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Pygmies and rhinos |
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...not to mention flambos |
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Even Bugs Bunny! |
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Read more back issues: |
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What's in the current issue? |
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Talk about your basic embarrassment of riches. You know you are having a great dive when you are photographing pygmy seahorses and a Rhinopias gets in the way. For the first time ever, we found the elusive pygmy seahorse in Milne Bay. Oh, they have been there all along of course, these Lilliputian undersea equines. While they are fatally cute, they also have absolutely the most perfect camouflage of any animal in sea, or perhaps all of nature. Even when you know within a few square inches where one is sitting, it can still take ten minutes of staring to spot it. The fact that they are barely 3/8" long certainly helps their cause. Then they have the habit of turning away and arching their backs toward you when they feel they are being watched. With their eyes thus hidden, they are simply impossible to spot. Yet there Birgitte was, maneuvering for a good angle, and she almost set her hand down on a weedy scorpionfish -- the elusive and rare Rhinopias.
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Last February our tours were distinguished by outstanding weather, consistently good visibility, and consistently amazing marine life discoveries. In addition to pygmy seahorses, one of my quests was the fascinating flamboyant cuttlefish. Never more than a few inches in length, they stalk |
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the sand and rubble seabed in a stealth-like fashion, looking for resting gobies and other unsuspecting prey. Spying their quarry, their color changes in rippling, iridescent waves as their excitement mounts. Slowly they walk forward, their lower tentacles acting like legs. When within range, their tentacles draw forward to a single point, reminding me of a kind of molluscian gun sight. Then in the blink of a shrimp's eye, a single thin, previously hidden specialized tentacle with what appears to be a helmet of suction cups on its tip shoots forward at least twice its body length from the center of the tentacle cluster and wham! Goby sashimi. Instantly this tentacle retracts, as lightning fast as it appeared.
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Our season also featured several discoveries of the amazing mimic octopus, a sand dwelling octopus capable of imitating such a diverse variety of other marine life as sea snakes, flounders, mantis shrimp, jellyfish and many more. Then of course there was the Holy Grail of weirdness, the much sought after but rarely spotted Bugs Bunny scorpionfish, plus the virtually unknown Soccer Ball balloonfish, pipe seahorses, Coleman's shrimp by the cocktail full, herds of cowfish and too many other creatures to name. The Tiata and her crew preformed flawlessly once again, so naturally we are returning in 1999 for two, possibly three consecutive two-week charters. As this is the first newsletter announcement of these dates, but with our two originally scheduled tours already all but sold out, we have optioned two additional weeks following the second trip. If you would like to join us in Milne Bay in 1999, take my advice... don't wait! Call us now! |
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