Skip to main content

Search

Items tagged with: hydroids

Underwater Bouquet
These magnificent hydroids (Ralpharia magnifica) look like a bouquet of underwater flowers but this animal is in fact related to jellyfish. Like jellies, they have tentacles with stinging cells that catch prey as it drifts past. They can form small colonies or can live as a single organism, and have a complicated lifecycle that comprises alternating sessile (attached to one place) and free-swimming stages.
Photograph: Alison McNeice

#photography
#hydroids

A vertical, underwater photograph capturing a dense colony of magnificent hydroids (Ralpharia magnifica) growing along a reef structure, resembling a bouquet of delicate flowers. Dozens of individual hydroids extend from slender, orange-brown stalks attached to the reef. Each organism features a small, reddish-pink central mouth surrounded by a stunning crown of translucent, white, hair-like tentacles that fan out in a perfect radiating circle. These fine tentacles sway gently in the current, ready to catch drifting prey with their stinging cells. The right side of the frame is a rich, crowded texture of reef life, including green and yellow sponges, while the left side opens up into a soft, hazy expanse of turquoise-blue water with a few thin, silhouetted marine branches reaching upward into the light.
#photography #hydroids

⇧