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Creatures of the Muck

Published

10 years ago

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Janice 1Muck diving.  “Le” muck diving.  There is no pretty way to say muck diving even if you are French.  In fact when you do muck dive for the first time and look out over a silty, sandy slope, or a pile of coral rubble, it seems that a hopeless hour underwater searching for some form of life, including your dive buddies, is ahead.  I was especially worried about unfairly judging muck diving at Maluku Divers in Ambon because my trip there immediately followed a boat trip through Raja Ampat which is so full of color and life everywhere.  But with a beautiful Balinese meal sitting in front of me at the end of the first day of diving on Ambon, my thoughts were that, perhaps all of the previous 15 days of travel, including three international flights through four countries, two domestic flights, and a liveaboard trip of twelve days, was just to arrive at Maluku Divers on Ambon.

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Although we took one of the longest, but most scenic, ways to get to Ambon, once we arrived there, our traveling was over.  Our first dive at Laha I, along the southern coast of Ambon Bay, was reported to be an absurdly long interval away from the resort when in fact it took less than five minutes – barely enough time to be introduced to Jamal, our experienced dive guide from Lembeh, Mo our boat driver, and Hafez, a young Indonesian king who helped us with our equipment on the day boat.  Topside, this dive site happens to be a small but active wharf area where people seem to both live and work on their boats.  The children are especially intrigued by the foreign divers.  They wonder why we use our money to travel so far just to see the fish right under their boats.

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Janice 3We did a backward roll into the warm water and swam to a pile of rubble directly under the boats.  It was noon so I was completely surprised when it was a mandarin fish colony that we were on a mission to observe.  My previous encounters with mandarin fish were to watch them having sex at 6:30 in the evening, but they were also busy scampering about at noon, just ignorant of the opposite sex and yet brilliant against their colorless home.  I was so focused on getting that perfect photo of a mandarin fish that I almost missed just how many other creatures inhabited this rather small rubble complex.  Banded pipefish were just hanging in the water, and very long white antennae revealed the location of the largest banded coral shrimp that I had ever seen.  One of the oddest-looking fish, an estuarine stonefish, was lying there like a sunken shipwreck.  With the exception of the stonefish that seemed cemented into this habitat, I found it difficult to understand that out of the entire ocean these creatures chose this noisy, close to shore site, and yet they live here together at least during daylight, harmoniously.  These were my first 30 minutes in Ambon.

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As we continued on just this first dive, it became apparent that there is no comparing the diving here to that in Raja Ampat because muck diving is just simply an entirely different sport. While in Raja Ampat we were more on a guided tour of mountaintops and walls underwater where classic coral underwater scenes were plentiful; in Ambon we were encouraged to stay in one spot, maybe one where there was just a pile of unremarkable rocks, and look for anything moving.  Jamal’s mere thoughts seemed to bring forth different creatures, at an exhaustive and uncontrolled rate, like he was a genie in training, but I forced myself to pause and try this alternative dive style approach.  I had incredible luck finding creatures.  In the Laha area, sea urchins of many types are serious diving hazards everywhere, and you are tempted to overlook them, but this is a mistake.  I initially was compelled to look at the fire urchins because of their vibrant colors, but then I started to see other animals living within them.  I discovered that they harbor all sorts of crustaceans and are like a mini habitat that transports squat lobsters, zebra crabs, and the beautiful pairs of spotted Coleman shrimp across the sand.  This “wait and see” method was quite useful to practice, because in Ambon, as you are waiting to peek at some main event creature, which was often, you could say so what, and find something else nearby that occupies your attention, like a solar powered nudibranch because you wonder which end is doing the driving.
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When asked, divers who come to Ambon immediately respond that they want to see histiophryne psychedelica, the new species of frogfish that was re-discovered by a novice diver in 2008.  It disappeared though or so they say, but when the other dive group from the resort returned from their first dive at Rhino City with photographic evidence of the celebrity fish, we were hoping to be his next human visitors.  I did not want to miss this fish so I followed Jamal closely on this dive.  The psychedelic frogfish had not been disturbed, because Jamal was able to lead us directly to it.  This fish was identified as a frogfish ultimately through DNA analysis, but it has features that distinguish it from typical ones.  Most notable is its flat forward looking face, but it also has no lure.  Like any unusual looking creature, this fish deserved a few minutes of quiet inspection without movement or flashing lights, but I was attracted to it in an unexpected way.  Often fish have physical features that advise the onlooker to keep away, but this fish has a soft, fleshy appearance that really tempts you to touch it.  As if to remind me not to do this, was an eel, a sort of bodyguard to the frogfish, living in the same crevice.

