Red Clingfish, Arcos rubiginosus

Between busy schedules and a pesky easterly breeze, we’re on the island for two weeks before Bas finally calls with an optimistic weather forecast. We’re on for the following evening. Our rendezvous is set for 7 pm outside Buddy Dive’s reception. I like the hour: between the sun setting at 6:30 pm, and calculating in the 20 minute drive and our time suiting up, we won’t be in the water until well after dark. The later hour gives critters plenty of time to creep out of their hiding holes before our visit.

On the drive to Lac Cai we pick up a bit about Bas and his troupe of animals. Thin, roughed and focused, Bas looks every bit the part of a young man who has chosen life on a tropical island and goes diving every day. Bouncing along behind the wheel of his worn pickup you can almost feel the intensity of his blue eyes pulsing as he talks about the animals he has recently encountered. His tales just happen to include species Anna and I have been tracking for years.

By the time we veer off the asphalt and onto the sand, images of rare fishes and shrimp dance in our heads. We come to a stop in the dark just past a mound of conch shells. Without a hint of moonlight, I can just make out the outline of the cut only steps away from where we gear up in the dim glow of a flashlight. With a short walk and a splash we’re underwater riding a warm current out to sea. Just that quickly we’re in another world.

We follow Bas’s lead past a field of pink and white tentacles, over a forest of sea fans, across a stretch of sand and tumble of rocks before breaking to the right at 30 ft. and tucking into the lee of a cliff. This is our goal – Bas’s prime hunting grounds – and almost immediately he begins finding animals. First to show up is a Red Cling Fish clinging to red rock, followed by a bizarre tonguefish inside a crevice. On the sand below, his beam spotlights a snail, the size of my fist, gliding past with its mantle spread, followed by a giant hermit crab that bursts onto the scene toting its conch shell home.

Tonguefish

Giant Tun, Tonna galea

Giant Hermit, Petrochirus diogenes

While Anna and Bas continue hunting the cliff, I’m watching the translucent polyps of Flower Coral filling with gametes—a harbinger of the annual coral spawn expected during the nights to come.

Flower Coral, Eusmilia fastigiana, tentacles filling with gamete bundles.

Just as I begin thinking things can’t get any better we hit the mother lode. Inside a crevice at 40 ft. Bas’s light picks out a rare Circled Shrimp making its way along the wall. Only seconds later, a pair of undescribed boxer shrimp appear in his beam.

Circled Shrimp, Gnathophyllum circellum

Whiteclaw Coral Shrimp, Odontozona sp.

As afterthought, my eyes dart to my air gauge. It can’t be, the needle signals we’re at our turn around point. In disbelief, I check the time, what seems like 20-minutes has somehow turned into an hour and a half dive.

Our adventure with Bas reinforces a couple of time-worn tenets of critter hunting: Don’t be afraid to explore alternate habitats, and whenever possible go with those in the know even if they might now and then lead you to the “wild side”.

Two nights later finds the annual coral spawn well underway. Traditionally, in Bonaire many species of stony and gorgonian corals spawn during days six through eight following the full moons of September and October—a big bonus for visiting Bonaire during the early fall. Making the period even more rewarding, the same cues that trigger corals to synchronize their reproductive behavior, also seem to put fish and critters in the same mood. Although most spawning takes place after dark, sponges start things off releasing great clouds of gametes during the day.

Touch-Me-Not Sponge, Neofibularia nolitangere, smoking gametes.

But it is the first few hours following sunset when most of the action takes place. Over the years, beside several species of coral, we have seen sea cucumbers, sea urchins, sea stars, fire worms, crinoids, Christmas tree worms, clams, several fishes and even sea spiders spawn during the magical evenings. Traditionally, things get started as brittle stars slink out of the reef and inch their way up to high ground where on tiptoes they liberate their annual cache of eggs—yellow, red or black depending on the species. Males, drawn by the same ancient rhythms, release clouds of sperm from surrounding rocks. With luck their gametes will somehow find each other in the night.

Female brittle star releasing eggs.

Male brittle star releasing sperm.

By the third night there are so many excited divers prowling the 30-foot coral crest at Buddy Dive Reef, I drop down to relative solitude at 60 feet. Just off a sand channel, I notice two soapfish together—odd behavior for the solitary predators. Within seconds they are rubbing, nosing and darting about—sure signs of courtship. As I hover above watching, the female’s belly swells to the size of a tennis ball. Following a bit more cavorting and several false spawning rises, the pair finally blast off side-to-side headed for the surface with me trailing close behind. At 20 feet I lose pace as the fish continue up another ten feet where, bathed in my light, they explode in a shower of gametes.

Greater Soapfish, Rypticus saponaceus, courting.

Cavorting

One of several false spawning rises.

And they’re off, heading toward the surface.

With a belly the size of a tennis ball, the pair join for a spawning rise.

Thrilled, I catch up with Anna to show off my soapfish in the camera’s display. But before she has a chance to glance at the screen, she rockets away toward a mound of Mountainous Star Coral snapping on her video lights as she goes. Moments later the coral begins releasing what quickly becomes thousands upon thousands of BB-sized bundles of genetics filling the sea like a snowstorm—without question one of the greatest shows on Earth.

Boulder Star Coral, Montastraea annularis, releasing mixed-sex gamete bundles.

A mass coral spawn—one of nature’s greatest wildlife shows.

© 2012, New World Publications Inc. All rights reserved.
The images and text in Marine Life Blog, unless otherwise noted, are the property of New World Publications, Inc. You may not copy entire posts or any of the images. The YouTube videos have been created to allow embedding. Quotes, using a few lines or a paragraph may be used, as long as credit is given or a link back to this blog is used.

