Quick Maui Dive: Five Graves' Eels

Dwarf Moray Eel
White Mouth Moray Eel
   Moray Heaven!
  Back on Maui for a quick visit we had to fit in a dive at one of our favorite shore dive locations, five graves. This is the same location that all the tour operators have dubbed to be "Turtle Town", but we weren't going diving for turtles. Instead we look for nudibranchs, frogfish, and other hard to find creatures that may escape the usual glimpse from the snorkel masses.
  Our dive quickly turned into a moray eel bonanza. We had several dwarf morays, cute little 6-8 inch fully grown, and some huge white mouth moray eels about 3 ft long. An undulated moray showed off its razor sharp teeth and a zebra moray contrasted with its toothless grin. As I tried to get a picture right down the mouth of the undulated a large fish swam in between my camera lens and the eel. This happens sometimes as I concentrate on getting the picture, but this time the fish stayed there, which is a little abnormal. So I glanced up, over my camera only to come face to face with a huge white mouth moray eel inches away, mouth agape.
Undulated Moray Eel
Cleaner wrasse cleaning inside the eel's mouth
Zebra Moray
Not afraid?
  After a little initial shock, I realized that this eel wanted to get in on the cleaning action that the other eel was getting. Little cleaner wrasse zipped around picking off dead skin, parasites, and food particles. My patience paid off when one of the little cleaner wrasse boldly swam inside the mouth of the eel! I witnessed this several times before being called off by Heidi to go see a baby yellow frogfish!





Ewa Fang Blenny, these fish mimic the movements and coloration of cleaner wrasse to get close to fish. Then they take a bite!
Baby frogfish up close
Tiny, tiny baby frogfish

  We didn't end of finding too many nudibranchs on this dive but the fish made up for it. Baby frogfish, Ewa fang blennies, and a scorpionfish showed up. We did manage to see a couple of flatworms, a kangaroo nudibranch, a violet-gilled, and some egg eating nudibranchs all chowing down on some spanish dancer nudibranch eggs. The bright red coloration of their pigments means they have been eating a lot of the pinkish eggs.
 



Kangaroo Nudibranch

Egg eating nudibranchs feasting on the pink eggs of a spanish dancer nudibranch

www.daimarsphotos.com

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