Dive #77 - Rich Torkington's Dive Log

A poor picture of a gorgeous fish – the multicolor angelfish is
an uncommon site on the reef above around 100 feet.
Videograph by Rich Torkington in Kosrae 2001

Dive Journal: We head south for the Walung Coral Gardens area this morning, aiming at Mooring Buoy 27. The surface swells, however, get too big for the low dive boat, and Katrina and Ben decide instead to head morth back to Hiroshi Point.

There is a nice daytime crinoid at some depth. Katrina points out several uncommon fish while we are at 95 feet, a Helfrich’s dartfish and a multicolor angelfish. The multicolor angelfish occurs only below 20m depth, and the Helfrich’s dartfish is a rarity above 40m depth. I get only a brief clip of video of both fishes, but this clip later gets a few cheers from Katrina back at the restaurant review.

Katrina also points out a shrimpgoby at around 80 feet, hovering near the shrimp’s burrow down in a tiny sandy clearing between the corals. I practically stand on my head to get a shot of him and I am glad I did. The shrimp comes out of his hole during the clip and it is kind of cool seeing the synergy between the two creatures. I later identify this fish as a graceful shrimpgoby, also a relative rarity. Unfortunately, the camera movement was too great to capture any decently framed pictures.

Later in the dive, I spy a truly beautiful mature peacock grouper being cleaned by a bluestreak cleaner wrasse. Also caught sight of an arc-eye hawkfish, speckled butterflyfish, and a red-streaked blenny. A great dive, especially for it’s sighting of the relatively rare fishes.