Category Archives: Vertebrates

In the middle of Sydney Harbour, at Chowder Bay, there’s a dive site underneath and around a long jetty. It’s a marvellous place, eerie and foreboding, while being so close to the heart of the city and the bright cacophony of urban life. The scene is at once primeval and post-apocalyptic.

Under the jetty is a community of animals of many kinds, living among debris and rearranging it. Down there an Anglerfish seems normal and appropriately dressed:

Even the seahorses look edgy:

And what a milieu for the octopus. They look completely at home, with the gloomy water and overgrown objects strewn about. Perfect for an animal so amorphous, opportunistic, at ease in small and odd-shaped spaces.

This one above was eating something, vigorously, which I could not work out. At first I thought it might have been a large nudibranch. It did look like another mollusc. Here’s a close-up:

Finally, another octopus, one undeniably in tune with the spirit of the place:

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