- Messages
- 93,490
- Reaction score
- 91,864
- Location
- On the Fun Side of Trump's Wall
- # of dives
- 2500 - 4999
Yesterday Cheng and I witnessed something very strange on Zee's Reef.
At one point in the dive she spotted three buffalo sculpins sitting side-by-side-by-side. Thinking it was a good photo op, she stopped to take a picture. Along comes this big rock crab and chases one of the sculpins away just as she's getting ready to take the picture. No worries, it's still a good shot, so she takes the picture. As she's lining up for a second shot, this Dawson's star moves in and reaches for the sculpins, who seemed totally oblivious to its presence. But the starfish reaches over the sculpins and tries to grab the rock crab ... but the predator soon became the predatee as the crab grabbed his tentacle and started eating it. But of course, starfish have plenty of legs, and soon a few more start reaching for the crab. This turned into something of a fencing match, which went on for a couple minutes as the crab was backing away, pulling little suckers off the bottom of the starfishes legs as he went and eating them.
Surreal ... never saw anything face down a Dawson's star before. But then a wolf eel comes along to check out what's going on ... only to get attacked by a ling cod that bites off half his left pectoral fin. Wow ... it happened quick, and the wolfie looked like it was in a lot of pain. It squirmed around on the bottom for a couple minutes, then approached Cheng and tried to crawl up underneath her. She said later she thought it wanted a pet and a hug because it was hurting. I motioned for her to back away, thinking that despite their usually friendly demeanor, the wolfie IS a wild animal ... and wounded. Then it came swimming toward me. Of course, my camera was clicking away ... I got a shot of the wounded fin ... then a "tonsil shot" as the darn thing swam straight into my camera.
An interesting few moments in an otherwise ordinary dive ... but those few minutes felt like Bob & Cheng in Wonderland or something ... trying to figure out who was gonna eat who next ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
At one point in the dive she spotted three buffalo sculpins sitting side-by-side-by-side. Thinking it was a good photo op, she stopped to take a picture. Along comes this big rock crab and chases one of the sculpins away just as she's getting ready to take the picture. No worries, it's still a good shot, so she takes the picture. As she's lining up for a second shot, this Dawson's star moves in and reaches for the sculpins, who seemed totally oblivious to its presence. But the starfish reaches over the sculpins and tries to grab the rock crab ... but the predator soon became the predatee as the crab grabbed his tentacle and started eating it. But of course, starfish have plenty of legs, and soon a few more start reaching for the crab. This turned into something of a fencing match, which went on for a couple minutes as the crab was backing away, pulling little suckers off the bottom of the starfishes legs as he went and eating them.
Surreal ... never saw anything face down a Dawson's star before. But then a wolf eel comes along to check out what's going on ... only to get attacked by a ling cod that bites off half his left pectoral fin. Wow ... it happened quick, and the wolfie looked like it was in a lot of pain. It squirmed around on the bottom for a couple minutes, then approached Cheng and tried to crawl up underneath her. She said later she thought it wanted a pet and a hug because it was hurting. I motioned for her to back away, thinking that despite their usually friendly demeanor, the wolfie IS a wild animal ... and wounded. Then it came swimming toward me. Of course, my camera was clicking away ... I got a shot of the wounded fin ... then a "tonsil shot" as the darn thing swam straight into my camera.
An interesting few moments in an otherwise ordinary dive ... but those few minutes felt like Bob & Cheng in Wonderland or something ... trying to figure out who was gonna eat who next ...
... Bob (Grateful Diver)
