DIVE Magazine Autumn 2021 by Syon Media

ISSUE # 24 AUTUMN 2021 £4.99

BRINGING THE OCEAN TO YOU MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Madison Stewart’s latest project

DEEP PASSION

Valentina Cucchiara: a diving life

THE HEART OF THE TRIANGLE Celebrating biodiversity

WHY ARE THEY SO BIG?

What we know about whale sharks

A G G R E S S O R L I V E A B O A R D S ® · A G G R E S S O R R I V E R C R U I S E S ® · A G G R E S S O R S A FA R I L O D G E S ®

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Welcome Editor’s letter

e all love whale sharks. There is nothing more guaranteed to explode a dive boat into a frenzy of excitement than the cry of ‘Whale shark!’ from an eagled-eyed crew member. Is it their sheer size? Or that they plough through the ocean seemingly oblivious to small-fry divers? Could it be their cheesy grins? Whatever the cause of the attraction, there is no denying their mysterious pull. That fascination is only enhanced by the undoubted fact that we really know very little about them. A new book, with contributions from 35 of the world’s leading scientists who study our gentle giants, sets out just what we do know, what we speculate might be true and the large gaps still in our knowledge. We have an exclusive excerpt starting on Page 17, plus an interview with co-editor Dr Simon Pierce. Graeme Gourlay, Publisher – graeme@dive.uk.com

Contributors Simon Pierce Simon, from New Zealand, is the co-founder and principal scientist at the Marine Megafauna Foundation, a US-based non-profit research institute, where he leads a global whale shark research and conservation programme.

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THE TEAM

Graeme Gourlay Publisher/Editor-in-Chief Gordon Beckett Art Director Joanne O’Brien Sub Editor Mark ‘Crowley’ Russell Senior Correspondent Douglas David Seifert World Editor Chloe Smith Advertising Simon Simmons Operations Director FOUNDERS Graeme Gourlay & Joanne O’Brien PRINTING Stephens & George Goat Mill Road, Dowlais, Merthyr Tydfil, CF48 3TD 01685 388888 NEWSTRADE DISTRIBUTION Intermedia +44 1293 312001 getintouch@inter-media.co.uk

Alan Powderham For nearly 20 years civil engineer Alan, from Surrey in the UK, has been concentrating his diving on the reefs of the Coral Triangle - much of the time using a rebreather. As his latest book, At the Heart of the Coral Triangle, reveals he is a keen observer of reef life.

Michal Štros Michal is a Czech biologist, scientist and underwater photographer who has been diving for more than 20 years. Michal has travelled around the globe, mostly to muck-diving sites, for his favourite subjects of ‘mini monsters and little beauties’, winning a stack of underwater photography awards in the process.

DIVE (ISSN 1471 6240) ©2021 is published by Syon Geographical Ltd. Registered office: Suite 3.16, Q West, Great West Road, Brentford, Middlesex, TW8 0GP. Registration number 7265915. All rights reserved. Syon Geographical Ltd cannot be held responsible for unsolicited material or photographs.

COVER IMAGE BY VALENTINA CUCCHIARA

Contents DIVE Autumn 2021

www.divemagazine.co.uk

7 Briefing Belize to refinance debt with conservation fund • Cartoon • The Blue Wonder reviewed • Whale Sharks reviewed • Highly commended images from the 57th Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition • The discrete charms of the Chris Ward Sealander Elite dive watch • 10-Minute Skills: Navigation 82 Miscellany of Marine Curios # 24 Candy crabs

Features

17 Whale Sharks Why do they grow so large? Exclusive extract from the definitive new book on the world’s largest fish. Plus, an interview with co-editor Dr Simon Pierce

XX 30

30 Shark Girl Alfred Minnaar talks to Madison Stewart abour making a difference to the lives of Lombok shark fishers

40 Coral Triangle Alan Powderham discusses using a rebreather to take exceptional underwater wildlife images

56 With Passion Profile of diver, teacher, cave explorer, film-maker, conservationist and campaigner, Valentina Cucchiara

72 Art Works The stunning underwater photography of Michal Štros

40 www.divemagazine.co.uk

THE ULTIMATE

DIVER’S PARADISE! Helengeli island blends raw tropical beauty with a luxurious stay to create a best-in-class holiday experience. Live in colourful villas and enjoy high quality world cuisine clubbed with a range of activities, including superlative diving and snorkelling, water sports and a serene garden spa. Truly a diver’s paradise! TEL: +960 9596006 | E-MAIL: SALES@OBLU-HELENGELI.COM

@obluhelengeli O B L U - H E L E N G E L I . C O M

BRIEFING Lighthouse Reef in Belize still has some of the best diving in the Caribbean. Photo: Tom St George

BLUE HOPE n Belize is poised to refinance more than US $500m in foreign debt, with a commitment to invest in marine conservation as part of a radical scheme called Blue Bonds. The government of Belize is working with the USbased The Nature Conservancy to restructure its crippling foreign debt, which is running at more than 133 per cent of its annual GDP and is unsustainable, according to the International Monetary Fund. A key part of the proposal, which more than 50 per cent of the foreign bondholders have agreed to support, involves the government spending a further $23.4 million on a marine conservation trust to help protect the world’s second-largest barrier reef. The buy-back offer needs 75 per cent of the bondholders to sign up – they have until mid-October to agree. ‘It is a good solution,’ Carlos de Sousa, a strategist at investment firm Vontobel, which holds roughly 10 per cent of the debt, told Reuters news agency. ‘The recovery value could have been higher but it’s okay ... It is also positive from a broader market perspective that sovereigns are finding creative ways to solve these issues.’ The bondholders will receive 55 per cent of the amount that they were owed. It is the second time that Belize has been forced to refinance its foreign debts. A similar scheme of Blue Bond refinancing was successfully used by the Republic of Seychelles in 2018. The Nature Conservancy Blue Bonds scheme uses private capital to refinance public debt for at-risk sovereign countries, such as Belize and Seychelles, which currently can’t afford to keep paying interest on their growing foreign debts. The Nature Conservancy helps to arrange alternative funding as long as the recipient country agrees to accelerate their marine conservation programmes to preserve coral

reefs and fish stocks. Besides struggling with mounting foreign debt, Belize has been hit by a collapse in tourist incomes due to the global pandemic and ever-increasing costs from the impacts of climate change. Belize Prime Minister John Briceño, in a televised address to the nation, said the conservation measures agreed will dramatically enhance the preservation of their reefs which have been under threat from overfishing and overdevelopment. ‘But let me be clear, in principle, the agreement that the government has hammered out with the bondholders committee does not guarantee that our proposal will ultimately succeed. While the committee represents close to 50 per cent of bondholders, the offer will require 75 per cent support in order to close’, Briceño said. To find out more about Blue Bonds or to donate, go to The Nature Conservancy website – nature.org. The Summer 2021 issue of DIVE ran an 18-page article on the challenges Belize is facing, entitled ‘A Most Remarkable Reef’. n

‘Have you tried turning it off and on again?’ www.divemagazine.co.uk

Philippines: “World’s Leading Dive Destination” for 2019 & 2020 (World Travel Awards) Philippinesinuk philippines_UK philippines_UK

