Glenn Andert’s blog

The following photo is a black and white Crinoid attached to a red fan coral.

Crinoids, also known as sea lilies or feather-stars, are marine animals with a mouth on top surrounded by feeding arms. Although the basic echinoderm pattern of five-fold symmetry can be recognized, most crinoids have many more than five arms (as you can see in this photo, they can have a LOT more). They feed by filtering small particles of food from the sea water with their feather like arms. This kind of crinoid has a stem used to attach itself to a substrate (in this case the fan coral). You can gently remove them from the substrate and observe the “feet” of the stem wiggling about trying to grab hold of something. There are several hundred known forms of crinoids and I have seen them in an amazing variety of colors. (Courtesy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crinoid)

This photo was taken at one of 3 Namena dive sites (Fiji) on 25-May-2007, along with the All Girl Crew (Pam, Leah and Grace) of ‘Learjet’.

This is one of the dive sites that places Fiji firmly on the map of the world’s best dive destinations. Any country would be proud to call such a rich and varied dive site their own. In times of old, sailors could use the pass here to avoid tacking around the island and reefs of Namena, and it now represents an area of the South Pacific which discerning divers treasure.

This map shows you roughly where Namena is in Fiji.

Nearby is Moody’s Namena Island Resort – a unique and secluded retreat on an extraordinary island in the Koro Sea. Access is by way of a boat transfer from Savusavu, or by charter float plane from Nadi. About a month later, Pamela and I stopped near Namena on our way to Yadua Island. We hoped to be able to visit the island, and perhaps see the iguanas. But we found the management to be rather stand-offish, well to lowly yachties anyway.