MaccaPopEye
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I wasn't sure which forum would be best to post this in so mods please move it if there is a better place 
Where I live in the sea level usually ranges from around 2-7m however at certain times of the year tides can range from 8m highs to 0.1m lows.
Usually the water is so dirty you probably wouldn't be able to see more than a meter if you went snorkelling or diving (not to mention tiger sharks and crocodiles are everywhere) but the lows less than 1m reveal some local coral reefs where you are able to walk right out and have a look at all the marine life while staying on dry land (and some shallow tide pools).
There are half a dozen extreme tides around midday towards the end of each year however there is also half a dozen extreme tides that happen around midnight in the first half of the year.
I've been out during the day on my own many times before and seen some very interesting things however I have always wanted to go and have a look at night too. So this time I spoke to a couple of local reefers and got some people to come out with me for some night time reef walks!
The below photo dump is just some of the things we saw over two 1am reef walks. I'm not that great of a photographer, let alone in pitch black while trying to hold a torch and take photos so here are some of the decent ones.
If you know the ID's of anything I didn't title (or if I got it wrong) feel free to let me know!
At these extreme low tides some of the coral ends up in tide pools but most of it is left exposed to the air for about 2+ hours. At night time this isn’t so bad, but during those midday lows the temp can be in the mid 30’s (Celsius). So next time you do a WC and some of your coral is exposed for a few min there is no need to freak out as some people do
The vast majority of coral out there is green or brown. But there is some pretty awesome turquoise and bluish corals as well as the occasional extreme toxic green and I have even seen some reds here and there.
It is mostly soft or LPS coral down there but we saw a few colonies of this acro. This colony was quite large and unfortunately the photo makes it look more brown than the green it actually is.
This monti (I think) was a colour pattern that I haven’t seen out there before, it looked purple and green.
There is a lot of fungia plate and tongue corals out there. Most of the plate corals are brown or green but this one had a cool blue tinge to it. There are a lot of tongue corals out there that are more of a blue or purple shade too.
These moon corals (moseleya latistellata) are everywhere and there are some very cool different shades of green which would likely colour up even better in clean water. In my first tank I had one from out here that was as brown as they come and 6 months later was toxic green with some thin bright orange stripes.
There are lots of different anemones out here, carpets (I’ve seen yellow, green and brown ones), bubble tips (mostly green) and then there is rock flower anemones. This one was particularly pretty, and it was fully out of the water and still open, usually they close up when they are out of the water.
These two are of another rock flower anemone, the first pic was just with the cameras flash and the second was the anemone under UV light and it really glowed! (It was really hard to get pics with the UV light on though, it washed out the camera and almost all didn’t turn out any good).
This was a very cool purple/blue Duncan coral. I’ve only ever seen green ones and once a bleached white one out there before.
One thing that is crazy common out there is goniopora. There is green, red and purple gonis everywhere. I see them there all the time though so I didn’t take any photos of them this time (my bad). But this cool blue coral looks similar to a goni (I actually thought it was at first), but turns out it is called blue anthelia (Sarcothelia sp.).
A couple of cool looking LPS with contrasting blotchy colours.
This one was a bit weird, I’ve never seen it out there before and have no idea what it is. It wasn’t quite as hard as I would expect an LPS to be but it was certainly harder than a sponge. Maybe some kind of soft coral?
I have heard of these white and black nudibranchs being common here but haven’t seen any until now.
Blue ringed octopus are apparently very common around here but I have yet to see one in person, possibly because I am lucky or maybe I’m just blind. However we did spot this long tentacle octopus on the first night. It made its way under a rock before I could get the camera out though.
I’m not sure what kind they are but we saw quite a few of these little shrimp. They were mostly buried in the sand but their eyes really lit up bright red in the torch light.
I’m not sure what kind of snail this is, but they are about the size of my hand and there is quite a few of them out there.
This was a really interesting chiton. I’ve never seen them during the day before but during the night they were everywhere. I’ve also never seen a spikey chiton before but what I found the most interesting is that I didn’t find any in the water but they were everywhere on rocks about 2-3m above the water line.
This crab thought I was trying to take his dinner. These crabs are everywhere out there and are very aggressive. They will run from you but if they feel cornered they will charge snipping away.
We saw two of these bright red crabs. One walking around and the other hiding in a rock.