It is the end of our first dive and most of our group has headed back up to the boat leaving our guide Imran and me near the mooring finishing our safety stops when Imran points to the midsection of a monstrous segmented worm making its way across a crevice. The large centipedelike body belongs to an inhabitant of the inner reef, notorious in these parts for a long curved set of retractable, rip-your-face-off cutting jaws. Since they were kids, local islanders have heard tales about the frightful sea creature they have come to call “The Thing”.

The Thing, Eunice roussaei.

The animal in question, given the scientific name Eunice roussaei in 1866, belongs to the family Eunicidae, which consists of just under 200 species worldwide varying in length from a quarter inch to 20 feet. Over the decades I have encountered family members on dozens of occasions from a small Florida species enticed from sand burrows with strands of Sargassum weed to brawny characters in Indonesia that surged out of the sand with their serrated jaws splayed to snatch fish heads dangling from sticks.

In a moment of mischief I slip my stainless steel rod beneath the worm and slowly lift a U-shape section of the inch-wide segments. Surprisingly, there is little resistance, and in less than a minute I have the six-foot beast completely out and sliding across my hands as placidly as a pet corn snake. Up close and in the light the animal’s color turns chocolate brown and shimmers with an otherworldly iridescence. With the nasty mandibles tucked away its eyeless head appears more cartoonish than threatening. A minute later the released worm slips slowly back inside the reef.

Hearing that we are heading for a grass bed on our second dive Imran, still buzzing about our encounter with The Thing, makes an ambitious request: “Would someone please find me a pipehorse.” It seems that he had been looking for the rare little cross between a seahorse and pipefish without success since he began diving eight years ago.

With a splash we’re over the side and heading for the grass—a shallow sea meadow of turtle grass and feather algae spreading as far as the eye can see. Within minutes the squeaking of Anna’s plastic video light arm draws attention. In the distance we can see her kneeling at the edge of grass with her eyes locked fast. Arriving at her side, I follow the direction of her finger to a pert little pipehorse with its tail looped in a lasso, swimming along the edge of the grass.

Pipehorse, Acentronura dendritica.

Like Anna and I have noted so often before, after having been introduced to the hunt and given the opportunity to slow down and survey a reef properly, local guides exhibit talents that far exceed those of city-raised expats. And such is the case with Imran. In the last two dives he has changed from a fly-up-and-down-the-reef-in-45-minutes tour guide to a critter hunter extraordinaire.

We find the grass full of Yellowface Pikeblennies. These soda-straw thin two- to three-inch bottom dwellers, which typically take up residence in abandoned worm tubes, are endlessly entertaining especially at times such as these when their population numbers near an annual peak prompting reproductive juices to flow. Coy females out and about and slipping through the forest of grass like shadows seem to derive the greatest pleasure from driving the guys nuts. When approached the males rise from their tubes and snap their spendid dorsal fins taunt like sails in a gale. Repeated encounters can put suitors in such states of competiveness that they attack neighbors. One male becomes so addled that Anna’s bobbing finger solicits a nip.

Male Yellowface Pikeblenny, Chaenopsis limbaughi, nuptial phase.

Over the weeks our grass safaris reveal a trove including decorator crabs, seahares, juvenile lobster, grass anemones, frogfish, and a rare Mutton Hamlet. But our strangest discovery comes when Imran finds a mole crab along the shallow inshore edge of the meadow.

Decorator Crab, Podochela sp.

Juvenile Caribbean Spiny Lobster, Panulirus argus

Mutton Hamlet, Alphestes afer

Mole Crab, Albuneidae

Taking advantage of such amiable company, at dinner one evening, Anna throws out the idea of producing a short episode for her upcoming release of Blenny Week spoofing the Discovery Channel’s annual blockbuster Shark Week. Everyone readily agrees so Anna tasks the group with crafting a script. Over breakfast the following morning ideas fly. Before the last cups of coffee go down a short sketch entitled the B-Team (Blenny Team) has been hashed out.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The B-Team

Our logistics in Dominica allow for plenty of time underwater. Residing at Castle Comfort on the southern outskirts of the coastal capital of Roseau, each day our party of ten makes two extended morning dives on a private charter operated by Dive Dominica, leaving the afternoons and evenings open for unlimited shore diving from the resort’s pier. Although the slope fronting the property lacks the island’s splendid coral- and crinoid-spangled reefs, it offers an enticing array of alternate habitats. The bottom near shore begins with a tumble of breakwater boulders separated by a towering gorgonian thicket from a sand and grass incline that merges at 80 feet into a field of silt studded with coral and sponge islets—fertile grounds for two-hour plus dives. The terrain features a circus of oddball animals, especially after dark when seldom-seen night creatures venture out from hiding to feed. On my first night dive I’m greeted by a shoal of four juvenile arrow squid that briefly linger in my light before disappearing back into the night.

Juvenile Arrow Squid, Loligo plei

Here and there I catch glimpses of a small night prowling fish skimming the grass tops. These are the first Bonnetmouths I’ve seen since this, and a closely related species, the Boga had their family status unceremoniously altered thanks to the brave new world of DNA. For decades the two striped plankton-pickers had exclusive rights to a family all their own, the bonnetmouths, Inermiidae; and so it stayed until genetic analysis recently revealed bonnetmouths to be long-lost members of the grunt family, Haemulidae.

Bonnetmouth, Haemulon atlantica

I had heard rumors about a pair of batfish inhabiting the house slope. And sure enough I happen upon one of the morphological wonders shuffling across the sand. Making the encounter even more remarkable a short rod, tipped with a fleshy tab, extends from above the mouth and wiggles like a fishing lure.

