Old Wives Enoplosus armatus.
The photographer writes; A very common fish in South Australia. They can be found in small schools or individually. Yesterday (25 April, actually), there were a number of pairs sitting quietly along the bottom edge of the Port Noarlunga reef. This pair were sheltering under an old ship's anchor located on a SCUBA diver's trail. There were several other pairs just out in the open above the sandy floor. This pair was at about 4-5m depth at low tide. I was only snorkelling but I was able to dive down a number of times to get several shots. The fish didn't swim away so I assume they were preoccupied and the pairing has something to do with mating, but there wasn't anything obvious I could see they were doing.
These individuals are about 300mm long. Some Australian creatures are not as inoccuous as they might seem. The Old Wife has poisonous dorsal spines which have given a few fishermen painful jabs, but they are perfectly safe to swim with (as far as I know) (ref).
Image: Stephen Kittel, stephenk at internode dot on dot net.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a choice to either preserve these species or to destroy them in search of short-term monetary gains. But if we decide to destroy these other life forms, the least we can do is to know what we are destroying by learning that they exist. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited.
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The Jellyfish photo was taken at horshoe bay, in around 10 meters of water. Me and my buddy swam off the breakwall and headed for the island. When we got closer to the island we saw all sorts of fish, like silver big silver drummer, big sweep, big snook and a few squid. I advise that if you have the chance, take a look.