This decorator crab was HUGE. It’s body was about 30cm.
Where I live in the sea level usually ranges from around 2-7m however at certain times of the year tides can range from 8m highs to 0.1m lows.
Usually the water is so dirty you probably wouldn't be able to see more than a meter if you went snorkelling or diving (not to mention tiger sharks and crocodiles are everywhere) but the lows less than 1m reveal some local coral reefs where you are able to walk right out and have a look at all the marine life while staying on dry land (and some shallow tide pools).
There are half a dozen extreme tides around midday towards the end of each year however there is also half a dozen extreme tides that happen around midnight in the first half of the year.
I've been out during the day on my own many times before and seen some very interesting things however I have always wanted to go and have a look at night too. So this time I spoke to a couple of local reefers and got some people to come out with me for some night time reef walks!
The below photo dump is just some of the things we saw over two 1am reef walks. I'm not that great of a photographer, let alone in pitch black while trying to hold a torch and take photos so here are some of the decent ones
.If you know the ID's of anything I didn't title (or if I got it wrong) feel free to let me know!
At these extreme low tides some of the coral ends up in tide pools but most of it is left exposed to the air for about 2+ hours. At night time this isn’t so bad, but during those midday lows the temp can be in the mid 30’s (Celsius). So next time you do a WC and some of your coral is exposed for a few min there is no need to freak out as some people do
The vast majority of coral out there is green or brown. But there is some pretty awesome turquoise and bluish corals as well as the occasional extreme toxic green and I have even seen some reds here and there.
It is mostly soft or LPS coral down there but we saw a few colonies of this acro. This colony was quite large and unfortunately the photo makes it look more brown than the green it actually is.
This monti (I think) was a colour pattern that I haven’t seen out there before, it looked purple and green.
There is a lot of fungia plate and tongue corals out there. Most of the plate corals are brown or green but this one had a cool blue tinge to it. There are a lot of tongue corals out there that are more of a blue or purple shade too.
These moon corals (moseleya latistellata) are everywhere and there are some very cool different shades of green which would likely colour up even better in clean water. In my first tank I had one from out here that was as brown as they come and 6 months later was toxic green with some thin bright orange stripes.
There are lots of different anemones out here, carpets (I’ve seen yellow, green and brown ones), bubble tips (mostly green) and then there is rock flower anemones. This one was particularly pretty, and it was fully out of the water and still open, usually they close up when they are out of the water.
These two are of another rock flower anemone, the first pic was just with the cameras flash and the second was the anemone under UV light and it really glowed! (It was really hard to get pics with the UV light on though, it washed out the camera and almost all didn’t turn out any good).
This was a very cool purple/blue Duncan coral. I’ve only ever seen green ones and once a bleached white one out there before.
One thing that is crazy common out there is goniopora. There is green, red and purple gonis everywhere. I see them there all the time though so I didn’t take any photos of them this time (my bad
). But this cool blue coral looks similar to a goni (I actually thought it was at first), but turns out it is called blue anthelia (Sarcothelia sp.).
A couple of cool looking LPS with contrasting blotchy colours.
This one was a bit weird, I’ve never seen it out there before and have no idea what it is. It wasn’t quite as hard as I would expect an LPS to be but it was certainly harder than a sponge. Maybe some kind of soft coral?
I have heard of these white and black nudibranchs being common here but haven’t seen any until now.
Blue ringed octopus are apparently very common around here but I have yet to see one in person, possibly because I am lucky or maybe I’m just blind
. However we did spot this long tentacle octopus on the first night. It made its way under a rock before I could get the camera out though.
I’m not sure what kind they are but we saw quite a few of these little shrimp. They were mostly buried in the sand but their eyes really lit up bright red in the torch light.
I’m not sure what kind of snail this is, but they are about the size of my hand and there is quite a few of them out there.
This was a really interesting chiton. I’ve never seen them during the day before but during the night they were everywhere. I’ve also never seen a spikey chiton before but what I found the most interesting is that I didn’t find any in the water but they were everywhere on rocks about 2-3m above the water line.
This crab thought I was trying to take his dinner. These crabs are everywhere out there and are very aggressive. They will run from you but if they feel cornered they will charge snipping away.
We saw two of these bright red crabs. One walking around and the other hiding in a rock.
This decorator crab was HUGE. It’s body was about 30cm.
