Granddaddy Moray

With a morning of suddenly calm seas, Miguel’s Diving staff jumped in car yesterday and went diving in a protected bay by a beached shipwreck. Since we had never been diving at this spot, we didn’t know what to expect. The rocky beach quickly becomes a shallow sand shelf that leads to a steep slope. The slope alternates between rocky outcrops and sand. Although coral cover is very sparse, we did find a couple of corals rare in other Gorontalo diving locations, as well as several colonial anemones that look like giant green scrub brushes when everyone’s tentacles are extended. We have not seen these before.

The area’s rocks prove highly attractive to dense congregations of fish, especially juvenile angelfish and cardinalfish. Pink anthias (Pseudanthias hypselosoma), known to be quite common in Indonesia, provide prey aplenty for prowling lionfish. Colorful shrimps are also quite abundant and use various holes in the substrate as shelter. One area was swarming with Reticulated hinge-beak shrimp (Rhynchocinetes brucei, 1994), a relatively new specie.

The really really big surprise was the Giant moray (Gymnothorax javanicus) that made all others we have seen look like mere scrawny offspring. Although this specie is quite common here, this granddaddy was about three times the size of others. Or should we say, the Mother of All Morays?

On the return pass at shallower depths, we were suddenly enveloped in a school of hundreds of Purse-eyed scad (Selar crummenthalmops). They are an important food source for local people. Passing by the shallow edge of the wreck, Blacktail sergeants (Abudefduf lorenzi) darted out. Seen for the first time in Gorontalo, this uncommon specie ranges only from Sulawesi and the Moluccas in Indonesia to the Solomon Islands.