Giant Carpet Anemone (Stichodactyla gigantea), seen here with one of its typical symbiotic partners, the Common Clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris)
William Saville-Kent worked widely in Australian waters, but found his greatest scientific and artisitc interests in tropical coral reefs, particularly the Great Barrier, off the Queensland coast. The Giant Carpet Anemone (Stichodactyla gigantea), seen here with one of its typical symbiotic partners, the Common Clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris), was originally named for Saville-Kent as Discosoma kenti, so it was only fitting that he devoted an entire plate to it in his groundbreaking 1893 book The Great Barrier Reef of Australia: its Products and Potentialities. The book was notable for being the first major scientific work to use photography for documenting nature. The black and white photographs are great, but it is his wonderful illustrations that really bring the book to life. Saville-Kent was the first to capture the truly breathtaking, the absolutely flabbergasting, and the singularly bizarre colour schemes of reef organisms. The colours of Saville-Kent's animals are no exageration, as anyone who has dived or snorkeled on a tropical reef knows, nature spared nothing when colouring the animals of the world's coral seas. Here's just a sampling of some of the beautifully detailed plates from The Great Barrier Reef:
