By Vladimir Brezina
… like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.
Philip Larkin, Best Society
But, contrary to Larkin, the best society is not always solitude…
(St. Pete Beach, Florida, December 2012)
Copyright
Wind Against Current by Vladimir Brezina and Johna Till Johnson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.Authors
Vladimir Brezina (RIP)
... kayaked the waters around New York for more than 15 years in his red Feathercraft folding kayak. He was originally from (the former) Czechoslovakia and lived in the U.K. and California before settling down in New York. He was a neuroscientist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He died in 2016.Johna Till Johnson
... is a kayaker and technology researcher at Nemertes Research. She's an erstwhile engineer, particle physicist, and science fiction writer. She was born in California and has lived in Italy, Norway, Hawaii, and a few other places. She currently resides in New York City.Recent Comments
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Wind Against Current 
Thank you for the description and amazing photos.
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You are most welcome, John—thanks for following our blog!
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Great series – and what a great find, not one but two live nautiluses!
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I think these are Florida Fighting Conches.
There were whole groups of them on the sand, all alive—
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Wow, Vlad, that’s so exciting to see! I’ve never seen anything like that – though I did find several immature conches buried in the sand fairly close together, but walking about, having a party together – that’s terrific. i just hope they weren’t organising a bout :)
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The funny thing was that when we came back a few minutes later, they had all disappeared. They were in a little lagoon some way up the beach and couldn’t have made it to the sea at the rate at which they were moving about… so they had probably all buried themselves in the sand :-)
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Fantastic series! I just love their “faces”. Wonderful capture!
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They are strangely comical, somehow… :-)
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These are crazy cool, Vlad, wonderful shots. Emergence 3 reminds me of Marty Feldman :)
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Yes! The last photo with the crossed eyestalks, too :-)
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So nice Vladimir! I have never seen one out of the shell! Love its eyes!!! Great! Thanks for sharing it!
Feliz Navidad!
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Thanks!! Merry Christmas to you, too! :-)
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Wonderful !!!
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Thanks!! :-)
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so theses are the creatures that occupy these lovely shells – they are as cute as caricatures. Right place,right time for these captivating captures!
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You just have to wait patiently for them to come out. But actually these weren’t shy at all…
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What a wonderful shots!
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Thanks—glad you like them!
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Great photos, I enjoyed looking through this post.
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Excellent—thank you!!
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Wonderful shots, Vlad! I love the first one for the patterns in the sand – beautiful. But then there are the eyes on stalks peering out of the shell – I feel like that sometimes, early in the morning!
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I know just what you mean, Lynn!
That photos shows just the last few inches of the conch’s track. Some of their tracks stretched back a hundred yards…
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What an interesting looking fellow!
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Yes, they turned out to be strangely fascinating…
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What astonishing photos! (The one that really took me by surprise was the first one, with the trail where the creature had bumbled its way across the sand.) I’ve seen those shells, of course, but I never saw the living animal before. Where did you come across it?
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St. Petersburg Beach, on the Gulf Coast of Florida. They are quite common there…
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Hey Super Sweet Blogger! I really enjoy your blog, and wanted to pass this award along to you. Your notification is here, and you can also retrieve the award graphic here so you can place it on your blog. http://thepanamaadventure.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/super-sweet/
Here are the rules:
1. The nominees have to thank the person that nominated them.
2.Nominate a bakers dozen of other Super Sweet Bloggers and let them know.
3. Answer these easy questions:
Cookies or cake:
Chocolate or Vanilla:
What is your favourite sweet treat?
When do you crave sweet things the most? When
If you had a sweet nickname what would it be?
Thanks, and have fun passing this along!
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We are so glad you enjoy our blog! Thanks for the nomination—we really appreciate it!!
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This is so charming.
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:-)
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Great series, thanks for sharing, Vlad. I had never seen a live one before, but they look so cute! Beautiful colours too. Isn’t nature amazing?
