Wetpixel reported earlier that: “Martin Ureta of cameraman.com has captured a unique image of a giant manta (Manta birostris) in the act of giving birth.”

It would now seem likely that this is not an image of a manta giving birth, but rather an image of one having a “gastro-intestinal eversion,” where the manta actually ejects the lower part of its intestine out of its cloaca in order to remove indigestible debris from its intestine. Comments posted onto the original Wetpixel post have caused this re-evaluation.

This has been documented and photographed before (pdf) although it is still a rarely witnessed event. It may also be that the image is actually of a reef manta (Manta alfredi) rather than a giant oceanic manta (Manta birostris) as was originally reported.

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Apple has updated its RAW compatibility to include seven new cameras. These include the: Leica D-Lux 6, Leica V-Lux 4, Leica X2, Nikon D5200, Pentax K-5 II, Pentax K-5 IIs, Pentax K-30, Pentax Q and Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1. The update requires Aperture v3.4 or later and iPhoto version 9.4 or later to have been installed.

Update version 4.04 is available now via the App store, or from the Apple support page.

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Alexander Semonov, marine biologist and head of scientific diving team at the White Sea Biological Station, Russia, has published a series of unique and beautiful high magnification images of sea stars. He writes:

“This is just small collection of sea stars skin surface with high magnification ratio from 1:2 to 2,5:1 made recently in three different seas: the White Sea, the Red Sea and the Sea of Japan. All those unusual structures at the skin surface is very common for echinoderms, it’s just gills, skeleton elements and pedicellariae. But look at it! I never cease surprised that nature shows amazing things. Variety of forms and colours among starfishes are very huge and you can hardly find two identical stars.”

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PEW Environment has published a video highlighting the initiatives that are in place to enforce the laws in the world’s shark sanctuaries. Unfortunately, many of the countries with the strongest legal protections for sharks have the least capacity to enforce their laws. However, during 2012 there have been a number of high-profile seizures of illegal shark fins in Palau and Honduras whilst authorities in the Marshall Islands have successfully prosecuted five shark sanctuary violations in recent months, resulting in total fines of $235,000.

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