Species diversity is always a big attraction to new dive locations. The Lembeh Straits has pulled in vast amounts of critter lovers who want to see species of marine life they have never seen before. Species like the hairy frogfish (Antennarius striatus), weedy scorpionfish (Rhinopias frondosa) and a whole array of other bizarre and well sought after rarities attract marine life enthusiasts, photographers, film makers and scientists alike.
Just about every critter lover has been away on their dive holiday and found animals they are unable to find in any of the resort or liveaboard identification books. Nudibranchs and their relatives are often seen that are certainly not in any of the books out there yet. There are many great destinations where we can find new species of nudibranchs.
In between assisting filming sequences for a BBC film maker whilst around the Komodo area recently I had a little extra time to go in search of new and exciting sites, of course with the chance to possible look for new marine life. To my big surprise I saw a fish on a night dive that simply wasn’t quite right. For over 10 years I’ve my head stuck in fish and marine life ID books and magazines. So when I noticed a fish that looked like a cross between a waspfish, scorpionfish, stonefish and stingfish I was glad to have my little camera with me.
I’ve already managed to sent some photo’s to the likes of Dr. Gerry Allen, Dr. Mark Erdmann and the Lembeh Straits critter maniac Bruce Moore of Black Sand Dive Retreat. I thought if Mark and Gerry hadn’t seen this then Bruce might have. Bruce and his many years of experience in Lembeh have brought him many surprise finds, however all these Indonesian specialists had never seen this fish at all, or even any documentation of anything like it. It’s behaviour, very much like the waspfish Richardsonichtys leauchogaster shown below is rather none existing and being at 32m I didn’t have a whole lot of time down there to see it this was actually going do anything or if there was another partner nearby. I have seen a few fish very similar to this fish like this...
This is may be somewhat similar species to a species that was photographed in Triton Bay earlier in 2007. however Gerry and Mark have seen more of the images from Triton Bay than me and are fairly sure this is something very different!
Source:
http://www.diving4images.com/creature_features.html
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