BOOK REVIEWS THE BLUE WONDER

Why the Sea Glows, Fish Sing, and Other Astonishing Insights From the Ocean, by Frauke Bagusche, Greystone Books, £18.58, ISBN 978-1-771-64604-8

AN OCEAN TOUR

n Full of delights and packed with information, this eclectic volume about the wonders of the world’s oceans is pitched at a general audience but has more than enough scientific rigour to satisfy the curious diver. There are bound to be nuggets of underwater facts within its covers that will surprise, while others will be well known. Did you know that plankton makes up five per cent of ocean biomass? Or that the cnidarian Turritopsis dohrnii is effectively immortal – its ageing cells rejuvenate by transforming back to their earliest developmental stage? German marine biologist, and avid diver, Frauke Bagusche, takes the reader on a glorious underwater tour from coral reefs to the deepest depths. The perfect book to dip into as you daydream about getting back in the ocean after lockdowns. n

WHALE SHARKS Biology, Ecology and Conservation Edited by Alistair D M Dove and Simon J Pierce, CRC Press, £72, ISBN 978-1-138-57129-7 THE BIG ONE

n This is the definitive scientific guide to whale sharks, and the most comprehensive published work to date regarding the world’s largest, yet elusive, fish. It features the work of 35 whale shark researchers, including that of two of the foremost experts in the field, co-editors Dr Alistair D M Dove of the Georgia Aquarium and Dr Simon J Pierce of the Marine Megafauna Foundation. At 336 pages and 13 chapters, and fittingly for it’s subject matter, it most assuredly does not fit into the category of ‘light reading’. It is an overview of the work of the world’s

Tiny shrimps are part of the planktonic life that makes up five per cent of the ocean’s biomass

leading whale shark experts, covering whale shark anatomy, growth, reproduction, population, movement and migration, behaviour, metabolism, ecology and conservation. There is even an entire chapter dedicated to whale shark parasites. Whale Sharks is aimed squarely at academia and is certainly not a coffee-table publication, but neither does it require a degree in marine biology to extract meaningful understanding. Anybody with a reasonable knowledge of ocean ecology will learn from its pages. Dove and Pierce do not indulge in the often-impossible-to-fathom word salad that scientists frequently use to pad out their papers, and the text is graced throughout with a light touch of humour. The book is priced for its intended audience and, as such, will not be appearing on the bestseller lists, but £72 for the paperback version (£193 in hardback) would be a sound investment for any establishment seeking to expand their visitors’ knowledge of one of the world’s most fascinating fish. n *Read an edited extract from the book, starting on Page 17 plus an interview with Simon Pierce on what science still needs to discover about whale sharks.

www.divemagazine.co.uk

BRIEFING

OCEAN WINNERS Here are two marine-themed images highly commended in the 57th year of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. It attracted more than 50,000 entries and an accompanying exhibition opens at London’s Natural History Museum on Friday 15 October.

NET LOSS

n In the wake of a fishing boat, a slick of dead and dying herrings covers the surface of the sea off the coast of Norway. The boat had caught too many fish, and when the encircling wall of the purse-seine net was closed and winched up, it broke, releasing tons of crushed and suffocated animals. Norwegian photographer Audun Rikardsen was on board a Coast Guard vessel, on a project to satellite‑tag killer whales. The whales follow the migrating herrings and are frequently found alongside fishing boats, where they feed on fish that leak out of the nets. For the Norwegian Coast Guard – responsible for surveillance of the fishing fleet – this was a crime scene. Audun’s photographs became the visual

evidence in a court case that resulted in the conviction and a fine for the owner of the boat. Overfishing is one of the biggest threats to ocean ecosystems, and according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, more than 60 per cent of fisheries today are either ‘fully fished’ or collapsed, and almost 30 per cent are at their limit. Norwegian spring-spawning herring – part of the Atlantic herring population complex – was in the nineteenth century the most commercially fished fish population in the North Atlantic, but by the end of the 1960s, it had been fished out. The Atlantic herring came close to extinction, and it took 20 years and a near ban on fishing for the populations to recover, though it is still considered vulnerable to overfishing. n

DEEP FEELERS

n Off the French Mediterranean coast, among cold-water black coral at 78m, French photographer Laurent Ballesta came across a surreal sight – a vibrant community of thousands of narwhal shrimps. Their legs weren’t touching, but their exceptionally long, highly mobile outer antennae were. It appeared that each shrimp was in contact with its neighbours and that signals were being sent across a far‑reaching network. Research suggests that such contact is central to the shrimps’ social behaviour. Against the deep-blue of the open water, floating among the feathery black coral (white when

living), the translucent narwhal shrimps looked exceptionally beautiful, with their red and white stripes, long orange legs and sweeping antennae. Between a shrimp’s bulbous stalked eyes, flanked by two pairs of antennae, is a beak-like serrated rostrum that extends well beyond its ten-centimetre body. Narwhal shrimps are normally nocturnal and often burrow in mud or sand, or hide among rocks or in caves during the day, which is where Laurent was more used to seeing them. They are also fished commercially. When shrimp fishing involves bottom‑trawling over such deep-water locations, it destroys the slow‑growing coral forests. n

You can enter next year’s Wildlife Photographer competition from Monday 18 October until 9 December 2021

www.divemagazine.co.uk

REVIEW

The Discrete Charm of a Luxury Watch Christopher Ward’s C63 Sealander Elite

n As soon as I put the Sealander Elite on my wrist, my preconceptions about luxury watches changed. I had struggled to see their point in the past, thinking watches should be functional, simple to use, reasonably cheap and be good for telling the time. Underwater, my computer did all that I needed for diving. Along came mobile phones and I stopped even wearing a watch topside. But as soon as I fastened the strap of the elegant Sealander Elite, I got it. There is something immensely satisfying about such a discreet object of well-designed luxury. Ironically, the age of Apple design has tweaked our aesthetic to appreciate the splendour of something so well made; it has opened our eyes to the joys of getting the little things right, and made us appreciate the delights of good design in everyday objects. The first thing you notice is the weight. On sight, you expect the watch to be heavy – it appears to be solid and substantial – but the slimline titanium case feels gossamer-light on the wrist. The case at 10.7mm tall, and weighs a mere 46g; featherweight compared to the stainless-steel behemoths of the past, and Christopher Ward says it is the lightest mechanical watch the company has ever made. However, unlike many other watches using Grade 2 titanium, here the metal is finished exquisitely; brushed and buffed to perfection, which enhances its sturdy appearance. The face is matt black, with a traditional luminous hour and minute dial. This is surrounded by an outer ring, slightly set back with orange accents in line with the main hour markers. Then, a tad confusingly, there is an further ring marked in minutes, which I initially thought was a rotating bezel, as this is marketed as a diving

