Good morning friends, here is one of the new Land Snails, Neosubulina harterti that is now calling our house, home. This particular species of snail has just appeared out of nowhere and after any given rain the driveway is just full of them. These are very small snails, this one here was less than half an inch in length with his body extended. My daily routine has been to get up early and carefully go outside with a flashlight and pick them all up and remove them from our walking areas and take them to a safer area away from foot traffic and the car. Land snails are gastropods, whose members also include aquatic snails (including marine snails) and slugs. The name means stomach-foot. This makes a degree of sense as the whole clan gets about by gliding on a muscular structure on the bottom of the abdomen, called the foot. The action that produces motion is a well-coordinated, wavelike contraction of muscles on the bottom of the foot that propels the gastropod smoothly forward over just about any surface. The action is not fast by human mobility standards but a determined snail can easily cover a meter in 5 minutes, so in the course of an evening a snail can travel the length of a football field and back. Land snails have several characteristics that make them easily identifiable. They have a single shell, usually coiled, that is a combination shield and humidor. The hard shell resists the efforts of predators and provides a haven during dry times. Snails are a moist gang, and if a snail cannot find a watering hole to renew its water supply, it will retreat to a protected nook, withdraw into its shell, and seal its shell to a solid surface. The snail will lapse into dormancy until rain, dew, or a garden sprinkler once again moistens the environment. This passive state, rather like hibernation but initiated by dry rather than cold, is called estivation. One indication that snails have been active is the telltale slime trail. Garden snails produce a layer of mucus on which they slide. This makes it easy to track their movement, but also saddles them with a reputation for being yucky. Most land snails have interesting projections on the fronts of their heads.  Technically they are tentacles, but “feeler” is a pretty good description of their function because they are touch sensitive. The two longer ones have light-sensitive organs at their tips, making them the snail’s version of eyes, although their function is limited to light perception rather than image generation. The shorter tentacles feel, taste, and smell the environment in the never-ending search for food and water, and in constant vigilance against dangers.

Good morning friends, I have a big beautiful Tillandsia Air-Plant for you all this morning which was just one of millions that we saw on our hike last Sunday at Mount Christoffel. A Tillandsia is a Bromeliad but not all Bromeliads are Tillandsias. Bromeliad is the Family name, Tillandsia is the genus. Airplants are the common name for Tillandsias (sometimes called “Air Plants”). Not all Bromeliads are Airplants. Airplants grow without soil while most types of Bromeliads do best in soil. Tillandsias grow naturally in South and Central America and southern parts of the United States. They are in the Bromeliad family, and are sometimes referred to as “air plants.” Hundreds of different varieties grow on trees, rocks, cliffs, and various types of cacti. Thin-leaf varieties grow in areas with more rain, and thick-leaf varieties in areas more subject to drought. No soil is needed to grow these unique plants. All water and nutrients are taken through the leaves. Their roots are used as wire-like anchors. Bromeliads or Tillandsias have a growth cycle starting with one plant growing to maturity and then blooming! One to two months after the bloom has finished, new plants form around the base of the “mother” plant. They will then eventually mature and complete their blooming cycle in one to several years, depending upon the variety and growing conditions. 

I did three dives yesterday. The first was with two models shooting some photos for Scuba Diver Magazine again the other two were with Mark from the World famous “Dive Bus” and a friend of his up the coast. All this week we are involved in a project of moving corals from one place to another due to up-coming construction project and if they don’t get moved they won’t have a chance. So today starting at 11:00 we will again be doing 2-3 more dives and moving corals and taking them to their new homes a short ways down the reef.   

So much to do, have a wonderful day, Barry

Good morning friends, it 5:00am here and super quiet! I have a very busy day planned ahead IF it doesn’t rain again! I am picking up Stijn at 8:00am and we are both first taking a friend of mine out to the airport to get him a ticket so he can get home to see his family in South America, will tell you this story more next week. After that we are planning on going to Mount Christoffel for the whole day doing photography. It’s something I have always wanted to do but have never taken the time to do it. Stijn will be helping me carry gear all day and help me set up any black-back-drop photos I may be taking so if it happens we may end up having some fun Curacao wildlife/vegetation photos for you next week.

For the past few days a group of four baby Caribbean Reef Squids, Sepioteuthis sepioidea have been living in our little lagoon at the Substation. The biggest one seen here is only about an inch and a half long. They spend their days just hovering in one spot under a big piece of algae encrusted rope that is hanging in the water and close to the surface. So yesterday after the sub dive I ran inside and put together another camera with the good-ol 28-70 lens and took off back to the water. When photographing squids you have to move real slow! In fact, what I do is just park myself about a meter from them and just hover there for 10 minutes before I start taking any pictures, that way they start to get a bit used to you. The basic coloring of a Caribbean reef squid is a mottled medium green to brown on their dorsal (upper) side with lighter coloring on their ventral (under) side for camouflage from predators swimming above or below them. These animals are social creatures often found in small groups that communicate through a variety of complex signals. Both cuttlefish and squid communicate by controlling the pigment in their skin. Messages such as readiness to mate, sexual identification, and alarm are flashed through various colorful spots, blotches, and background color. To signal slight alarm, their brow ridges turn bright gold and their central arms turn white. Their entire body will pale when a squid retreats from a potential predator and in open water when faced with an extremely aggressive predator, reef squid can also hide themselves and confuse predators by ejecting a cloud of black ink. Retreating squid near the protection of the reef will often turn dark brown or reddish in color to match their surroundings.

In addition to their colorful signaling behavior, S. sepioidea display unique behaviors such as pointing their bodies upward or vertically prior to striking a fish or prey, curling upward during territorial disputes and in hostile situations, and pointing head-down when approached by a predator in open water. As you can see here this little guy put his arms out as far as he could to make himself look bigger to try and scare me away, I was laughing underwater at how darn cute he was! Compared to the size of their body, squid’s eyes are strikingly large. They have the largest eye-to-body ratio in the entire animal kingdom.

I better get moving, I will send more baby squids shots this week! Have a wonderful weekend,

Barry