aandtsociety recent marine species collecting trips

[Saltliquid]

We have had 4 trips since the last post from us here so i will just put on a nice pic from each trip.

The first pic is of some marine species collected on a trip to mainly get 4 thousand litres of water for one of the clubbies with a very large marine set up.

While we were there we had a three hour snorkel for some fish and inverts for our tanks.

The water was nice and clear and this pic is one of the five pics of the catch for the day and there was also several pics of the area we were at,over all a very nice club day out collecting.

This is an underwater pic of a clown trigger from a trip to frazer island and the day was very calm and the water very clear,this is one of nine photos from the day and it was a boat trip to a reef off frazer very few have been to because of it's extreme openness as it is 2 hours of open ocean north of frazer isl,it is one metre deep on top and a hundred and thirty feet deep around it.

The reef in this photo has one of the most concentrated amounts of corals and reef life in queensland and is just over an hours trip in the boat from home.The life here is rediculasly spectacular.There were nineteen pics from that day.

we know this section of reef that the commercial guys do not know of and the latezonatus clown fish there are in serious abundance.
The depth is just resonable for snorkelling at just under sixty feet at the deepest and twenty feet deep on top.
All these clowns were for a display but some of the guys wanted some breeding stock so we have to use akydinos clowns now as they are like flies around here and we don't want to touch that reef of latz until the other adults there have a chance to do some more breeding before we collect any more,if in the near future any of the clubbies want any.if you take to many latz,other species of clowns may take over and the latz will loose their foot hold on the area.
They are a hard fish to catch as they will run from their anemone and they are always in water that is a little deep.

 

[criccio]

Great pics once again.

I'm curious, with all the amount of diving you've done have you ever come across chaetodon tricintus outside of the protected waters of Lord Howe?

http://www.fishbase.org/summary/speciessummary.php?id=6636

 

[Saltliquid]

yes

yes

There is a small structure (reef area) not that far into NSW and accessible with a small boat at about 10 mins from the closest boat ramp, where a friend of a commercial collector I would do a bit of work for would set his very large fish traps, he was a commercial fisherman.
Now I have never been there though I have the gps marks for the spot, but I have seen the frozen carcases of both Balina angelfish and the three banded that have been caught in his traps.
He would show rob pics of his caught fish from time to time to get an ID of what he wasn't able to find the name of, when rob found out what he had caught he wanted to see the carcasses, his mate had caught one three band and two Balina over a 6 month period at this close to shore spot.
There was a trip, I didn't go, to many whites down there for me, but there is a community of both of these fishes living there between 70 and a 100 feet of water.
A couple of mates have said we should check it out, but it should be left as it is, an untouched and obscure reef.
One of the commercial guys mates was shown where another community of the Balina were, not the three bands, but he did what i wouldn't(i hear), though the pic he took, a part from any other (activities) carried out there that day, became quite valuable, it was okay, but he was shivering a bit at the time and it could have been a better pic.
He had a few friendly whites come in for a look that day and things got a little bent because of the quick accent and I don't mean him, now that was just waste.
When I used to work with a couple of the commercial collectors I would always carry a deco line for the fish in water deeper than 40 feet and as I come up I attaché them to the line and up I go and just hook it on the boat and leave them decoing so they never come up as fast as me.
The McCulloch's is out off here, you don't need to go over the border for them.
Don't get me wrong, they are not common up here like the latz, I have only caught three ever and left a pair and a small single, but back than they weren't worth the thousands they are worth now.
When the commercial guys find the rare one from time to time around here you won't here about it, but the wholesaler over seas will.
I remember around 7 maybe 8 years back there was this German wholesaler that used to have a standing request for anyone who could supply him with nine Balina and would pay 33 thousand $ American each for them.
Who the hell would pay what the retail on that would be, that's ridicules and that is why that reef remains untouched and hopefully still unknown.
It is to close to shore for the greedy to resist the temptation.