As I have mentioned previously, last weekend I gave a couple of talks on sea creatures and how I’ve photographed them at Portsmouth Blue Reef Aquarium. For those who haven’t been, I would recommend it. It is not a large aquarium, but it does have some interesting stuff I haven’t seen elsewhere. One of these is this Mata Mata turtle Chelus fimbratus
The also have lots of native species, such as the breeding small spotted catsharks, also known as lesser spotted dogfish. This is a young animal in one of the smaller aquariums.
And here is a ‘mermaid’s purse,’ the egg of a dogfish.
They also have a successful breeding group of short-snouted seahorse Hippocampus hippocampus, a British seahorse species, which is threatened by various actions by man, makling captive breeding all the more important.