 

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The psychedelic frogfish’s coloring was also a bit of a mystery to me.  It is usually obvious why a frogfish looks as it does; generally I am not sure that I have actually seen one when I have seen it because they imitate their habitat so well.  Although the overall color of the psychedelic frogfish allows it to blend in with the sand of Ambon, there are vibrant white lines that extend radially from its eyes and then swirl around over the main part of its body.  It was not until I read about this fish, where these patterns were shown to parallel those from certain hard corals, that I could begin to see how the fish evolved to mimic its environment.  However, the lines also have a sort of hypnotizing affect on the viewer, and perhaps have a dual purpose in distracting as well any prey so that it loses concentration for a moment.

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Histiophryne psychedelica was an amazing fish to see, but what was additionally fascinating is how many other unusual “what was evolution thinking” kind of creatures were on the same dive and within meters of the shore and surface.   There is a resident giant black frogfish in about two meters of water at one end of the dive.  We also found a rhinopias scorpionfish hiding in the halimeda algae.  A white leaf scorpionfish and an army of hinge-beaked shrimp occupied the coral bommie across from the psychedelic frogfish.  It was also a place for finding all sorts of nudibranchs that seemed big enough for the nearly blind to see.

Janice AThe dives in Ambon rarely went below twenty meters.  Only once did I find myself at twenty-five meters and that was to watch a flamboyant cuttlefish that we had inadvertently chased to this depth.  Most dives occurred on this same coast, just different sections of it.  Even though the landscape was somewhat similar overall, sloping sandy, I was starting to feel that there were different neighborhoods.  The Laha dives were where the harlequin and bumblebee shrimp, pipefish, and assorted frogfish lived in the rubble and the sand.  Further west, the landscape becomes more covered with corals and especially crinoids.  Here there is also a jetty, Air Manis Jetty, where a different lifestyle is in development.  There is quite a bit of human refuse where eels and giant banded coral shrimp could find a home.  The crinoids here have space to move about the sand like ladies in 17th century ball gowns and were sometimes escorted by a matching ornate or long nosed ghost pipefish.  Octopi displayed themselves openly in daylight, and fat nudibranchs were busy chewing the sponges that covered the pilings of the pier.

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Unexpectedly by day, I was really becoming a confident diver in Ambon.  I was filling my log book with the description of creatures many of which I actually found myself:  a xenocrab on an isolated whip coral protruding from the sand, a curious long armed shrimp by a tree anemone, a pair of leaf scorpionfish that I nearly drowned myself in excitement over and no one around to show, lots of pygmy cuttlefish, shrimp in crinoids, and shy long snout seahorses bobbing about as if they were drunk.  I found that I could spend most minutes of a dive looking at a single anemone.  All varieties exist on the sandy slopes of Ambon, bubble anemones in different colors, carpet anemones, and tube anemones.  So many different types of shrimp and crabs could live in one single anemone.  Especially at the anemones if you waited long enough, the animals would begin to crawl out from hiding.
Janice 12
But who comes out for the moonlight?  I boldly proposed to postpone dinner one evening for a night dive on the house reef.  An hour and a half later we returned to the resort with a whole new set of images in our heads.  It is not clear what you are looking at sometimes during a day dive in Ambon, but at night it takes some special imagination to identify an animal and where its eyes might be.  This is especially true with the crabs for which there seems to be an endless parade of.  It is a bit like dropping in on Alice in Wonderland’s underwater tea party where everybody’s hat mimics his own favorite piece of underwater habitat, but sometimes it looks ridiculous and awkward for the crab to live with.  One case in point was a decorator crab with long thin pink vertically growing sponges on its head.  It looked to be performing some sort of balancing act, and so perhaps, I thought it is with a bit of pride or personality that each animal adopts its headgear rather than merely for survival.  There were open soft corals, a giant pleurobranch, many kinds of nudibranchs, and a bobtail squid that buried itself up to its eyeballs in the sand to escape while peering at us.  We were nowhere near finishing our air on this dive; it was actually hunger that drove us back to the shore after one and a half hours.

