Fish: What Fish? Saturday 16th December

Fish: What Fish?

So much to learn here and I am plagued by my inability to actually pass a fish test. I think I know all the fish families and species and take the test all confident, but let myself down again and again. 49/50 just isn't good enough for science and the worst part of it is that I had the right answer but my brain did a crazy turn around logic thing (there has to be a fusilier on the test, surely), and changed the answer so that it was wrong (on 2 tests! What am I like!). Only have one more chance though, so not sure what to do!

However, I still love the little things in the water. Had an amazing dive the other day at a site called LOST I'm not sure but I think that the name is directly related to the addiction here to the show ' lost'. I mean the scenery is pretty similar, with less scary polar bears, others and odd numbers! Testing ourselves on fish in the water means floating around for a long time and writing on our slates the name of the species etc. However, apparently us floating wasn't something that was appreciated by a local inhabitant and he released a veritable well of ink into the water.

Now, the octopus was really inconspicuous before he decided to hide itself with big black plumes of ink, but our interest was sparked good and proper and I then spent a good few minutes checking out all the nooks and crannies before I saw the big eye checking me out. Really well camouflaged in grey/white speckled coral colours, but was obviously not happy about me diving down and having a good look in his face as he was writhing around quite a bit, colour changing as he did so, until he eventually decided that that was enough and settled on a dark red colour. Not the most inconspicuous once again, but I am thinking he knows we have seen him, and maybe this is his warning, fighting colour.
(N.B. You may have noticed my preference for referring to this octopus as being male. Well I would like to say that after having enjoyed a lecture on octopus gonads, by Danielle our resident expert, I was able to sex the beast. But that would be ALL LIES and I think that as this is my story and I can tell it just the way I want, not much justification, but hey!)

Amazing though, I am not sure that I have even seen an octopus ink like that on any nature TV show, but it really is a sight to see all the brown ink diffuse into the sea, and takes a good
5-10mins to clear. Probably more than enough time for a predator to get bored and find something else to eat, for there are plenty of other options (though not sure if they are as tasty, have had a fair amount of octopus here already), but we were just especially attracted to it! Fantastic.

There were also some really large Moustache Trigger fish (you can see here that I am proving my Fish ID skills, though by showing off I still am a failure, just probably the worse kind now!). Anyone that has been diving in Australia or tropical environments will know that this fish family are notorious for being a little bit vicious, in as much as they veraciously patrol not only the horizontal, but also the vertical zone above their eggs. Which is very disconcerting when they threaten to nip at you for just passing by! Fortunately, these big ones were just minding their own business, no egg protecting today.

The waves to get out to the site were pretty harsh as the cyclone season is about to start, but the dive was great and well worth it. I haven't been able to go out since (3-days out of the water!) as the volunteers here leave on the 20th Dec and are priority in getting the dives, also I clearly am not able to partake in the science yet (still bitter about the fish tests, all three of them, though the first I failed fair and square).

The sea is calm and the visibility great so hope to get out again soon, and I am bored of studying fish anyway!

Maybe I should just learn Coral and Benthic for a while............ Nah!