From Jennifer Marohasy's blog
Jennifer Marohasi
The water at the outer reef, northeast of Great Keppel Island, was very noisy last Friday.
Two humpback whales! They were having a conversation, which included some screaming and some howling.
Were they surprised to see six of us humans underwater? We can't see them, but we can hear them. Underwater visibility is about 10 meters.
It was a nice, sunny day up there and we spotted their butts from the boat on the way back to Great Keppel Island. so beautiful.
What I saw underwater was a lot of dead coral, and a lot of dead Acropora branches. I estimate that about a third of the coral area in the Keppel Islands has been lost. But not all coral species, Acropora is the one. As a sector, especially as a branch, it is most affected.
On the one hand, it's hard to see so much death. But there is still so much life.
One of the highlights of last Friday's dive was seeing two epaulette sharks (Hemiscyllium ocellatum). One was located in an area of broken and mostly dead coral. My partner Jen and I took wide-angle photos of the sharks and were able to do some assessment of the amount of dead coral in the area at about 10 meters deep and what all the dead coral looked like. It's not easy to spot the shark, whose natural colors blend in with the algae-infested coral.
Stare long enough among dead coral and you'll find all kinds of things, including nudibranchs. My photos, both wide angle and close-up, are of gold and blue phylloxera.
Around the corner, I spotted an equally stylish scrawled angel fish (Chaetodon dubra) A month ago, when I swam at this reef for the last time (June 20), this question suddenly occurred to me. On Friday, the same fish showed up again and took a closer look inside my mask. Until I reached for my camera and it swam away.
I put the camera down, made some whale noises, and then the fish came back and looked me in the eye, shaking its head on the other side of my mask. In that moment, I wished I could convey that he was truly a beautiful fish, and so fearless.
Other very beautiful animals I saw underwater last Friday were squid. The four of them moved in unison and even looked at me in unison. They do everything as an evenly distributed group of four.
I inspected the expanding bubble tip anemone (Entacmaea tetracolor). Remember that in this dive site – not far from the moorings. A clade of Acropora genus. Having lost out to the macroalgae, the Bubble Tip Anemone (Entacmaeaquadricolor) squeezes in – and takes over.
The dying coral, heavily infested with algae, is being replaced by anemone colonies studded with black-backed clownfish (Amphiprion melanopus). Most unexpectedly, the visibly swollen mass of anemone was still pure white, but clearly very active, and lacked algae on its tentacles.
So albino sea anemones (Entacmaea tetracolor), with the help of their symbiotic clowns, are taking full advantage of the coral's demise.
In fact, the reef's coral cover may have decreased significantly, but species diversity is arguably on the rise.
I am so grateful to Keppel Diving and especially my good friend Jenn (the other one) for leaving me with so many memories.
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The featured image (top) is that angelfish, and it's very curious. A scribbling angel fish, Chaetodon dubra
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