Wild Table Coral (Red Sea) ID

Peter Clark · Jan 14, 2019

I'm working on IDing this species of acropora I saw in Dahab, Egypt in the Red Sea. Giant table coral that was very beautiful. Looking at photos online I was wondering if it could be Acropora clathrata, but I honestly have no idea. Attached is a photo of the entire table as well as many other shots taken along its surface. Lots of baby fish around the surface and a large school of glass fish under it.

Thank you!

Chilli · Jan 14, 2019

acropora latistella ??

29bonsaireef · Jan 14, 2019

So cool to see the juvenile fish using the coral as shelter. Might be A. Pharaonis?

jda · Jan 14, 2019

A. Hyacinthus is pretty abundant in the Red Sea. Not sure if that is it.

bsn_rn_cen · Jan 14, 2019

Cool pictures

Whisperer · Jan 14, 2019

Acropora cytherea is a consideration.

Peter Clark · Jan 14, 2019

Thank you all for great thoughts! I may end up in Adobe Lightroom tagging it Table Coral and then under synonyms putting all these options so it is tagged with all. I'm also digging through my GoPro footage to see if there is anything there of it that adds anything, but I doubt it. These photos were taken on my SLR. I don't have a good eye for coral species ID and all the options you all have suggested look possible.

29bonsaireef, I agree I loved seeing the fish fry on it. The vast majority of the fish near it (anthias, glass fish, and the gobies) were adults, but the butterfly and the lyretail hogfish were juveniles. Yes, that tiny guy in the second photo is a hogfish. Took me awhile to ID that little guy. I love butterflies and that goby quickly became one of my favorite sightings. I'm sooo glad I'm such a geek that I lugged my camera gear all the way there for this. And to think I was only in the region for a wedding back in late September / early October. Perfect pretext for a once in a lifetime trip

I was already familiar with many species from aquariums so things like lyretail anthias, bluespotted stingrays, emperor anglefish, purple tangs, bubbletip anemones, etc were very exciting for me to see in person. And of course tons of acropora.

Dr. Dendrostein · Jan 14, 2019

Peter Clark said:
Thank you all for great thoughts! I may end up in Adobe Lightroom tagging it Table Coral and then under synonyms putting all these options so it is tagged with all. I'm also digging through my GoPro footage to see if there is anything there of it that adds anything, but I doubt it. These photos were taken on my SLR. I don't have a good eye for coral species ID and all the options you all have suggested look possible.

29bonsaireef, I agree I loved seeing the fish fry on it. The vast majority of the fish near it (anthias, glass fish, and the gobies) were adults, but the butterfly and the lyretail hogfish were juveniles. Yes, that tiny guy in the second photo is a hogfish. Took me awhile to ID that little guy. I love butterflies and that goby quickly became one of my favorite sightings. I'm sooo glad I'm such a geek that I lugged my camera gear all the way there for this. And to think I was only in the region for a wedding back in late September / early October. Perfect pretext for a once in a lifetime trip I was already familiar with many species from aquariums so things like lyretail anthias, bluespotted stingrays, emperor anglefish, purple tangs, bubbletip anemones, etc were very exciting for me to see in person. And of course tons of acropora.

Thanks for sharing, comrade

Peter Clark · Jan 14, 2019

Video came out better than I expected. It is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Rrqf6lVPCxb0yim-u6Xicd7wVPHJUuky/view?usp=sharing The one thing to note is that I mount my GoPro on top of my SLR housing and don't always have it tilted to line up with what I am photographing. Since I tend to focus on the still photographs, the video often is aimed poorly. All depends what I am thinking about at that exact moment. This video was running while taking all (or at least most of) the photos above.

KrisReef · Jan 14, 2019

Peter Clark said:
Thank you all for great thoughts! I may end up in Adobe Lightroom tagging it Table Coral and then under synonyms putting all these options so it is tagged with all. I'm also digging through my GoPro footage to see if there is anything there of it that adds anything, but I doubt it. These photos were taken on my SLR. I don't have a good eye for coral species ID and all the options you all have suggested look possible.