Shortnose Batfish, Ogcocephalus nasutus

Batfish Extending Lure

Crustaceans, in the form of crabs, shrimp and lobster, less fearful for their lives after dark when predators have bedded down, emerge from the grass to feed. First I find a purse crab, the size of a nickel that burrows backward into the sand, followed by the largest decorator crabs I’ve ever seen. Even under the cover of darkness the fine fellow wears a bouquet of sponge on its back to disguise its presence.

Juvenile Purse Crab, Iliacantha sp.

Furcate Spider Crab, Stenocionops furcata coelatus

What a treat to find Orange Ball Corallimorphs growing in profusion between the boulders near the dock. During the night, these close relatives of anemone display one of the most striking polyps of all the cnidarians. Unfortunately, the animals abhor light, closing within seconds of being hit by my beam.

Orange Ball Corallimorph, Pseudocorynactic caribbeorum

The dock also makes it convenient to be underwater at dusk when marine animals tend to coordinate reproductive activities. Although I didn’t witness much hanky panky, an unidentified burrowing sea cucumber did poke out of the sand and broadcast a creamy ribbon of gametes.

Unidentified Burrowing Sea Cucumber Spawning at Dusk

Late one calm afternoon splintered light from the setting sun silhouettes a solitary Reef Squid in grand fashion.

Caribbean Reef Squid, Sepioteuthis sepioidea

On a morning dive off the township of Soufriere I catch a glimpse of gold and magenta stripes darting across an opening at 80 feet. The pattern is too distinctive not to be a Candy Basslet, one of the Caribbean’s most beautiful and reclusive fish, and a species I’ve seen only once before. So I settle a few feet away and wait, and wait as the time on my decompression meter plummets. The basslet never shows another fin, but remaining still underwater for a period of time always pays dividends. In this case a cryptic Red Face Moray, the width of a chopstick, emerges from a nearby crevice.

Red Face Moray, Monopenchelys acuta

On my way up to the shallows I find a Golden Crinoid Shrimp living in the only place it can survive—on the spiky arms of a Golden Crinoid.

Golden Crinoid Shrimp, Periclimenes crinoidalis

I finish the dive under the boat watching a territorial dispute between two blennies battling for control of abandoned worm tubes near the top of a coral mound where the richest plankton currents flow.

Spiny Head Blenny Fight, Acanthemblemaria spinosa

For some unexplained reason an unusual influx of pelagic Sargassum piles up on Dominica’s wind swept east coast; random patches of the vegetation make it around to the island’s lee where we’re diving. These floating rafts harbor a splendid macrofauna of about one hundred species from eleven phyla. The problem comes in finding and photographing the remarkably well camouflaged animals. Even in calm seas, the combined movements of a diver and a raft of weed bobbing on the surface, creates a real challenge. I come up with a simple solution that had to this point eluded me. Instead of dealing with the floats near the surface, I take a patch to the bottom where the maze of vegetation is stabilized with a rock.

Postlarval Batwing Coral Crab, Carpilius carallinus, in Sargassum

Ben Victor is a one-man show. Armed with an aquarium net and baggies he’s off and gone the moment he hits the water. If we do happen to catch a glimpse of him underwater, his modus operandi is always the same—head down near the substrate and oblivious to anything larger than an inch. For the most part he is after gobies and blennies. On our trip he concentrates on the most recent of his many passions—blennies in genus Starksia, which according to recent studies probably includes far more species than previously imagined. In my decades of underwater hunting I had only sighted two species of the small elusive fishes. Under Ben’s tutelage, which sets me up with a search image and insight, I find during our two weeks what he perceives to be six different species. Two of the individuals Ben believes might be new species.

Checkered Blenny, Starksia culebrae

Dwarf Blenny, Starksia nanodes

Ben also reintroduces me to the handsome Red Banner Blenny, a hole-dwelling species with a distribution from Dominica south to Venezuela.

Red Banner Blenny, Emblemariopsis ramirezi

Although a fish man first and foremost, Ben shows me an unfamiliar red shrimp found under a rock that makes my day.

Crimson Coral Crab, Microprosthema semilaeve

One morning I notice a large Sand Diver, a member of the lizardfish family, perched on the edge of a rise with its torpedo-shaped body angled up toward an aggregation of Brown Chromis feeding in the currents. In the psyche of fishes the location and size of eyes are invaluable indicators of perceived body size and intended direction of movement for both predators and prey. For this reason it makes fish uncomfortable to be approached directly from the front, which invariably causes a subject to turn or move away. Each time I near the predator it darts to one side, only to return to the same position after I’ve backed off. After five slow and deliberate approaches, with my eyes averted to the side, the fish, out of complacency or frustration, allows me close enough to snap its portrait.

Sand Diver, Synodus intermedius

Toward the end of a pinnacle dive I come upon two humongous Spotted Scorpionfish lying on the bottom a few feet apart. The situation instantly brings to mind stories I’ve heard over the years about the fish locking jaws in territorial disputes that have been reported to last for hours. After a few minutes one of the frying pan-sized bruisers turns and makes a break with its rival in close pursuit. In a maneuver so fast that if I had blinked it would have been missed, the pair faceoff and lock jaws in a massive collision. A quarter-hour later as the needle on my air gauge approaches empty, I reluctantly leave the motionless pair still locked together with unblinking eyes warlike and uncompromising.

Scorpionfish Fight

Scorpionfish Fight

I make the last dive of the trip off the dock in the early afternoon. With plenty time on my computer I swim pass the gorgonians and grass and drop down the slope farther than I had previously gone to see if I can pick up a deepwater species. Through the chalky haze at 140 feet a sea pen appears, only the second I’ve ever seen in the Caribbean. Close inspection reveals a flattened shrimp clinging to the stalk. My find turns out to be a symbiotic Wire Coral Shrimp, the first of the species reported to inhabit anything other than wire coral.

