It’s a brand new year, and time for me to head to one of my favourite dive destinations…the Eastern Fields of Papua New Guinea. It’s been slightly over two years since I was there last, so I’m anxious to get back and see how things are.

As of this morning, I have news from Captain Craig of MV Golden Dawn that the conditions are fantastic. Keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll stay that way.

One of the highlights of my previous visit was when we stumbled upon a plump, pink frogfish at a dive site called Shaw Thing.

This discovery caused Craig to clap his hands in the water, skip around, and squeal like a gaggle of giggly girls high on helium.

This pretty pink piscine caused Craig to squeal with delight

Not that there’s anything wrong with said hypothetical congregation of snickering schoolgirls of course. It’s just that Craig so wants everyone to take him seriously and accord him the respect otherwise due to the captain of a marine-going vessel.

To this end, he invests considerable effort in trying to look steadfast and stalwart:

Craig trying (in vain) to look captainly

…but just can’t quite seem to pull it off (the dopey expression being an obvious contributing factor).

So back on the boat, pursuant to the Frogfish Incident, I felt obliged to advise him, as a caring friend, that tittering about in the water doesn’t help his cause.

We’ll see if he’s learned his lesson.

For everyone joining the upcoming trips…safe travels and see you soon!

If you’re keen to see frogfish, there are a lot in Ambon (major understatement)!

Phil, one of the keen-eyed divers on the Ambon Night Safari trip, counted 18 (or was it 20?) different frogfish over the course of eight days of diving, including this pretty reddish one:

The waters around Ambon are chocked full of frogfish!

Among other frogfish highlights I can recall were several pitch-black frogfish, a few yellow ones, a white one, several mottled-puke colour individuals, and a lovely lavender fish.

Unfortunately, we didn’t see the Maluku frogfish, but that’s not surprising given how rare sightings of that enigmatic piscine are.

While chatting with Rachel Arnold about the unidentified Histiophryne frogfish I posted about last week, she sent me this snapshot of a preserved specimen of another undescribed Histiophryne frogfish:

Rachel took this photograph at the Australian Museum in Sydney. The fish is a fairly old specimen caught in Currarong, NSW, Australia in May 1968 by a person identified on the specimen tag as K. Deacon.

According to what Rachel was told, there used to be sponge gardens in that area, but they have since disappeared, perhaps due to pollution.

It seems like this might be the only existing record of this fish.

I know it’s difficult to discern what the living fish would look like, but if anyone’s seen a strange-looking frogfish that resembles the one in the above photograph hanging out in a sponge garden in New South Wales, can you let me know?

Have you ever seen this frogfish (Histiophryne sp.) in the wild? Or anything that resembles it?

It’s an undescribed frogfish species that has been spotted in Lombok and possibly Cebu. Please note that it’s not one of the normal Antennarius frogfish species you see on dives.

Rachel Arnold, who is one of the key people at the University of Washington who described the new Maluku frogfish (Histiophryne psychedelica photo | video) and has just written her Masters thesis on the evolutionary history of frogfish (based on DNA analysis), is currently studying this fish.

Though I haven’t met her in person, Rachel was kind enough to take time to talk with me about the Maluku frogfish after I photographed it.

She is also quite active monitoring the internet for photographs and video of frogfishes posted by divers. In other words, she values input and feedback from the dive community, which…as some of you many know…is more often the exception rather than the rule among academics.

I firmly believe that we in the diving and underwater photographic communities should work with and learn from the research community, as well as give back when we can. We spend much more time in the water than researchers do.

So if you’ve seen this fish before, please let me know, so we can help Rachel gather more information about this fish’s habitat and geographic distribution.

It’s only been a day or so since I’ve gotten back from my trips aboard the MV Golden Dawn, and I’m still struggling to catch up with correspondence, phone calls and meetings.

There’s a lot I want to write about and many images and video I’d like to post, but the way things are going, it doesn’t look like I’ll have much time before I head out again in a few days.

The story behind this photo is too good to keep quiet though.

Craig, who’s the captain of the Golden Dawn, has been visiting the beautiful reefs of the Eastern Fields for something like 20 years. In that time, he’s apparently never come across a large frogfish like this one (I think it’s an Antennarius commerson).

So, when one of our divers spotted this fish and showed it to Craig, he was so happy that he literally shrieked(!) with joy. I was at least 20 metres away, around the corner, when I heard him making a racket.

I assumed something was wrong and rushed over, only to see a half dozen or so other puzzled divers…everyone wondering why Craig was giggling and clapping his hands together like a happy little schoolgirl who had one Twinkie too many during recess.

