a fishy friend
This was the #1 photo by Flickr - Interesting on the date April 19th 2009.
Quite possibly my favourite photo from our trip to Belize, though maybe a little backstory to explain the context: after 17 glorious dives around Glover's Reef, we had to limit ourselves on our last day to exploring the lagoon as we were flying home the next day.
Only 2-4 feet deep, we found a whole ecosystem down there, with seahorses, urchins, jellyfish and lots of other amazing creatures - but somewhere along the way, we found a friend: this little fish just decided he liked Annette (or possibly her colourful bikini stripes), and adopted her. He swam all around her when she was standing still, and followed along no matter where we went, usually swimming furiously just in front of her mask like in this photo. It was the cutest thing imaginable and we spent an hour giggling and taking photos of it.
Over the course of our exploration, it travelled hundreds of meters from where we found it and we felt just terrible when we eventually had to get out of the water - it just wouldn't leave her side. We can only hope that it found its way home. This had to be the most adorable fish behaviour we had ever seen.
When we told the divemasters on the island, they at first thought it was a Schoolmaster, since they are completely lost when not together in groups and will 'adopt' and try to 'school' with any creature which will allow it, but after seeing the photos they decided it wasn't a Schoolmaster after all. The closest we came to in the books was a juvenille black snapper, but even that has slightly different markings than this. If ANYONE can identify this little guy we would love to hear from you.
Thanks!
a fishy friend
This was the #1 photo by Flickr - Interesting on the date April 19th 2009.
Quite possibly my favourite photo from our trip to Belize, though maybe a little backstory to explain the context: after 17 glorious dives around Glover's Reef, we had to limit ourselves on our last day to exploring the lagoon as we were flying home the next day.
Only 2-4 feet deep, we found a whole ecosystem down there, with seahorses, urchins, jellyfish and lots of other amazing creatures - but somewhere along the way, we found a friend: this little fish just decided he liked Annette (or possibly her colourful bikini stripes), and adopted her. He swam all around her when she was standing still, and followed along no matter where we went, usually swimming furiously just in front of her mask like in this photo. It was the cutest thing imaginable and we spent an hour giggling and taking photos of it.
Over the course of our exploration, it travelled hundreds of meters from where we found it and we felt just terrible when we eventually had to get out of the water - it just wouldn't leave her side. We can only hope that it found its way home. This had to be the most adorable fish behaviour we had ever seen.
When we told the divemasters on the island, they at first thought it was a Schoolmaster, since they are completely lost when not together in groups and will 'adopt' and try to 'school' with any creature which will allow it, but after seeing the photos they decided it wasn't a Schoolmaster after all. The closest we came to in the books was a juvenille black snapper, but even that has slightly different markings than this. If ANYONE can identify this little guy we would love to hear from you.
Thanks!