Wire Coral Shrimp, Pseudopontonides principis, on a Sea Pen

© 2012, New World Publications Inc. All rights reserved.
The images and text in Marine Life Blog, unless otherwise noted, are the property of New World Publications, Inc. You may not copy entire posts or any of the images. The YouTube videos have been created to allow embedding. Quotes, using a few lines or a paragraph may be used, as long as credit is given or a link back to this blog is used.

We love diving under docks, so Anna and I are understandably excited as our launch approaches the fabled Laha Pier located on the northern shore of Ambon Harbor—a corner of the world long famed for remarkable animals that we have been itching to explore for more than a decade. It is our last full day aboard the Dewi Nusantara (formerly the Paradise Dancer), the luxury live-aboard, which for the past two weeks has sailed us south from Raja Ampat in eastern Indonesia, and dropped anchor at Ambon this very afternoon. Like us, everyone is in high anticipation of ending our voyage with a bang.

Redhead Coral Gobies

As the saying goes first impressions can deceive. Topside, the storied pier, smaller than expected and girdled with a scrum of weathered fishing vessels, juts out unimpressively from a grimy beach fronting an equally grimy lagoon. The scenery doesn’t improve underwater. From a forest of line-fouled pilings a steep slope piled high with bottles, boards, busted buckets, and waterlogged boots cascades seaward—one of the last places on Earth anybody would want to visit unless you happen to be a critter hunter.

Many of us are immediately drawn to the swarms of pie-sized Fire Urchins scouring the seafloor in nomadic hoards. A careful survey of the echinoderms reveals exactly what we’re hoping for—mated pairs of Coleman Shrimp, and a scattering of Brook’s Urchin Shrimp—obligatory symbiotes that live exclusively among their hosts’ hornets’ nests of spines. On our way back up the incline dive guide Yann spots a pair of Harlequin Shrimp dancing atop a sea star dragged into the shadows of a junk pile for dinner.  After the dive, reports of bumblebee shrimp, frogfish and a pair of pipehorses continue to filter in.  Without question, Laha Pier is hot.

Coleman Shrimp, Periclimenes colemani.

Brook’s Urchin Shrimp, Allopontonia brooki.

Harlequin Shrimp, Hymenocera elegans.

Bumblebee Shrimp, Gnathrophylum americanum.

At the pier once again the following morning a current forces us up into the shallows among the pilings. While clinging to rocks, Anna and I watch a lizardfish dart out into the gale and grab a toby, which, as is its nature, inflates to the size of a ping-pong ball. The toby’s last-gasp strategy works for several minutes, but eventually the fish is swallowed whole. The current abates as quickly as it began. Anna disappears down the slope while I check out a number of large cornetfish uncharacteristically hovering in the shallows. I slip slowly over the rocks on my belly, but the fish spook. Ten minutes later they are back settled into place as before. This time I make it close enough to see a troupe of white-banded coral shrimp picking parasites from the fishes’ gills like robots on an assembly line.

Lizardfish with inflated Toby.

Cornetfish cleaned by White-Banded Coral Shrimp, Lysmata amboinensis.

At ten o’clock, the next morning two skiffs from Maluku Divers pull alongside the Dewi Nusantara to collect Anna and me along with three shipmates who plan to remain in Ambom for a few days. Anna and I join the skiff with the resort’s manager, a gregarious Dutchman, Marcel Hagendijk, and Indonesian dive guide Semuel Bukasiang. Anyone who keeps up with our dive travels is well aware our esteem for local naturalist guides. Like Laha Pier’s renown for harboring rare creatures, Semuel’s reputation for finding them precedes him. Trained in Lembeh Strait during the 1990s as one of Larry Smith’s original team of guides, Semuel later explored much of eastern Indonesia on live-aboards before settling in Ambon where he continues his reign as a superstar supreme.

Following two morning dives we arrive at the resort to find our luggage stowed in a waterfront bungalow and a warm lunch waiting. Recently relocated on Ambon Harbor’s northern coastline, closer to the airport and better diving, Maluku Divers is our kind of resort: laid back yet service oriented, comfortable and picturesque, with a top-notch camera room and dive facilities, and best yet, providing quick and easy access to a wonderland of world-class animals.

That afternoon at Laha, while Semuel and I are away, Anna videos a pair of cuttlefish mating, a behavior I’ve wanted to document for some time. As it turns out, it takes three lengthy dives, following cuttlefish about, before I get the goods. Finally on the third dive, after trailing the five-inch subjects for more than an hour, the pair finally becomes frisky. Suddenly, the smaller female turns to face her partner and bends all eight arms back over her head exposing an opening for the male to dart forward and insert his sperm packet. The episode is repeated two more times in rapid succession before the pair calmly resumes their hunt.  Minutes later the female begins nosing around a small crevice where she eventually extends a cone of arms inside leaving behind a single, marble-sized egg dangling by a thread.

Male cuttlefish (left) placing sperm packet.

Female placing fertilized egg.

The cuttlefish never seem bothered by our company. Most of their time is spent feeding for crustaceans among the rocks. When a potential meal is detected, a long translucent feeding tentacle shoots out and grabs the victim that is drawn into a circle of sucker-lined arms and promptly dispatched by an unseen beak.

Cuttlefish hunting.

Cuttlefish with captured crab.

