Favoritos de squidpastry

Rio Grande River at Vinton Road, Vinto, TX.

Habitat is mixed shrubs, weeds, grasses, mesquite, cattails, reeds, and salt cedar habitat along the riparian zone and on the levy.

A rare species for Texas. I saw ~12 today in the afternoon. The next morning I looked here again and stopped counting at ~200 individuals!

Picked up this sea biscuit. As was exiting water felt a firm squeeze on my hand. It also suctioned to my hand. I screamed and looked. Took a few clicks and put its home back on seafloor sand substrate.

Now this was a bit of a surprise.
Swam out when I lifted a rock. It then tucked into a space nearby. Very weird things. Habitat shot last. That's the spot he was in before I flipped the rock.

~4cm long
Lower intertidal.

We got to swim with this school for almost an hour. I ditched the SCUBA gear so I could get really close and eventually they didn't seem to care about us at all. They mostly stayed in the top meter or so of the water column, you could even kick underneath and have a cloud of them above you. The school was continually shedding scales and dropping bright orange turds on us... it was a very smelly ride home!