u/SA_Underwater

It's actually really hard to get most cone shells to sting a human. Nearly all species just retract into the shell and stay there when they're moved around. I've handled many different species and if I was ever stung I didn't notice it.

Only the Gastridium genus/subgenus (especially G. geographus) are aggro and want to sting everything. They're fish-eating specialists so their venom targets vertebrates (which includes us). Nearly all cones are worm-eaters or gastropod-eaters.

Pulicarius has coronations on the shoulder of the shell, eburneus is smoother. Also the siphon of the animal of pulicarius is black and white with a red tip. The siphon of eburneus is just black and white.

Haha, I'm not quite baked enough to see that. On a related note though apparently hippo is delicious...

It's a head of a 2cm sea slug (Nembrotha Aurea) facing the camera.

Yep this was at Garvies and the offshore dive site was in line with the whaling station.

Thanks. We were at 20-24m today.

Thanks! Panasonic GH5II with the Olympus 60mm in an Isotta housing and Backscatter strobes.

Looks like a juvenile eburneus to me but it can be tricky to ID the subadults without a specimen in hand. No members of this group of cones are dangerous to humans.

The big problem is that there is an extremely dangerous slum just one street behind all of this. The Durban beachfront and harbour wharf should be prime real estate like the V&A but it won't happen because of the crime and sewage leaks. This is putting lipstick on a pig.

Always. Cosmetics companies also use the "reef-safe" label as marketing. People will pay more to feel like they're making a difference. The same people who will happily get on a mass-polluting cruise liner.

Yeah it's debatable whether sunscreens actually cause noticeable harm to reefs in the first place. The sea has an incredible capacity to dilute pollutants to barely detectable levels. In the lab studies they used a concentration of sunscreen vastly higher than what is actually found in even the busiest areas. If it is indeed harmful then I can only see it being a problem in localised high density areas with poor water circulation (such as tidal pools).

I think the sunscreen problem is greatly exaggerated. Global warming is killing corals more than all other factors combined. Agricultural runoff, silting and chemical pollution are just speeding up the destruction of already doomed reefs.

Scuba yes (and have), free dive... definitely not.

Yep I do usually use warm filters because the subtropical reefs here tend to have overwhelmingly warm coloured subjects and I like a deep blue background (not visible in these photos because it was too deep and dark on the day). My white balance is set to the same colour temperature as the filters though so the colour out of camera is pretty well balanced. The eel, goby and transitioning emperor angel were actually yellowish in life not pure white.

Yes, they held free card tournaments and mini painting on the exact same days. In their social media release a few days before ICON they even marketed it as an "iconic" weekend. They changed this after there was backlash in the comments. They were also deleting all negative comments on the post and banning people from their page.

These are the clowns who decided to sabotage ICON by holding competing events on the same day for free. It's extremely short-sighted to try to split an already small and niche community. Events like ICON bring more people to the hobbies and create more customers in the long run. It's clear that Big Bang is just trying to create a monopoly and I want no part of this obvious cash grab and their scumbag tactics.

Big Bang have their own event coming up but still decided to undermine ICON with competing events on the same days. They even had the cheek to call it an "Iconic" weekend on their social media. Absolute dick move.

Big Bang decided to run their own special events on the same days as ICON this weekend so I will no longer be supporting them. Trying to muscle out small vendors and undermine one of the few events we have in Durban is extremely petty and shitty behaviour.

The plants are all over Durban roadsides and gardens but you probably won't notice them until they flower (usually late summer into autumn). Beautiful shrubs that attract lots of birds and butterflies.

This is unfortunately what happens when people lack critical thinking skills and decide to get their information from dodgy Facebook groups instead of doctors and scientists. Just look at how many people fall for the most obvious AI generated slop videos and you'll realise how dumb society has become. "Idiocracy" has become a documentary. It's going to take a lot more suffering and dead kids before people (hopefully) wake up and remember why vaccines are so important.

We don't have much dangerous marine life in KZN. Scorpionfish, stingrays and eels can hurt you but they're not aggressive unless you really harass them. Most of these in the photos are also only a few cm long.