Baby Cuttlefish & Big Mama

Miguel's Diving staff gets a little stir crazy during off-season. This week we braved the growing swells of May to check out a new muck site. Directly below the dive boat, hiding in the shadow of a pink sea pen was the first of three baby cuttlefish we found during the dive. All were merely the size of a thumbnail and no doubt recently hatched. It was pink like the sea pen and absolutely still. Only a careful observer like Yunis our dive guide would ever spot it. Beneath its semitransparent body, you could see its cuttlebone in the camera's viewfinder, a body part only found cuttlefish. The next baby was brown and hovering among some dead leaves but too skittish to photograph. The third one lay perfectly still among Molle tunicates, only its distinctive half-moon eye slit betraying its presence. Toward the end of the dive we discovered one of the largest adult cuttlefish we have ever seen, its girth bigger than a dive tank's diameter. This Big Mama drifted unconcerned over the sand bottom for a spectacular photo. Click the thumbnail to see a larger photo of a baby cuttlefish.