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 ABOUTfeatured: 30 Best Snorkeling Blogs Fun Ways to enjoy the caribbeanArchive for the ‘Starfish + Urchins + Kin’Dec 29, 09 Comments Off
 Sea Urchin with Flowers Good evening all, cough, cough, sniff, sniff, yes I still have a dumb cold. I stayed home all day doing close to nothing and trying to lay down but find it impossible to sleep during the day! While snuggling my camera in bed I thought why not finally do something with the piles of sea urchins I have laying everywhere, I’ve been saving them for a day just like this. Every time Aimee and I go to the beach we are on the lookout for these dried up urchins but most of them are always broken or the birds have cracked the shells looking for a snack. So today I rounded them all up and proceeded to check each one in a dark room with a flashlight for the one with the best glowing color. I found out that most of the ones we have are not going to work for this type of shot as they are to dark but will be nice as a collage instead. I spent about an hour setting this shot up, in my mind it seemed like it was going to be so easy but I quickly found out there was more to it than meets the eye. Anyways something a bit different for you all, I know you all get tired of being underwater and want more topside stuff and I do keep a list of all the requests I receive.
I wish I had something exciting to tell you but it was just one of those days!! Have a great evening all!!
Sunny Curacao regards, Barry
Nov 15, 09 Comments Off
 Spawning Brittle Star Hi friends, here’s another cool picture of a Banded-Arm Brittle Star spawning. Look carefully and you can see the hundreds of tiny eggs that are being released! I found out the night I shot this that trying to sneak up on a spawning brittle star is close to impossible! Not impossible as you can see but close as I took hundreds of photos. They are so sensitive to light that the second you shine light on them to focus with the camera they are gone! You wouldn’t think a little creature like this could move very fast but boy would you ever be surprised!
I called in sick again today and spent the whole day going thru old photos. I’m going thru and picking out all the best birds, reptiles, dolphins, shots of Curacao, family pictures, flowers and so on and so forth and putting them all on my new 1TB hard drive so I can find things easier. I have so many full cases of cd’s and dvd’s and about ten 500GB mini hard drives that are all full, that’s a whole lot of pictures!! Someone asked me the other day how many dives I have done since I have been here, I stopped counting at 1000!
It’s off to bed, hope you all had a wonderful weekend! Sunny regards, Barry
Oct 24, 09 Comments Off
 Brittle Star Good evening my dear friends, are you getting the most out of your weekend?? Our days are spent mostly at the Sea Aquarium and then in the evening’s Aimee rushes home to walk the dogs in what little light we have left. Today at 1:30 my friend Kenji and I went on a dive as we had no more programs for the rest of the day. The water was pretty murky in the shallows plus big waves overhead didn’t help the visibility but we still had a pretty good dive. Aimee and I were just looking at some of the photos I took today and in one photo of some encrusting sponge she spotted a see-thru shrimp that I accidentally took a nice photo of, I never even saw it?? This really seems to happen quite a bit, I shoot something and then get home to find another little treasure in the photo, let’s just call it a bonus!
This is a Sponge Brittle Star that Aimee found on the night we saw the grooved brain corals spawning over in front of Aqua Electra. These sponge brittle stars don’t seem to be affected by light like their cousins the regular brittle stars, those guys are scared of everything! Eva was with us the night we found this, Aimee kept me pretty busy with one cool find after another.
Gotta run, talk to you all tomorrow, Barry
24-10-2009
Oct 16, 09 Comments Off
 Spawning Brittle Star Good evening readers, guess what I did today, yep, NOTHING! I had a fairly relaxing day at home while Eva went to the Aquarium and did some shopping on the beach and Aimee had to work. About the only outside adventure I did today was to take the dogs for a nice walk at the salt ponds and while I was there I picked all my trail tools I had hidden over there in the brush. I spent most of the day backing up photos onto mini-hard drives and burning DVD’s, I took a whole lot of pictures this week!
Here’s a fun shot from last night, this is a large Brittle Star Spawning! I tell you it’s such a strange and wonderful thing to see! It’s like an underwater alarm is sounded and all at once every brittle star crawls out from underneath something and starts mating and spawning. Here you can see the body raised up high and all those eggs being released into the water, I mean is that cool or what?? I raced all around trying to get more of these type of shots but it just happens so fast! I am going back tonight at 7:00 to see if that was it or if it is still going, stay tuned.
