Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Puppy dog eyes

Something about Diodon porcupinefish reminds me of puppies. They always look kind of curious and sad at the same time.

porcupinefish 2

Unfortunately an (thankfully becoming rarer) occasional party trick of divemasters at some holiday resorts is to pester these fish to inflate (they are a type of pufferfish). This stresses the fish and can leave them unable to look after themselves. If you do dive and see someone do this please don't encourage them by taking photographs - as you can see porcupinefish look quite cute enough in their uninflated state. Also please don't tip or give further business to any professional dive operator that does this and let them know why.

porcupinefish 3

Also a larger specimen like this huge one is just as likely to not inflate but instead turn round and use those teeth you can see to surgically amputate a harasser's fingers (which gets no sympathy from me - if you google you can find pictures of exactly what they can do - not for the squeamish!).

No comments: