Coral Focus ran by Alice Whitehead and Joel Feeney recently collected hands down the nicest “Symphyllia” (likely Lobophyllia robusta) I have ever seen. I spoke with Alice about the pieces collection she stated the following.
“Joel Feeney from Coral Focus collected it. He found it on the front edge of the outer reefs, straight out from Mackay. It was in approximately 15m of water on a sloping edge. He literally saw a Manta Ray straight before finding it and then locked eyes on that masterpiece! = good dive”.
What a good dive indeed. It’s not often you find “Symphyllia” that stand out from the crowd let alone a piece like this that defines the quality of an entire species.
An image of a “Symphyllia” in the wild.
Typically most “Symphyllia” from Australia are green or red with the “rainbows/ultras” being a red/orange with two or three accent colors. Compared to the usual specimens this one takes the cake by a long shot. Red, orange, pink, blue, green, yellow, purple, cyan etc etc etc – the colors keep coming and they all bleed together like an expressionist painting on the oral disk.
The quality of piece that’s representative of many ultra’s coming out of Australia – beautiful and full of color but still not a “rainbow” in the same light as the specimen highlighted in this article.
I look forward to seeing what other specimens Coral Focus finds in the coming years. As of now we have a new CADE coming to the Reef Builders studio which we plan to restart Jake’s aussie wall tank in. Hopefully a robusta of this quality is in the studio’s future. All images in this article were taken and provided by Alice Whitehead.
If you’d like to keep up or see Coral Focus’s inventory follow them here.
Here’s some more eye candy.
