dancingfish news

I’ve finally gotten a few photos up from a trip to Keystone Jetty last September. I had some equipment issues, so it’s miraculous I had any photos at all, but it’s just a few.

The gallery is at http://www.dancingfish.com/gallery/list.php?exhibition=43&ee_lang=eng.

I was able to take in my new Seatool housing and D300 camera yesterday for a dive off one of the Bandito Charters boats. On the first dive, we went to Dalco Wall, the current was ripping, and since it had been a few months since I’d been drysuit diving, I decided to leave the new camera on the boat. Of course, Leslie then found a spiny lumpsucker, which I’d never seen before and would kill to get a photograph of. He was very cute! But the second dive, at Sunrise Beach, was nice as well. Here are a few photos…

There are a few more photos in the new Sunrise Beach gallery at:

sunrise gallery

Wow, I’ve been so busy lately, but didn’t realize it had been quite that long since I posted a favorite photo! Hope that y’all haven’t given up on me.

Today’s favorite is a very cool critter, a peacock mantis shrimp. This little lady is also carrying a large bundle of eggs, protecting them until it is time for them to hatch. I should have posted this one on mother’s day!

This is an interesting criiter, IMHO. The blue ribbon eel starts out all the same sex, and are black with yellow stripes when a juvenile. As they mature, they are males that are a bright blue with yellow stripes. When and if they become a more aged eel, they will have the opportunity to turn female, and all yellow, such as this one. Also known as the “Old maid eel”. However, this is when they reproduce, so these eels are essential to the survival of the species. However, the yellow ones are much more rare than the blue or black ones.

There are some interesting corallimorphs in Sulawesi, but I’m not very good at IDing them. This is a corallimorph with some resident Periclimenes shrimp.

Clownfish are tough subjects. They’re wiggly to the point of being hyperactive, and sometimes they are aggressive and like to chase us photographers around. I was lucky and came across these two posers:

These guys are “false” clownfish, since the true clownfish are Amphiprion percula, and these are Amphiprion oscellaris.

Crinoid shrimp are small reclusive crustaceans that like to hide within the arms of crinoids on the reef. They are so well camoflauged that many divers overlook them. Dive guides will frequently push them out of their hiding places with their pointers, but I don’t like it when they do that. This one, however, was sitting right out on top of an arm, and the dive guide just pointed to it as we came across it. It was a nice, vibrant yellow.

There are numerous fish in the world known as batfish. Strange red-lipped batfish and other varieties that walk on the bottom, as well as the spadefish types. The spadefish types are really beautiful when they are juveniles, sometimes having ultra elongated shapes and vivid colors. Even as a juvenile, a pinnate batfish can be several feet in height, and are usually jet black with a neon orange border when very young. This juvenile was tiny, only an inch or so tall at most, and swam constantly in circles, as the juvies typically do. I’ve wanted a good photo of one of these for ages, but the ones I’ve seen before are typically tucked in a crevice, and are so large that it’s difficult to get a good framing without too much water between. Because this one was tiny and out in the open, it was much easier to photograph, although even so, the constant movement made it hard to get the right perspective.

We encountered many juvenile cuttlefish on this trip to Lembeh, in all different sizes. This was a juvie who was curious about me, but trying to stay a little hidden next to some lavendar colored algae.

It was hard for me to choose my first favorite of the day from this trip. I decided to go with this harlequin shrimp, since I’ve seen harlequins so rarely in the past. I have seen them deep within a cauliflower coral in Kona. I saw a beautiful pair in Papua New Guinea. And I saw a pair in Thailand at Richeliu Rock. We’d heard there was a pair at a dive site in Lembeh Strait, so we talked to the guides and made plans to go there. We saw them on two different dives on this site. The first time, the pair was walking around a small cluster of coral, a cleaning station type area. That is when I took this photo. I believe they were hunting for sea stars, their favorite food. The second time, a few days later, they were away from the coral and hiding in some mucky sponges, along with a red sea star that they were eating, so they had been successful in their hunt. They are beautiful shrimp.

I have now posted the gallery for the 2007 Lembeh Strait trip:

Gallery

Also on that page are PC (EXE) and Mac (Flash) versions of a multimedia slideshow.

Enjoy!

Another couple of great dives here in Lembeh. Still jetlagged, so taking it easy the first couple of days. Once again, one dive with film and one with digital. We were lucky enough to encounter a blue ring octopus on the first dive of the day, at Tanda Rusa.

In this photo, the blue ring has just caught something to eat and is eating it:

And we had a few other critters on this dive as well..

A snake eel with a cleaner shrimp:

A juvenile cuttlefish:

A fingered dragonet:

A cool cowrie:

And some lovely nudibranchs:

A very nice dive…

The first day of diving is done. I did two dives, one with film and one with digital. From the digital dive (at Teluk Kembahu 3), I have a few photos to share:
Jellyfish:

Lysiosquilla mantis shrimp

A dancing flambouyant cuttlefish:

The strange Ambon scorpionfish:

And of course, the mimic octopus:

Enjoy!

I have a double-whammy for everyone today. First, because I go to Indonesia next week and won’t be posting the favorites while I’m gone, and second, because these will probably be my last favorites postings for this Solomons trip, and I still have several of my favorites that I haven’t posted! Anyway, the first photo is of a beautiful corallimorph, and if you look closely, you can see a small transparent shrimp sitting on the left side:

The second photo was taken of a small ghostgoby that lives around these bubble corals. A pretty fish on a pretty background, what more could I ask for?

I will try to post some photos from the road… Expect the weird and wacky!

This guy is a real clown. He’s a Freckle Face Blenny. Comical face, funny behaviors. And just to make sure the joke is on you, he lives in a place where it’s nearly impossible to shoot him. That would be the shallow surge zone, typically in a rock shelf area.

This particular dive we dubbed the “washing machine dive”, because we had incredible cross, up and down currents along the wall where we were. For a good part of the dive, we had to swim through our own bubbles, because they wouldn’t float upward! Anyway, Sam on the Bilikiki had been looking for a freckle face blenny for me, and he indicated that there was one on top of the 4 foot shelf where all this water was focusing its energy. I thought, “You have got to be kidding!”. But I followed him up, and proceeded to get zipped back and forth in the surge as Sam looked for blennies in their holes. I found a likely subject and attempted my few shots. With manual focus. This photo is the result. You can see the force of the surge in his face, as his normally upright cirri are bent sideways by the water. And I’m sure he was laughing at me the whole time..

Another of my wide angle shots from Mary Island. There is frequently a large school of barracuda there, along with the ubiquitous jacks.

Hmmm, it’s Saturday. Must be time for a clownfish!

Sometimes, anemones don’t really look like anemones. This shrimp, a Periclimenes brevicarpalis, also known as a popcorn shrimp, lives in an anemone known as an adhesive anemone. The tentacles on the anemone are very short, giving its surface a textural look almost like coarse velvet. This shrimp and anemone are regular friends on the reef.

This is a Clark’s Anemonefish. I like this photo because the fish was being shy and coy.

Here’s another shot that has been incredibly popular on Flickr for unknown reasons… This one was taken in Leru Cut, but rather than the traditional view of looking out the front of the cut, this is in the back of the cut, looking straight up at the pool overhead that is in the mangroves. The sun was streaming down and the light was very pretty.