watch. However, it is static. Personally, once I got used to the configuration, I didn’t find this a problem. In the age of first-rate dive computers (and the habit of carrying a backup), I don’t expect to use a watch to calculate anything underwater. I’d rather have a good-looking watch that I can take diving (the Sealander Elite is water-resistant to 150m) and wear all the time, than some all-singing, all-dancing, complicated gizmo that doesn’t function as efficiently as the most basic dive computer, and is far harder to set and read. The innovation introduced with the Sealander Elite is a push-button crown that sits virtually flush with the case. To set or wind the watch, you push on the crown, and it pops out; one further click and you set the date, one more the time. For something on a spindle just over 1mm thick, it feels remarkably robust, and the movement is positive and satisfying. Besides adding to the sleek look of the watch, it means the crown can never dig into your wrist during active sports such as climbing. The mechanism is a certified Swiss chronometer (a copy of the test document is included in the stylish packaging when you receive your watch). This, with a price range on the Christopher Ward website (you can only buy the company’s watches directly) of £1,150 to £1,380, depending on strap choice, is far less than you would pay for such a package from similar quality brands. The company was founded in 2004 with a mission, it says, to combine the best of British design with the excellence of Swiss mechanisms, offering quality at an affordable price. It has certainly achieved those aims with the Sealander Elite. n Graeme Gourlay

www.divemagazine.co.uk

BRIEFING

10-MINUTE SKILLS

Navigation By Mark ‘Crowley’ Russell n Walking through London recently, I saw a young woman, head buried in the screen of her phone, walk directly into a lamppost. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said when I asked if she was okay, ‘I wasn’t looking where I was going.’ I saw that Google Maps was open on her phone – so, in a way, she was looking exactly where she was going – she just had no idea where she was. This translates directly into the use of compasses for underwater navigation. During my time as an instructor, I watched any number of students, fixated on their compass face, swim straight past – or directly into, on occasion – their intended target. While it is important that divers are able to use compasses correctly, it is often the case that too much emphasis is placed on their use, at the expense of other, equally valuable insights into underwater orientation. It might sound obvious, but using a good map to get acquainted with the dive site beforehand, is immensely valuable to proper navigation. If the lady of the lamppost had orientated herself with a wider overview of the area before setting out on her journey, she would have been able to navigate the streets of London using the huge amount of information from the surrounding area, with the smartphone map a useful tool to confirm that the user is moving in the correct direction, rather than the sole source of information. If the map had shown her that her intended destination, for example, had involved turning right after the supermarket but before reaching the park, she could then have dodged lampposts, pets and people until passing the supermarket, whereupon she could have stopped, referred to the map, reorientated herself and continued. If she’d found herself at the park gates, then she would know she’d gone too far, and could refer to the app for a correction. This is also translatable to diving, but with two significant differences. Divers frequently forget – or don’t know how – to use natural aids to navigation to orientate themselves, but also, more importantly, don’t take a map underwater with them.

If there is no dive site map, and you don’t know how to make one, then it’s probably best not to dive unsupervised without, at the very least, an orientation dive. Assuming that a good map exists, however, then copying it to a slate, or making detailed notes with as much directional information as possible, is essential. It should include depths, currents and fixed objects that might be encountered along the route. A short example description might be: ‘Start at small coral block directly under entry point (5m deep); swim bearing 115° approx 20m across sand to large coral pinnacle, 12m deep (mooring halfway at 10m, seagrass at 15m); keep block with large salad coral on left shoulder; take bearing 180°, swim approx 10m to sunken speedboat at 15m’… and so on. There is a lot of information in that brief description, of which the compass bearing is only a small part. Once I’ve set my bearing, I know I should arrive at the large coral pinnacle after no more than a few minutes; the mooring – if I see it – will be a good place to pause and check my compass, and the seagrass means I’ve gone too far. The direction in which the reef fish, soft coral, kelp or drifting sand is moving tells me I am swimming against a mild current, so if I find myself at 12m but I’m still over the sand, I can maintain that depth and swim into the current, following ripples along the sea bed if there are any, until I reach my intended target. If I were to fixate on my compass bearing in the above example, then I might well end up too deep, with no frame of reference. This does not automatically mean the end of the dive, and, if the diver has enough information to hand, might be corrected. Getting lost, even on an easy dive site, however, becomes very uncomfortable, very quickly, and may lead to rash decisions. For example, making an unsafe ascent into boat traffic, which could have been avoided by divers taking into careful consideration where they are at any given point in the dive, rather than being fixated solely on the direction they’re travelling. n

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Diving photo courtesy of Will Appleyard ©

ST HELENA IS ONE OF THE SOUTH ATLANTIC’S BEST SCUBA DIVING DESTINATIONS. Wth clear warm waters, fascinating wrecks and endemic marine life. The island’s position lends to favourable sea conditions, offering a range of diving opportunities from 40 to 130 feet.

Many a boat trip is treated to St Helena’s resident dolphins, somersaulting their way out into the blue.

The Island boasts a wealth of unspoilt rocky reefs and caves that are teeming with an astonishing diversity of life, home to nearly 780 marine species.

www.sthelenatourism.com |

What to know more? Visit https://bit.ly/2FdJSJy with details to plan your next marine adventure.

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@sthelenatourism

WHALE SHARKS

Researcher Jonathan Green face-to-face with an adult female whale shark in the Galápagos. Photo: Simon J Pierce

BIG FISH The world’s leading whale shark scientists have collaborated on the definitive guide to our largest fish. This fascinating overview of exactly what we know about whale sharks was edited by Alistair Dove and Simon Pierce. In an exclusive, edited extract we look at why they grow to such a phenomenal size, and interview Simon about the questions science still has to resolve about these gentle ocean giants

www.divemagazine.co.uk

WHALE SHARKS

HOW AND WHY IS THE WHALE SHARK THE WORLD’S LARGEST FISH?

By Alistair Dove, Mark Meekan and Craig McClain

eople are inherently interested in extremes, especially when it comes to animals. Exploring and identifying which member of any given animal group is the biggest, the fastest, the smallest, or the heaviest, seems to be a natural and irresistible part of human nature, and our drive to classify and measure things. Doubtless, the enormous size of whale sharks is a principal factor promoting public interest in this species, and may even be one reason why you are reading this book. In this brief introductory chapter, we explore fundamental questions about the size of whale sharks, and seek to place this extraordinary animal in a comparative context. It is not a trivial issue, not just biologically, but because body size plays a surprisingly important role in conservation. For better or worse, people tend to prioritize large animals in conservation, so the future plight of whale sharks may be tied to their tremendous size, in much the same way as is the increasing public awareness of this exceptional animal. THE WHALE SHARK BODY PLAN The unusual features of whale sharks start at the very front: the whale shark has a terminal mouth. In other words, the mouth opens right at the front of the head, which is unlike every other extant shark species, in which the mouth is subterminal – sometimes even ventral – and preceded dorsally by a section of the body called the rostrum or snout. This rostrum varies from pointed (mako sharks, Isurus spp.) to bluntly squared (tiger sharks, Galeocerdo cuvier) to rounded (most carcharhinids or ‘typical’ sharks), or to wildly modified, as in the hammerhead, winghead, and bonnethead sharks (Sphyrnidae). The very wide and square mouth, which can be up to 1.5m in horizontal diameter, has a side effect, which is to widely separate the nares (analogous to nostrils) of the whale shark. Much is made of the cephalofoil (the ‘hammer’) of hammerhead sharks and how it serves to separate the nares in those species, allowing them to better determine the direction of origin of smells, a sort of stereo-olfaction, if you will. But the nares of whale sharks are large and far more

