This past weekend I did a little one day diving trip with my local Japanese dive shop, Live Scene. I woke up at 4 am, got into a car, and drove four hours to beautiful Ehime Prefecture. We end up in this cute little fishing village in the middle of nowhere. Nothing but trees, mountains, and the ocean around it. Stunning place and a beautiful day for diving.

The nice thing about this place was that while it was in the middle of nowhere, there was also no one around. We were the only divers in sight, and with the exception of a couple of small boats full of old Japanese men fishing, the only people on the water. The reason we headed to this spot is that it has an unusual amount of soft and hard coral for this area of Japan. In the past divers have spotted large number of squid, pufferfish, and an assortment of shrimp. While the weather above was quite nice, the water below wasn’t so great. Visibility was between 5-10 meters and cloudy, probably due to recent rain storms. The water temp was a nice 23 degrees C. Both our dives were between 7-9 meters, and each about 45 minutes in length.

The large amount of coral was also home to a large amount of sea life. Lots of small fish running around, the odd shrimp under a rock, and quite a few jelly fish. Harmless and beautiful, they pulsed through the water with ease. I attempted to take some video.

On our first dive we found these really interesting little Zebra crabs. No bigger than a penny, these guys blend in to their surroundings to such a degree that I didn’t know what everyone was making a fuss about at first. I snapped around 20 photos using my camera’s macro mode and natural light. (For a really close up photo scroll down)

One our second dive we ran across three well hidden sting rays in the sand. In fact I almost landed on one while taking a photo. I could only see its eyes sticking out of the sand. The one in the picture below is missing a chunk out of its face. They probably loved the cloudy water and sandy bottom. The second dive centered around a couple pinnacles of coral that were home to quite a few interesting fish. A couple of little holes were home to eels as well as unusually large amounts of small shrimp. The most interesting part about the dive were the 3 little pipe fish that I saw. At first I was very excited because I thought they were sea horses (they’re in the same family) but soon came to realize that they were pipe fish. They moved rather quickly, but I was lucky to get off one good photo. In other photos you can see that the pipe fish is pregnant. (For a better, edited, photo scroll down.

I had some time today at work, so I did a bit of photo editing on my good pipe fish and zebra crab photos. The edited versions below show you a more up close and personal look at these animals. Click to enlarge and to enjoy.

The video below gives you a good idea of the coral growth and under water landscape. Plus it has a cute jelly fish which is worth a view if nothing else.

The dive site has some really interesting things to see, if only I could see them properly. I now understand why Japanese people always carry dive lights, water conditions require a light. I may try and go back again this fall when the visibility improves. Maybe try another one day, two dives, event.

(Or maybe I’m just spoiled from my recent trip to Indonesia.)

There has been a lot of buzz the last few years about creating artificial reefs. A lot of government money has been spent sinking ships, oil rigs, and even train cars (as I wrote about before) in an attempt to create reefs to stimulate wildlife growth. But there is a downside. Several high profile artificial reef failures have drawn a lot of criticism from the public, and many question the effictiveness of the reefs. From the Newsweek Article:

“Even so, there’s the question of safety and durability. The federal government is still cleaning up an ill-fated 1970s attempt at artificial reefing that employed more than 2 million tires fastened together with flimsy metal clips off the coast of southern Florida. The tires came loose from one another during a rash of tropical storms. Since then, they have been rolling around the ocean floor, destroying natural reefs, polluting the water and occasionally washing up on shore. Wooden ships in Florida and junk cars in Alabama have met similar fates.”

While I would love to dive these locations, as I’m sure a lot of other divers would, the question of long term environmental impact. If things are quickly degrading in the water, causing large amount of trash to wash up on shores, maybe local governments should rethink sinking certain items. Maybe just stick to sinking NAVY ships.

While in Indonesia I fell in love with Cuttle Fish. These members of the squad family have amazing color changing abilities that look like something out of a movie. Recent studies show that these smart invertebrates have the ability to learn while still in their egg. From the very interesting article:

Usually, cuttlefish eggs lie in an envelope full of black ink. But this clears as the embryos grow older, leaving them growing within translucent eggs.

These unborn cuttlefish also have fully developed eyes. That leads the researchers to conclude that the cuttlefish embryos must peer through their eggs, and learn to recognise their prey, a behaviour which will help give them a head-start in life.

I feel bad every time I see one of these guys in a grocery store…

The blog Colourlovers has a really fun article on one of my favorite animals, the nudibranch (aka sea slug). The blog post is great for, if nothing else, some really great photos of nudis showing off their wide range of colors and shapes. While my nudibranch photos below are not nearly as colorful, they are still quite fun.

I can say without a doubt they are one of the most fun creatures to photograph. Slow moving, colorful, weird, and very photogenic. I once took 50 photos of one special nudi while diving in Indonesia just because it was so weird. Shoot, I’m even planning on doing a cold water dive this winter in Japan because the spot is known for its nudis. They are just so super weird.

The movie Finding Nemo has done a lot for ocean environmentalism. Kids everywhere suddenly became interested in the ocean and sea life. This was good. Whats bad is that the movie has created a demand for clown fish as pets. A big demand. One that has increased capture and poaching of wild clownfish world wide. From the article:

“Marine biologists say numbers of clownfish have fallen by 75 per cent in some areas in the five years since the hit movie first came out. They believe the demand among children, many in Britain, for their own orange, white and black striped Nemo lookalike is to blame.”

What confuses me is that clown fish are easily breed in captivity. So much so that it seems strange that a black market operation has sprung up to supply the world’s children with their own little Nemo. I was looking around a pet store the other day and they had a couple tanks full of clown fish for sale, all which were bred in captivity. It would be sad to find that the world’s clown fish population had been decimated because of a failure to breed them properly.