I've seen Sasquatch! 6 Bumphead Parrotfish! I wasn't expecting these fish to be quite so huge but they were probably three feet in length AND two feet in height (this is with the magnification that occurs underwater, mind you) with flat vertical foreheads that they bash the coral to bits with. Sizable teeth plates, too. The current was absolutely ripping so I had to grab a hunk of something dead to get a close look. Someone made a great spot of an octopus in a coral head but again, because the current was screaming, I had to crawl along the sea floor to get a topside view of it. Other notables...a giant resting turtle with 2 remora on its shell, a photo-worthy close up of a banded shrimp and my first cuttlefish.
1. Shark Reef, Gili Trawangan, Indonesia
75 feet for 43 minutes
A frogfish! Rare and very hard to locate. This guy was a little smaller than my fist, a pale putty color, and completely inverted. Another giant clam but this time Herman the divemaster took my hand to gently touch the mantle. I did and as you would expect the clam would close up quickly at the touch. Felt like the inside of a mouth. Go figure.
2 more cuttlefish, another Scorpion Fish, a sizable moray, and a goby and shrimp duo. The little sand goby is a lousy hole digger and the shrimp, well, he doesn't see as well as the goby. So they have this arrangement where the shrimp digs and tends the hole and the goby serves as the shrimp's first alert system when predators approach. If you spot the goby first and then his hole, you wait just a little bit to see the shrimp emerge with a shovel or two of sand.
2. Hann's Reef, Gili Air, Indonesia
73 feet for 59 minutes
Herman was my buddy this week while J took his certification course. He's a Lombok native who has been diving Trawangan for 15 years. In spite of being a smoking fiend, he's fantastic on air, and has the gift of finding the good stuff. He also liked to make me laugh and flood my mask and would joke and try to make me think that I had been bitten by a snake eel.
1. Shark Reef, Gili Trawangan, Indonesia
75 feet for 43 minutes
A frogfish! Rare and very hard to locate. This guy was a little smaller than my fist, a pale putty color, and completely inverted. Another giant clam but this time Herman the divemaster took my hand to gently touch the mantle. I did and as you would expect the clam would close up quickly at the touch. Felt like the inside of a mouth. Go figure.
2 more cuttlefish, another Scorpion Fish, a sizable moray, and a goby and shrimp duo. The little sand goby is a lousy hole digger and the shrimp, well, he doesn't see as well as the goby. So they have this arrangement where the shrimp digs and tends the hole and the goby serves as the shrimp's first alert system when predators approach. If you spot the goby first and then his hole, you wait just a little bit to see the shrimp emerge with a shovel or two of sand.2. Hann's Reef, Gili Air, Indonesia73 feet for 59 minutes
Herman was my buddy this week while J took his certification course. He's a Lombok native who has been diving Trawangan for 15 years. In spite of being a smoking fiend, he's fantastic on air, and has the gift of finding the good stuff. He also liked to make me laugh and flood my mask and would joke and try to make me think that I had been bitten by a snake eel.
1 comment:
Three fee long? I never saw anything that big snorkling. I suppose diving is where the action is.
Post a Comment