Janice 8Each hour underwater at Ambon went by like lightening for me.  I am not sure what kind of rating system one can apply to diving in Ambon.  A star rating system does not seem accurate because it conjures up more typical images like corals and blue water and big animals and whether there is current or not.  Things are not swimming around much and if they do have fins they can also have legs attached to creep around, and sometimes your photos of an odd creature inadvertently advertise Coke.  I am a scientist, and I cannot help but think of evolution when I am under the water.  All sorts of ideas pop into my head, like what exactly was evolution thinking, and how genetically different am I really than the rhinopias scorpionfish?  To me it seems that Ambon is a collection of evolution’s experiments or abandoned ones in addition to the usual animals, and perhaps a rating system should correlate to remarkable skills of evolution at work here and your confidence level as a diver when you leave.

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Janice Nigro is an avid scuba diver with a PhD in biology.  She is a scientist who has studied the development of human cancer at universities in the USA and Norway, and has discovered the benefits of artistic expression through underwater photography and story writing of her travel adventures.

Marine Life & Conservation Blogs

Creature Feature: Dusky Shark

Published

7 hours ago

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April 20, 2024

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In this series, the Shark Trust will be sharing amazing facts about different species of sharks and what you can do to help protect them.

This month we’re taking a look at the Dusky Shark, a highly migratory species with a particularly slow growth rate and late age at maturity.

Dusky sharks are one of the largest species within the Carcharhinus genus, generally measuring 3 metres total length but able to reach up to 4.2 metres. They are grey to grey-brown on their dorsal side and their fins usually have dusky margins, with the darkest tips on the caudal fin.

Dusky Sharks can often be confused with other species of the Carcharhinus genus, particularly the Galapagos Shark (Carcharhinus galapagensis). They have very similar external morphology, so it can be easier to ID to species level by taking location into account as the two species occupy very different ecological niches – Galapagos Sharks prefer offshore seamounts and islets, whilst duskies prefer continental margins.

Hybridisation:

A 2019 study found that Dusky Sharks are hybridising with Galapagos Sharks on the Eastern Tropical Pacific (Pazmiño et al., 2019). Hybridisation is when an animal breeds with an individual of another species to produce offspring (a hybrid). Hybrids are often infertile, but this study found that the hybrids were able to produce second generation hybrids!

Long distance swimmers:

Dusky sharks are highly mobile species, undertaking long migrations to stay in warm waters throughout the winter. In the Northern Hemisphere, they head towards the poles in the summer and return southwards towards the equator in winter. The longest distance recorded was 2000 nautical miles!

Very slow to mature and reproduce:

The Dusky Shark are both targeted and caught as bycatch globally. We already know that elasmobranchs are inherently slow reproducers which means that they are heavily impacted by overfishing; it takes them so long to recover that they cannot keep up with the rate at which they are being fished. Dusky Sharks are particularly slow to reproduce – females are only ready to start breeding at roughly 20 years old, their gestation periods can last up to 22 months, and they only give birth every two to three years. This makes duskies one of the most vulnerable of all shark species.

The Dusky Shark is now listed on Appendix II of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS), but further action is required to protect this important species.

Scientific Name: Carcharhinus obscurus

Family: Carcharhinidae

Maximum Size: 420cm (Total Length)

Diet: Bony fishes, cephalopods, can also eat crustaceans, and small sharks, skates and rays

Distribution: Patchy distribution in tropical and warm temperate seas; Atlantic, Indo-Pacific and Mediterranean.

