Red frogfish

Any dive that includes an encounter with a longlure frogfish is a good dive.  This morning we had the pleasure of encountering this red longlure frogfish, which was less than 3 inches long, at about 40 feet.  Of course, frogfish are always easier to find when someone directs your eyes to them.  Even with lots of pointing and head nodding, they can be extremely difficult to see.

The frogfish is facing down in all these photos.  Below is a closeup of its head.  The eye is in the center of the photo.

Looking inside corkscrew anemones

Peering inside anemones is always interesting.  However, inside the corkscrew anemone, red and white banded antennae signal that a red snapping shrimp is inside.  Sometimes if you knock on an adjacent rock it will come out to see what is going on.  Alternately, if you stick your finger just in front of the anemone, it will come out and take a look.

This is a corkscrew anemone.

This is a red snapping shrimp, that I found this morning.  One of its claws, the snapping claw, is quite a lot larger than the other. Their snapping apparently  wards off intruders and it helps them catch prey. The smaller claw pinches, which startled me at first, but it isn't very painful. The shrimp was about an inch and a half long.  Photos taken at about 30 feet.

Gray snapper

We often encounter gray snappers on our dives.  And frequently, we find a bunch of them together.  Today, the gray snappers were in a tight bunch, slowly swimming together, almost touching, which seems a little odd for fish about 16 inches long.  They seem pretty unconcerned about divers. These fish were about 25 feet deep.

Spotted drum

The spotted drum is a very common sight, swimming back and forth in reef recesses during the day, coming out to feed only at night.  Over the last several years, we have frequently encountered early juvenile spotted drums in smaller spaces on the reef.  These early juveniles have been as small as a half inch.

This year, the only early juvenile drum that I have seen was closer to 2 inches in length.  So, I'm hoping that this isn't a harbinger of population decline for the spotted drum.

The first photo is the juvenile, always a joy to find!

The second photo is an adult, about 8 inches long.  Both photos were taken in about 30 feet of water.

Spotted spiny lobster

This morning, on our dive, I found a spotted spiny lobster hiding in a recess in the reef, at about 50 feet.  While I sometimes look for lobsters, today, I was trying to take a photo of a sponge, and happened to see the lobster in the process.  This lobster was about 8 inches long. If you look closely, this lobster is quite colorful.

After viewing our video of this lobster, we realized that it is a female with eggs attached under her tail (see below).

And just a note of explanation:  To post this entry, I'm sitting outside, after dark, covered with mosquito repellent because the Internet access in our condo complex is horrible, and the wifi hot spot at our dive shop is great.

Green moray

Today, we encountered the largest eel down here, the green moray.  They get up to 8 feet long.  This guy was more like 6 feet long.  It is an impressively large fish.  This one was at least 5 or 6 inches wide.  It was resting under some rocks.  In this position it seemed to be panting, opening and closing its mouth -- that's how it pumps water through its gills to get oxygen.  Just prior to these photos, it was being cleaned by gobies, which you can see on a rock in front of the eel.

Sometimes when you are looking for a green moray, the first thing you see is part of its body.  Then you follow the body to the head, which was to the right.

Green morays generally hide during the day, and hunt at night.

Spotted eagle ray

Thursday morning, three weeks into diving, we encountered our first spotted eagle ray of the season. This ray wasn't very big, a little over 2 feet across, but it's tail must have been 6 or 7 feet long.

In other years, we have frequently seen spotted eagle rays while diving here in Bonaire.  I don't know if anyone is surveying their relative abundance, but they seem to be less abundant this year.