Marine Life Encounters Blog

A cuttlefish hatching and finding muck diving gold.

April 9 - This morning’s dive is a bummer compared to yesterday’s stunner. The info we have on this area details a very different scene than what is discovered. The dive team’s pre-breakfast reconnoiter finds the area devastated by blast fishing. What had been a thriving reef just a few years earlier now lies in a tumbled heap of white coral bone. Except for surviving patches of coral here and there and some new sponge growth, the area is a wasteland. Conservation groups such as the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International are working hard to educate the local fishermen about the destructive nature of using explosives for fishing. After witnessing the damage all around us, the economics of the devastation makes matters even more disturbing. Less than four US dollars will buy a bottle of nitrate and a fuse that, on average, will produce $20 of market fish. Wendy’s briefing put the dive in the “You win some, you lose some” category. Having no time to search out an alternate area due to a pressing schedule induces us to dive here anyway. Ned and Liberty make lemonade out of lemons by turning over a gazillion rocks in their untiring quest to discover new flatworms, slugs and other sorts of creepy crawlies. Our group still makes some nice sightings of cuttlefish, a blue ribbon eel, a juvenile pinnate batfish and a half dozen species of shrimp gobies. I was able to add a Pastel Ring Wrasse to my life list.

At 10:45, we cross the equator. Jim Pearson, Bruce and I spend an inordinate amount of time on the bow setting up the shot of our handheld GPS as it hits 00.00.000, only to have it jump from 001 seconds S to 001 seconds N.

Guido sounds the siren as those of us now in the northern hemisphere wave to the crew at the stern, still in the southern hemisphere.

Our afternoon dives are off the island of Kayoa. Drifting along the slope, I look up to see old friends and long-time traveling companions Lynne and Roger Van Dok motioning me over, always a good sign. (Lynne discovered the unique pink color form of the pygmy pipefish last December in Tawali.) They are under a large ledge with a group of pie-sized batfish that appear to delight in our company. Park Chapman and Geri join us as the friendly fish swoop in and encircle us for the remainder of the dive. Back on the tender and still giddy from the enchanting experience, we laughingly dub the bunch, Lynne’s Trained Batfish.

On the late afternoon dive, some of our group saw sea cucumbers spawning. Ned had the experience of a lifetime on the dive, so I will pass this off to him to tell his story. ~ Anna

We don’t get farther than 20 feet from where we tumbled out of the dingy, and with good reason. On lifting up the edge of a rock slab, I discover a clutch of about 20 Broadclub Cuttlefish egg cases. Each, about the size of a thimble, dangles from a separate holdfast. I motion for Liberty to find Anna. This is a whopping good piece of luck: Broadclubs typically lay their eggs deep within tangles of coral branches where they are difficult to observe. Adjacent cases lie empty and tattered indicating that some of the eggs have recently hatched. While the three of us stare, a baby cuttlefish pops through its casing and swims away. The hatching sends us into overdrive; six eyes dance from egg to egg attempting to locate the next one to go. Liberty points to an egg near Anna and begins to slowly fan the casing. As if by magic, the white embryo slowly takes on pigment and begins to hop about. Then, quick as a snap it breaks through the casing and is gone. After a few more individuals hatch we pick up a routine. Liberty indicates which egg he thinks will be next, and Anna and I focus our lenses. With her video camera running at 30 frames per second Anna has little trouble capturing the tiny cephalopods making their break, but I am stymied, the breakthrough is too fast for my trigger finger. That is until I note that a second before it pops forth, a maturing embryo will turn on its back and take what appears to be two deep breaths. In just over an hour most of the eggs hatch. I’ve had my chances, now it is in the hands of the Photoshop gods to find out if I get the shot. ~Ned

Back on the boat, while Ned disappears to download his hatching cuttlefish images, the rest of us convene on the sun deck to take in the marvelous sunset. Paul comes up with the winning photo of distant Makian Island, our destination for tomorrow’s dives. Then it’s back to cocktails.

