The Stories of My Best Shots #29, Cleaning Wrasse & Lion fish

For a couple of years, I used to live in Okinawa, Japan. Let’s just say that the part of my time there which I spent underwater was great. One of the lesser known dive sites in Oki is Tengan Pier. The credit for introducing me to that site goes to my friend Jerry.

Tengan pier is a long docking pier in the relatively shallow Kin bay. There are no great coral reefs to be found, and the visibility is often mediocre. But, a lot of nice marine life has settled on the concrete pylons of this pier, especially some really pretty seafans. What made the site attractive for me was the presence of lots of unusual fish species, especially gobies and blennies. However, my 29th best photograph (according to the Flickr community) is of two relatively common species – a lionfish, and a cleaner wrasse, removing dead skin and parasites from the former.

There was one cleaner station next a pylon, with a pair of cleaner wrasses offering their services to fish with itches. The large lion fish positioned itself in front of the wrasses, spread its fins, and waited for a full service. The wrasses went to work. So did I. I dearly hoped to take a few photographs of this interesting act of natural history. The lionfish did not particularly like this idea, though. It spread its venomous fin spines further and turned away from me. I needed to be very diplomatic now – at the same time I wanted to get close enough for a good shot, but then I did not want to disturb the fish when they were displaying this interesting behavior. A little dance ensued: Klaus backs off, the lionfish decides he is far enough away, cleaning continues. Klaus carefully circles to the other side of the lion fish, comes, closer, the lionfish turns away from him, Klaus back off again. Inbetween this underwater ballet, I managed to get this shot of the lion fish’s dorsal fin spines with the cleaner wrasse.