They are sort of scowly… and they definitely lurk or even follow divers as they move about the reef.
And then, there’s that whole opening and closing of the mouth thing.
But all that I read says… that they are motivated by curiosity and the mouth things is to assist their respiration.
There are no reports of unprovoked attacks on divers and the only substantiated incidents involved spearfishing.
I swear, I was not doing anything to warrant this kind of look.
In fact, I believe this was one of the times that I waited patiently… while he went to the surface for a breath of air and then returned to the spot I was at.
Maybe it was his favorite spot… and I am getting the turtle equivalent of “get off my lawn”.
This guy is a Spotted Trunkfish.
They are not fast swimmers but they are very “helicopter like” in their swimming… hovering and moving up, down and sideways with ease.
They will retreat into recesses in the reef’ like you see here, if they are feeling at all uncomfortable with who is nearby.
He will grow up to be even prettier than this… and much prettier than his cousin the French Angelfish.
But at this stage of life they are virtually twins. The only difference being in that yellow band that runs down the center of his face. You will see that this band stops when it gets to the yellow band that encircles his mouth.
On his cousin (the Grey Anglelfish) that band would cross over the circle and touch his lips.
I recently heard that the energy needed to change colors is considerable… which motivated me to learn more about what and how they are doing with these color changes.
So here’s what I learned…
Octopuses change color for camouflage, to communicate with other octopuses, and to match their mood.
The color changes can occur in a fraction of a second… sometimes under 100 milliseconds.
They can change color by stretching or squeezing millions of elastic cells called chromatophores under their skin.
Each chromatophore contains a sac filled with pigment that can be red, orange, brown, yellow, or black. When the muscles around the chromatophore tighten, the sac opens, revealing more pigment. When the muscles relax, the sac contracts, making the octopus appear white.
His most distinctive feature are his eyes… made up of a bright red iris with a green pupil.
They are generally wary of divers… keeping their distance by moving away as you approach.
If they decide you are a big threat… they will dive under the sand and stay hidden until you move away.
I thought you might enjoy seeing that for yourself.
These two pixtures are the same fish, a Honeycomb Cowfish… taken just seconds apart as he swam across the reef.
But that’s a pretty good pixture too.
They are about the size of a dinner plate, plentiful along the reef, often swimming in pairs.
Their distinctive coloring and willingness to be in close proximity to divers… make them great subjects for the close up portraits pixtures that I like to take.
My first pixture is a Conch shell as I first saw it when I swam up to it. Pretty cool… especially if you look closely at the very bottom of the shell and notice the eyeball watching me.
If you look closely, inside his mouth… you will see the shrimp that is at work removing bacteria and parasites.
I am always fascinated that what can be a meal is sometimes not… because of the work they are doing.
And even more fascinated by… How does that get communicated?
Their normal coloring is that of the one in the background… mostly white, yellow and silver.
It is my understanding that it is the males that turn the darker blue color… and they do that when they are guarding their eggs.
If you look closely at the upper right part of this frame… you will notice what looks like a purple stain on the coral head. Those are the eggs.
Sergeant Majors are always an aggressive and a territorial little fish (4-6in long).
But when they are guarding eggs that aggression ramps up a lot… and they don’t want anything, even something as big as a diver, anywhere close to their egg patch.
Three reasons…
They are Lydia’s favorite sea creature.
They are kind of exotic.
They are so challenging to spot.
They really don't move around a lot… at least not on a daily basis.
But even when you know where they are going to be… they do a splendid job of blending in.
They have a golden brown triangular body, a long pointed snout, long slender spider like legs.
And because she can be fancy like that… mother nature often gives them violet tips on their claws.
We see them a lot and find them to be unafraid of divers… retreating only if molested.
On the very first day of that trip I flooded the battery compartment of my strobe… and by the time I realized what was happening the strobe was beyond any hope of repair.
The prospect of many days of diving with no pixtures looked pretty bleak. But luckily I found a dive shop (Dive Friends) that was well stocked with photo gear and I was able to buy a replacement strobe.
Then the universe balanced the scales.
On the 1st dive of Day 2 we were approached by an Eagle Ray… not once but twice.
