Garibaldi Eggs

Garibaldi Eggs

Each yellow dot is a lottery ticket. A female Garibaldi laid these eggs a week or so ago, on a mat of red algae meticulously prepared by a male. The male then fertilized the eggs, and now guards them, fanning them and repelling predators. (He valiantly tried to drive me from the nest, so I made my visit brief). Each egg will become a tiny transparent larval Garibaldi (unless a predator eats it first), and one of them might survive to adulthood and have eggs of its own. This image shows about 1/20th of a mat of eggs, as shown in yesterday's blog post. Garibaldi are plentiful in the kelp forests of California's Channel Islands. These eggs were at Santa Cruz Island.