Blue Water Coral Reef Mangroves & Archerfish
Photo's by
Graham Abbott, Matthew Addison, Eric Cheng, Yeang Ch'ng, Colin Gans, Colin Robson, Mike Williams & Norbert Wu
Click on images for larger view and more information about image
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| Coral reefs thriving below the clear blue water mangroves |
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| Hard coral reef below mangrove |
Archerfish in the mangroves |
Soft coral reef |
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| Schooling archerfish in mangroves |
Flat, clear water & |
Schooling garfish in mangroves |
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| A pair of cuttlefish mating beneath the mangroves... |
Later on the cuttlefish plants its eggs beneath the mangrove |
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Sea grass habitat |
Sunken mangroves |
Corals hanging from |
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Mangroves on |
Anemone, clownfish |
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Dense mangrove |
Stumps of mangrove |
The deep moody |
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Mangroves & Archerfish
My first ever mangrove dives were during my stay helping out at Operation Wallacea on Hoga Island within Wakatobi. Here I helped with the study of sea slugs (opistobranchs). The opistobranch team leader Lindsay Warren had been waiting for the right conditions to go to a different area in search of new or unknown species of sea slugs. Lindsay asked if I would be interested to join the team in to the mangroves the next day, of course I was made up with the chance to check out this new environment. We had a very interesting and most unique dive in this strange new environment. During our dives here I even managed to find a new species which can viewed on the Sea Slug Forum at http://www.seaslugforum.net/display.cfm?id=1823. Not so long ago I heard from Dr. Mark Erdmann about the very unique Blue Water Mangrove area in Irian Jaya, I simply had to go and check it out!
It was on a trip with a few very well known photo pro's that I first dived this area. I had not even planned it with this group I was not all that sure I wanted to start a trip with a full day of exploring, needless to say the ocean gods were with us and on our way down to Misool we hit very strong currents. When I woke in the morning I noticed we were no where near where we were supposed to be. A quick check with the skipper and a look on the charts and I noticed that we had just gone past the Blue Water Mangroves. It would have been another 3-4 hours if we had tried to continue to the planned destination. I asked the skipper to turn round and head into the mangrove area. Here is went in search of a few interesting areas to drop the divers, I found a few channels and a fantastic reef area. This area was so good, we spent a whole day and could have easily done another day though we were on our way to Fakfak, this was out target area, with the first ever group of hardcore recreational divers to this area!
Archerfish
I had always thought that this fish was Amazonian, so it came as a big
pleasant surprise when I first noticed these fish in Irian Jaya. Then when I
first dived the Blue Water Mangrove area I was really blown away, here we
saw schools of Archerfish, with a little patience it's even possible to
watch their very unique feeding behaviour. Archerfish have adapted in a very
clever way... this maybe even one of the most unique feeding methods known
underwater. Archerfish feed by swimming beneath the mangrove roots, when
they see a fly or other prey sitting within the roots above, they swim
beneath them and spit a small narrow jet of water at the animal, knocking it
off it's perch, when the prey falls to the water the archerfish simply swims
by and gobbles it up! This means that this very unique fish has the ability
to understand refraction of water.
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