It’s not often we get a lot of macro in the Maldives compared to say… SE Asia which is world famous for it’s amount of critters. So I wanted to take a splash myself to see if I could find any nudis.
It took a while but managed to find a couple near some of the remaining algae. Mission accomplished, it was off o my normal route to see what else I could snap in the fading afternoon light.
Early February saw some really really really green water on our dive sites. This algae bloom is seasonal I believe and it came in with some strong NE winds. The lagoon and even some of our favourite reefs had a few meters of visiblity.
The silver lining was in the macro life that sprung up to feast on the algae. The vis cleared in a week but there was plenty of things to hunt for. The slug above is new to me, and Chris Palmer took some nice shots of a pink coloured nudi- there were literally thousands of them. The nudi below was posing really well with its eggs (yellow looking bubbles). It’s often difficult to get underneath nudibranchs so as to get a nice background.
2 weeks…. later and they were all gone 😦
This moray eel was first spotted, then photographed by our guest Martin Kaspar on Lambada Thila using a Canon S95 with its built in flash. I honestly have no idea what species it is. One thing for sure- it was tiny and poking out of the sand like a small snake eel. If any of you have an idea… please give us a heads up!
Diving with Martin and his friend Joseph we also found a huuuuge nurse shark on Uthuru Haa, and some very friendly remora on Bodu Faru.
Many thanks to Martin and his dive buddy Joseph for allowing us to use some of his shots.
Some golden pilot fish that hitched a ride and showed me the way back to the top reef.
A smiling remora
The dorsal fin is modified with tiny teeth-like ridges allowing the remora to hold on to its host- in this case… Martin.
Martin getting some love
Just the tail of the nurse shark, but I reckon it was a solid 3 meters, nose to tail.
We just received some new…. well, not exactly ‘new’…. kayaks. So far we have a single and a double kayak for exploring the lagoons. Still saving up for the hovercraft. We have some moeny put aside- another 30 million should do it.
Many thanks go to Chris Palmer for allowing us to put up some of his photos of the Ornate Ghost Pipefish which has a cool sounding Latin name: Solenostomus paradoxus. I’m really, really, really stoked to say that there are now 2 of them in the same coral bush. This may well mean that they’re a breeding pair.
It’s hard to say whether the largest one is the same fish as we saw last year. Chris was using a flash with his camera which really makes the colours explode as you see here in the first picture. I believe this is the female as it has a large brood pouch under its pelvic fin.
Compare the picture above to this one below of the male… which swam away as soon as we approached. Is that a sad indictment to the courage and testicular fortitude of the male species? Or does it simply show more intelligence…. Again, many thanks to Chris Palmer for the photos. Nice diving with you!
Laamu Dive and Surf 