Toward the end of the morning Semuel signals us of over to show off a Mosaic Boxer Crab he found under a rock. Although I have photographed the species before, the exquisite pea-sized crab, noted and named for feeding anemones attached to the ends of its claws, has evaded Anna’s lens. As she positions for the shot I turn to find a colorful rock to use as a backdrop. When I pivot back, Anna and Semuel have vanished. Unconcerned, I take a shot or two of the crab before I feel a tap on my shoulder. It’s Semuel motioning up into the water column where Anna is making a safety stop. Puzzled, I tuck the little crab back under its home rock and swim to her side. She points at her left thumb, oddly cinched below the knuckle with a red rubber band. Then she makes the sign for “lionfish” and points back at her finger.

On the boat Anna relates the sorry saga of her hand going down for balance, as it turned out, on the spine of a lionfish. We have been on lionfish collecting trips with REEF in the Bahamas, so know how painful such wounds can be. Hot water is the elixir, breaking down the venomous protein for relief. Anna sits with her finger inside a thermos of warm water for the best part of an hour significantly decreasing her pain. Had Semuel’s rubber band trick helped in the effort? Who knows, but Anna is back in the water that afternoon.

Great animals keep coming. While surveying a stretch of coast we find three classic crustaceans one after the other. The first is a Hairy Squat Lobster nestled in the fold of a barrel sponge, followed by a magnificent Banded Tozeuma Shrimp clinging to a black coral bush, and finally topping off our trio of miniature wonders a Wire Coral Crab.

Hairy Squat Lobster, Lauriea siagiani.

Banded Tozeuma Shrimp, Tozeuma armatum.

Wire Coral Crab, Xenocarcinus tuberculatus.

Later in the dive Semuel leads us to isolated coral head the size and shape an old beetle bug car. In this and other oceans we’ve occasionally come across such isolated structures that for some unknown reason attract an inordinate amount of sea life, measured in both biomass and biodiversity. Anna and I call these phenomenon “beehives”. This site, undercut on opposite sides with deep grottos, hums with activity inside and out. Waves of small schooling fish dominate the seascape until open-water predators pass sending the multitudes diving en masse for safe haven below. Lively cleaning stations are also key components. Inside, hinge-beak shrimp carpet the walls and white-banded cleaner shrimp wave white antenna to attract customers from the legions of cardinalfish hovering nearby. It’s a place to spend hours, so we do. The longer we stay the more we see. Soon even cryptic species make fleeting appearances—first a juvenile Coral Grouper (the first I’ve encountered) and later a Convict Goby. But the main attraction is a Fimbriated Moray curled deep within the recess with its open mouth wide to accommodate cleaner. Try as she might Anna is unable to maneuver her camera housing into position to record the action; but not to worry, Anna has a plan.

Juvenile Coral Grouper, Cephalopholis moniata.

Convict Goby, Priolepis cincta.

The following day, our last in Ambon, Anna arrives at the beehive equipped with a recently purchased GoPro—a miniature video unit, packed inside a Plexiglas housing that fits in her hand. Stretching as far as possible she places the housing, with the camera running, on a rock near the moray’s gaping mouth. With lights aimed from her primary housing near the entrance she watches the drama unfold. Later, at our bungalow she excitedly downloads her images, only to discover that the tiny camera had been angled a mite too high cutting off much of the eel’s head. Although dismayed she good-naturedly edits the footage nonetheless, entitling the results “Learning Curve”.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A southerly blow, sending spray over the seawall, doesn’t bode well for our final dive. We’re after an image of a Redhead Coral Goby destined for the next printing of Reef Fish, Tropical Pacific. But unfortunately, our intended target sighted by Anna a few days before, lives among mazes of coral braches in ten feet of water where the surge reigns. With a good ol’ fashion what-the-heck, we decide to go for it, knowing that if necessary, we can later head down the slope to calmer water.

Redhead Coral Gobies

As expected the swells in the shallows throw us about at will. I decide that as long as we are here we should at least search for the goby, which Semuel quickly locates. The instant I see the charming little fellow scampering around the pencil-sized braches I decide to try for a shot. Lying spread eagle on the sand with my BC deflated and extra weight ringing my waist, I’m still out of control. Adding to my woes, the goby, wanting nothing to do with me, hides out of view. Semuel helps the effort by settling on the opposite side of the coral, which forces the fish to scurry from side to side. Then, unexpectedly there are two gobies that for split second nestle together looking straight into my lens as seductively as puppies at the pound. I bite down on my mouthpiece, exhale until my lungs scream, but no luck, my legs and body still pitch like leaves in a gale. Then Anna comes to the rescue lying across my wayward legs. It’s just what I need. Ten minute later, the gobies come together and I snap the shot.

© 2011 – 2012, New World Publications Inc. All rights reserved.
The images and text in Marine Life Blog, unless otherwise noted, are the property of New World Publications, Inc. You may not copy entire posts or any of the images. The YouTube videos have been created to allow embedding. Quotes, using a few lines or a paragraph may be used, as long as credit is given or a link back to this blog is used.

I can think of few things more appealing than exploring eastern Indonesia on the Paradise Dancer with a boatload of friends, and that’s just what Anna and I did once again last April. Measuring just over half the length of a football field the stylish replica of a 19^th century three-masted schooner more closely favors a boutique hotel than your typical liveaboard. Although there are amenities aplenty, it’s the world-class animals inhabiting eastern Indonesia’s Raja Ampat waters that entice our merry band of 19 critter hunters halfway around the world. Like us, this will be the second voyage in consecutive years for many aboard, and once again our trip coincides with the end of the diving season in Raja Ampat allowing us to customize our itinerary as the vessel makes a transfer voyage to her summer venue. The previous year’s two-week cruise took us west to the outlying reefs and muck of Halmahera before ending at Lembeh Strait. This year, we plan to explore the best of Raja Ampat then veer south toward the island of Ambon located on the northern fringe of the Banda Sea.

