Rarities underwater

Again, one of my dream fish.
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Hard to compete with the variety in the Pacific.
I love it when frog fish "yawn". If you sit there long enough they almost always will.

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A couple more rare ones, first a hybrid between Acanthurus nigricans and A. leucosternum, photographed at Christmas Island (Indian Ocean):
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And another one of those stunning odd-pattern A. lineatus, also from Christmas Island:
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A normal A. lineatus at the Great Barrier Reef for comparison:
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Those abberant lineatus are out of control. Interesting that you've photo'd at least two, but we've never seen them in the hobby (well, I havent heard anything of them...).
 
The aberrant A. lineatus are very interesting indeed, I only saw them in ONE reef in Christmas Island (Indian Ocean) and there were about 4, never saw them anywhere else. I collected all with hand nets, took tissue samples and released them. One thing that made me suspect it was some kind of disease was that the scales on the aberrant ones were falling off very easily compared to the normal ones. After handling them for a few seconds just to clip a piece of fin, my hands were covered with scales.

Here is another one from the same site:
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Gobies? Yep... :)

One of my favorites, the eastern Pacific Elacatinus puncticulatus photographed in Panama:
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Problem with gobies is that a lot of times we can't be certain about the identification just based on photos. The one below is in the genus Amblyeleotris, but I am not very sure which species it is. Photographed in the Philippines:
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This one is a Mahidolia, also from the Philippines:
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This is not a goby, but could pass as one as it behaves just like it. It's a triplefin, Helcogramma striatum:
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I'm sinking....

Shortstripe Goby, Gobiosoma chancei
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Peppermint, Coryphopterus lipernes
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Sharknose,Gobiosoma evelynae
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Unless you go to reef scenics soon I will be cooked. Just can't make myself get the slides out and besides they won't approach your library.
 
Haha, let's start another one with reef scenes! :) May inspire some aquascapes...

I have a few Elacatinus gobies too, will post soon. It's a pain resizing all these images, even use the batch conversion in Photoshop.
 
I have a few more here and there. May have to go diving tomorrow. But finding a buddy that wants to sit for an hour is another thing.
I post process with Aperture and for images I like keep two files, TIFF and 1024x1024 JPEG. The latter is perfect for emails and Boards.
Don't use PS much, either the image is OK or trash it.
 
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Just realized I already posted most of my Elacatinus photos a few pages back, but here is one I didn't:

Elacatinus randalli, Venezuela:
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Now back to the Pacific, Stonogobiops nematodes, Philippines:
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That clown tang is insane!!!! What type of disease would cause something like that? Anyway here are some more for all to see. T
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