Achoo

Sorry I did not cover my mouth, said the gurnard perch, but we have no mask wearing restrictions down here! That spray of particles in the water is not Covid but the chewy bits of my last morsel! I watched this little guy for some time, curious he was not at all perturbed by my […]

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Old Friend

It has been way too long since I have been diving. What with work, the weather, too cold, too wet, reluctant dive buddies and any other number of reasons it just simply has not happened since July! Last Thursday night I needed to travel south for non diving reasons and decided that since I was […]

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Face 2 Face

Just imagine being two inches tall, opening your eyes, turning on your torch and coming face to face with … Assuming you are still with me you’d quickly become entranced by those amazing blue-green opalesque eyes and what at first seemed ugly becomes beautiful. You can spot a gurnard perch from quite a distance at […]

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Opal Eyes

There are many fishes local to a region that you will never find in an aquarium or in the fish markets or even in National Geographic. They are either poisonous, uninteresting, commercially unviable or just plain ugly. The poor Little Scorpionfish (Maxillicosta scabriceps) seems to fall into all categories. Those eyes however are magnificent and […]

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Electric Squid

Our Rapid Bay night dive was meant to be about little critters, especially nudibranchs smaller than half my little finder but when this Southern Calamari (Sepioteuthis australis) came into my view I was suitably distracted. In fact I was so distracted in the strong current that I had drifted 70m or more from the jetty […]

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