Painted Ponies
Talking to Amanda, she thought they might be Hippocampus colemani, a relatively newly identified species (the 34th in fact) named after Neville Coleman that is found at Lord Howe Island in Australia. So far, we're not convinced but then again, we're not exactly seahorse experts. Amanda also said they may have about 2 other species that they are looking at adding and it might be one of those. And would we mind sending in our photographs in to help with the identification? I have a couple of good photographs of them. Greg has a bunch of great photographs of them from all different angles that are still "in the archives", perfect for a good ID analysis. Good thing we didn't delete them. Maybe that's why we keep the extra 5,000 marginal photographs that we do. You never know when you'll need to identify a new species ...... It could happen!
I've been thinking about this as we've been cataloguing our photographs into Lightroom. Some of our photos are not "the best of the best" so why even bother keeping them? I try to be brutal and delete the less than mediocre ones, but sometimes it's just fun to review all of the images in a particular dive and have it bring back the memories of the dive itself. Sometimes you'll find things in a photograph that you didn't realize was there. Sometimes it allows you to see a "different side" of a particular fish. Sometimes it helps someone else decide whether that was a yellow fin or a yellow line species. Sometimes, the crappy ones can be made into a great web photograph that will never be printed on paper.
And now, just what I needed, I have another excuse - sometimes you can help identify a new species!