Habitat: Ranges from inshore waters out to the edge of the continental shelf.

Conservation status: Endangered.

For more great shark information and conservation visit the Shark Trust Website

Images: Andy Murch

Diana A. Pazmiño, Lynne van Herderden, Colin A. Simpfendorfer, Claudia Junge, Stephen C. Donnellan, E. Mauricio Hoyos-Padilla, Clinton A.J. Duffy, Charlie Huveneers, Bronwyn M. Gillanders, Paul A. Butcher, Gregory E. Maes. (2019). Introgressive hybridisation between two widespread sharks in the east Pacific region, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 136(119-127), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2019.04.013.

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Join Pharaoh Dive Club for Red Sea Splash Family Summer Camp in August 2024

Published

1 day ago

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April 19, 2024

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family summer camp

3rd AUGUST 2024  – 1 or 2 WEEK PROGRAMMES

Daily water programme with Snorkelling & Scuba Diving.

Beginners or qualified, something for all.

Leave the kids with the Splash Team for days of Excitement, Fun & Adventure!

family summer camp

BOOK NOW: INFO@PHARAOHDIVECLUB.COM / TEL: +44 7598 329059 or +20 100 6822000

There are various options for accommodation with options for 2, 3, 4 or 5 guests.

Eco Huts provide accommodation for families of up to 4. The best option to enhance the adventure and closest to camping with basic facilities. For August we will provide central air cooling for all the Eco Huts.

family summer camp

Deluxe Chalets are only suitable for 2 guests. Fully air conditioned rooms with private bathroom and other facilities.

family summer camp

Boutique Rooms are available for families of up to 5.
Individual bespoke rooms fully air conditioned with private bathroom and other facilities.

Eco Huts: £675 per adult / £425 per child / Under 8 FREE of charge
Deluxe Chalet: £830 per adult / £505 per child / Under 8 FREE of charge
Boutique Room: £925 per adult / £550 per child / Under 8 FREE of charge

BOOK NOW: INFO@PHARAOHDIVECLUB.COM / TEL: +44 7598 329059 or +20 100 6822000

This is a truly unique opportunity to have a Family Desert Adventure totally away from it all! You will be based at the remote Roots Red Sea on the coast of the Egyptian Eastern Desert, 140km south of Hurghada city.

family summer camp

Red Sea Splash main focus is Snorkelling & Scuba Diving but that’s not all, we provide a rounded week of activities in support.

Pool& Field Games – Arts & Crafts
Marine Biology Workshops
Cultural Activities – Orienteering Adventures

Roots Red Sea have established strong links with the local communities of Hamerwain  & El Quseir affording our guests to have a true taste of the local culture, SPLASH CAMP embraces this opportunity and bring in the local children to join in the fun with our adventure seekers.

family summer camp

During the day, families are welcome to take part in all activities together or the kids can be left with the SPLASH CAMP team while the parents enjoy the facilities or go diving themselves!

family summer camp

At the end of the day, its family time while the SPLASH CAMP team take a break. For those with the energy, there are family evening activities planned a few evenings.

Open Air Movie Night – Desert Star Gazing Walk & Talk
El Quseir Evening City Tour

The second week is very special, we head off on the Big Blue for a liveaboard safari around Fury Shoals.

family summer camp

BOOK NOW: INFO@PHARAOHDIVECLUB.COM / TEL: +44 7598 329059 or +20 100 6822000

U-8 Splash Club

Sadly we can’t offer Scuba Diving to the Splash Club but we can have lots of fun Snorkelling & Free Diving!

