That Fish Blog – Aquarium Advice and Information

Dave here. Most of you have heard of making a “bucket list”, a list of things that you feel you have to do before you die to make your life complete.  Well, I am far too disorganized to have much of a list, but one thing that I would have had on by bucket list if I were to have made one, I have been lucky enough to do:  Diving on the Great Barrier Reef.

I just got back from a long awaited vacation to Australia, part of which I spent in Northern Queensland, where I was able to make a couple of visits to the outer reefs for some amazing diving and snorkeling fun.  Having been born in Australia, and still being an Australian citizen, there are questions that I have been asked all my life from friends and acquaintances. Have you ever seen a Kangaroo? Have you ever held a Koala Bear? What the heck is Vegamite?  Yes, I have seen a Kangaroo, and held a Koala, and Vegamite is an Aussie thing that defies description, if you know, you know.  The question that I have been asked a million times over the years that I have always had to answer “NO” to, I can finally answer “YES” to. YES, I have been diving on the Great Barrier Reef.  I have been a certified diver for 16 years, and ever since I began thinking about diving, the Barrier Reef has always been one of my target sites.

The reef was everything that I had hoped it would be, truly amazing.  I have done many interesting dives, mostly wreck diving in the Carolinas, and some diving in Florida and the Caribbean.  It just does not compare. The shear size of the Barrier Reef is overwhelming, you could spend a lifetime exploring, and still only see a small portion of it.   The pictures that are posted in the blog are from my trip out to the Agincourt Reef System, which is a portion of the outer Great Barrier Reef system about 40 miles off shore out of Port Douglas, Queensland

You could tell that I was the only reef geek on the dive boat.  While most of the divers on my boat were hoping to see a shark, or a turtle, or maybe a migrating whale (don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to experienced a dive with a whale), I spent most of my time in shallow water, looking in all the nooks and crannies, taking pictures of “nothing” as I heard someone say.  The diversity was amazing, and some of what I saw was quite surprising to me.  There were huge colonies of brown Sarcophyton and Lobophytum leather corals, growing very near the surface, and large colonies of White Pom Pom Xenia on the outer reef.

A couple of the things in particular that I was looking forward to seeing were some wild Clownfish, and Giant Clams, neither of which I have had the opportunity to see here in the Atlantic.  The reef delivered big time.  I saw some massive T. gigas clams that had to have been at least 4′ long, as well as T. maxima, T. crocea and T. squamosa.  Some of the clams were in fairly deep water, one of the T. gigas that I saw was in about 50 feet of water.

Clownfish litter the reef, wherever their host anemones can gain a foothold.  Common to many of the large coral boulders were clusters of Green Bubble Tip Anemones (E. quadricolor), which hosted mostly Clark’s (A. clarkii) clownfish, and also some Cinnamon (A. melanopus) clowns.  There were also quite a few spots where what I believe were Long-tentacle (M. doorensis) Anemones hosting mostly Clark’s and a few Maroon (P. biaculateus).  The most spectacular anemones that I saw were a few bright blue and purple colored Magnificent or Ritteri (Heteractis magnifica) Anemones hosting Pink Skunk Clowns (A. perideraion).  There were others that I caught glimpses of, but I was not sure of the species.

The large schools of fish that dart about the reef are equally impressive, one of the more brilliant schools that I saw was one of hundreds of Yellow and Blueback Fusilier (Caesio teres), which are quite common to the reef.  Also seen on the reef were large schools of Green Chromis that dart in and out of the reef formations as they sense danger.

I hope you enjoy the pictures from my visit.  I think that this experience needs to appear on my list a few more times, as once was definitely not enough.

You may check out lots more underwater pictures I took of the GBR at the That Fish Place Facebook page.

Until Next time,

Dave

September was a bad month for Honolulu Harbor and all of the fantastic fish, corals and wildlife that called it home. On September 09, 2013 over 233,000 gallons of molasses spilled into the harbor, sinking to the sea floor and suffocating everything in it’s wake. The cracked pipe that allowed the mess to flow into the harbor was repaired within days, but the damage caused by the viscous mess has been rapid and devastating.

You think of molasses and you don’t think of widespread death, but flood a pristine marine environment with sugary syrup and that’s the result. The heavy fluid ends up being lethal in several ways.  The goop clogs gills, suffocating fish quickly. It coats corals and inverts, robbing them of light, oxygen and water flow vital to their ability to thrive. The sugars are also a rich food source for marine bacteria which reproduce in massive numbers, depleting dissolved oxygen as their numbers grow.  The dissolved sugar alters the pH of the water and also creates what’s called an osmotic effect, basically dehydrating marine organisms whose living cells expel water in an attempt to equalize with their external environment. Within hours the death toll began to rise, and to date thousands upon thousands of fish, inverts, corals and even other animals like sea turtles have perished. 

Unlike oil spills that may be wicked off of the surface of the water, the nature of this spill means that cleanup of the molasses itself is not an option. The syrup will dissolve and nature will slowly eat it up and wash it out of the harbor and into the sea. Clean-up in this case means fix the leak, monitor the progress of the damage, and collect the carnage of dead sea creatures that wash up on shores and pile up in shallow areas so that predators like sharks and barracuda aren’t attracted to area. While some creatures may bounce back and return to the harbor pretty quickly, it may be years until the coral reefs, vital to the economy and ecology, in the harbor recover.

What a sad situation. Unfortunately, the only real course of action is to allow nature to clean up another man made mess. On the bright side, nature knows how to take care of herself, and despite the scope of the problem, this particular spill is in many ways still better than oil or some other chemical deluge. Now all anyone can really do is wait and see…

While browsing at aquarium and fish-related websites, books, magazines, other media, it can be easy to take for granted how difficult the beautiful images you see were to capture on film….until you try to take a photo of your own tank. It’s not as easy as taking a snapshot at a family picnic. Aquarium photographs often turn out blurry, overexposed, underexposed, discolored and otherwise unrecognizable, a far cry from what you were trying to capture. So how do you get calendar-worthy snapshots of your tank? Here are a few tips and tricks I’ve come across: Read More »

It’s no secret that cephalopods have amazing skill at camouflaging themselves to avoid predation. You may have seen the unique tactics of the mimic octopus in recent years, or you may have been lucky enough to see a squid or cuttlefish in action, changing color and skin texture with lightning-quick speed. Their abilities are intriguing to us and necessary for their survival in the big ocean blue. Read More »

Many stories have come to light through recent years discussing the plight of coral reefs around the world; overfishing, destructive collecting methods, pollution, and ship traffic damage have taken a serious toll.  A number of new studies show that an even greater threat has emerged in 2010, extreme water temperatures.

Earlier this year, the region of Indo-pacific reefs known as the Coral Triangle (a roughly triangular area that encompasses Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste) endured record surface water temperatures. These extreme water temperatures caused a mass coral bleaching event that may prove to be the worst on record. Read More »