29bonsaireef, I agree I loved seeing the fish fry on it. The vast majority of the fish near it (anthias, glass fish, and the gobies) were adults, but the butterfly and the lyretail hogfish were juveniles. Yes, that tiny guy in the second photo is a hogfish. Took me awhile to ID that little guy. I love butterflies and that goby quickly became one of my favorite sightings. I'm sooo glad I'm such a geek that I lugged my camera gear all the way there for this. And to think I was only in the region for a wedding back in late September / early October. Perfect pretext for a once in a lifetime trip I was already familiar with many species from aquariums so things like lyretail anthias, bluespotted stingrays, emperor anglefish, purple tangs, bubbletip anemones, etc were very exciting for me to see in person. And of course tons of acropora.

It kills me to see these photos. I am so envious of your adventure but grateful you snapped and posted these pics. It would have been easier to positively identify this coral if you would have snapped off some frags, one for the reef tank so we could have photos of it growing and one to put into the mail to J.E.N. Veron for his opinion on the species id. And maybe one for my tank, but I'm dreaming. At least you got these photos. Truly very cool sir!

Oh yeah, a serious question, do you recall the depth this coral was at? Thanks for posting. The video, fantastic!

Dr. Dendrostein · Jan 14, 2019

Peter Clark said:
Video came out better than I expected. It is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Rrqf6lVPCxb0yim-u6Xicd7wVPHJUuky/view?usp=sharing The one thing to note is that I mount my GoPro on top of my SLR housing and don't always have it tilted to line up with what I am photographing. Since I tend to focus on the still photographs, the video often is aimed poorly. All depends what I am thinking about at that exact moment. This video was running while taking all (or at least most of) the photos above.

Is this the famous Peter Clark, ralley driver?

Peter Clark · Jan 14, 2019

Looks like it was probably somewhere around 55-60 feet down. My dive computer logged a max depth of 59 feet and it was around halfway through the dive, so that seems to match up with the location of this coral head. We swam specifically to it and then back, so the coral head was the focus of the dive. They called this dive site the "Lighthouse" and it is just off the town of Dahab itself. There is a lighthouse on land right near it hence the name. It is at the north end of Bannerfish Bay.

Haha I have a feeling that if I tried taking a few frags with me I would still be in Egypt awaiting trial. Massive police presence everywhere there as a show of force. Most of the time they are just sitting around so I doubt they add much protection and more reactionary force, but still don't want to try breaking some frags off. And airport security in both Sharm El-Sheikh and Cairo is a lot tighter these days. Amazingly in Sharm the xray guy correctly guessed what my underwater housing was. That thing had caused a lot of trouble elsewhere in the trip at border crossings and such! I have a feeling one airport security person in Tel Aviv was wondering if I was a spy with all her questions about where I would be going in Egypt and who I would be meeting with after she saw the camera housing.

Currently I also sadly do not have a tank set up. I did in college and am slowly working on getting one set up again. My wife finally gave approval for me to get one in early summer, but life happened and still delayed. I have most of the equipment like lighting sump, protein skimmer, pump, powerheads, heaters, etc, but not the main tank or stand yet. Need to redo some stuff in our living room before we are ready for it. In college I had a 29g reef with soft corals and a 120g reef with a snowflake eel, small triggers, etc. My plan for the new tank is SPS (fingers crossed) since I LOVE acropora, but I know I don't stand a chance at keeping anything difficult so would want to start with just a few frags of an easier variety awhile after the tank is running with fish and stable. I really miss my clownfish and bubbletip too, so I would love those again but will have to expect it walking right into whatever my best acro would be.

Peter Clark · Jan 14, 2019

Jomama said:
Is this the famous Peter Clark, ralley driver?

More like famous Peter Clark the computer geek who works on the content side of a website with content I don't really know (but luckily don't have to!)

Dr. Dendrostein · Jan 14, 2019

Peter Clark said:
More like famous Peter Clark the computer geek who works on the content side of a website with content I don't really know (but luckily don't have to!)

The famous ralley driver spells Clarke with e on the end. Bummer.

