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.
So almost everything that we see will go and hide if we pay it more attention than it’s comfortable with.
We get fleeting glances of things, before they duck for cover. Kike this Reef Spider Crab… who is a pretty formidable character himself.
Sometimes we can get a pixture of part of it… in its hiding place.
Then we hunt through our reference books and the Internet to confirm what we saw.
When Lydia first saw this guy he was partially exposed with both of his big claws out and ready for business was.
But by the time I got there with my camera he had retreated to hide… and this is all I saw.
When threatened they will take in water and expand, which will cause all those spines that you see to stand straight up… making for a hard to swallow meal.
They are nocturnal hunters the big eyes and the green sparkles in their eyes help them see in the dark.
You are right… it is the same guy but this is a today pixture and it’s a special one.
Today was Lydia’s 555th dive and it was the day that she crossed the #1 thing off her scuba bucket list.
Lydia can find the tiniest of things on every dive… and more than once she has led me back to that same tiny thing the next time we dove that same site.
But until today the thing that she has never found on her own was a seahorse.
Today she did…. same seahorse, same general area but not in the exact same spot!
That encounter happened the same day we found the Octopus… so it didn’t make it as the story that day.
He is a member of goby family and there are a lot of them. I am going to guess he’s a Watchman Goby… but I might be wrong about that.
I thought this was a cool pixture because this guy has to be the literal embodiment of that old saying… “eyes bigger than your stomach”.
A couple of pretty experienced divers that we have been seeing them around the dive shop for the last week or so.
Today we learned that they knew where the resident seahorse hung out.
So, when they offered to show us, my seahorse lover jumped in with a quick “yes please”.
And… they did !!!
But then on the next dive we came across this Brown-spotted Moray being attended to at a cleaning station.
One of the rules of a cleaning station is that the “cleanee” holds still.
So, if I don’t make too big a nuisance of myself there are some good pixtures to be had.
If you look very closely at the edge of the eel’s mouth, right below his eye you will just be able to make out the cleaner shrimp doing his work.
On a different day… when I have a good close up of a Pedersen Cleaner Shrimp I will tell you all about what they do.
He is a Juvenile Smooth Trunkfish.
At this stage of his like he is almost perfectly round and looks like a marble with eyeballs and fins.
But he’s not even as big as a marble… probably closer to the nail on your little finger.
In addition to being small, he is also very quick and very active… making him tough to get a really sharp pixture of.
But that’s a story for another day… because it’s an even better day when you see an Octopus.
At the very end of our 2nd dive. We were almost at the ladder in just 6ft of water.
And there he was hanging out under the very same anchor that I featured in my first story from this trip.
Octopus are a nocturnal hunter… so it’s a rare treat to see one during the day. And, an even rarer treat for him to be out of his den.
But sometimes the challenge is of a different nature.
This guy is a Roughhead Blenny… and he is wee. Maybe about 1/3 the diameter of the eraser on the end of a pencil.
We find them in perfectly round holes that have been bored into concrete blocks (for boat moorings) or coral heads in shallow water.
They stay pretty close to home (in fact I have never seen one out of his hole) so once you find one you can count on them being there every time you go back to that spot.
The challenge with this guy is getting a good pixture. I will need a “tack sharp” image because he is so small that no matter how close I get… I am going need to blow it up a lot so you can see it.
But all that grey to start a day always makes you wonder how it might go.
Well excellent really when you see a turtle on both your dives that day.
The first of the two was the more exciting encounter. We saw him on his way to the surface near the end of our dive but he was too far away for pixtures.
But then as we did our safety stop, he came back down to settle on the bottom not too far from us. Alas, his plan was to tuck himself under some soft coral… so still no joy in the pixture department.
Near the end of our 2nd dive we swam up on this dude… a Green Sea Turtle, sitting on the bottom, out in the open and happy to pose.
That has not been the case on this trip… at least not so far.
But on our first dive this morning we did see two… one after the other.
The first and more exciting of the two was a very big Green Moray. But he was shy… and wedged himself so far under a coral ledge that a good pixture was not possible.
The second was a one of the smaller species… a Goldentail Eel.
He was a much more willing model, who posed well in front of a beautiful backdrop. So… here you go!
It is thought to be a defense against predators as they can blend in with their surroundings when they choose.
This guy however was all bright orange and contrasted with the bottom as he moved along it feeding.
That is until he was tired of me following him… then in a blink the color was gone, the pattern was gone and he folded all his fins in the be an entirely different shape as he zoomed away.
But when I caught up to him again, a few minutes later… the color and pattern were back and he had resumed his search for food along the bottom.
Scientists believe that these fish have light sensors, hidden beneath color changing cells in the skin, that work like Polaroid cameras. Essentially, the hogfish can take pictures of itself without using its eyes or even its brain, to monitor its color changing performance.
