Photo for the day

Rico's father, who works there still (even though he's retired) forwards this, by Brad Erisman, a research scientist in the Marine Biology Research Division, from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography website:

Earlier this year, Octavio Aburto, my colleague from the Gulf of California Marine Program and a research scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, travelled to Cabo Pulmo National Park in Mexico, to participate in the making of a film on this incredible marine reserve, whose fish community rapidly recovered following protection in 1995. During that trip, he took this stunning photo of a huge aggregation of bigeye jacks swirling like a tornado in front of our friend David Castro, a local divemaster and naturalist whose family is responsible for the establishment of the reserve and the rich abundance of fishes that now reside within its borders.
The picture has gone viral over the past few weeks since he posted it on his website and Vimeo account, and submitted it to the 2012 National Geographic Photo Contest. While many viewers have marveled at the beauty of the photo itself, much of the attention surrounding it has focused on a discussion of whether it’s authentic or a doctored photo created from Octavio’s imagination.
As Octavio said, in a recent interview published in National Geographic, this photo is one-hundred-percent real and has captured one of the most amazing spectacles of the marine realm: a massive fish spawning aggregation. Spawning aggregations are gatherings of fish that occur at specific sites and during predictable times for the sole purpose of reproduction. For certain species of fish, such as bigeye jacks, these aggregations can be huge and include thousands to even millions of fish engaging in complex courtship and mating rituals. We have been conducting research on fish spawning aggregations in the Gulf of California for more than fifteen years, as many species of fish in the region are known to engage in this marvelous behavior, and coastal communities depend on the harvest of aggregating species for their livelihoods.

Rico says some things would still be hard to believe if we didn't have the pictures to prove it...