Incredible Fish of Bali

Five pictures of frogfish, five different colors. This is typical to see here in Bali after just a few dives. We did six dives in Tulamben and came back with five wildly different colors of frogfish. They are ambush predators so they camouflage in with their surroundings, and then with one of the fastest movements of any animal, they gulp in unaware fish passing too closely by. These frogfish that we found ranged in size from the size of a quarter (white), to the size of a fist (yellow).

   Next on the list were scorpionfish. They are also an ambush predator, lying in wait for prey. My favorite scorpionfish to look for is the leaf scorpionfish. It camouflages itself as a submerged leaf, gently swaying in the current back and forth. Just like frogfish they come in all colors. We found a few yellow ones, a beautiful white one, and a couple of their bigger giant scorpionfish relatives. 

  These scorpionfish are beautiful, but deadly at the same time. They have poisonous spines lining their fins, which is one reason I tell people never to grab onto the rocks. It might not be a rock after all.

 My other favorite fish to look for while in this part of the world make up a long list. There are beautiful angel fish that we don't get to see in Hawaii, tiny pygmy sea horses that are so small people didn't even know they existed until recently, bumphead parrotfish, anemone fish in their beautiful anemone hosts, and ribbon eels.

  One thing I always have to do when I come to dive Tulamben, is an early morning dawn dive to see the resident school of giant bumphead parrot fish. For decades this school of bumpheads has been residing in the wreck of the Liberty at night. If you come too late in the morning they will have already woken up and headed out to who knows where. But they are amazing to see, being about half of my size, with huge foreheads that the males use to fight each other for dominance. Their massive teeth are fused together to form a beak used for easily breaking off big chunks of coral to eat and digest. And quite often that coral will work its way through the parrotfish's digestive system and be ejected out the back end as a poof of finely ground sand.

  The last fish I have pictured here is a very unusual one, the ribbon eel. We only have moray eels and snake eels back in Hawaii so this is a real treat for us. They are not often seen but when you do see a ribbon eel it is usually sticking its head out of its hole like the two pictured here. They can disappear back inside its hole and hide from sight so we were quite lucky to get a few shots of these. The juveniles are black, the adult males are blue, and the adult females are yellow. It is believed that ribbon eels all start out as male, then change to female if necessary. Pretty unusual story for a pretty unusual fish. It is only fitting that they resemble some mythical dragon out of ancient Chinese lore.