Critter Post #11 - January '10
Posted on Jan 22, 2010 by bruce_moore
Mystery Fish ... Christmas Bustle ... Varying Degrees ... New Year Nudis ... Send in the Clowns ... Consistent Mimics ... Old Friends ...
HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Once again, all-too-soon, it is time to find a new calendar as another New Year envelopes us, bringing hope, renewal and the chance to spot new and exciting critters.
But I'd like to begin by putting out a call for a specific ID on a fish that has us stumped. The picture was taken by a guest of ours - Mr. Ezio Riva. He took it at ~15 meters in depth at Nudi Falls last August. It is a tiny juvenile (notice its size next to grains of sand and gravel) and is obviously a kind of scorpionfish. Even our friend Gerry Allen could not stick a name to it, but pointed out that many juveniles have different marking and colouration than their adult form. So ... Any ideas?
As for us at Black Sand Dive Retreat, after a quiet December, things picked up as expected over the Christmas Holiday. The water was too warm, being a balmy 29-30 degrees C, which tends to drive many critters deeper, but we still had fine dives with plenty to see. Having three fantastic guides in Hengky, Atu and Soleman makes the difference in times where the special critters aren't "jumping out at you".
The water temperature then dropped in January to 26 degrees C, which was the biggest quick change we've seen in years and as expected we immediately noticed a rise in nudibranch numbers. Through this entire period we had noticeably less critters in comparison to just last October / early November, but that is to be expected in this time of the year. But there's always plenty on the plate. The nudis on this page are (starting from the top): A large dendrodoris tuberculosa with a pair of imperial shrimp aboard and you can see one grabbing for food from the sand as it passes by. Then a Glossodoris cincta about to munch down on something, a tamja morosa moseying along a rope sponge covered in skeleton shrimp and a Phyllodesmium rudmani not quite blending in with its xenia coral food source / host. And further down is a Chromodoris fidelis.
In January we noticed an increase in the numbers of clown frogfish, seeing one virtually every second dive, including at places they are considered rare such as Angel's Window and California Dreaming. Painted and giant frogfish numbers are down, so it is good that the clowns are flying the froggie flag for the meantime.
The numerous ambon scorpionfish we were seeing throughout the year disappeared over November, but we've started to see them again at two sites at least. The ornate ghost pipefish also disappeared, probably just completing their cycle. We've been still seeing robust ghost pipefish every two or three dives, but this year we've only seen two ornates thus far: one deep - past 30 m and the other a clear juvenile. With this cooler water we expect their numbers to increase.
Besides water temperature it is the "winter" surge that shuffled the deck as well. We expect this every late November and were not disappointed as early December had the shallows in many sites transformed to "milk". Even now, the shallows in many sites don't offer much and are plains of rippled sand, so we just go over the edge to find stuff. Mimics (picture below) are seen every few days and this was fairly dependable over 2009 as well. We saw two yesterday on a dive I accompanied. We even recently saw one of the hairy octopus I wrote about in the last entry. White-v and veined octos are about, but not in high numbers. No wonderpus yet this year. There are a few flamboyant cuttlefish still about. 2009 was not only the best year in my memory for ambon scorpionfish and thorny seahorses, but for flamboyants as well, which I'm personally quite pleased about as they are three of my favourite critters.
One of our House Reef monkeyfish popped up again after we had not seen any since October (see pic on left). I recognized him by shape as he was so overgrown with algae that he looked like a rock with eyes. On other sites we've had some noteworthy critters: I found a pair of coleman shrimp and Hengky spotted a single individual on recent dives. We still have a pair of halimeda ghost pipefish on display. Hengky found a pair of tiger shrimp yesterday (but he finds a new pair every two or three weeks).
Exciting times in Lembeh to start a sparkling New Year.
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