He was a small one but he came in closer than I have ever been to one before… allowing me to get 4 nice pixtures.
I previously posted one of those in BoM #452 and here’s another.
I had no idea that their face was shaped like that.
PS… the new strobe works great!
They come in various shades of brown, green, tan or white.
Although they look like a rock they are really a colony of living organisms.
Found in most reef environments especially on the seaward slopes, between 15 and 75 feet.
The valleys between the ridges are lined with polyps that will extend at night to feed.
They are 1 1/2 to 2 in long. Their walking legs and parts of their body are translucent. The third pair of their legs are enlarged and equipped with large claws. These claws are prone to breaking off but can be regenerated.
They are cleaner shrimp and can be found perched near openings on the coral or sponges. They wave their long white antennae to attract the fish they clean by removing bacteria and dead skin etc.
Oh look… there’s a customer now.
If a diver slowly extends a bare hand toward the shrimp… they will sometimes climb on and attempt to clean those fingers.
They are very common but their coloring and tiger-like bars is something that always catches my eye.
I find them to be a surprisingly difficult subject to photograph… something about that transparent tail makes for a lot of pixtures that are not quite in focus.
But this guy, a Sharptail Eel does a pretty good impression of one.
They are generally a grayish color w/ white body spots that often have a yellowish center.
We see them when they are foraging in the open. Moving snake-like along the bottom in search of food.
They move fairly quickly with a lot of poking their heads into things. So I am always thrilled when I can get a shot that includes their head.
Most of the ones that we saw on this year’s trip to Bonaire were mature enough that they no longer had that feather like look.
That is until we saw this guy. He was even good enough to twirl a bit… to really show off his featherness.
But that seems to be exactly what this Porcupinefish is doing.
Kind of sassy… don't you think?
Those pretty white tufts all along his body are actually bristles that they will display when disturbed.
Those bristles can easily penetrate and break off in skin, causing a painful burning sensation and an irritating wound.
Until this trip I had never seen these guys moving. But this trip we often saw them moving about the reef as they foraged.
It also seemed that thw ones we saw on this trip were going out of their way to strike artful poses.
This is just one small coral head of the hundreds that we would have seen on this dive.
And, it’s teeming w/ life… gobies and blennies and chromis, oh my!
As you can probably guess from what you see here, they are very adept at camouflage… using their ability to change color to blend in with their surroundings.
They like to lie motionless on the bottom… looking more like algae covered rocks than fish. So very often, we only see them because they chose to move while in our line of sight.
I was taking pixtures this guy when he did this open his mouth real wide thing.
I’m not sure if it meant something or was just a yawn… but it did make him look kind of fierce.
They come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors… especially when you factor in the changes that they go through as they mature through the juvenile, adult and supermale phases of their lives.
They use their beaks to scrape algae and polyps (their food) from coral and rocks. In the process, large amounts of coral are taken, ground in their gullets and excreted back to the environment as sand.
Some species of parrotfish have the ability to secrete mucus bubbles that envelop their bodies and protect them while they sleep. I believe that is what we are seeing here… as his coloring is significantly more muted than normal.
At the end of each dive we like to do a 5 min Safety Stop in 15-20 ft of water.
This, by definition, is a whole lot to hanging around with nothing else to do but observe the movements of the small stuff around you.
This was the case when I found the first of these two guys… the lighter colored one.
In my efforts to get a clear pixture of him… I annoyed him enough that he moved from his soft coral to the one next door.
That’s when we both came upon the guy who lived next door… the darker of the two.
Honestly, I think the neighbor was pretty annoyed that we had dropped in.
The good news is I still have lots of photos from the trip and the stories to go with them.
So, the posts are not going to stop… just slow down a little. Probably just once a week and probably on Sundays.
I actually write these as a Blog and then repost them to social media. So if you ever want to see one again or see all that came before you started tuning in… you can find that Blog at… http://mtjboydscuba.blogspot.com
And yes that is a turtle butt… because why not.
They like to sit partially out of their hole and watch the world go by. Occasionally they will hover above that hole as if they were dancing. And will of course lower themselves all the way into that hole when they feel threatened.