Juvenile Sailor Flying Fish, Prognichthys sealei

Following dinner Paul, Anna and I join dive master Wendy Brown and guides Yann and Andre around a spread of nautical charts. Knowing that we will visit plenty of clearwater reefs to the south, we set our immediate sites on the productive muck of Aljui Bay off the northern shore of Waigeo, the same bottom that crawled with critters the year before.

And sure enough once again we encounter a circus of exciting animals populating the pilings and sand slope of the Cendana pearl farm’s fuel dock. Even before we make it to the wooden structure, Yann and I spot a Wunderpus, bluering, and the same undescribed octopus I dubbed Slim Jim the previous year.

An undescribed blue-ringed octopus blanches as it makes an escape across the sand.

One of at least 60 octopus species from Indonesia waiting to be scientifically described, we dubbed Slim Jim.

During that evening’s dive the unforgettable croaks of the seldom-seen Banded Toadfish welcome us back. While Andre scouts the pilings for the toadfish and frogfish, I drop down the slope intent on finding an epaulette shark – a small night-feeder resident that prowls the bottom on modified fins. Andre has been busy back at the pier while I’ve been away. He not only points out the amorous toadfish hunkered down in a sponge thicket, but also shows off four frogfish including a large emerald female wedged in the shadows of the pilings.

Banded Toadfish, Halophyme diemensis.

Spot-tail Frogfish, Lophiocharon trisignatus.

Epaulette Shark, Hemiscyllium sp.

After comparing notes with Wendy and Yann, we decide to backtrack south to the island of Batanta with the hope of locating a submerged plateau we dived in 2005 with Larry Smith, and also visit a muck site that Yann is keen on showing everyone. As usual, Anna’s memory and notes serve us well. We not only find the reef we are looking for, but Anna also recalls hearing a morning chorus of bird calls at a jungle-lined bay nearby. The captain agrees to anchor that night as close to the shoreline of the bay as feasible. The following morning, right on cue, a squawking, squeaking, singsong world of exotic sounds erupts at the first hint of day – a morning that the sleepy headed, coffee-clutching clan assembled on the bow will not soon forget.

Because of currents we have to wait until afternoon to visit the offshore plateau. The delay suits me fine – I’m after flasher wrasse, which we discovered there in abundance nearly a half decade ago. The showy two-inch group of fishes typically go into a frenzied courtship routine later in the day when excited males dash about with elegant, oversized show fins unfurled and colors blazing. Their speed during courtship helps the suitors avoid predators as well as demonstrate genetic prowess. For the remained of the day males avoid becoming tasty tidbits by collapsing their fins, muting colors and hanging out with herds of smaller, non-descript females near bottoms offering ready access to hiding holes. Unfortunately, this particular plateau has hiding holes aplenty.

In the not so distant past the seamount’s crest supported a lush coral garden before blast fishing reduced it to a bone pile of rubble. From the fishermens’ point of view the price was right: A beer bottle of nitrates and a detonator costing less than $4 U.S. produces $20 worth of market fish. However, the destruction goes well beyond calculable economics. Each blast decimates a thriving habitat roughly 20-feet in diameter. Making things worse, the piles of pipe-size rubble left behind are too unstable to support new coral growth. It will probably be decades or possibly the better part of a century before coralline algae fuses the mass sufficiently for new corals to once again thrive. Fortunately, after a vigorous educational effort the use of explosives and other destructive fishing practices have been reduced markedly throughout the region. In the interim, the fragmented tabletop bathed with food-carrying currents provides sanctuary for a profusion of small, plankton-picking wrasses, including flashers.

When we drop on the mount we find our timing a bit off, the current still rips. Wrasses abound but are more interested in dinner than sex, and the blow is too stiff for comfort so Anna and I slip down the slope into the more manageable lee. At 60 feet, well below the working depth of blast fishermen, all is right with the world – robust hard and soft coral colonies stand heroic as far as the eye can see in 100-foot visibility. Adding to the good tidings, we find isolated groups of flasher and fairy wrasses displaying. While attempting to follow a juiced up Irian Jaya Wrasse an unfamiliar flasher species trailing white dorsal fin pennants streaks past. In an instant I’m off after the fish as it zigzags down the slope at a breakneck pace. Just as I realize that I’m approaching 90 feet the fish turns and works its way back up the rise where it pauses and displays before a bevy of females – the chance I’ve been waiting for. That evening Anna identifies the new fish from a paper stored on her laptop. It is a Nursalim Flasher described by Dr. Gerald Allen and Dr. Mark Erdmann in 2008 from the FakFak coastline several hundred kilometers southeast.

Nursalim Flasher, Paracheilinus nursalim.

We’re back in the muck the following morning at one of Yan’s favorite sites in the crook of a bay just off a narrow beach of black sand. Chalky water baths a barren incline laced with seagrass and feather algae. Not much to look at, but just the kind of bottom where dandy little animals often hang out. What the site lacks in ascetics it more than made up for in sea slugs, a popular group of shell-less mollusks that have surprisingly eluded us until this point in the journey. In the 90-minute dive we ferret out a couple of outrageous sapsucking slugs and several aeolid nudibranchs, but the big deal of the dive is sighted above water perched in the leafless branches of an old tree. Not 30 feet from where we bob, waiting for the tender to return, two Palm Cockatoos preen calmly in clear view.

One of five known variations of Green Longtail Sapsucking Slug, Oxynoe virides.

Sapsucking slug, Stillger smaragdinus.

Yellow-tipped Phyllodesmium, Phyllodismium briaeum.