widely separated than those of even the largest hammerhead, it’s just less noticeable because their head lacks that iconic hammer shape. The directional smelling abilities of whale sharks must surely be excellent. Behind the jaws lies a truly enormous orobranchial chamber that makes the whale shark effectively a ‘swimming mouth’. It extends back as far as the middle of the pectoral fins, accounting for perhaps 30 per cent of the body length. This capacious chamber houses the ten gills and 20 filter pads. Anything that enters the mouth must be swallowed or must be small enough to pass through the filter pads, or it can be ejected back out of the mouth by a motion that resembles coughing. The skin consists of a tough, thin, pigmented outer layer or epidermis, in which the denticles are embedded, and a thick, rubbery, white dermis of dense and collagenous connective tissue. This remarkable skin may be one of their most extraordinary adaptations, providing structural support (enhanced by the ridges), insulation, and exceptional defence against both predators and well-meaning scientists trying to attach satellite tags. All but the very largest of predatory animals that attempt to bite a whale shark are going to come away with a mouth full of gristle, if anything at all. HOW BIG IS THE WHALE SHARK? The whale shark is not only the largest extant fish species, but perhaps the largest fish ever to have existed. Critical evaluation of this possibility is hampered by the poor fossilisation characteristics of sharks, where teeth are often all that is preserved, and body sizes must be extrapolated from fossil tooth sizes using scaling relationships derived from extant species. The legendary Miocene mega-predatory shark, the megalodon (Otodus megalodon) may seem comparable in size to the whale shark. However, critically evaluated size estimates of this species found that the maximum size range was likely to be 14.2–15.3m. While the fossil record is, of course, incomplete, no fish skeleton of any species has yet been discovered that was longer than 18m and thus it appears that the whale shark really is the all-time record holder. It has been recently proposed that significantly different growth trajectories may exist for male and female whale sharks. Male growth curves tend to asymptote (slow down) at the onset of maturity, which occurs at an average adult size of 8.0–9.0m, whereas female growth curves do not appear to follow an asymptotic pattern, instead continuing to a larger average size of 12 –14.5m. This suggests that when we are considering the body size of the largest whale sharks, we will generally be talking about females. Researchers interested in

GRAPHIC: JEN RICHARDS ART

demography of whale sharks often comment on the apparent lack of really big males, concluding that they must be in some part of the ocean as yet undiscovered. But perhaps we don’t find really big males because there aren’t any, or many, at least. Notwithstanding the potential differences in growth trajectories of males and females, we can confidently say that the majority of adult whale sharks are probably between 9m and 13m in length and, from any viewpoint, that’s objectively a very big fish. HOW BIG IS THE WHALE SHARK RELATIVE TO OTHER LARGE MARINE ANIMALS? Compared to its closest relatives, which are other members of the shark order Orectolobiformes (carpet sharks), the body size of whale sharks is extremely divergent. The largest tawny nurse shark, which is the next biggest orectolobiform shark and the whale sharks’ closest relative, is around 4m in maximum size, or less than a quarter of the length of the largest whale sharks. Not surprisingly, whale sharks are also genetically distinct within the phylogeny of this order. This evolutionary distinctiveness mirrors an ecological divergence, too: most orectolobiform sharks are sluggish bottomdwelling predators, whereas the whale shark is the only one that is pelagic and planktivorous. In comparison with other shark species outside the Orectolobiformes, only the basking shark approaches the whale shark in size and, even then, not very closely. The

Photo-identifying an adult female whale shark at Galápagos. Photo: Simon J Pierce

largest basking shark documented was just over 12m in length, so the difference in maximum length between these two species (6.8m) is larger than the maximum size of almost all other shark species! Although the whale shark and basking shark are both filter feeders, the two species are not closely related, and their filtering mechanisms are very different and certainly evolved independently The third filter-feeding shark, the megamouth Megachasma pelagios, is also relatively large at around 6m in total length, although only half the size of basking sharks and a third of the size of the largest whale shark. Megamouth sharks are more closely related to basking sharks than to whale sharks but their filtration apparatus is different from either of the other two species, suggesting that filter feeding has appeared at least three separate times in the evolutionary history of sharks, four if you include extinct filter-feeding taxa. Among the apex predatory sharks, at just over 7m in length the largest great white sharks, Carcharodon carcharias, are smaller than many juvenile whale sharks and roughly a third of the length of the largest recorded whale shark. So, the white shark may be ‘great’ relative to other apex predatory sharks, but it is relatively puny compared to the whale shark. WHY IS THE WHALE SHARK SO LARGE? The anatomical and ecological uniqueness of whale sharks suggests a long, lonely, and distinct evolutionary path, but is their extraordinary body size a result of phylogeny (that www.divemagazine.co.uk

WHALE SHARKS is, their evolutionary ancestry) or their ecology? Evidence argues against phylogeny as the only explanation for whale shark gigantism. Whale sharks are the only species in their genus, which is in turn the only extant genus in its family, which is in an order whose other members are all demersal species of unremarkable size relative to other shark species. There is another rhincodontid known from the fossil record – Palaeorhincodon Herman 1975 – the fossils of which are distributed broadly across the globe and include at least four putative species. As with many sharks, the descriptions of these four species are all are based exclusively on measurements of fossil teeth. Although the fossils of Palaeorhincodon are from the Eocene at least 166 million years ago, and therefore predate the earliest appearance of fossilised Rhincodon teeth in Oligocene formations 23 million years ago, the relationship of these genera to each other and to their most recent common ancestor has not been established. If other gigantic members of the Orectolobiformes ever existed, none of them are represented in the current fossil record. The whale shark is the only remaining gigantic member of this order and does not seem to represent a remnant of some previous speciose radiation of giant carpet sharks, and so we must look elsewhere than the phylogenetic constraints on orectolobiforms for the explanation of the whale shark’s extraordinary size. When it comes to extremely large body size in the ocean, there is a clear correlation with planktivorous feeding habits, regardless of taxon. The largest whales are the planktivorous mysticetes, the two largest sharks are also planktivores, and the largest batoid elasmobranchs, the manta rays, are also filter feeders. So, perhaps a better and more generalised question is ‘are animals able to become planktivores because they are so large or do large sizes result from planktivory?’ The size of whale sharks means that they can use the heat captured at the surface by basking, and from warmer surface waters, and retain it within their very large bodies to be able to swim and feed in deep, cold water. This strategy of evolving a very large body size to stabilise and maintain temperatures is known as ‘gigantothermy’ and is an adaptation shared with leatherback turtles today, and the extinct sauropod dinosaurs of the Mesozoic. WHY ISN’T THE WHALE SHARK LARGER? While it is interesting to explore how whale sharks come to be large, we must also ask ‘Why isn’t the whale shark even larger?’ Given that whale sharks have adopted the same planktivorous habits as the mysticete or baleen whales, why have whale sharks not achieved the same body sizes seen in that group?The first explanation concerns the biomechanics of cartilaginous fishes. The robust and truly bony skeletons of marine mammals can support larger body sizes than those that can be supported by the rib-less, flexible, cartilaginous skeletons of sharks and rays. Furthermore, the rigid bony skeletons of whales can withstand the tremendous mechanical stresses of lunge-feeding enormous volumes of water. Whale sharks, on the other hand, have a quite different 20

and very efficient feeding mechanism, which does not rely on lunge feeding and is thus much less mechanically stressful. The upper limit of body size in whale sharks may also be set by energetic constraints. In mysticete whales, the energy demands of increasingly large body sizes trade off against the ever-higher energetic costs of lunge feeding, which may be many times the basal metabolic rate. At the upper size limit, the cost of feeding exceeds the energy that can be harvested from even the densest food patches. Could a similar upper limitation exist for whale sharks? While the cost of feeding is lower in whale sharks than in whales, whale sharks also live and, importantly, feed in the relatively nutrient-poor tropics. So, it remains possible that it becomes difficult for whale sharks to harvest enough energy to sustain their metabolic needs beyond their contemporary body size. CAN SIZE SAVE THE WHALE SHARK? Evidence is accumulating that body size may be an important factor in how humans approach conservation initiatives, and this obviously has significant implications for whale sharks.

