h2omark

Hi Marlie

Nick asked me to drop by and comment.  I did the initial ID on my iPhone in the veggie section of the supermarket.  

Now that I'm on the big screen I'm happier to put a species name on them - although if it really matters a colony shot  should always be taken.  (Gotta carry that big wide angle rig as well -  dontchya hate it!)

Anyhoo:

The one with fine spinules / dots between the polyps / corallites is Echinopora lamellosa


The coral with a smooth surface between the polyps / corallites is probably Turbinaria stellulata

Learning to ID corals underwater requires using a strange combination of wide view and close up characters to exclude the other species. It can also sometimes require a measure of the "force".

Without a wide shot of the Turbinaria I would keep the ID as provisional.

If you are really interested in underwater coral ID you should check out the Indo Pacific Coral Finder at http://www.byoguides.com   It's a practical underwater guide that deals with the chaos of growth form variation shown by corals. You interrogate it by shape and form and it send you to a page of look-alikes where you let your eyes do the work instead of trying to understand latin based text descriptions.

If I recall correctly you will find an example of Turbinaria stellulata behaving badly in on of my free training movies on the Coral Hub  http://www.coralhub.info

Check out:  http://www.coralhub....ion-3-hardcore/

Cheers

Russell Kelley

Author Indo Pacific Coral Finder