On todays second morning dive at Nudi Falls i was shooting Damselfishes and Anthias over a shallow reef during my safety stop. The water was clear enough and a mild current made the fishes line up nicely. At some point i saw a strange movement in the corner of my eye. When i turned my…
It seems like there is always something that can top what you have seen the day before: When we went back last night to see the Rhinopias that we found yesterday, Simon found a second, bigger one. So right now there is a resident pair of Paddleflap Rhinopias in Lembeh Strait. A smaller red one…
Just to begin with: Unfortunately today we could not manage to find another Hairy Octopus – so the record stays on four individuals on four consecutive days. Nevertheless we did manage to find something else instead: On our second morning dive we stumbled over this beautiful Rhinopias sitting in a rubble-softcoral patch. It is a…
Coming back to Lembeh is always a very special thing. But these Days diving seems to be even more exceptional than i remember: In my first week of diving here we have seen now the rare Hairy Octopus for 4 days in a row. On four different dive sites and also in different color variations!…
More or less everything in nature, with the rare exception of an adult orca or a fully grown female great white shark will be prey for something else. One consequence of this is that fear will be a prevailing emotional status in nature, as bold and brave animals will be caught and eaten much quicker…
One of the most numerous and beautiful fish in Lembeh is the Banggai cardinalfish. Just a few years ago, this small black and white fish with delicate patterns was quite rare in the strait, but now it can be seen almost all through Lembeh. Yesterday I saw quite a number of them at Aw shucks,…
Yesterday`s blog on Batesian mimicry got me started thinking (thus the big tank of air, brain activity requires oxygen!). Batesian mimicry was about “parasitizing” on the true signal of something sending out an honest warning. This is a very special type of mimicry. Camouflage, where animals try to look like something more or less inedible,…
A couple of weeks ago the title for being the ugliest animal in the world was awarded by the British science festival. Top contenders were the proboscis monkey, lice, the nowadays famous blobfish and a frog from lake Titicaca with the catching name the scrotum frog (it is, I promise! No, I did not make…
Cephalopods belong to the large group of animals known as molluscs. Generally molluscs do not move well, and when they do, it is by either gliding over a slime track or by using their external shells. But not the cephalopods. Cephalopods move very quickly and with very precise movements when that is needed. Most animals…
In the six months that I’ve spent in Lembeh over the past year, today was probably the single most insane day for critters that I can remember. Between the two boats today, guests saw Hairy/Randalls/Painted Frogfish, multiple Mototi Blue-ringed Octopus, Blue-ringed Octopus, Algae Octopus, Flamboyant Cuttlefish, Ornate and Robust Ghost Pipefish, Ambon Scorpionfish, and the…