The really interesting thing about these guys is that they are mouth brooders. The males will hold the eggs in their mouth until they hatch.
I’ve seen pictures of that but have not been lucky enough to get that shot yet myself.
They are a tubular shape typically 24-36 inches long.
They like to align themselves head down amongst the soft corals and use their color changing abilities to bland in as they look for prey.
They are prey too… for larger fish like groupers and eels. So, the camouflaging comes in handy for protection too.
Generally they are on a mission to get from one coral outcrop to the next.
And they are hunting… which involves sticking their head into openings and under ledges.
My belief is that if you don’t get the eye(s) then you don’t have a pixture worth keeping… which is tough when he keeps sticking his head into things.
This morning we saw a Brown Spotted Moray doing all the above… but I was able to think far enough ahead of him to get this shot.
They particularly like to hover in the water column and are generally pretty shy and most likely to move away if approached.
They are pretty darn cute with that winning smile and the heart shaped eyes.
They are another of the species that will take in water to inflate themselves if they feel threatened. Getting to be twice the size reduces the number of potential predators as it requires a bigger mouth to eat them. They are also covered with spines that will stand erect when they are inflated making for a prickly meal. Some species are also poisonous, having neurotoxins in their internal organs.
When all that is added together they have a short list of predators… sharks, orcas, tuna, dolphins. And… humans as they are thought to be a delicacy in some countries.
We have been putting that theory to the test on this trip.
We have been getting our airfills at the Carib Inn dive shop. The Carib Inn is right on the water with a very nice pier and easy access to Calabas Reef right in front of the resort.
So far on this trip we have made 22 dives on Calabas with plans to make our last two dives of the trip there too.
Everything really cool that we have seen on this trip… turtles, octopus, seahorse, tarpon, eels, maybe even a dolphin and more has been right here on Calabas as well as the other places we saw them.
The one exception to that has been the Eagle Ray that we saw on our first full day of diving. But hey, we have two more dives to do here… so who knows.
One thing that we have seen in Bonaire before but had not seen until today were Reef Squid. In fact Lydia mentioned that this morning… and guess who turned up today, while we’re diving on Calabas.
Many of you know that I consider Lydia to be a witch (a good witch) with the power to make things she thinks of come to be… I believe she was at it again today.
At the end of today’s dive we were once again coming in over long sandy flats that had been all stirred up by the wave action. The visibility was pretty poor and we were near the end of the dive… so our expectations were pretty low.
Lydia noticed that she was coming right over the top of a Bar Jack that just didn’t seem to want to move. So, she reached out a hand to shoo him away.
That’s when the Octopus who had colored himself to exactly blend with the sandy bottom jumped up and made a run for it.
He only had to go a few feet until he found some coral to duck under. That’s where I was able to get this pixture.
We often went to the local playgrounds when she stayed over at our house.
Pretty much every pixture that we have of her, from those outings… she is hanging upside down from some part of the equipment.
Seems to me that this Chain Eel must be a gymnast too… as he is totally upside down as he watches me from his hole.
This is a pixture from this trip… but I want to tell you a story from the past.
Today is Lydia’s birthday and the story is about her… and her extraordinary abilities as a spotter.
A number of years ago we were here in Bonaire when Lydia found one of these little guys in amongst a big soft coral.
I think it might have been the first time we ever saw one of these… because when she called me over to take a pixture, I could not for the life of me see what she was pointing at.
After our dive we looked him up in our “fish books”. When I realized how cool he was I must have said something like “I would love to get a pixture of that”.
So the next day… she took us back to the same dive site, swam us out for 15min or so to the very same soft coral, found the same fish in amongst the branches of that coral and helped me to get the pixture I wanted.
That has to be the scuba equivalent of finding the same needle in a haystack… twice! And she made it look easy.
As we swim from their dock to the reef we pass a massive concrete block that is the base of one of their boat moorings. Next to that block there is a coral head that stands alone on the sand. These two characters are to be found at the base of that coral head every time we pass it.
The guy on the right is a baby Lionfish… although he is much bigger now than .when we first started seeing him. Lionfish are natural to the Pacific but are an invasive species in the Caribbean. They are thought to be ruthless killers of other fish… with no natural predators.
