East Point coral with sponge

Lee Point coral with sponge
Originally uploaded by wandering lizard.

I went on a midnight, low tide reef walk last weekend. The tide was particularly low (0.2m), so the reef off East Point was exposed and the NT Field Naturalists had a bit of a guided tour, complete with experts in sponges and various types of marine invertebrates. Very cool stuff. We walked out onto the reef and found stuff like these corals, with sponges. We also found lots of flatworms, nudibranchs, sponges, corals, octopi, toadfish, Darwin jawfish, brittle stars, and a lot of mud. Incredible diversity. Apparently Darwin has the highest diversity of sponges in the world (or second, it was nearly 3am when they shared that tidbit of information, so I'm a bit unclear on what was actually said). Here are a few photos of what we saw. Who needs diving gear?