Joanna and I spent more than two hours at the Ardmore / Yarrow Point snorkelling site yesterday. Although it was only her second time snorkelling in cold water, she had already progressed from getting accustomed to the equipment to enjoying the sightseeing.
She said that, even though the fins help with flutter kicking, she used her arms for a breast stroke because the movement helped to keep her warm. I would never have thought of that.
The most interesting thing I saw underwater was an ochre star with signs of starfish wasting disease so I uploaded a couple photos of it to iNaturalist.
When looking at videos from the day I found these two that happened to include a gunnel very close to a different ochre star (not the wasting one).
In the first video the gunnel is motionless on the left side of the star. In the second video it swims past the upper right side of the star. I don’t know if this close association is a known behaviour but I have never noticed it before. The fish at the end of the second video is a different one a few metres away.
