Zanclus samples from Anse des Cascades - 19 July 2011

Because the sea was very rough during the two weeks in Reunion and because we could not be sampling in the marine reserve, this was the only site where we could go to search for the Moorish idol: Anse des Cascades.

And here are the 15 samples we collected with my brother ...

Sampling trip July - Reunion

The past two weeks, Emilie and I have been in holidays in Reunion. But as everyone knows, none of us as biologist can be in real holidays. So, we kept this statement true and we went snorkeling to see cucumber ;). Anyway, here are some pictures we took while "working".

Here is the culprit sea cucumber, Synapta maculata (on right hand side), with its nice tentacles around its mouth. The urchin Diadema setosum with its five characteristic white dots and peacock worm in the top left.

Then we saw some fish like this trumpet fish and this Picasso trigger fish.

This puffer fish that Emilie hunted for a while to get this nice picture!

Also some beautiful fish and others not very nice.

Emilie picked up some ophiuroids also. This one was probably Ophionereis porrecta as you can see.

Who's who? who can say which one is moorish idol and which one is the bannerfish?

And then when we left, we got a very nice surprise (thanks to Emilie's piercing eyes!). Look in the water close to the fishing boat, there are two dark roundish shapes. Who guessed?

Two juveniles of rays at only 3m from the beach!

That was our snorkeling in the reserve area at Etang Sale