I am off to a birthday party at work, talk to you later, Barry
15-10-2009
Sep 30, 09 Comments Off
 Sponge Brittle Star Hey gang, how was your day today?? Sure is a lot of strange things going on in the world right now with the weather being at the top of the list! I guess for the most part that’s what’s nice about living here, it’s always the same weather just about every day of the year and hurricanes just go around us. Today was really windy which always means rough seas, the good side is no mosquitoes!! Aimee had the day off and spent most of it working on key-wording the photos I have ready to send to the States which will then be available for sale on our www.wildhorizons.com site, check it out.
Here’s something we see on every night dive but I never get tired of shooting it. This is a Azure Vase Sponge with a beautiful little Sponge Brittle Star hanging out on the side. These brittle stars spend all day out of site hiding from the fish who will eat them if given the chance. At night long after the fish have gone to bed they then slowly crawl up out of these sponges or from under coral heads and feed on algae or any other left over goodies they can find. Lights don’t seem to really bother these guys they just continue to go about their business knowing that as long as it’s night they are safe!!
Aimee is out walking the dogs again, she already took them for two hours this morning to the beach and yes they are two lucky dogs!! I had to take my rear bike rim into the Dasia doctor today, I need a new cog in the back, broken spokes and time for new liquid in the rear tire to help prevent flats. That’s about it, headed to a Photoshop party tonight so I better get moving. Later Gators, Barry
30-9-2009
Sep 16, 09 Comments Off
 Variegated Urchin Good evening friends, what’s happening?? I took the day off because my finger was pretty swollen still and Inca was acting strange?? I took her out to the trails so many times to try and get her to do her business but nothing each time and then she would look at me and slink back to the car acting like she had just been beat? Finally at 5:30 tonight she finally decided she had to go and did go but is still acting weird, will be glad when Aimee gets here!! So we didn’t do any kind of walk or hike today neither one of them seemed to excited about it. I spent most of the getting ready for a helicopter photo shoot that we are going to do tomorrow at around 12:30. Sport Diver magazine is doing an article on helicopter diving and needs a specific shot so tomorrow with the help of Mark again and one of his friends we are going to give it a try over by the Marriott.
I was a good boy today and cleaned up the house before Aimee’s arrival! Geez after sweeping the whole house it’s amazing how much hair Indi looses?? It looked like a baby kitten in the dust-pan today! We are still expecting Aimee to arrive tomorrow night but I haven’t heard from her in the past 24 hours so not sure if there is a new plan or not?
Mark called me today and said on their night-dive last night around 7:00 they saw the brittle stars spawning!! I can’t believe I missed that?? I have all my gear in the car now and am running down to Pier Baai to do a night dive to see if there is still spawning tonight, it’s worth a try hurt finger or not!
Your photo this evening is a close-up shot of our local Variegated Urchins that we have everywhere on the reef. These are one of the few urchins that you can handle, you can carefully pick them up and they will crawl around on your hand, it feels really cool!
That’s it, glad everyone liked today’s photo so much love the compliments! Bye now, Barry
16-9-2009
May 1, 09 Comments Off
 sea-urchin-in-mangrove-leaves Good evening readers of the blog. Here’s another fun shot from one of my morning walks to the ocean. This was taken along the waters edge and left high and dry as the tide slowly went out. The leaves are all from Mangrove trees that grow all along the coast and the pretty green thing is an internal skeleton of a dead sea urchin called the interambulacral area. Many of my morning walks consist of looking for these urchins and carefully bringing them home, a difficult task considering they are about as fragile as an egg! I have a whole pile of these things here at the house, I want to eventually use them in a fun photo with all of their different shades together.
