theharborsvideoproject's Favorites

I'm pretty sure these are red hake though I might be incorrect. It's hard to see where the mouth terminates relative to eye, but the pelvic fin ray seems to terminate a little after anterior start of anal fin. Mottled brownish (with dive lights). These were schooling by the thousands at the Patriot shipwreck ≈30m depth. A couple sculpin in the mix too.

We got to swim with this school for almost an hour. I ditched the SCUBA gear so I could get really close and eventually they didn't seem to care about us at all. They mostly stayed in the top meter or so of the water column, you could even kick underneath and have a cloud of them above you. The school was continually shedding scales and dropping bright orange turds on us... it was a very smelly ride home!

I believe this individual is holding a food item, amphipod or something. I've found many of these this season (2021), I'm not sure if they had some kind of local population boom or if I'm just better at noticing them. I observed my first handful of individuals last year (2020) and this season I've spotted dozens during single outings. They also appear to be social? I've seen them interacting as pairs, etc. They are very difficult to photograph but a joy to observe.