Deploying a fin-mounted satellite tag in Galápagos. Photo: Simon J Pierce

For example, larger animals are more popular in zoos, with guests willing to pay more money to symbolically adopt larger animals than smaller. Similarly, animals featured on the covers of popular nature magazines tend to be large-bodied, regardless of taxon or even conservation status. The attachment of greater cultural value to animals based on their size has given rise to terms like ‘charismatic megafauna’ to capture the idea that very large animals are in some way more appealing, better, or more important than smaller ones. This is a completely arbitrary distinction, of course, and yet true nonetheless. Conservation practitioners would do well to model efforts to protect whale sharks after the successful ‘Save the whales’ and ‘Save the panda’ campaigns of the late 20th century, which have been extraordinarily effective in bringing many mysticetes and the giant panda back from the brink of extinction. There seems little doubt that the large body size and peaceful behaviour of these animals contributed to increases in their perceived value in the eyes of the public, once they were made aware of their conservation plight.

IN CONCLUSION There is no doubt that the whale shark is the largest shark and the largest extant fish of any kind, and it seems likely to be the largest fish ever to have swum in the world’s oceans. Some questions remain to be answered about the body size of whale sharks and how it relates to their lifestyle. For example, we still do not know which factors limit the body size of whale sharks. We do not understand the genetic basis of gigantism in whale sharks nor indeed of most other species. The availability of the complete whale shark genome may be a useful tool in the search for a genotypic mechanism to explain such a divergent phenotype. Finally, questions remain about the precise relationship between body size and body temperature in this species. Is it just thermal stability, or passive gigantothermy, or do whale sharks have specific adaptations for partial endothermy, as occur in many other pelagic species? While scientists seek the answers to these questions, the sheer mind-blowing size of these ocean giants will continue to captivate the scientific community and the public alike. n www.divemagazine.co.uk

WHALE SHARKS Simon Pierce at work, Mafia Island, Tanzania. Photo: Ralph Pannell

THE BIG QUESTIONS REMAINING Mark ‘Crowley’ Russell asks co-author of Whale Sharks, and co-founder of the Marine Megafauna Foundation, Dr Simon Pierce, what we still need to find out about this elusive species DIVE: What first inspired you to study whale sharks? SIMON PIERCE: Whale sharks are awesome. They grow from 50cm at birth to become the largest fish that has ever lived. They dive to at least 1,900m. They swim more than 10,000km a year, often without approaching a coast. And they manage all this with a big goofy grin and a general ‘oceanic Labrador’ vibe. These spotted giants really are quite endearing. I fell in love with whale sharks the first time I got to work with them, back in 2005. At that stage, little was known about their lives and habits. We’ve learned a lot more in the years since (cue sound of our new 340-page book thumping on the table), but many interesting mysteries still remain… DIVE: Why do divers mostly encounter juvenile males? SIMON Whale sharks were only discovered by Western scientists in 1828. Until the 1980s, there had only been a few hundred reported encounters with the species. Even Jacques Cousteau only ever saw two. We know now that the key is to find places where there are high densities of their preferred 22

prey, zooplankton and small fishes. Whale sharks have permanent munchies. In some areas, such as off the Yucatán coast of Mexico, several hundred sharks can be seen feeding at once, gathering in a sharky constellation to exploit mass tuna-spawning behaviour. That’s interesting in itself, but not particularly mysterious. The odd thing is that it’s almost exclusively male whale sharks which frequent these areas. Most of the sites associated with whale-shark tourism – think Ningaloo Reef in Australia, South Ari in the Maldives, multiple areas in the Philippines, Mafia Island in Tanzania, and others – are dominated by juvenile males. The occasional juvenile female is certainly present, but it’s rare to see adult females at any of these locations. ‘Sexual segregation’, as this situation is referred to, is common in sharks and rays. Normally, though, the ‘segregated’ part of the population hasn’t been hard to find. In whale sharks, for the most part, we still don’t know where the females live. They seem to be using completely different areas. Why aren’t female whale sharks taking advantage of these predictable buffets? Well, adult and subadult male sharks will both harass juvenile females (also each other, boats, even

Laser-measuring a tagged whale shark in Madagascar. Photo: Simon J Pierce www.divemagazine.co.uk

WHALE SHARKS whale shark researchers), so that’s one good reason for the females to avoid them, but this segregation persists even in places where no large males are present. Perhaps productive feeding areas attract more whale shark predators? For males, the main aim is just to eat lots and grow fast to reproductive size, so rich but risky habitats might be worth it. Females benefit (in evolutionary terms) by playing the long game, growing more slowly to a larger size, so they could prefer to live in safer areas elsewhere. Smart. I think it’s most likely that females are feeding on slightly different prey, and presumably offshore; otherwise, we’d be seeing them more often. The best way to answer this conundrum will likely be through long-term tracking studies that allow us to directly compare and contrast habitat preferences between the sexes. We can also use biochemical techniques to look at long-term diet and habitat use across populations. Early work using these methods hasn’t seen many clear differences emerge between the sexes yet, but... most of our data is from males, because we know where they are. Sigh. DIVE: Are there any places you regularly see females? SIMON: The northern Galápagos Islands is one area where adult female sharks are regularly seen, and it’s one of my favourite places to work. Most of the sharks we see there are 10–12m in length, and almost all are females. It’s not a feeding area, and they don’t stick around – most sharks are only there for a day or so, at most. When I first saw these sharks, apart from being gobsmacked by their sheer size, I was flabbergasted by the ‘junk in their trunk’. These sharks had a massive ‘bump’. Clearly pregnant, we assumed. In 2018, we were able to recruit the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium research team to join us for an expedition. These Japanese scientists are the world leaders in using waterproofed ultrasound units for reproductive assessments. They collected ultrasounds from multiple sharks, and… nothing. Whale sharks have extremely thick skin, so it’s difficult to be definitive about it, but it seems likely now that females close to adulthood develop a pronounced ‘bump’ – though it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re carrying pups. Confusing, but that’s science. For the moment, anyway, we’re back to having only one confirmed pregnant whale shark to talk about. That 10.6m ‘megamamma’, caught off Taiwan in 1995, contained around 300 cute little pups. It’s very rare to see adult female whale sharks close to the coast, so we assume they’re living in the open ocean. That makes them hard to study. Hopefully, we can find another ‘megamamma’ some time soon. DIVE: Where are the pups? SIMON: If bus-sized pregnant sharks have proved challenging for us to find, imagine trying to find a baby one. Only 30 to 40 newborn whale shark pups have ever been found, scattered across the world. Pups are born free-swimming, and it is 24

