The Phantom of the Garibaldi

[MaxBottomtime]

The ocean was much calmer than last week around Palos Verdes. Long intervals between 2 1/2' swells and no wind. Naturally, we got socked in by fog as we arrived on the south side of the peninsula. We weren't the only crazies out in the pea soup. We saw a boat nearby on RADAR and approached slowly. Scott and Ian took a guest to the Underwater Arch.

I found the strangest looking garibaldi at Honeymoon Cove. It looks like he stuck his face in a mustard jar.

We checked out the resident moray eel, who was happy to mug for the cameras.

There are now five Hopkin's Rose nudibranchs on the same rock. I've only seen that at Shaw's Cove. The rest of the dive was somewhat boring. Although visibility has improved it was surgy and most of the animals had gone into hiding.

We waited two hours for the fog to lift but it was having none of that. We switched our focus to the Redondo Barge instead.

Visibility at each site was just under fifteen feet with 52°, about the same conditions as topside.

 

[blue steal]

I've seen a whole lot of Garibaldi over the years, but never one that looked like that one. Quite interesting.

 

[drbill]

I've seen ones with patches of different pigmentation, usually small and not as distinct as this is, Phil. Failure in the pigmentation cells?

 

[MaxBottomtime]

Dr. Milton Love sent this email today;
Very cool. I, too, have not seen this before. Like so many other unusual color or pattern variants in fishes, this is likely some sort of genetically linked thing, one that is likely usually selected against in the long run. I don't think that it is, for instance, a skin cancer, the type that leads to black skin patches in rockfishes, for instance.