April 10 – The volcanic island of Makian is our stop for the day. Other than Lembeh and a few black sand sites in the Komodo area I don’t remember seeing another muck bottom that appeared so promising. Now any shallow semi-barren silty sea floor can be considered muck, but black pumice sands, fresh water seepage and the mouths of dry river beds seem to the magic ingredients that, for whatever reason, attract an inordinate amount of exotic marine life. At Makian all the elements are in place, and every critter hunter aboard senses the possibilities, and is chomping at the bit to get below. The morning dive on a sand ridge dotted with sponge and crinoid islets, sea fans and black coral bushes, fulfills our expectations. A single black coral bush standing alone at 70 feet is loaded with eye-popping animals including a pair of ornate ghost pipefishes, four Tozeuma shrimp on steroids,

a spindle cowry and a Longsnout Hawkfish that was just dying to have its portrait taken. Jazzed, most of the group votes for a return to the ridge, but Wendy and I are pushing for the nearby fishing jetty. “I have always had luck under jetties!” I plea. “OK, the jetty it is!” pronounces Wendy, “Load up Boat One.” Paul teases me about passing up a known quantity, “And not just any old known quantity mind you,” he rags, “and all for a pie-in-the-sky dock dive.” Oh my, the pressure is on…

I don’t have to worry long - Guido just misses landing on a pair of Robust Ghost Pipefishes

and while waiting for his turn at photographing the beauties James spots a teeny Shortpouch Pygmy Pipehorse

 clinging to an algal stem. Sixty seconds into the dive and we’ve hit pay dirt, the pressure is off, and best yet, we have 69 minutes of the dive left to go! Acho, Wendy and Yann point out animals rapid fire. I’m delighted with a spaghetti-sized snake eel, which gums me when I extend my finger into the video scene to give some perspective to its tiny size.

The fishwatchers in the crowd add bright yellow Short Tail Pipefishes, both the Reptilian and Crocodile Snake Eels and a Thorny Seahorse to their species list.

Everyone is so stoked about the muck that even the cocktail crowd forgoes sunset martinis for a night dive. The vote is unanimous to return to the dock. The two snake eels turn into a dozen and we locate four seahorses instead of just one. Everyone is pointing out something to someone at the same time. Among the goodies are Bobbitt Worms,

 a juvenile batfish, decorator crabs and night-prowling nudibranchs galore.

After climbing back aboard, laughing, high-fiving and still dizzy with discovery, the tender drivers inform us that the town folks who have come down to the dock for an evening’s entertainment believe we are treasure hunting and that my video rig is an underwater drill. I just wish that I had time to share some of my images of the real bounty we’ve encountered in their front yard.

 

April 11 – Ternate, at long last! Anyone who has attended one of Ned’s talks about Indonesia has heard the tale of Alfred Russell Wallace, an uneducated English collector of specimens, who is today considered to be the most renown field biologist of all times and the father of biogeography. In 1858, after weathering a bout of malaria while on Ternate, he wrote “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type.” Wallace’s story and the chain of events set into place by his paper is chronicled in an article Ned wrote years ago for Ocean Realm magazine, entitled “Ghosts of Indonesia”  A visit to Ternate has been high on our list ever since we started traveling to Indonesia ten years ago. We all rush up to the bow to get a photo of Ned, proudly posing with Wallace’s book, The Malay Archipelago, as Ternate’s volcano, Mt. Gamalama, steams in the background.

Our first dive of the day is a wash for those of us who stay near the drop point. We spend a long hour looking for pretty much anything we can find on a swell-scrubbed bottom of black volcanic sand and boulders. The only thing that comes out of it is a hot new shrimp Liberty finds on an isolated sea pen way off in no-man’s land. Those who drifted along the coast ran into a nice coral area with a lot more fish life. 

“Muck, we want muck!” is all the crew has been hearing ever since our classic dives at Makian. To comply, they take us to a spot that reminds us of Tulamben, in Bali, and that is good, really good. Wendy and Yann return from scouting with a shot of adrenaline that snaps everyone awake – they left Acho babysitting a prowling Wunderpus.

 This particular animal has been much on our minds. A recent issue of Scuba Diver Australasia features our article covering the current plight of marine taxonomy and the naming of the octopus, Wunderpus photogenicus. But, more significant, Wunderpus sightings always herald great critter hunting. Ned finds the world’s most beautiful sea star. It doesn’t even look real.

We hit the critter-rich jackpot on a coral slope that transitions into a rubble field, before giving way to a black sand plain dotted with small sponges and coral heads.  A mimic octopus, a second Wonderpus, the best nudibranch hunting of the trip and an unknown species of long-armed octopus highlight the afternoon. The night dive, at the same location, starts off with promise. We come across a pair of courting Leaf scorpionfish, halfway into the dive, just before the modest current builds into a bottom-hugging fight to hold our ground. This is manageable for those of us who were still poking around the reef when the blast hits, but for those farther out on the sand plain, it’s Mister Toad’s Wild Ride and an early finish to the last night dive of the trip.

April 12 – Tifore, a volcanic island halfway between Ternate and Lembeh is our final stop. The dive team returns from their scouting run to report that there is a lot of bomb damage but extremely clear water and abundant fish life. It wasn’t a site for critter hunters but the Eduardo, Park, and Ned had a fine time watching the hyperactive courting antics of a large aggregation of spawning wrasses.

