# Just got back from a collecting trip in Long Island. Lots of pics.



## Guest

As some of you may know, my family and I have been collecting saltwater fish for about 6 years now. Specifically, the saltwater stray fish that come up to our norther waters in late summer and early fall. During this time, the gulf stream carries juvenile tropical fish up to the coastlines of the northern states, but when it gets colder in late fall, they all die off. So, every year my family and I go out snorkeling and seining and collect as many as possible. Up until this year, we've done all of our collecting in RI, but since Long Island has the advantage of being slightly more southern and being near the gulf stream, some parts tend to get more tropicals than we do, so we took a 3 day collecting trip down there. For 2 (and a half) of those days, we mainly snorkeled, but for one day we met a really awesome guy there that I've known for a couple years and he showed us his collecting spot and we mainly seined. This is where we got all the good stuff.  We also took advantage of our time there to visit the Atlantis Marineworld Aquarium, which was a really nice aquarium.

Anyway, on to the pics...bare with me because these are kind of out of order.

View from the seining spot our friend showed us. 









Inside the bucket...view of what we caught seining that day. Throughout the trip we caught blue spotted cornetfish, a striped burrfish, two seahorses, two kingfish, a bunch of spotfin butterflies, a lookdown, a jack, and two boston bean cowfish. Pictured here is some of all but the kingfish.









Striped burrfish. I made him kind of angry. 









Larger of the blue spotted cornet.









Largest of the two seahorses.









Last spot we went to in Long Island before we had to check out of the hotel. Kind fo a surfy spot, but we snorkeled anyway. Here we got the two kingfish.









Kind of a neat view of the huge rock breakers at the beach. 









It was the subtle architecture that attracted me to this building.









Lots of vineyards here.









In the cooler waiting to make the journey back to RI.










On to Atlantis Aquarium!

Native game fish pond...stripers (HUGE!), bluefish, dogfish, skates, etc.









Pea**************** mantis.









Sea lion...he followed our hands. I think he just wanted to eat us though.









Pirahna.









Malawi cichlids.










Huge shark tank....sand tiger sharks, nurse sharks, and an array of different fish.









...including this enourmous Queensland grouper.









Tree frog.


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## Guest

Their coral reef tank was amazing...largest in the northern hemisphere, i think. This is half of it.









View of the whole length.









Gorgeous anthias.









Another view.










Finally, our fish made it home.

5 connected tanks and one quarantine tank will go where that empty space is. I have to clean it out, though.









Kingfish.









lookdown and jack.









spotfin butterflies.









Well, that's all for now....lots of pics. lol


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## MaelStrom

Sounds like it was a really good trip! And yay for lots of pics!
I hope you burped the burrfish


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## gil_ong

wow. "free" fish. awesome!


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## Guest

MaelStrom said:


> Sounds like it was a really good trip! And yay for lots of pics!
> I hope you burped the burrfish


 
haha, don't worry, I did. :razz: He's doing quite well now.


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## Buggy

The burrfish, cornet and seahorse are adorable and that reef tank is beyond amazing. You are one lucky kid to be able to do things like that. Thanks for sharing.
(The building made me laugh.)


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## Fishfirst

nice lookin setup you got there


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## flamingo

FIVE CORNETFISH?!?! *cries*
One of these days your going to have to send me one 
I really wanted the one you had a while back.

Btw, watch out with seahorses exposed to air.
One word= gas


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