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It is indeed! For the colors, it didn’t hurt that it was in the golden late-afternoon sunlight…
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These are awesome, Vlad! Love the close-ups. Can’t wait to show the kids!
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Thanks, Robin! You were there, and you can vouch that I didn’t make it all up :-)
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So very cool shots! Thank you so much Vlad!
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You are very welcome, Amy!
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What a fantastic scene you captured and the quote holds great personal significance for me. Nice post.
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Excellent—thanks for letting me know!!
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What great shots. From the back, they look so dignified.Then you get ’round to the other side and you see those crazy eyestalks! Like some mollusk reincarnation of Marty Feldman.
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Do you realize how the fact that we both know who Marty Feldman was dates us both? ;-)
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ha ha ha. I was hopeful we were both of around the same vintage.
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I just saw where one of your earlier commenters made the same comparison to Marty Feldman. :-)
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Yes, he comes to mind rather irresistibly in this context ;-)
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What a fantastic series of photos!!! I have never actually seen the living critter in one of these shells! Very cool!
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Me too—I wasn’t quite expecting them to have an elephant trunk and crossed eyestalks with comical expressions… :-)
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AMAZING>>> How long did this take? The little eye balls are freaking me out…in a cover my eyes and look again way…..These are striking pictures.
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I took many photos, of which these are just a small selection, over many minutes. It took a while. They do move slowly, or rather tentatively—they extend slowly out of the shell, feeling their way around, although they can withdraw in a flash if danger threatens…
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This is the first time I’ve seen what’s inside one of these shells. I have one. I won’t look at it the same way again :)
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Yes, you never know what’s in that shell that’s sitting on the shelf ;-) I have some too…
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That is very cool. Terrific images.
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Thanks, Edith!
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I’ve never seen these! Imagine what they would look like if we were the size of a grain of sand…
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Pretty horrific, I imagine. But that’s true of most animals. Have you considered what a cat looks like from the point of view of a mouse? Not to mention insects…
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Beautiful pictures!
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Thanks!!
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These are so cool! Marty Feldman indeed! I was thinking a creature in the Star Wars bar scene or from Men in Black. And here I thought those characters were just figments of someone’s imagination.
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No, someone had been observing nature very closely…
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Love it!! Those eyes! How wonderful. Thank you having the patience to watch and watch, and for bending way down for the conch’s eye view! This is a gift –
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It was a telephoto lens, so that I didn’t have to crawl through the water up close :-) And the conches were quite unperturbed by my presence… Thanks!!
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Pingback: Weekly Photo Challenge: Our 2012 in Pictures | Wind Against Current
The perfect light to capture these little guys.
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It was indeed!
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What an incredible sight to see these beautiful ‘shells’ alive and in action :) fantastic shots :)
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It was pretty incredible… :-) Thanks, Jenn! :-)
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Pingback: Reblog / Link Project: Wind Against Current | ft. // la vie éclectique
Incredible on every level possible!!
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Thank you so much, and thank you for following our blog!! :-)
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Oh, more weird cuteness <3
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Weird cuteness is right… :-)
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I am somehow partial to this phenomenon :-)
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:-)
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That is amazing! I had no idea what lived in there. Thanks for sharing.
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Very cute creatures live in there… You are most welcome! :-)
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Pingback: Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside | Wind Against Current
This is just so awesome!!!!
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:-) Thanks!!
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Reblogged this on TURNING 50 IS A BITCH!!! and commented:
This is just absolutely amazing. I love this so much especially because I grew up in the Caribbean. Sigh.
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We sympathize—we try to go south every chance we get… Thanks for reblogging!!
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Sweet.
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:-)
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Thanks for leaving the link, I thought I had seen photos like these before…
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Yes, they come in handy now and again… :-)
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What amazing little creatures they are! They brought a smile to my face. :) Thank you for sharing these wonderful photos.
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You are most welcome, Grace! :-)
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