We had a lovely dinner at our house last night with thirteen of us there consuming Eunie’s delicious Midwestern American farm meal. A special guest was there, but I’m not going to keep blasting her name out over the web, because I think that it’s time for her to have a chance to enjoy a bit of privacy. It was a typical Madang dinner party. There was a pile of “happy shoes” at the door, good food, good friends, and good Australian wine. Everybody came to our house by boat, so even the departing was fun. Everybody walks out to the dock, gets into their boats and we all wave bye-bye as if we’ll always see each other tomorrow. And, we usually do.

When I saw the sunrise this morning, the word industrial  popped into my mind:

It seems that I am a compulsive titler – is that a word, someone who titles things? I don’t know. If it isn’t, it should be. Every image has to have a title floating around in my head.

Oh, I can see that I’m boring you. Let’s get to the miserable failure that is the subject of today’s post. This could have been a perfectly good image of a Scorpionfish:

We had just gotten into the water at Planet Rock and I was fussing around making certain that our anchor was not doing any damage and watching divers and counting noses when Richard Jones pointed out this Scorpionfish. It was such a peculiar shape and so well camouflaged that I really wanted to get a good image of it. Sadly, I had time only for a quick snap. Unfortunately,as so often happens, the camera did not focus where I wanted it to. The focus on the rear half of the fish is tolerable, but the head is blurry. Still, it is so odd that it’s worth a look.

I have a lot of trouble figuring out what is a sponge and what is a sea squirt. I was all set to identify this as some kind of sea squirt. Fortunately, I sent the image to my Facebook friend Ana Karinna Carbonini of the Laboratorio de Biología Marina at the Universidad Simón Bolívar. She said that she thinks it is a Sponge, possibly a species of Leuconoide  or Asconoide:

You can take a sip of coffee now while you absorb that. Have a quick glance over your shoulder to see if the boss is lurking about.

At the request of a friend, here are a couple of Anemonefish shots from our dives on Saturday. This is a Red and Black Anemonefish (Amphiprion melanopus)  peeking out from the safety of its host anemone:

I particularly like this shot, because it shows a very typical behavior. Anemonefish will often alternate between dashing about frantically around the anemone, coming up close to you to investigate or even take a nip of your finger and then plunging down within the tentacles to peer out and observe the result of the attack. I get more fun from watching anemonefish than anything else under the water, with the possible exception of some of my dive buddies.

For the Disney fans, here are some genuine Nemo wannabes. The Clown Anemonefish (Amphiprion percula)  never fails to live up to its name:

One seems to be shouting at me. By the way, I would call this a failed shot also. Careful examination will reveal that it was a snap shot and I did not take the time to check the focus carefully. Of course, if I had, I would have missed the shout.

Finally, I’ll show you this artsy shot of the beautiful clear view of the reef near Alexishafen late on Sunday afternoon:

We were all peering over the side of Felmara  as we stopped for a swim. The water was crystal clear and the pinkish sunset was alternating with the deep green of the two metres of water under the boat. A little bit of magic.

A little bit of magic is all it takes.

Well, I’m actually writing Tuesday’s post on Tuesday. For the last three days, I’ve been play catch-up, since I had to hustle so much for some magazine articles that I am working on. I’m going to have to get Eunie to start cracking the whip two weeks before deadline times so that I don’t get so messed up again. I’m such a slacker. I never used to wait until the last moment for an assignment. I don’t like working under pressure. I don’t know what’s gone wrong in the last year or so. I seem to always be hurrying the last few days before a deadline and I don’t like that. I try not to let it affect the quality of my work, but I think that I’m really kidding myself about that.

Anyway, here’s a strange critter that could spoil your day much more than a missed deadline. In fact, if you were seriously stung by the spines on his dorsal fins, you could be dead,  not just late:

It’s one of the many varieties of Scorpionfish that live in our waters. Here’s another one:

From the front, it is very difficult to see the eyes. Try enlarging the image by clicking it and comparing it to the previous image.You might be surprised where you find the eyes in this image. The “monkey head” figure, is just a fluke of camouflage and the dark depressions where you might think to find the eyes is just a trick of the light and shadows.

The Dwarf Hawkfish, though only half as long as your finger, is so full of colour that it looks as if it were wearing a clown suit:

We have quite a variety of hawkfish here. I should mention that the SEARCH box on the sidebar of Madang – Ples Bilong Mi  works quite well. Just enter “hawkfish” into the box and press <ENTER>.  You’ll see all of the posts in which the word appears.

Here is another shot that you may have seen before. I got this one at Planet Rock, I believe. It is a school of mixed Pickhandle Barracuda and Bigeye Trevally:

They tend to swim around in giant circles, so, if you get inside the circle, you can snap away happily for quite a while without having to chase them.

This is one of my best nudibranch shots. It is also one of our most colourful nudibranchs. The word means “naked lung”. You can see the breathing organs at the right side – the tail end:

Last, but certainly not least, is the Netfin Grouper. This fish seems somehow dignified to me, as if it were the undersea version of a banker or stock broker in a pin-striped suit. Whoops, maybe I did a little faux pas  there. Putting the word dignified in the same sentence with bankers and stock brokers these days might rub some people the wrong way. Oh well, it’s not for me to decide. I put my money under the mattress these days. I lose less that way:

We’ll have to see if tomorrow something else pops into my head beside fish. I certainly hope so and that I have time to write about it.