Joyce and I took advantage of the last chance to beach comb and I Hit the jackpot finding a handmade toy top and a pod full of sea beans – an unusual find, since pods usually rapidly deteriorate at sea.

Our final fish species count, accumulated almost single-handedly by Janet, is over 680. Once she returns home, she will finish cross-checking her photos and confirming some difficult id’s with scientists before releasing the official fish list for the trip. I’ll post it here when we receive it from Janet, so “stay-tuned.”

Packing for the journey home is always the worst part of the trip. Geri, ever-dedicated to her photography, continues to snap away while the rest of us struggle with bootie-drying and lost lens caps. Heather suggests that we pay homage to Geri and her trademark pigtails with a diversion from the usual group photo, so those with hair, which is a mixed bag to say the least, do their best Geri impersonations. A fun way to end a fun trip ~ Anna DeLoach

 

A rare pipehorse trumped by a christmas tree worm spawning

April 6 – An overnight steam takes us to Pisang Island, a lone sentinel southeast of Halmahera. The impressive stands of giant hardwoods sheltering calling birds and edged by a white sand beach bode well for a shore excursion. The water here is as clear as any I’ve seen in years. Aggregations of orange and purple anthias fill the sea along the drop-off as far as the eye can see

Eduardo Martinez and I drift along the edge and follow a huge school of grazing bumphead parrotfish, while Ned and Liberty spend the first dive turning rocks in a rubbly, bombed-out section of the reef flat. For their troubles, they discover a tiny frogfish, an abalone, a couple of flatworms and a crab or two. Dave Inman declared the afternoon dive one of the most beautiful he’d ever experienced.

Guido, Joyce, Heather and I skip the afternoon dive to beach comb and conduct an informal flip-flop survey. For five years now, we’ve noticed that a beach’s collection of flotsam flip-flops tends to be either left-footed or all right-footed. Over the years this phenomena has led to much speculation, even to an imaginary spoof documentary entitled “Island of Left-footed People.” I stumbled upon a tidy little explanation last year while reading Skye Moody’s “Washed Up: The Curious Journeys of Flotsam and Jetsam.”  In 1990, five containers fell off a ship, releasing about 80,000 Nike athletic shoes into the North Pacific. Beachcombers and oceanographers collecting the shoes found that depending upon the location along the Pacific Northwest coast, shoes were predominately left-footed or right-footed. As the story goes, the slight curvature of the left and right-footed toes of the shoes caused them to tack in different directions with the prevailing currents and wind. Our flip-flop survey on Pisang showed a statistically significant count of 11 left-footed shoes to 22 rights.

The beach prize of the day is a germinated sea bean. I’ve collected hundreds of different tropical drift seeds but this is the first time I’ve ever found a seed that had actually completed its journey and carried out its purpose. After photos, we carefully replant the seedling. Check out www.seabean.com for more info about sea bean drifters.

Sea Bean Doing Its Thing

 

The clear waters of Pisang Island also provide plenty of action after dark. Acho shows us decorator crabs and nudis as fast as we can take them in. Twenty minutes before the end of the dive, a plankton cloud moves in bringing a swirl of bugs and worms that halo my video lights. But with the unnerving chaos comes a scattering of settling fishes, including surgeons, jacks and lionfish, tinier than my pinky nail. Their transparent and silver bodies – vestiges of a recent pelagic past – brand them as newbie’s. Within moments of settling, the vulnerable fry disappear under rocks or beneath the sand. In a few days they will reappear as full-fledged juveniles.

 Just before we surface after our prescribed 70-minute dive, the saron and hingebeak shrimp begin pouring out of the crevices. But, rules are rules, and we mustn’t keep the softie, non-night diving cocktail circuit back aboard waiting too long for dinner.

Actually, cocktail hour proves to be a useful time to share photos and knowledge and we return to find the Gordon’s school of underwater photography in session, conducted by David Kay with student Mary Ulrickson honing up macro skills on the bottle.

Pisang island has surely been visited by other dive operators passing this way; however infrequently enough that there are no known names for the sites in dive literature. Pisang means banana in Indonesian, so Wendy, Yann and Acho, christened the sites we explored: Pisang Goreng (a popular fried banana dessert), Pisang Susu (a tiny sweet yellow variety) and Gone Bananas. A delightful ending to a delicious day.