Peter Clark · Jan 14, 2019

Jomama said:
The famous ralley driver spells Clarke with e on the end. Bummer.

Ahh so the inferior spelling gotcha

KrisReef · Jan 14, 2019

I was guessing at least 40' but I was amazed at the amount of light on the surface of the coral table. I am guessing you were using ambient light with the video, but again it is hard to imagine that much light at depth?

Peter Clark · Jan 14, 2019

KrisReef said:
I was guessing at least 40' but I was amazed at the amount of light on the surface of the coral table. I am guessing you were using ambient light with the video, but again it is hard to imagine that much light at depth?

The water was decently clear and under a desert sun. Never saw a bad day of visibility that trip. And for the photos I shoot with a Canon 7D (the original not the Mk2) with a 60mm macro lens and I shoot in only RAW. I then use Lightroom to whitebalance the photos if needed tweak exposure, but these didn't really need it if memory serves me correct. The hardest part of underwater shots is that due to less light the camera wants to use a very wide aperature, but that means very shallow depth of field. So it is a challenge balancing those without making the ISO too high. You have to make it higher than you like, but you just have to do whatever you can to keep things in focus at a decent shutter speed. Looks like the second photo there of the hogfish fry was with an ISO of 640 and shutter speed of 1/400th with the aperture at f/6.3. You can clearly see the shallower depth of field there. And in Lightroom it appears all I did was white balance with no other tweaks.

KrisReef · Jan 14, 2019

Peter Clark said:
The water was decently clear and under a desert sun. Never saw a bad day of visibility that trip. And for the photos I shoot with a Canon 7D (the original not the Mk2) with a 60mm macro lens and I shoot in only RAW. I then use Lightroom to whitebalance the photos if needed tweak exposure, but these didn't really need it if memory serves me correct. The hardest part of underwater shots is that due to less light the camera wants to use a very wide aperature, but that means very shallow depth of field. So it is a challenge balancing those without making the ISO too high. You have to make it higher than you like, but you just have to do whatever you can to keep things in focus at a decent shutter speed. Looks like the second photo there of the hogfish fry was with an ISO of 640 and shutter speed of 1/400th with the aperture at f/6.3. You can clearly see the shallower depth of field there. And in Lightroom it appears all I did was white balance with no other tweaks.

@Peter Clark What you wrote reminds me of a line from the movie "The Usual Suspects," tweaked a bit that line would be ~"Ansel Adams was a punk." If you are not familiar with the movie, let me clarify and say "you shoot like a pro" -in a difficult environment. I loved that movie, and your photos captured a lot of life at depth. I like to free dive, or at least I once did. Your shots took me down there with you, thanks!

Peter Clark · Jan 15, 2019

KrisReef said:
@Peter Clark What you wrote reminds me of a line from the movie "The Usual Suspects," tweaked a bit that line would be ~"Ansel Adams was a punk." If you are not familiar with the movie, let me clarify and say "you shoot like a pro" -in a difficult environment. I loved that movie, and your photos captured a lot of life at depth. I like to free dive, or at least I once did. Your shots took me down there with you, thanks!

Thank you! I use the method of take lots and lots of photos and select a handful of great shots

I also obviously focus on things that interest me, which means a lot of the time dive masters point something out and I just ignore it and other times I'm looking and looking for something that they view as nothing and when I finally ask them about it they find it for me super fast. On this trip the Emperor Angel was that for me. Between 2 dives in Eilat, Israel, 6 dives in Dahab, Egypt, and 8 dives in Sharm El Sheikh, it came down to the very last dive I mentioned to the dive master I hadn't seen one yet and he quickly found one early in the dive, only for me to spot another late in the dive and then another within 5 minutes of snorkeling back at the hotel. Pure luck on that one. I would have been SOOO sad not to have seen one. Amusingly I had been sad I had not seen an orchid dottyback during the trip, and then looking back at photos and videos I realized that they would look blue underwater not purple due to red light disappearing first and I realized I actually had almost 200 photos with the little guys in them! I just thought I was seeing some small blue fish that I wanted to ID.