The unmissable ‘bump’ observed in many of the large female whale sharks seen in the Galálapagos. Photo: Simon J Pierce

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WHALE SHARKS

Rui Matsumoto from the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium, measuring a whale shark’s heartbeat with ultrasound, near St Helena Island in the South Atlantic. Photo: Simon J Pierce www.divemagazine.co.uk

WHALE SHARKS likely that they get no further assistance from their mother. My working hypothesis (or arm-waving speculation) is that we don’t see them because the mothers are giving birth well offshore, away from coastal predators, and the babies are following the daily vertical migration of plankton from the depths to the surface when darkness falls. I could be embarrassingly wrong though. It wouldn’t be the first time. DIVE: How old do whale sharks get? SIMON: Whale sharks become adults at about 7–9m length in males, and about 9–10m in females. Age-wise, our best guess is that those sizes correspond with about 25 years for males, and 30 to 40 years in female whale sharks. We know that the largest whale sharks ever recorded have been in the 18 to 20m range. Working out their maximum lifespan should therefore be a simple exercise in extrapolation, right? If only it were that easy. Shark skeletons are made of cartilage, not bone. The ‘centra’ in their vertebral column continually grows as cartilage accretes through time. Like a tree, the centra forms a dark band during times of slow growth, and a lighter band when the shark grows faster. Each band pair can represent a year, as with trees. Unfortunately, whale sharks – and you can trust me on this, I’m a doctor – are not trees. Whale sharks feel no obligation to suffer through winter. If it gets cold, they just go somewhere else. That means the band formation may not be annual.

Once they get to around their adult size, whale shark growth slows down dramatically. The relationship between the shark’s size and age breaks down completely. Two whale sharks, Stumpy and Zorro, have been returning to Ningaloo Reef in Australia for more than 20 years. The research paper describing their sighting histories notes that ‘their growth has been negligible over the past two decades’. They may still form bands in the centra, but there’s a good chance they’ll be indivisible, even under a microscope. So how old do whale sharks get? We don’t know. Most large shark species are long-lived and slow-growing. Greenland sharks, living in the cool, deep Arctic waters, grow less than 1cm per year and can be more than 6m long at full size. A 5m female was estimated to be 392 years old. Female white sharks only become adults at about 33 years, and are estimated to live to at least 73. Even small, spiny dogfish are thought to live for at least 80 years. There’s a good chance that the whale shark’s maximum lifespan will easily exceed our own. DIVE: Some of the data from tagging research reveals whale sharks dive to great depths. Why? SIMON Whale sharks are incredible deep-divers – probably to deeper than 2,000m (whereupon the pressure crushes our tags). The open ocean may be boring at the surface, but there’s plenty going on in the mesopelagic depths just a few hundred metres beneath. Literally trillions of lanternfishes,

Laser-measuring a tagged whale shark in Madagascar. Photo: Simon J Pierce

Using an ultrasound on a whale shark in St Helena, South Atlantic. Photo: Simon J Pierce

probably the most abundant vertebrate on the planet, live in this twilight zone. They’d make an excellent snack for a hungry whale shark. But why do they keep going deeper? There are lots of good reasons not to go deeper. There isn’t much food in the deep ocean, it’s lower in oxygen, and it’s very cold, with whale sharks occasionally facing nearfreezing 2ºC temperatures. They aren’t just diving for the fun of it, as they have to spend time warming up at the surface afterwards. We’re not sure what the purpose of these deep dives is yet, but an intriguing possibility is that it’s a part of the shark’s geomagnetic navigation strategy – they are likely to get a better fix on the Earth’s magnetic field closer to the crust, much as we might go outside to get a better GPS signal. At the moment, whale sharks are showing us the limits of our technology, depressingly (and expensively) quickly, so the reasons behind these behaviours remain unknown.

pioneered on whale sharks, such as photo-identification, are now standard methods in research with other shark and ray species, and we’re pushing forward to integrate artificial intelligence with image processing so we can work faster at identifying individuals. Some of the first satellite-linked tags were designed for and deployed on whale sharks to track their movements across vast distances. Whale shark scientists are continuing to trial new techniques, such as ultrasound on free-swimming sharks, underwater blood draws, even in-water semen collection. We’ll keep solving mysteries, but that certainly will not diminish the wonder and joy of encountering these colossal sharks. The very existence of whale sharks makes the world bigger for all of us. n

DIVE: What’s the future looking like for whale sharks? SIMON Whale sharks are a really special species. They’re gigantic. They’re iconic. They’re also globally endangered. Their large size, placid nature, and the existential threats to their very survival keep motivating us to develop new and improved research techniques to learn more about them. Many of the non-invasive study techniques that were first

Whale Sharks Biology, Ecology, and Conservation Edited by Alistair D M Dove and Simon J Pierce, CRC Press, £72 ISBN 978-1-138-57129-7 www.divemagazine.co.uk

SHARK GIRL

The first time Madison Stewart came to Lombok in Indonesia, was to film the sharkfinning trade. She had to be persuaded by the film crew that it was a good idea. She didn’t want to demonise the local fishers, and she didn’t want to see the carnage they initiated. She had vowed also not to support the economy of the world’s biggest sharkhunting nation with her tourist dollars. She hated the experience. Today, a tiny island off Lombok is her second home, the base of Project Hiu, a radical programme she founded with the help of the local people to offer an alternative to the harsh and dangerous living of slaughtering sharks

PHOTO BY CARAGH FRASER

Report from Alfred Minnaar. Photos by Alfred Minnaar & Caragh Fraser

MAKING A

Madison on the beach next to Tanjung Luar fish market in Lombok

DIFFERENCE

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SHARK GIRL

first met Madison – ‘Pip’ to her friends and family – two years ago. I knew of her work on the films Shark Girl, Blue and then Sharkwater Extinction, with the late Rob Stewart – her close friend and mentor. Then I heard about her project with Indonesian fishers in Lombok to offer them a different way of making a living by taking tourists on trips in their boats to experience the joys of the ocean. I lived nearby, on Gili Trawangan, and jumped at the chance to go on one of her first tourist charters. Catching up with her this summer on Lombok, she filled me in on how Project Hiu (hiu is Bahasa Indonesian for shark) was getting on, and explained in detail how it all got started. ‘It’s so strange, because I never wanted to come to Indonesia,’ 27-year-old Pip told me over a coffee. ‘In the shark community, Indonesia has a reputation for being a heavily fished environment, and I knew it was the largest shark-catching nation in the world; and I didn’t want to be a tourist supporting it. Now l am trying to actually arrange to live here.’ She told me how the film crew of Blue had to persuade her to get on the plane from her home in Australia’s Gold Coast to visit the notorious fish market in Lombok, one of the largest in Indonesia. ‘I knew that I didn’t want to come in and then leave, and to demonise the fishermen,’ she added. ‘It’s something I talked about with the film crew. We came into the shark market on our first day here, and we saw hundreds of dead sharks – species that I’d never even seen in the wild. Huge sharks. It was incredibly confronting, and it was also quite shocking. We didn’t interact with the fishermen then, and that has never really sat well with me.’ It wasn’t until the release of Blue at a film festival that she found inspiration from another film being screened that led to Project Hiu. ‘We were watching a bunch of short films, and there was one about this fishing community in Mexico, and all the fishermen were shark fishermen, and then they realised that tourists wanted to come and do whale-watching from their village, so they refitted all their boats to run tourist trips. Once they had been taught how, the fishermen took it upon themselves to do the rest. That’s where I got this idea of like, “holy hell, I could do that number!”’ Pip decided to head back to Lombok. ‘It was just on a whim, so it was incredibly lucky that the fisherman I happened to meet that day was Odi. Odi is the one who should be sitting here talking to you, because he’s

