Dive a Lot, See Crazy Action

I have used the same dive computer since 2017, and it keeps a tab on how many dives I have been doing with it, in total. It shows 1197 as of today, all dives done in the Philippines.

I have rarely ever had noring dives. There is always a fascinating play of colors and shapes on display: bright blue fish dancing in the water column hunting for plankton, and bizarrely shaped corals growing on the reef; anemones swaying in the current. Even the most common species on a coral reef can be pretty and pretty fascinating.

Once you get into the hundreds of dives, and/or have an excellent critter spotter with you – I have become a pretty good critter spotter by now, I think – you’ll see rare and unusual species. Ghost pipefish, Rhinopias, leaf scorpionfish … these are extra treats for the educated diver.

But then, and that’s something even the best spotters can’t guarantee: unusual behavior. There is a lot of underwater behavior which you’ll be able to see on almost every dive: anemone fish defending their anemone home, the occasional fight between surgeonfish, and the shrimp goby – shrimp pair in action. These are all interesting – but the rare fish and invert behavior is what really gets the jaws of experienced divers to drop. A sea snake attacking the nest of a frenetic damselfish … two male mandarin fish displaying in a pose down to mark their territories …  a frogfish binging on shrimp half its size ….

So, please enjoy, along these line, a snake eel, pretending to be a sea snake, but the trying to snatch a mantis shrimp from its burrow in the sand. I have seen this exactly one time since I started diving in 1987:

Seen on Screen Only

And there there is an even more special sub-category of the rare behavior: the stuff you just see once you pull your new videos or stills up on a laptop screen. For example, take a look at this minute parasite on the eye of a dragonet:

Best Fishes,

Klaus