Lab photo from specimen collected with permit.
Observations made by the Biodiversity Ilo team from the Florida Museum of Natural History (FLMNH) & the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles (NHMLA). Photos by Jessica Whelpley (FLMNH), Brittany Cummings (FLMNH), Leslie Harris (NHMLA), CC-BY-NC-SA, credit to Biodiversity-Ilo

Specimen collected on the Northeast Pacific Deep-sea Expedition in May to June 2023. Look below for a link to the collection video, and check out the expedition website for more info at https://www.oceannetworks.ca/expeditions/northeast-pacific-deep-sea-expedition/

Observed on the Northeast Pacific Deep-sea Expedition in May to June 2023. Look below for a link to the observation video, and check out the expedition website for more info at https://www.oceannetworks.ca/expeditions/northeast-pacific-deep-sea-expedition/

These corals were photographed and identified by the late Mr. Hans Ditlev, MSc (1946-2013) who was a coral specialist educated and working at Aarhus University, Denmark. These reported observations (c. 550 species, over 3.900 photos) are parts of his lifetime work with scleractinian taxonomy. Important parts of his collections are deposited at Phuket Marine Biological Center, Thailand; and Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia.
The corals are carefully identified by this expert in taxonomy and have a geographic position. The nomenclature follows WoRMS (marinespecies.org). However, the dates of collection or photographs are usually not given. The date is therefore arbitrarily set to 1. January 2000 to make it possible to enter them in iNaturalist. The high quality of the photos as well as the careful identification of a real specialist makes them valuable as references and will also, hopefully, contribute to the improvement of the AI system for Automated Image Recognition in iNaturalist. These photos are uploaded to iNaturalist with permission from Hans Ditlev’s wife, Mrs. Else Ditlev, Hornslet, Denmark.
Hans Ditlev published the book “A field-guide to the reef-building corals of the Indo-Pacific” in 1980. After that, he worked on a revision of this book, as he understood the importance of literature for identification as fundamentally important for work in ecology, evolution, conservation etc. His too early death motivated two colleagues to try to complete his work which resulted in the books “Indo-Pacific corals identified and illustrated by Hans Ditlev” by Jørgen Hylleberg & Tomas Cedhagen as authors; vol 1: viii+406 pp. 2015, Thailand National Science Museum; and vol 2: xxii+374 pp. 2018, Phuket Marine Biological Center. Hans Ditlev published scientific articles and described some new coral taxa.