Beautiful cloud patterns at Equatorial Indian Ocean....

We had around 36 days cruise at Equatorial Indian Ocean.....during the entire cruise, one of the things that i found very interesting ( other den my work , experiments and results) is the clouds in da sky during the day and da stars at night....the reason i might have noticed da beauty of clouds to such an extent,could be because da only thing u can see during da cruise is da huge sky above and water below...whichever direction u might see den...ofcourse no land to be seen during da entire cruise...

On da ship during the night time....star gazing is what we find people doing which includes even those fellows who were never interested in such stuff.......especially wen it is a high time during da long cruises nd u r homesick already.....

Here are some pics of the cloud patterns tht were clicked during the entire span of dis cruise....









































Isnt this a real beauty??

life at rocky shore....

I happened to do my MSc dissertation on the macrofauna associated with seaweeds on the rocky shore.....the study area was Anjuna beach, Goa.

Most of us must have seen rocky shore(if not visit Goa... der r couple of these kinda shores here).... but very few know that Rocky shores are considered as one of the most diverse ecosystems...also the organisms that are found here need to adapt themselves with the varying conditions..i.e.during the high tide, organisms here are submerged in the water and during low tide, they are exposed to sun..

Also, da organisms show seasonality i.e. organisms found during rainy seasons may not be found suring the premonsoon or postmonsoon times...This is the study area ....quite slippery mainly during the rainy seasons....



These are some of the seaweeds (macroflora) found......

Macrofauna includes polychaetes, chiton, limpets, bivalves,isopods decapods,gastropods ostracods,copepods etc,.......
Polychaete identification at species level is a bit tough job ...... as first we need to sieve the sample, secondly, organisms need to be sorted out from the seaweeds ...and then stored in formalin...den viewed under microscope....here are some of the pictures of few macrofauna and the polychaetes seen under the microscope taken by me.....

chiton and a gastropod

Limpets

Beautiful image of a polychaete worm(Nereis )

So next time u visit a rocky shore...dont forget to checkout lyf out der as most of these macrofauna are visible with naked eyes......