Splash Club includes:

Certified Snorkel Course – Marine ID Games – Intro to Free Diving
Arts & Craft Sessions – Adventure trails – Cultural Playtime – Pool Games

family summer camp

U-12 Explorer Club

In addition to an exciting snorkelling and Free Diving Programme in the Splash Club we can take you under the water on SCUBA to a whole new world of fun and wonder. If you are under 10 your first breath under water will be as a Bubblemaker and continue with daily Seal Team Missions. From 10 we will complete a Discover Scuba Diving experience in the amazing Red Sea. Alternatively we offer a full junior certification programme to become an international qualified Scuba Diver.

family summer camp

U-16 Adventurer Club

For qualified Scuba Divers regardless of age it’s the Adventurer Club and exploration of the local reefs and marine life. There will be 2 dives every day with the Open Ocean marine field station team who will introduce you to Red Sea marine life and workshops on marine research. Alternatively there are opportunities to continue your scuba diving certifications with our instructional team.

family summer camp

Parents are welcome to join the club activities and join the courses.

BOOK NOW: INFO@PHARAOHDIVECLUB.COM / TEL: +44 7598 329059 or +20 100 6822000

Big Blue might seem like the new kid on the block, but the team behind the highly acclaimed liveaboard is far from that. They have been running Red Sea safaris since the late 1980’s and were in fact part of the early pioneers who ventured out to the unknown on vessels that in today’s world, really shouldn’t have left the harbour! It’s that experience and the years of operating the award-winning Roots Red Sea resort which truly set Big Blue apart from the crowd!

family summer camp

Large lounge area, spacious sun deck and terrace deck.

family summer camp

Airy restaurant with five tables with up to six chairs per table, serving a varied and delicious menu with special dietary requirements catered for.

family summer camp

The spacious cabins have side by side beds and a large walk in wet bathroom.

family summer camp

Ample dive deck for divers & snorkelers.

family summer camp

Safety is everyone’s priority, whether you are relaxing on board, swimming, snorkelling  or diving.

On board Big Blue is fitted with smoke alarms, emergency lighting and a fire alarm system. The lower corridor has a full-size door fire exit at the bow and open stairs to the stern. There are evacuation plans in each room along with life jackets, glass breaker tool and a fire extinguisher.

BOOK NOW: INFO@PHARAOHDIVECLUB.COM / TEL: +44 7598 329059 or +20 100 6822000

Red Sea Splash at Fury Shoals is a very rare opportunity to get involved with marine biology expedition for children and adults. Open Ocean biologists are on board to provide fascinating and entertaining facts about the marine life you will see. The team will provide workshops on marine life identification and survey methods both of which, should you wish, you will have the chance to put into practice during your safari.

family summer camp

The week is open to snorkelers, scuba divers and non divers too!

Fury shoals is perfect for first time mariners as it offers plenty of protection from the weather.

We board at Port Ghaleb on Saturday evening and prepare to set sail early on Sunday morning.

family summer camp

Heading south, our first day will be diving the reefs of Abu Dabbab before sailing overnight to reach our ultimate destination the Fury Shoals.

Here we will spend four days swimming, snorkelling and scuba diving amazing reefs. This includes guaranteed DOLPHIN encounters at Sataya Reef!  After the last dive we haul anchor and head back to Abu Dabbab for our final two dives before disembarking our boat BIG BLUE.

family summer camp

Camp Extension Cost*
Adult £650 per adult
Under 16 £350 per child

BOOK NOW: INFO@PHARAOHDIVECLUB.COM / TEL: +44 7598 329059 or +20 100 6822000

FURTHER INFORMATION – INFO@PHARAOHDIVECLUB.COM

TEL: +44 7598 329059 or +20 100 6822000

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Scuba Travel – Bella Eriny – Saturday Departure 4th May save £200!

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Experience the Red Sea in May with Bella Eriny Liveaboard! As the weather warms up, there’s no better time to dive into the crystal clear waters of the Red Sea. Join us on Bella Eriny, your premier choice for Red Sea liveaboards, this May for an unforgettable underwater adventure. Explore vibrant marine life and stunning coral reefs Enjoy comfortable accommodation in our spacious cabins Savor delicious meals prepared by our onboard chef Benefit from the expertise of our professional dive guides Visit our website for more information and to secure your spot: www.scubatravel.com/BellaEriny or call 01483 411590 More Less
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