TED

No. I'm not referring to a Turtle Excluder Device or a Thrombo-Embolic Device (although both represent simple, useful inventions). Instead, I'm referring to TED.com. It stands for technology, entertainment, design. The site hosts talks by prominent speakers in those areas. I was unaware of this site until Tallie McClary forwarded me a link to a cool video from TED. If you haven't had time to search youtube for all of the best cephalopod videos or you just don't have time to get through all of those that are out there, then check out this video for a bit of great cephalopod ("head foot" -- octopus, squid, cuttlefish, etc.) behavior. It comes from a series of talks called "Evolution's Genius." I haven't checked out the other clips yet, but this one is worth a watch.


Geeze, I'm sure getting lazy with this blog thing! I'm just referring to other people's sites now! Ha! I'm not even finding the sites!
Truthfully, I'm working hard on a post. Ask anyone on Blackbird Caye. I've been putting in serious research time for my next post. I'll have it up soon. In the meantime, let the cephalopods on the video entertain you. In a funny coincidence, I watched this video shortly after taking a nice retired, 77 year old, freelance photographer named Peg and her grandson, Peter, out snorkeling today (I'm teaching them how to do Coral Reef Monitoring) at a place called "Coral Canyons" (see pics) and we observed some similar squid behavior to what's in this video. I not sure what the squid we saw (pic of one below) were doing, but there were two of them and they would not leave a small area that they were "guarding." It must be sex. That's all I can figure. Somehow it's related to sex.


We did see some other characters while we were snorkeling today. This picture of a juvenile yellow-tail damselfish does not do it justice by any means. In real life, the blue dots look like light radiating from the side of the fish. They are amazing. As a shout-out to the fans of the Chondrichthyes, here are eye close-ups are from two different types of stingray that we saw.



Not to be Chordate-biased, I've included a lobster below (he kept touching me with "his" antennae) and a bold yellow-lined arrow crab. The crab was sitting out in the open in the sand. That's not usually where I find them. Usually, I see them in sponges, near anemones, or in crevasses in the reef.