I’m sitting here wondering what to say while I listen to some very cool East London Jazz from Seal, which dates my taste in music somewhere in the Early Bronze Age. Later I’m going to do some Steely Dan, maybe Babylon Sisters.  So, I’m all moody and overworked and and I had a bad night walking around in the dark at a friend’s house with a big rock in each hand while attending to an armed robbery. More about that later. So, right now I’m in the frame of mind to give the world The Big Blue Finger!

And (brace yourself)  here it is:

Regular readers will recognise one of God’s funnier jokes:  the wonderfully whimsical Blue Starfish (Linckia laevigata).  Actually not all of them are blue. Most are a sort of dull green or yellowish brown colour. I can never help laughing when I see one. I think to myself, “Yeah, I can dig it.”

Since my mood is wandering, let’s look ahead to our next Pagan-Turned-Christian holiday by absorbing the lemony wonderfulness of these Christmas Tree Worms (Spirobranchus giganteus):These are among the amazing tiny creatures that I never tire of seeing. It’s fun to see how close you can get to them before pop back into their holes and disappear.

Since I have a few live coral keepers out there who watch this space for mouth-watering samples of what they could be playing with, if they only had a big enough tank, here’s a nice little coral community:I’m no expert, for pity’s sake, but I think that I can see seven different species of coral in this area which would measure about one square metre.

Here’s one of the better shots that I have managed of Clark’s Anemonefish (Amphiprion clarkii):It’s not much good as a specimen shot, because you can hardly see the second white bar which is an identifying feature of this fish, as is the white bar in front of the yellow caudal fin. What you can  see, however are its tiny, razor sharp teeth (and they do  bite!), the clear cornea of his right eye, and a lot of detail in the front white band, which is very difficult to capture, because of the huge difference in brightness between the black and the white. Click to get a larger image.

Now, since I”m not feeling quite so grumpy as before, I shall show you a grumpy fish:This Coral Grouper (Cephalopholis miniatafdsa)  clearly did not care to be bothered.

That’s pretty much the way I feel today. Eunie has gone to Port Moresby to do battle with the Department of Immigration and Naturalisation concerning her Permanent Residency. I can hardly think about anything else. I told her to not return to Madang until she had it in hand (as if I could order her around . . . makes me giggle just to think of it). I told her very sternly.

She gave me that smile. You know, the one that Mona Lisa did so well.

If you’ve ever even heard of a salp, I’d be surprised. They are seldom seen by humans who are not intimately involved with the sea, literally submerged in it. While I have seen large specimens on several occasions while diving, I’ve never had my camera with me. So much for luck. To make it worse, Trevor Hattersley recently got a fairly good shot of a salp from his boat:It’s worth a look here and here to see the details of these critters (actually a bunch of critters travelling together – a colonial animal). There are many different kinds. As you can see, this one is almost completely transparent. With just a bit of imagination you can see a hint of the segmentation, if you click to enlarge.

So much for the monster.

I showed you an image of a Coral Grouper (Cephalopholis miniata) yesterday the tail of which I had accidentally amputated in my rush to get the shot. I thought that you might like to see the whole fish. I just happen to have a couple of nice specimen shots from a while back:

I really like this fish. It’s pretty beyond reason. Click on these to have a look at the shading around the caudal fin (tail):That’s a fairly serious fish.

I also have comical fish. Clown fish, in fact. This is the real Clown Anemonefish (Amphiprion percula) – no kidding:Disney did not have to do much to this fish to turn it into Nemo.

For those peculiar folk like me who prefer a specimen shot, here it is:It’s worth clicking on this one to see the incredible violet shading on the edges of the fins, particularly the pectoral.

An now, since I’m in a nutty mood (actually got a couple of things to work correctly at the office today), let me give you the nut’s nemesis, the Squirrelfish, specifically the Blackfin Squirrelfish (Neoniphon opercularis):

This is one of those fish that is easy to overlook when diving. It’s not too flashy and it plays hide-and-seek with a vengeance. However, if you can get a good look at one, you begin to appreciate it.

I’ve been rummaging through my thousands of shots that you’ve never seen. Some of them are not too shabby. Expect a fairly steady diet of fish for a while.

I’ll get into the explanation of the confusing title of this post later. First, you have to get up with me at 05:30 to come out and see the sunrise. It wasn’t particularly thrilling this morning. I caught the first light here with three exposures of 15 seconds each stitched together in a panorama with Photoshop:The water was very calm this morning and the long exposures turned it into a mirror.

While I was at it, I made this new header for Madang – Ples Bilong Mi:

The goofy font is called “Thriller”;  I have no idea why. I suppose that they had to call it something.

Yesterday, I left a “Mystery Fish” image with you so that someone could identify it. The result of that experiment was underwhelming. Our own Lucy Proctor, a home-town girl, answered correctly with the common name and  the taxonomic name! Meet the Longnose Hawkfish (Oxycirrhites typus)  in all its mighty splendor:

So, why the long, redundant title? In this case, I’m being a little pedantic. The common names are simply minor variations. In many cases, however the same fish will have completely different names in different places. To test this I Googled:

• long-nosed hawkfish – 9,380 hits
• longnosed hawkfish – 6,450 hits
• longnose hawkfish – about 14,000 hits

The hyphen in the first entry doesn’t seem to make any difference, probably because Google ignores it, even if you surround the word with double quotes. In the second entry, longnosed, Google asked me if I meant longnose, so it must be doing something to see what the favoured term is – very cute. “Longnose” is the clear winner. Here’s what’s interesting:

• “Oxycirrhites typus” – 8,420 hits

The correct taxonomic name falls somewhere in the middle of the number of references. Okay, okay, it’s not  very interesting. I’m just filling space here.

This may sound silly to some, but I’ve been trying to get these shots for more than ten years. It’s a fairly rare fish. The only place where I know that it can be seen almost without fail is on the The Henry Leith  near Wongat Island.

The little devils are very shy. They like to keep something between you and them. That’s why they are so hard to capture. In the shot above, the best I’ve ever managed, there is still a bit of pesky  coral between me and the fish. Both of these first two shots were exposed with natural light, no flash.

If you can get one to come out in the open, you can’t get very close or it will tease you mercilessly by moving each time it sees your finger tightening on the shutter release. At least that’s how it seems. The whole operation involves a lot of contorted positions, grappling to find a hold without damaging anything, and holding of breath until tunnel vision sets in. Not to brag, but one really has to work to get shots such as these.

Just to be contrary, I turned on the flash for this shot. The colours here are what you will see in most images of this fish. It’s prettier, but it is not as accurate as the shot taken with available light and corrected for tint and colour temperature:It is a lovely little fish and well worth the effort to capture its beauty.

Here is an image demonstrating good luck – bad luck. In a one second interval I had a chance for a perfect image of a Coral Grouper (Cephalopholis miniata):

As you can see, I blew the chance. The now tail-less fish will not be decorating my desktop.

Finally, because I’m not finished bothering you, here’s another nutsy header that I made up this morning while Eunie was getting ready to go to the office:

Silliness and whimsy keep me feeling young.