It was another very busy day at work and tomorrow is the same, Aimee had the day off and pretty much just relaxed all day without having to go do anything stressful! Have a great weekend, Barry
05-01-2009
Apr 25, 09 Comments Off
 sea-urchin Good morning from little o’l Curacao! Too busy last night to get this out and have to hurry this morning as well as work is a calling! I found this super cool sea urchin last night as I was leaving the Sea Aquarium. At first glance I thought it was just a dead crab laying on the rocks but with a closer look found out it was a molted crab shell being used for camouflage! What a great disguise! The crabs around here lose their shells or molt as it’s called quite regularly and we see their old shells floating everywhere but have never seen one used as sea urchin clothing before? His buddies must be so jealous! If you look to the top left corner of the photo you can see another urchin laying just under the water line with piles of sea weed and kelp attached to his shell not nearly as attractive and clever as a dead crab shell! These urchins pretty much just stick to one area most of the day and slowly move around eating whatever is attached to the rock, like slime. They have to be careful because if they release their grip on the rock to much a wave could hit them and turn them upside down leaving their bellies exposed to predators.
I have to run, have a wonderful weekend, talk to you again this evening. Sunny regards, Barry
04-24-2009
Apr 19, 09 Comments Off
 black-and-white-crinoid Hello from Curacao! Did you all have a nice weekend?? My day started out with overcast skies turning to rain while out cleaning the trails with the dogs. We ended up having to seek shelter on the World Cup course under a big rock and just sit there and wait! Once it slowed down a bit we continued back on the Inca trail. Near the end while sweeping and grooming the trail we ran into dozens of police officers walking in from every direction?? I said to myself, ok, what is this about? They said we are looking for a lost man in his thirties who disappeared in this area a few days ago, have you seen anything?? Then they asked, why are you sweeping a trail?? So I had to explain the whole “if you build it you have to maintain it thing” I think they thought I was just some crazy white boy who had been in the sun to long? They then asked, are there other trails out here and do you know where they are?? I kind of just laughed and said no one knows these trails better than I do because I built them all!! Well upon hearing that the Captain called everyone over and had me not only draw a very detailed map for the searchers he also asked if I would mind leading the way and showing the main group where the caves are that I knew of? So off we went, Special Agent Brown and his two hound-dogs were now part of the team! I have never seen so many people out there as I did this morning, helicopters overhead, boats along the shore and us walking thru the desert. I led the groups all over pointing to all kinds of hidden areas with caves that I am sure only I have ever found. After an hour I left them to their hunting and took off, not sure what the outcome of today’s search was but we pitched in the best we could.
I then spent the rest of the morning preparing the underwater camera and getting my gear ready for a dive at Blue Bay with my friend Marco. We met there at 2:30, signed in, got our tanks and off we went swimming on our backs towards the big underwater wall which is towards the west. Usually when I have done this dive in the past (every year) we started at the beach and swam to the wall, then we have to turn back because we have used up half our air not getting to stay at the wall very long. So this time we swam on the surface to the wall and then started the dive, way more fun! The water today was so clear you could see 100 feet in any direction, it was beautiful! I dropped down the face of the underwater mountain (or wall) to 80 feet and hung out there for awhile before ascending to 60 feet the whole time watching Marco shoot video of creatures above me. What amazed me most today was the three golden crinoids I found, they are the same ones in the same home’s from five years ago when I first came here. These crinoids as you see here have the ability to move around but this one and the other two have said “why move when you have such a great location” and as you all know location is everything! Our dive today was nothing short of wonderful, Marco filmed scorpionfish, sharp-tailed eels, giant snappers and a Queen angelfish just to name a few and I took picture after picture each one better than the last. This location is by far the best spot in Curacao for purple and green stove pipe sponges, they are everywhere! I told Aimee that we are going back here this Thursday to get some photos of her with these sponges, it’s going be great! We had a long dive and I hated to get out but both of us were starting to get real cold! Thanks again Blue Bay!
I hope you all have a wonderful Monday, talk to you tomorrow, Sunny regards, Barry
04-19-2009
Jan 21, 09 Comments Off
 deep-water-crinoid Good morning, I came home sick as a dog last night, I was very cold with a high fever, sore muscles, and very thirsty? The neighbors gave me some meds and seemed to work great, it was a long night but so far I feel better?
This is another “creature from the deep”, and was again found past the 500 foot mark! This is some kind of crinoid and looks so prehistoric. The setting I placed this in is almost identical to where it was found, just sand and rocks. These crinoids are filter feeders of sorts grabbing floating bits of food with their moveable arms. If you look closely this one is attached to the rock with what looks like feet and have the ability to move from rock to rock.
Sorry so short, I am going back to bed! Have a great day, Barry
01-21-2009
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