Unidentified aeolid, Favorinus sp.

Sailing south toward the large island of Ceram we find clearer waters and an abundance of fish-rich reefs – perfect pygmy seahorse hunting grounds – so Andre and Yann set about searching for the tiny treasures. Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to photograph numerous pygmies and well respect how difficult it can be to capture a suitable image, so when a guide points one out I tend to move on and let others experience the joy and frustration. The two most common species, the Denise and Bargibanti, inhabit sea fans with their tails curled around the intertwining maze. Even with a guide’s finger pointing from only inches away pygmies blend so ingeniously with the background that they can be lost in a blink. Keeping an eye on the tiny targets is only the first trial. When approached, the reluctant subjects invariably droop, turn away, or slip to the opposite side of the fan. Adding to the challenge, the photographer must continually struggle to maintain position while holding a bowling-ball size housing steadily focused as colleagues hover nearby impatiently waiting their turns.

However, favorable circumstances are not to be ignored. Trailing behind for most of the dive, Yann and I catch up with the others after everyone has had a good look at a pair of oversized Bargibanti pygmies Andre discovered near the top of a fan that extends strategically above a supportive rock shelf. At Yann’s insistence I swim over and take a look. Perfectly perched in the open, a large pregnant pygmy looking for all the world like a plump snowman with black button eyes. Who could resist?

Bargibanti Seahorse, Hippocampus bargibanti.

As related in the previous trip report, I saw my first Rumengani Pipehorse in Lembeh Strait the week before setting sail on the Paradise Dancer. In fact, after several years searching for the recently described species, I saw five different individuals with the help of three dive guides, so the wispy novelties remain fresh on my mind. Experienced critter hunters are well aware that once you’ve seen an unfamiliar species in the wild you acquire what is known as a search image – a compilation of data such as size, color, habitat and behavior that make the species easier to find in the future. I rather believe that it has more to do with dumb luck than a search image when I happen upon a pair of the teeny, thread-thin waifs dangling by their prehensile tails from a gorgonian branch at 85 feet.

That night an unidentified species of marble shrimp crawls out from under a rock just long enough for me to snap off a picture. Natural selection went into overdrive when embellishing this outrageous creation.

Rumengan’s Pipehorse, Kyonemichthys rumengani.

Undescribed marble shrimp, Saron sp.

Talk about ending our trip on a high note: At Tanjung Uli, off the current swept coast of Ceram, I live a four-year-long dream of swimming with juvenile flyingfish. I will not log details of the experience here. The full account appears in our “Encounters” column in the winter issue of DAN’s Alert Diver magazine to be released the first week of November, and also on their website: http://www.alertdiver.com/Flying_Fish. All too often when we see a captivating wildlife photograph we imagine the skill and prowess of a lone photographer is responsible for capturing the image. The Alert Diver piece, entitled “Team Flying Fish”, details how the solitary artist scenario doesn’t always mesh with reality. No less than a dozen shipmates and crew are responsible for the unique images presented here and in the article. A big thanks to everyone involved!

On Saturday April 23 the Paradise Dancer drops anchor in the Bay of Ambon, Anna’s and my first visit to the historic island. When we first began diving in Indonesia in the late 1990s the destination was off limits to outsiders because of a sectarian conflict that lasted until 2002. To me the bay will forever be symbolic because it was at Ambon in 1857 where Alfred Russel Wallace – the father of biogeography and co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection – looking down at a coral reef though the clear water later expressed his profound impressions of the watery wilderness in his memoir, The Malay Archipelago:

“… the clearness of the water afforded me one of the most astonishing and beautiful sights I have ever beheld. The bottom was absolutely hidden by a continuous series of corals, sponges actiniae, and other marine productions, of magnificent dimensions, varied forms, and brilliant colours. In and among them moved numbers of blue and red and yellow fishes, spotted and banded and striped in the most striking manner, while great orange or rosy transparent medusae floated along near the surface. It was a sight to gaze at for hours, and no description can do justice to its surpassing beauty or interest.”

Juvenile Pharao Flying Fish, Cypselurus naresii.

There he stood, the greatest field biologist of all time unable to effectively explore the myriad life forms inhabiting the shallow sea shimmering only a gaze away. The passage brings to mind just how fortunate we are to be in the first generation in the long history of discovery to freely swim with the fishes. How lucky are we?

© 2011, New World Publications Inc. All rights reserved.
The images and text in Marine Life Blog, unless otherwise noted, are the property of New World Publications, Inc. You may not copy entire posts or any of the images. The YouTube videos have been created to allow embedding. Quotes, using a few lines or a paragraph may be used, as long as credit is given or a link back to this blog is used.

Before flying on to Sorong, in far eastern Indonesia, for a voyage on the famed Dewi Nusantara, Anna and I stop off yet again in Lembeh Strait. We have the pleasure of diving with friends Claire Davies, Shirley Westcott, Wendy McIlroy, and Cary and Jim Yanny, owners of Eco Divers and Lembeh Cottages where we’re all staying.

The first morning, promptly at 8 am, we load in a van and whisk down the mountainside to meet our dive launch at Police Pier for the hop over to the Nautica, moored at her accustomed roost in the middle of the Strait. Even before we have a chance to fill out the Nitrox log, Anna and the ladies are hammering out a new episode for Blenny Week, Anna’s idée fixe for the past several dive excursions.