PHOTO BY ALFRED MINNAAR

the brains behind a lot of what’s happened, and he’s the reason I’ve been able to make the project possible.’ She said that she doesn’t want to be all ‘hippie’ about it, but the ‘Universe must have had my back that day’. He was the first person she approached, and the only one to speak good English. His family owned the most shark boats on their fishing island – that day they landed more than 80 sharks. ‘I told him I was a pro surfer, and I asked him if he knew any local waves that we might not know about, which is so funny for anybody who knows how bad I am at surfing. At first, he was super-hesitant. He

The village around the fish market, which you can see in the distance on the left

didn’t want us to take any pictures of the sharks he was unloading. After a while of chatting with him, I asked him, “Can I hire your boat tomorrow, and you can show me some of these spots?”’ Pip was surprised when she saw the boat the next day. ‘They had really cleaned it up. It went from having rivers of blood, to being immaculate. When I got on the board, I was like, “Is this gonna work? I don’t know”. Five minutes later, we’re at some of the most beautiful coral I have ever seen. That afternoon, we surfed the waves coming off their island. It was one of the most wild on-the-water experiences I’ve ever had,

and that’s when I realised, holy shit, this could work. There’s potential here. I could bring tourists to be on this boat. That was back in 2017.’ As I am listening to Pip speak about the fishermen and Odi, it becomes clear how difficult it is for the locals to escape shark fishing. Odi is one of the more well-to-do fishers, by his village’s standards, but even he could not avoid it. She told me Odi’s story. ‘He’s been to university and studied a few different languages, and one of them was English. He was in his third year when his father passed away, which is the only reason that he went back into shark fishing, because he had to www.divemagazine.co.uk

SHARK GIRL

PHOTO BY CARAGH FRASER

Pip with Odi aboard one of his fishing boats

come home and provide for his family. He wants more for himself and his family, and he’s very, very good at helping me make this project possible.” Pip explained how it is an industry of exploitation. The fishermen are born into the trade, some starting as young as seven. She added, as an aside, that was the age she was when she saw her first shark with her father, an avid diver, and pointed out if she had been born in Odi’s world, she would most likely be fishing sharks rather than photographing them. ‘It always shocks me when I talk to people about the shark-fin trade, and they immediately go towards hating the fishermen. What people don’t see is the guy that buys the fins off them and the factory that exports them, and the people in Hong Kong that buy the fins and then resell them. The fishermen are at the bottom of the food chain – you’re looking at the most exploited part of the entire trade. It’s easy to make them the villain, but they’re the victims of the trade.’ Pip knows the danger of fishing sharks first-hand. 34

She went on a two-week trip out to sea with the local fishers, a voyage she told me she wouldn’t want to do again. There was a crew of eight on a boat which was not equipped to cover the distance it did. The crew were all very stressed – not how they are on her tourist trips. They knew accidents were frequent. The equipment was basic. They had to rely on the skills of their highly experienced skipper to survive the rough journey. ‘It was crazy,’ she remembered. ‘I thought they would have had some kind of method to pull the sharks up onto the boat, but they’re pulling 100-kilogram animals over the side of the boat, with nylon lines with their bare hands.’ The locals go out on such trips roughly once a month. The money made is split between the crew, which on a successful voyage could be US$100 a head, or more frequently as low as $25 – not enough to support their dependant families. By contrast, one 500g fin can sell for nearly $1,000 in Hong Kong. Before the global Covid-19 pandemic, Pip had built

PHOTO BY ALFRED MINNAAR

Two of the chartered fishing boats moored up on a deserted island, with a party of guests on the beach 35

SHARK GIRL

PHOTO BY ALFRED MINNAAR

up the project to run enough tourist trips to keep as many as three fishing boats fully employed in some months, and with a better wage for the crews than they would have got from shark fishing. But it was a daunting prospect with an uncertain outcome at the start. ‘The first thing I had to do was to convince the shark fishermen that they wanted to be involved in tourism with me. But also, I had to convince tourists to come and get on a shark-fishing boat with me. To my absolute shock, everybody was keen to do so; they were just dying for the opportunity to be involved in something bigger – to experience the marine ecosystem, but also to do it in a way that they know is helping sharks. ‘What’s so amazing about the trips is that people don’t really care about the stunning corals or learning to surf.

They care about the fact that they get to sit next to a shark fisherman and know that he’s not shark fishing because they’re there. That’s what they get on the trips, and that’s honestly why it’s worked.’ Pip’s project has moved beyond just running tours. She has become involved in the family life of the shark fishermen and the whole village of around 3,000 people. One of the first things she realised, as she spent more time on the island, was that there was no proper schooling for the children. The teachers at the school were untrained volunteers who were getting paid US$15 a month. There were many adults in the community who couldn’t read or write. The project funded teachers and a translator. ‘One of the biggest things that I’d like to see happen in

this project is expanding the education of the kids and helping the school; the school is severely underfunded.’ The project has also helped to improve the drinkable water on the island, as well as improve the wastemanagement system. Asking her about her goals for the future, Pip was cautious. ‘People ask me all the time what the plan is and where I’d like to see it in years to come. But I try to avoid overthinking about that, because, you just never know. It takes a lot of time to do this properly. I try to let it happen organically, and so far, that’s been really, really good. I would eventually like to see is a sponsorship system where big corporations could sponsor our boats – it’s not that much money. They could brand a boat and advertise that they’ve stopped

it from fishing for an entire year and saved more than 500 sharks, employed five men and supported all their families. These days, companies want to show they’re doing some good.’ Covid-19 has been tough for the project because tourism is its primary source of income, and that has come to a complete halt in Indonesia. However, Pip and her business partner, Ben Hall, have done well with e-commerce, selling branded goods on Project Hiu’s website, and donations also flow in steadily. One special moment that stood out for her was when a fisherman called and asked her if it would be okay to go back to fishing sharks. She told me that they were afraid she would stop supporting them if they did. She reassured them that she would never try to stop them

The poster at the back of the fish market reads: ‘We are committed to stop the catch of protected sharks and stingrays’ www.divemagazine.co.uk

