopefully tells you :D
 
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