Christy beat me to it - the two items are mangrove propagules.
Here's some reading on the topic of mangroves:
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issu...02/feature.htm
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/20...ure/index.htm0
Also I hate to be the nagging moderator, but could you resize your pictures to something along the lines of 640x480? The large pictures cause the board software to move text frames all over the place.