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I had gone to the magical kingdom of the
Manta rays in hopes of catching these amazing animals on film,
hopefully even to get them in their mating underwater ballet.
Unfortunately the weather hadn't cooperated and conditions
were far less than favourable. Add to this the incoming tide
at Mi'il channel was not in synch with our morning dives and
the trip was starting to be a recipe for disaster photographically
speaking. Well, as it turns out, Yap has much more than just
Mantas on the offering. Great walls with fifty meter plus
visibility on the outer reef, Grey reef and Blacktip sharks
and shoals of reef and pelagic fish. The small critter animal
life isn't as good as Southeast Asia with the exception of
one of the most colourful fish in the sea, the Mandarinfish.
These psychedelic leftovers from the sixties
are part of the Dragonet fish family ranging in size from
three to seven centimetres. Under pressure from the aquarium
fish trade, Mandarinfish are quite a rare treat to divers,
plus the fact that they come out after five pm and are found
in three to five meters of water in coral rubble. Not exactly
a place where divers spend a lot of time. I have been to several
places in Southeast Asia to find Mandarins and to date the
highest concentration I have seen is in the island of Yap.
How ironic, I travel to a remote island in the Pacific looking
for a five meter animal and wind up spending more time with
a five centimetre fish. But don't get me wrong; I did see
mantas almost everyday.
The dive is an easy one, a mere five minutes
from the Manta Ray Bay Hotel by boat is a small island where
Mandarinfish reef is located. There is hardly any current
and you don't have to go any deeper than 6 meters to see the
action. At first when you get into the water it looks as though
there is nothing there but Pyjama cardinalfish and shrimp.
But within minutes of the dive the little mandarins appear
from nowhere to start their nightly ritual of feeding and
mating, reminds me of the line from the movie Scarface "is
this what its all about…" Most of the smaller females are
going about their business of eating while the considerably
larger males start looking for a willing partner to make baby
mandarins. At times there would be one male surrounded by
about five females as another male would come in and try and
muscle in on the action, only to be chased away. This can
go on for as long as an hour until the suitable female finally
has chosen her mate. From there the two break off from the
group, come together side by side and start a spiralling motion
up and away from the reef. As the spirals get tighter and
tighter, they stop for a split second, the female releases
her eggs and the male releases his sperm and both scamper
back to the reef like a couple busted for necking at a drive-in
movie. All that is left is a faint cloud of dust, and they
may repeat this once or twice again. Another observation I
made, that I witnessed for the first time, was that after
the mating; the female would swim off the reef and hover in
mid water for about two minutes. She didn't seem to be feeding;
she just hovered there motionless, alone, doing nothing.
The Mandarinfish seem to do this ritual every
night, but from what I have observed through the years it
seems to reach a peak during the full moon. So if you're in
the mood for a little voyeurism, Yap is the place for mating
Mandarinfish.
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Mating Mandarinfish (Synchiropus splendidus)
Photograph by Scott
Tuason
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This short article
was written by Scott Tuason
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