Japan’s Little Fish with a Big Heart

MANY JAPANESE DIVERS LOVE UNDERSEA CREATURES, particularly the home-grown varieties living in abundance along the country’s craggy volcanic coastlines and offshore islands. They also have an infatuation for the eccentric […]

JAPANESE DIVERS LOVE pufferfish nests, crop-circle-like sand structure pufferfish love nests, Torquigener albomaculosus, 6-foot egg nest, Amami Ōshima, UNESCO’s World Heritage List Alert Diver magazine Q4 2023

Fangs

Fangs are an adaptation that have benefited the blenny species enabling them to ward of predators. Some species of blennies have poisonous fangs. Read more about the importance of fangs.

Yellow fangblenny hangs out in the water

Ghost Hunters

Ghostpipefishes are incredibly hard to find — spending most of their short lives in the open ocean as bits of plankton before eventually settling in protected coastlines, where they discreetly blend into the shadows and breed. Read more about encounters with ghostpipefish.

Mated pair of silvery-white ghostpipefish

Hachijō-jima’s Sea of Exquisite Fishes

On our first trip to Hachijō-jima in 2015, we were in the company of friends on a mission to photograph a scientifically undocumented pygmy seahorse the size of a pumpkin seed. Even after a concerted four-day search, the tiny target eluded our efforts until a single seahorse miraculously materialized in the last minutes of the last dive on the last day.

Spawning Japanese island blennies (Helcogramma nesion)

Hit List

Of the fish sighted around Bay Islands, Honduras in the last 20 years, the writers compiled a list of several they had yet to interact with. Here are their tales.

A redcheek goby has a black-and-green striped body, with a red-striped head

Team Flying Fish

Flying fish can be hard to spot, but once you do, they’re fantastic creatures. Learn more about how one group of divers worked together to spot flying fish.

Bug-eyed, young sailor flying fish

Blue-Ringed Daze

What diver isn’t enchanted by an octopus, especially a beguiling beauty with the reputation of an assassin? Even though we searched for legendary blue-ringed octopuses across their territorial waters of the Asia-Pacific, it took five years before we made our first sighting in Lembeh Strait.

Smaller males attach tightly to the females’ mantles for extended periods while mating.

Journey’s End

In attempt to find larval fishes and invertebrates, two divers attempt to dive at dark. After several foiled attempts and an onslaught of minnows, they were able to find one cephalopod.

A two-inch long orange trumpetfish

In the Middle of the Sea

Anthias anthias, or the swallowtail sea pearch, is in the grouper family. Two divers were eager to see them in the wild as they are considered the “mother of all Anthias species.”

An orange swallowtail seaperch cruises about in the ocean.

How to Save a Fish

In response to the declining grouper populations, conservation organizations have paired with local government to spearhead initiatives. Their efforts have worked and populations have grown.

An aggregation of grouper swim around the ocean.