The guy on the left is a small French Grunt. He has been there every time we have seen the Lionfish… almost like he watching over him. In fact, as I have tried to get pictures of the Lionfish he has put himself between it and my camera, more than once.
So what’s the end game here… friends for life or does the Lionfish grow to be an adult and make a meal of the Grunt.
They are very plentiful and very territorial… so they’re not hard to find and they don’t travel very far at all.
But they are small (about 1 1/2”), they are very active and they move in darts… which is a perfect recipe for hard to photograph.
We have been here 26 days now. Lydia asked me to get a picture of one right after we got here. So, I have spent more than 50 dives and shot hundreds of attempts.
Today was my first success!
When you are underwater it’s the dark patches that are interesting because that’s where all the life is.
Some of the dives here in Bonaire have long swims out over that sandy bottom to get to the reef.
In all honesty that part can be pretty boring… until you come on something like these guys.
They are Garden Eels they live in colonies of holes in that sandy bottom. They are about the same size and shape as earth worms. But more entertaining as they like to rise up out of their holes like you see here and sway with the currents.
Now think about there being dozens of them (maybe even hundreds) spread out in every direction. That can be pretty entertaining on a boring swim.
But that’s not it… it’s breath holding.
This guy has the ability to stay underwater for as much as 5 hours!
He does this by slowing his heart rate… which he can lower to the point where there are 9 minutes between each heartbeat!
Just has we tipped over the crest of the reef and started down the slope… these two (an Octopus and a Bar Jack) came swimming right at us.
It’s pretty rare to see an Octopus out and swimming free… and if you do it’s usually pretty fleeting.
But we followed this pair for what had to be close to 10 minutes… long enough for me to take 17 pixtures.
It seemed like the Octopus was “commuting” somewhere…. as he would swim for a few feet and then settle to the bottom for a rest and then go again.
This very often leads to some research as we try to name something that we haven’t seen before… or haven’t seen in a long time.
Every once in while we get stumped and this is one of those times.
I can tell you that they are antenna, they are 2-3 inches long and they will retract if you come real close to them.
Our dive this morning had a long swim, over a plain sandy bottom before we got to the reef. Across that sand there were dozens and dozens (maybe even hundreds) of these sticking up out of small holes in the sand.
They certainly knew we were there and if you tried to touch them… just the instant before contact they would draw back into their hole and would extend again once we moved on.
Maybe someone like our friend Steve Gadd who trained in marine sciences will be able to help us out.
Update
Turns out these antenna are attached to a worm… Mesochaetopterus stinapa. I’m going to call it the Meso Worm for short. A white worm with a very mean looking mouth.
Now that we know that… Lydia remembers seeing one of these guys pop out of his hole and grab a bit of something away from a nearby fish.
Lest you should doubt it… there is her crown right there on her forehead.
Nope I didn’t make that up… it’s right here in my Reef Fish guide.
They were facing each other like this in the water for several seconds… which is kind of a long time in the fish world.
I’m not really sure what’s going on… could have been fighting, could have been kissing.
They did a couple of circles around each other returning to this position.
But then they just swam off… so I guess we’ll never know what it was about.
It was a Conch shell, not a very big one but in good shape… so, rolled it over and Mr Conch was home and visible.
At the right end of the shell you can see one of his eyeballs on the end of a stalk. His snout is the yellow and black piece. The other eyeball stalk is just above that. The white stuff is just sand. And, the big claw looking thing is actually the foot that he uses to propel himself along the bottom.
After a few pixtures I turned him back over and we both went along our way.
But all that we have seen until today have been adults.
While the adults are an interesting fish to look at… it’s the babies that have the cuteness value that is right off the charts.
They can only be described as a “ swimming feather with eyeballs and fins”.
This guy is a juvenile and falls somewhere between the two.
Anemones very often have a symbiotic relationship with shrimp. So, in addition to the beauty of the Anemone itself… that closer look is often rewarded with some additional action.
When I first spotted this one… I wondered why there were grains of sand on it.
But that closer look revealed that the grains of sand were moving… and that they were in fact very tiny Spotted Cleaner Shrimp.
