Anyway the return comes with one of my favourite subjects, reef-based ambush predators. This is another frogfish. We've looked at the giant frogfish in the past and this is a smaller species. Smaller froggies are generally a pain to id specifically and can need things like fin ray counts just because each species (and for that matter the same individual on different days) can look very varied. I think we'll probably go with clown frogfish (Antennarius maculatus) on this one though
She's doing her best impression of a rock covered with an encrusting sponge and coralline algae and is basically just chilling at 20-something metres in the South China Sea. She's not luring at the time of picture and I'm fairly confident in calling her she because males are tiny in this genus. As you can imagine finding such well camouflaged species on a dive is pretty tricky. The local dive guides in the Philippines will generally have a pretty good handle on the location of froggies in their patch but its a real achievement to find one of your own. On my last trip I found one by myself in 48 dives, compared to 5 in 42 the time before. Either I'm getting out of practice or the guides are getting better. Probably both.
Turtle feeding frenzy pics coming soon. I promise.
2 comments:
I was absolutely delighted to see your blog feed highlighted on my Bloglines list. So glad you're back on line. Great photo and interesting description of the frogfish. I always look forward to learning about the undersea world from you.
You speak of relocation - within the UK or away?
Prompted by your post, I read the BBC description of the first day of the Test match and realized that, after decades away from home, cricket terminology has disappeared from my vocabulary. It took me ages to figure out what was going on :)
I haven't had the courage to move to Beta Blogger. The old blogger seems to be serving me well. Is there a good reason to change?
Thank you Pam, I'm very glad to be plugged in again.
I'm outside the UK now with more details on where I am coming soon.....
It does however look like I spoke too soon in the cricket stakes
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