In fact, her six-part parody of Discovery Channel’s Shark Week, now up on the little screen, includes “Secrets of the Blenny”, shot during the week.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Soon the filmmakers are huddling in the salon in a fit of jabber and giggles as they plan out the script. I only hope viewers get a fraction as much enjoyment watching the clips as Anna and friends had making them. While the ladies busied themselves with their artful endeavors Detmon, veteran dive guide and friend, and I slip away for a bit of critter hunting. And bingo, right out of the gate, we stumble on a Wunderpus Octopus making its rounds. Later in the afternoon, we visit an algae and sponge thicket where I’ve photographed flasher wrasse over the years. Each afternoon from 4 to 4:30 several species of flashers spawn in frenetic orgies that occasionally end with cross-fertilization. In the six months, since our last visit, the showy little two- to three-inch wrasse have hybridized once again, this time a few mature males share the markings of Filamented and Blue Flashers, both regular participants in the afternoon trysts.

Wunderpus, Wunderpus photogenticus, out for a stroll.

Current Lembeh version of Filamented Flasher, Paracheilinus filamentosus.

Blue Flasher, P. cyaneus.

Hybrid between a Fliamented and Blue Flashers.

Just as we are heading back up the slope Detmon points out a brilliant red and yellow Spiny Devilfish waddling across the bottom as if on a mission. Before I can settle in to take a picture Demon grabs my arm and points out a second, third, forth, and then fifth devilfish ganged around a large anemone where the waddler is headed. The gathering of solitary lie-in-wait predators is exciting, but unsettling. Unlike the flashy red fellow tottering toward the mix, the other devilfish display characteristically drab coats and lie partially buried in the sediment with only elevated eyes and bristling backs exposed. Their row of poison-laced spines, rising above the sand like concealed gun turrets, acts as a telling reminder to tread lightly when mucking around the bottom.

It obvious from her swollen belly that the largest of the five devilfish is a gravid female whose pheromones are attracting a stable of suitors. In all likelihood a ritualistic courtship competition will soon begin with one of the males eventually winning the right to spawn with the female around sunset. We would dearly love to stay, but an hour still remains before dark and after three long dives our computers are beginning to sizzle.

Spiny Devilfish, Inimicus didactylus, decked out in a multi-colored coat.

Spiny Devilfish Face

The next morning we spend much of our dive following a ball of juvenile Striped Catfish – armed with poison spines, the thousand feeding mouths roll across the bottom like a thunderstorm. As protection from predation, a pair of juvenile jacks with patterns mimicking the tiny catfish, have taken up residence with the continuously morphing cloud of bodies. On the way back to the boat I run into a Snake Blenny, arguably the strangest blenny in the ocean, hunting in the shallows. Instead of hightailing for its burrow this fine fellow permits a surprisingly close approach before slowly slithering away.

Ball of juvenile Striped Catfish, Plotosus lineatus

Symbiotic juvenile jacks.

Snake Blenny, Xiphasia setifer.

In the afternoon luck continues. Under a log at 60 feet we discover a wildly wriggling wisp that turns out to be a recently settled moray still cloaked in the translucent-green vestiges of its pelagic larval life. In the branches of a soft coral bush Detmon points out a peanut-size egg cowrie with its tentacles, eyes, proboscis and foot fully exposed. Close inspection reveals a fresh clutch of eggs being attended to by the busy snail.

Post larval moray

Wilson’s Egg Cowrie, Prionovolva wilsoniana, with eggs.

Even though we’ve made at least a thousand dives in Lembeh the ever-generous bottom continues to bestow extraordinary gifts. Back aboard the Nautica for lunch Ednan, another eagle-eyed guide, reports finding a Rumengani’s Pipehorse living on a wall at 80 feet. The news sets me on high alert. This just happens to be the one in the same exotic little fish that has topped my most-wanted list of must-see animals for the past four years, the time elapsed since the animal was first found in Lembeh by Manado-based dive guide Noldy Rumengan and photographer William Tan of Singapore. (I tell Noldy and William’s story of discovering the new pipehorse that today bears Noldy’s name in the January 2012 Alert Diver magazine.) Even after sorting through the logistical improbability of relocating the pin-sized whiff on a heavily encrusted submarine wall the size of a football field, I’m optimistic, and with good reason, I have a ringer in my corner – Detmon. Over the years I’ve acquired a mythical regard for the hunting prowess of well-seasoned Indonesian dive guides, and Detmon ranks among the best.

With what seems to be an all too brief set of directions from Ednan, we’re off.Easing down the drop off to 80 feet Detmon glances right then left, then takes a fin stroke or two north and begins hunting.I hover above at 60 feet to save air. Twenty minutes later he motions me down, and points into a jungle of algae, soft coral and sponge. I see nothing. He points again; I stare again. This time a sand-colored thread of life, with a long prehensile tail lassoed fast around a stem, takes shape just off the tip of Detmon’s finger.

Rumengan’s Pipehorse, Kyonemichthys rumengani.

When you’re on a roll, you’re on a roll. On our last day in the Strait, we find another pair of Rumengani Pipehorses, this time in the chalky shallows near a construction site south of town. The little fish have altered their appearance to match the silt-covered alcove where they dangle from a snarl of dead stems. Watching the fish blend so adeptly with their surroundings, it’s understandable why it has taken so long to discover the remarkable animals. This thought brings to mind the probability of all the other splendid life forms remaining to be uncovered by inquisitive eyes.

Mated pair of Rumengan’s Piphorses.

If you want to experience the thrill of critter hunting in Lembeh Strait, join us June 2012 for Lembeh Cottage’s Second Annual Fish and Critter Hunt.

Book today to secure your place!

© 2011, New World Publications Inc. All rights reserved.
The images and text in Marine Life Blog, unless otherwise noted, are the property of New World Publications, Inc. You may not copy entire posts or any of the images. The YouTube videos have been created to allow embedding. Quotes, using a few lines or a paragraph may be used, as long as credit is given or a link back to this blog is used.