Watching behavior is a favorite pastime of many Lembeh divers. Animals feed on other animals, fish spawn with one another, and of course there is plenty of egg laying going on. This week in Lembeh, Two Fish Divers guests were shocked to see a Shaggy Scorpionfish gobble down a Wonderpus! For a moment it looked like the Wonderpus had a fighting chance as its tentacles braced against the face of the Scorpionfish, but in the end the Scorpionfish won the fight. And this isn’t the first time a Wonderpus has seen the inside of a fish’s mouth. A few months back Two Fish divers saw a Wonderpus eaten by a flounder. However, the dive-guide’s gentle tap on the flounders nose made it spit the dazed Wonderpus back onto the sand! For now it remains 1:1 for Wonderpus against predatory fish…
As for spawning behavior, you can’t beat Lembeh’s Mandarin fish dive! Guests often ask if there’s any chance of actually seeing Mandarinfish, and we assure you there is! The Mandarinfish in Lembeh are big, beautiful, plentiful, and anything but shy when it comes to their nightly mating ritual. As dusk falls, the large males swim into the water column with a female, swirl, twirl, spawn…then repeat with another female!
It is an altogether fascinating event!
As for egg laying, this week at Two Fish Divers we saw Nudibranch mating as well as laying eggs! Nudibranch are hermaphrodites, so any two Nudis of the same species can mate. They line up their ports (located on the right side of each Nudi), make contact, swap seed, and part ways. They each proceed to lay colorful egg-spirals on the reef that each contain hundreds of tiny nudibranch eggs. Both the mating and the egg laying is quite a fascinating behavior to witness, and lucky for us, is a somewhat common sight at Two Fish Divers, Lembeh!
Photo Credit: Robyn Smith, Photography Instructor
