Part Two

As you search for another outcrop with the promise of good macro, quick glances into the tops of barrel sponges can sometimes give you a look at long legged macro monsters like this Arrow Crab.

Moving along and getting much closer, reveals an anemone which has made a home in the sponge

Not far away, another anemone enjoys the flow of nutrients which the sponges here thrive in...

Of course the more you look around up close, the more you run into cleaning shrimp...

however, shrimp like the Peterson above are so small that you will not see many until you have really acquired an "eye" for macro life...If you see these regularly, consider yourself pretty sharp! If you do have this sharp eye, an even tougher assignment would be spotting frogfish, one of the ocean's best masters at camoulflage. They look very much like a sponge, and they count on tiny fish swimming by, and being fooled into believing they are a sponge as well. When they tiny fish ventures to close to the mouth of this sponge, it gets a new home in the belly of a frog fish, like the one below!

ven to the trained eye, this looks like a sponge. Even the eye is disguised to the point of looking like a part of a sponge.

Sometimes we get lucky and see a frog fish which has moved into an area where we can make out his entire shape. If you are careful, slow and deliberate, you may get close enough to even see the built in fishing gear of the frog fish.

Contrast oportunities like the one above are limited, but this provides a good perspective on what the frogfish actually looks like.

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