Our dive boat for our week on the GBR - the SpoilSport.

Magnificent Sea Anemone. It was a pretty nice sea anemone but the name refers to its size - about six feet across.

Anja over table coral.

Blackspotted Pufferfish being cleaned by Cleaning Goby.

Blue clam embedded in coral.

Brittle Star hanging out on Finger Coral.

Chevron Barracuda.

Christmas Tree Worm on coral.

Convict Blennies.

This beautiful encrusting coral apparently has no common name. Its scientific name is Favites cf. abdita.

Dueling Feather Stars.

Encrusting Coralline Red Algae -- the "cement" that holds the reef together.

Foxface Rabbitfish.

Giant Clam. The fantastic color comes from the photosynthetic zooxanthellae algae living in its tissues -- which provide the nutrition that lets it become so large.

It was about 20 inches across.

Same with this giant clam. It was about three feet in length.

Halemida Algae and Red Corraline Encrusting Algae.

The disc-shaped blades of Halemida Algae are fortified with calcium carbonate. When it dies, the calcium chips fall to the seabottom, eventually to be ground into coarse sand by the ocean's action, or to become bound into the reef.

That's a totally black Sea Cucumer at the top.

My dive buddy Kermit Smith found this nudibranch, so I call it Kermit's Nudibranch.

Lace Coral (which is not really a true coral).

Leather Coral.

Leather Coral Polyps, up close.

A Mad Puffer. That was its name, not its attitude.

Mushroom Coral - actually each is a single cell.

Mushroom Leather Coral.

Nemo Found!

This is another coral with apparently no common name, although it out to be called Anchor Coral. That's because its polyps when extended are shaped like little anchors.

And its scientific name appears to be Euphyllia ancora.

Plate Coral.

Plate Coral.

Red Lionfish.

Reef Damsels.

Sailor's Eyeball. It's a single, large cell of alga.

A similar species in the Caribbean is call Sea Pearls.

Sandperch.

Sea Fan with Feather Star.

Sergeant Major city.

The Shark Feeding Dive.

Even more dangerous than the Shark Feeding Dive was the ensuing Shark Tooth Hunting Frenzy among the divers.

Table Coral with Chevroned Butterflyfish.

Table Coral Community, as in little fishes and other creatures living among the fingers of coral.

Safety stop at the hangbar.

Fish friends under the boat.

End of the dive.