New Triggerfish Footage

I went for a really nice dive last week and saw a Titan Triggerfish! This is one of the larger fish one sees on a reef in the Philippines these days, with sharks and large groupers increasingly rare even in MPAs (like the one I dived in, in Dauin). Triggerfish are powerful fish, with sturdy beaks, who can even break away parts of the reef, as you can see in this video:

 

But They Are Not Always Nice

In the video above, I coudl calmly approach the triggerfish. I assume it knew I was there, but it didn’t care. Instead, it continued to feed, and at the same time it was cleaned by a cleaner wrasse.

Their behaviro changes drastically when they are breeding. Then, they are agressively defending teh location of their nest, which is usually a depression in the sand. These fish are big enough, with sturdy enough teeth, that they can actually injure a human diver. The fish usually defend a cone over the nest, and the recommendation is to swim away horizontally, not vertically, to leave that defended cone, but that doesn’t always work right away. In the video below, the triggerfish kept attacking even after I had moved away significantly. Once in attack mode, they stay in attack mode, it seems.

 

Triggerfish Images

Over the years, I had some success photographing triggerfish underwater. There are actually fewer images of them in my archives than I thought there would be. The big triggerfishes are scary, the small ones skittish! After going through my images, I definitely am motivated to shoot these interesting animals some more in the near future.