April 7 – We start the day at the southern end of Mano Island. We’ve been asking for muck and we get it! What a fun site – we find five different species of pipefishes plus a beautiful black Ornate ghost pipefish. Flasher wrasses were flashing off in the middle of the day instead of waiting for their traditional late afternoon courtship period. I come over a rise and find David, Jim and Paul tightly gathered around a small coral head photographing a colony of diminutive coral hermit crabs. Instead of commandeering discarded gastropod shells like their larger brethren, coral hermits take up residence in abandoned wormholes in living coral. In most instances coral hermit colonies consist of fewer than a dozen individuals. However this coral mount contains hundreds of the cute little characters busily waving their feeding antennae in the current.

 

It is the ship’s policy when exploring new territory, to always request permission from nearby villages before entering the water. Today’s appeal received a rare rebuff. It is upsetting until we learn that the local powers have a good reason for their decision. Tomorrow is national election day and the village doesn’t want any distraction in their declared “Quiet Week”. In such isolated communities the presence of two dingy-loads of Darth Vaders in neoprene, tumbling backwards in unison and remaining submerged for hours always attracts considerable attention. What appears to be a bit of bad luck sets the stage for afternoon prosperity.

With no more GPS numbers to try in the area the dive team decides to explore a silty channel before steaming on. It takes a bit of searching along the mucky grass slope, but before long we begin to find gold. First to appear are pairs of endlessly cute Signal Gobies, busily digging their honeymoon suites in the soft sediment. In deeper water we find dense aggregations of flasher wrasse displaying in all their glory at the height of a late afternoon love fest. I’m stalking an unfamiliar lizardfish when several wildly swinging lights catch my attention. When I arrive at the scene four of our group surround Yann, who is clearly excited. Straining to see what he is closely following with his finger, it takes what seems like forever to see the two threadlike forms he is tracking – oh my, two Rumengani pipehorses! Underwater naturalists around the globe have been abuzz about these tiny creatures that were recently discovered by Singaporean photographer William Tan’s dive guide, Noldy Rumengan. Shortly after the pair was discovered in North Sulawesi and subsequently scientifically described (Kyonemichthys rumengani) a second pair of the same species was rediscovered hundreds of miles south in South Sulawesi. This leads one to believe that with the right search image in place we might find that these splendid little fellows are more common than first imagined.

While maneuvering to keep our eyes on the tiny pipehorses without stirring up silt, Yann points to a Halimeda Ghost Pipefish not six inches away. In the excitement I had to force myself to slow down. We’re at 60 feet on the third dive of the day; this is no time to be swept away in a frenzy of goby fever! Back on board the tender, I tell Ned, who with Liberty had been occupied in the shallows photographing a Hairy squat lobster, about the new pipehorse, but the significance of my words don’t register until I show him my video. “Why didn’t you insist that I go back down to shoot them?” he barks. “I told you it was the new pipehorse” I reply. “But you didn’t say it was Noldy’s pipehorse…”   Uh-Oh.

April 8 – Our fortunes continue to run, as Wendy and company put us on an oceanic reef that Paul later declares to be one of the most beautiful he has ever dived. (That is a significant declaration coming from a 40-year dive-travel veteran.) Thick, healthy coral reef framed with hundred-foot-plus-plus vis extends in every direction. Here biodiversity meets biomass. Fishes large and small saturate the sea, filling every cranny while shoals of open water species laze in the reef’s lee or repeatedly explode in starbursts of colors off the point.

Even with so many wonderful things buzzing about, a number of the group spend a chunk of their bottom time laying flat on the 60-foot seafloor watching jawfishes pop high out of their holes to nab passing plankton.

Liberty as usual dutifully goes about the business of finding critters for the book. His dedication pays dividends when he extracts a 5-inch sea cucumber from a crevice. Under closer examination, the strange little cucumber turns out to be a segmented worm!

We hate to leave this reef after just two dives, but we still have a lot of territory to cover. Our afternoon dive is another winner with more sharks, dartfishes, glassfish and the biggest moray I have ever seen anywhere. Toward the end of the dive Liberty’s eye catches a wispy swirl emerging from a Christmas Tree Worm. Ned, realizing that the animal is spawning, immediately goes into action.  

Now, it’s my turn to be heartsick for missing a rare sight. I have been fixated for some years now with finding spawning Christmas Tree Worms, to the point that I have contacted the few divers I know who have witnessed the behavior to match their sighting times and dates to moon phases and coordinates in the hope of improving my chances. Liberty’s discovery occurred at 3 pm on the day before the full moon – both peculiar times and dates indeed for the spawning of anything. For minutes, the reddish brown strands spiral up the corkscrew core of the worms’ gill structures before tailing off in the current. Later I tell Ned that I would happily trade him my Rumengani pipehorses for his sighting. Still smarting from missing the pipehorse the evening before, he readily agrees to the imaginary trade.