The frogfish was pretty big, maybe 30cm or so in length, but they’re not particularly rare…so I (and everyone else) didn’t quite get what fuss was about.

“At least no one’s in trouble”, I thought to myself, and lingered for a while to watch as other people took photos of the frogfish.

In hindsight, I think the reason Craig was so excited must be because he’s partial to pink.

This is perhaps the smallest frogfish that I’ve ever come across, or at least that I’ve ever noticed.

While I was in Ambon, my dive guide Toby showed me this little fish, which was sitting among the peach-fuzz-like stuff covering a small rock while doing its best impression of…peach fuzz on a rock.

“Mini me” was about the size of a grain of rice, perhaps a little bit bigger.

It was perfectly camouflaged, and the light levels were low with a ripping current. I have no idea what species this frogfish is. I just know I had to squint a lot to see it.

Update 08 June: Margaret Thompson sent me the image below of a tiny orange frogfish she photographed in Lembeh. Unlike me, she was smart and had a pointer next to the fish for scale. Cute, no?

Thanks Margaret!

Before I head out on my next trip, here are a few more photos from Izu.

The first is an adorable juvenile yellow hawkfish (Cirrhitichthys aureus), which is known as an oki-gonbe (オキゴンベ) in Japanese. There are, of course, lots of hawkfish in tropical waters, but this hawkfish is the most striking variety I’ve come across, ranging from a nice tangerine colour to a deep orange hue sometimes.

They’re not particularly shy. The big ones can be fairly inquisitive, swimming right up to check you out on occasion.

But of course, not everything I saw was necessarily cute…at least not in the traditional squishy mushy sense.

This fish, for instance, is a yellowfin scorpionfish (Scorpaenopsis neglecta), its common name referring to yellow patches on the underside of the fish’s pectoral fins.

Known as satsuma-kasago (サツマカサゴ) in Japanese, these fish resemble the scorpionfish I’m accustomed to seeing in tropical waters.

In fact, this one reminded me somewhat of the white devil scorpionfish I recently photographed in Lembeh, which I initially mis-identified as a stonefish. Thankfully Cheryl was ever-alert and pointed out my stupidity!

From what I gather, satsuma-kasago spotted in Izu are not usually white in colour, so this one is a bit unusual.

And finally, here’s a photo for my young friend Alexa, who has told me she likes seeing photos of frogfish.

This is a spotfin frogfish (Antennarius nummifer) or beni-izari-uo (ベニイザリウオ) in Japanese. I’ve only ever seen this species in Japan, though they have a much wider distribution.

This particular one was plastered against the underside of a rock formation, flush against the rock and coral so that it was virtually impossible to distinguish from the background.

The only reason I saw it was that I spent a long time near it while photographing another fish. The only reason you can see it in this picture is because of the lighting I used to bring out the outline of the fish. Amazing camouflage artists these fish are.

Speaking of frogfish, I can’t resist adding a couple more photos for Alexa. These are extremely rare frogfish. In fact, they’re yet to be properly classified.

For the time being, I’m calling this one the fuzzy tank frogfish:

And this one the stumpy desktop frogfish:

I was about to go to sleep, but thought it worth posting another photo…to illustrate how different lighting can create an entirely different feel/ mood for a given subject.

As with the previous post, this image is of a giant frogfish (a different individual), but the perspective and lighting are quite different, giving this a relatively intimate, soft, cuddly feeling…in contrast to the more documentary feeling of the other frogfish portrait.

Of course, the complexion of the respective frogfishes played a role in deciding how to portray them. Had I tried to make the frogfish in the previous post soft and cuddly, it probably wouldn’t have worked.

Why? Because the other frogfish has a craggly complexion, kind of Tommy-Lee-Jones-esque, while this one has a nice smooth complexion (to the extent frogfish can have nice skin).

Picking the most suitable perspective and lighting is crucial to making an image “work”.

The diving today was vintage Lembeh. Pygmy seahorses and a variety of nudibranchs to start the day, followed by a giant frogfish (Antennarius commerson) and lots of octopuses…among other critters of course.

I’ve been playing around with light a lot these first few days, trying to create images of common Lembeh subjects in an uncommon manner. As I’ve mentioned in previous write-ups about diving here, the most challenging part about visiting this area isn’t finding interesting marine life or taking photos…it’s creating unique photographs.

Along these lines, here’s an attempt at making a large, yellowish giant frogfish that we came across on our second dive, at a site called TKII, look a little different.