A mangrove dive, a hitchhiker and 472 species of fish

Mangroves and Soft Coral

 

 

April 2 –We spent the day in the mangroves of Gam Island. I have long ranked mangroves high on my list of favorite alternate habitats to explore. Most mangrove forests are washed by turbid coastal water, limiting sightseeing, but not on Gam, where clear water invades the tangled growth right up to shore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a feast for the imagination to glide over a carpeting of corals and anemones overhung with a leaf-filled tropical sky, and neighbored by prop roots garlanded with sponge and soft coral. As tropical fishes dance about below, Archer Fish and Ballyhoo patrol above, mirroring their images off the calm surface. 

The Archer Fishes’ (a patient observer can maneuver to within a few feet) unique talent of dislodging insects from overhanging branches with a jet of water shot from pointed mouths, allow them to hit stride at high tide when the odds rise in their favor.

The mangrove forest coupled with an adjacent coral ridge showcasing a parade of colorful fishes, cuttlefishes, octopuses and nudibranchs, keeps everyone happy for four dives, including a night excursion, where Liberty finds a knock-your-socks-off hydroid decorator crab and Acho proudly shows off a pair of Robust Ghost Pipefish. Ned related later, with a mischievous hint of amusement in his voice, that he watched the huge Bumphead parrotfish, startled by dive lights, blindly kamikaze toward me at collision speed and, only after my last second lifesaving spin, ricochet off my tank (instead of my face).

We return to the boat to find that Guido, on the prowl in the skiff for fresh fish, instead purchased a parrot from a passing boat of boar hunters. Assuming it a recent captive, he has every intention of releasing the bird the following day. That is until Lillian, an avid birder, identifies it as a male Eclectic parrot, endemic to the area. She also notes how tame the bird appears even accepting hand-fed papaya from Hendrak, the chief steward. Guido’s plan for a quick release will have to be put on hold.

Two days aboard the boat and we are already conditioned to expect after-dive treats from Hendrak. He’s also wrested back control of the breakfast toaster from Mary and Park whose “Croissants al Carbon” prove that toasters and tourists don’t mix.

 

April 3, 4 & 5 – Our next three days are spent in the southern area of Raja Ampat. The fish surveyors are in top form exploring one of the fishiest dive sites on Earth, Melissa’s Garden. The hard coral shelf and its surrounding sand skirt encircling three rocky islets, is a potent fish attractor. All the fishwatchers are coming in with high counts and adding new species to their life lists.

 

The afternoon dives in southeast Misool are gorgeous and fishy producing three different kinds of pygmy seahorses. Bruce August from Miami, an ol’ hand at Caribbean diving, on his first venture out into the far flung reaches of the Pacific, danced a jig after being shown his first pygmy seahorse. Another clear example confirming Ned’s timeworn adage, “Move slow, learn to think small, and you will never have a boring dive.” 

 

I am enjoying the opportunity to shoot wide-angle video footage, which is sorely lacking in my library after years of concentrating my attention on identification and behavior video.

 

Our final dive in Raja Ampat is off Wayilbatan. Our own Jim Dalle Pazze while on our first trip here with Larry Smith in 2005, named the site, Neptune’s FanSea. The current running between two islands flies us effortlessly though a narrow quarter-mile passage buttressed by a towering garden wall of soft corals and oversized sea fans. We travel one way before breakfast and back the other way before lunch.

 

By the time we return for a bite, the parrot has been given a name, Moey, and has settled in to stay on a broom-handle perch overlooking the outdoor dinning area. That night, with the help of slides, Guido tells the tale of how the Dewi Nusantara, built of hand-tooled ironwood by Dayak craftsman on a muddy estuary in nearby Kalimantan, came into being. His captivating account immediately brings to mind the classic Werner Herzog movie Fitzcarraldo. In the 1984 film, an expat Scotsman attempts the improbable task of transporting a river cargo ship over a mountain peak in an attempt to gain sufficient wealth to fulfill his dream of building a world-class opera house on the banks of the Amazon. The marked difference: Where Fitzcarraldo experiences a triumphant failure, Guido Brink pulled off a triumphant success that now carries us in classic style and comfort across one of the world’s most exotic seas.  

Our final fish count for Raja Ampat is 472 species, including the rarely sighted, cave-dwelling Paddlefin cardinalfish. Janet alone has 468 fish on her list. She continues her hunt well after each dive, reviewing her survey slate and scanning digital photographs in order to track down the more difficult-to-identify species captured by her ever-ready, point-and-shoot camera.