PHOTOS BY CARAGH FRASER

SHARK GIRL

A tour guest shows some of village children his phone

The school on Maringkik where Project Hiu is based

Odi’s oldest daugher Bina on Pip’s shoulders

from fishing sharks if she couldn’t help provide a viable alternative. She is also adamant that she won’t pay them money just to stay home and do nothing. ‘I would like the future to be a little bit more selfsustaining. I’d like them to be able to run day trips without me, and for our training on how to be ecotourism guides to kick in. It would be great to get them to not throw the cigarette butts into the ocean, and switching them from anchors to moorings and little things like that. I’d like to see them being able to function on their own to take tourists out. They already want to rip out the boxes on their boats where they keep sharks, and to put seats in there for tourists. They are the ones who want this, sometimes more than I do. I’m acting like a facilitator, which is great. That’s what my role should be.’ She told me that they were going to the shark market in a few days, and that I could join them. Two days later I jumped into the car with her and photographer Caragh Fraser, who helps her document the shark-fin trade. It was vast. People everywhere. Noisy, chaotic, unhygienic, and the nearer we got to the shark-finning area, extremely pungent. We had come on the day of a large landing of sharks. All types of sharks: silkies, hammers, threshers, tiger sharks… lying in pools of blood. Pip looked at the boats in the harbour and told me they weren’t local – probably from Java. She pointed out the buyers as she navigated through the streams of blood and gore in the area where the sharks were being cut up, and warned that this was the time they are most sensitive to filming. A few moments later, one guy started pointing at us, gesticulating for us to move back and to stop taking photographs. She quietly told me not to push it any more as we had enough footage. The shark fins were being separated and put into boxes, and immediately driven off on scooters. Pip pointed out the shark meat being put on the side and explained that they would sell it despite it not being for human consumption. The mercury-riddled meat ends up being eaten by the poorest on Lombok. It leads to cancers, Parkinson’s Disease, congenital disabilities, spinal problems and a host of other conditions. She told me the mercury bioaccumulates – it doesn’t pass through the digestive system but lingers in the body. She often takes samples of the meat back to Australia for scientists to test mercury levels and to identify any other toxic chemicals that the sharks as apex predators may have accumulated. It was a typical scene as we walked back to the village near the market: insane midday heat; street vendors shouting over each other; exotic smells wafting; kids bathing in the ocean; and fishermen coming and going. Pip took a minute to kick a football with some of the kids. I could but hope that her vision of a world with opportunities for these kids becomes a reality. n l To find out more about Project Hiu and to support Pip’s work go to https://projecthiu.com www.divemagazine.co.uk

CORAL TRIANGLE

The heart of the triangle Graeme Gourlay talks to Alan Powderham about the 20 years of work to create his opus At The Heart Of The Coral Triangle

Photographs by Alan J Powderham 40

The tiny bearded goby is among the vast number of small fish which account for more than 40 per cent of the fish diversity found on healthy reefs. Collectively they are known as cryptobenthic fish and are thought to provide more than 60 per cent of the fish biomass consumed on reefs www.divemagazine.co.uk

CORAL TRIANGLE

Related to vertebrates, ascidians have a notochord, a primitive forerunner of a backbone. The lollipop tunicate (left) and the beautiful vase-like Rhopalaea sp, are encircled by smaller Clavelina

A Endangered golden sea snakes in the Banda Sea must return to the surface to breathe. However, that only takes 30 seconds or so and they then return to depths of 50 to 100m to hunt for up to two hours

lan J Powderham’s passion is to observe fish – to hang out on a coral reef as unobtrusively as possible and watch the array of life going about its business around him. His stunning book, At The Heart Of The Coral Triangle, is the result of doing just that, in the richest, most vibrant reefs on the planet, for nearly 20 years. His work as a civil engineer involved with sustainable construction projects in the Far East gave him the opportunity to indulge his love of the marine world, and he has spent thousands of hours underwater intently looking and trying to understand an incredible kaleidoscope of life. ‘I started diving in the Coral Triangle in 2004 and have barely dived anywhere else since,’ Alan, now 75, explains from his home in South London. ‘Obviously I haven’t been everywhere – the Coral Triangle covers such a vast area, 6,000 square kilometres, from Malaysia to the Philippines, down through Indonesia to Papua New Guinea. But I have dived extensively at its heart in Indonesia, particularly from Bali, up to Sulawesi and across to West Papua.’ www.divemagazine.co.uk

CORAL TRIANGLE The garish colouring and complex form of the Rhinopias may seem an odd livery for a stealth predator. But we should wary of judging from our perspective. It is a highly effective hunter perhaps it confuses its prey

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CORAL TRIANGLE The extremely shy Midas blenny pops its head out of a burrow in an encrusting sponge. The impressive-looking fangs are in fact ‘pseudo teeth’ used to attract females. They feed on zooplankton and graze on algae

At the back of his mind an idea had been growing to do a book on the coral reefs. Alan had already published a book about the marine world of Venezuela – Venezuela Submarina – where he had learned to dive in 1977 while working for six years on the design of the metro system in Caracas. He had joined a local dive club, quickly graduated to underwater photography, and was soon winning competitions and gleaning magazine photo commissions. ‘I was very lucky,’ he says. ‘Venezuela has more than a thousand miles of Caribbean coastline, which I found irresistible. My style of very non-intrusive diving suited taking photographs, and it grew from there.’ Alan returned to England with his family, but his work involved plenty of travel and he dived whenever he could, building up an extensive network of academic colleagues and friends who shared his interest in the marine world, both at Imperial College where he was a visiting professor, and at the nearby Natural History Museum in London. While working in the Far East, he met up with Bruno Hopff, an inspirational Swiss dive guide who became the coowner of the Amira liveaboard – a traditional wooden-built Pinisi two-masted boat dedicated to exploring the marine diversity of the region. It was Bruno that persuaded an at-first 46

Unobtrusively hanging out at 20 metres on a rebreather, Alan was surrounded by a chaotic shoal of blue-streak fusiliers curious, but not spooked, by their silent intruder. Having checked him out, they returned to hoovering up the abundant zooplankton

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CORAL TRIANGLE

A titan triggerfish takes centre stage surrounded by a feather star and soft corals. A shy red coral grouper can be seen in the background

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CORAL TRIANGLE Surprisingly, this plume worm did not retract when approached and stepped on by the brown frogfish. The frogfish even extended its lure to hunt. The advantage for the frogfish is that its prey are attracted to the worm’s plumes. The benefit for the worm is harder to discern

The decorator crab on the right has just completed re-attaching an array of stinging hydroids as camouflage, after moulting and leaving its discarded shell on the left 50

It remains a mystery how these Banggai cardinalfish, endemic to the Banggai archipelago in Central Sulawesi, ended up 400 kilometres away in the Lembeh Strait. Equally puzzling is that they seem to have adapted to living around the stinging tentacles of the anemone, crowding out the more usual resident clownfish

sceptical Alan to try diving with a rebreather. He was quickly converted to the new set-up. ‘Rebreathers are incredible,’ says Alan. ‘But you can’t really call them user-friendly. And it’s not that easy to get hightech kit to work reliably in the remote places I wanted to go.’ The well-equipped Amira and Bruno’s enthusiasm, plus the boat’s excellent dive guides, working as spotters for his photo subjects, soon changed his mind. Alan says: ‘One of the things that really upsets most of the inhabitants of a coral reef is the noise that opencircuit divers make, plus the visual intrusion of all those bubbles. With a rebreather, you can be completely silent. And you can just observe, which is what I love. I would go to a particular spot and start looking. Obviously, you are a presence on the reef, but you can become very nonintrusive with a rebreather.’ He also appreciated the added benefit of breathing the warm recycled air of a rebreather, rather than the cold, noisy blast of compressed air from an open-circuit rig. Nothing scares off fish quicker than a shivering diver trying to get comfortable. Rebreathers also allowed him to worm his way into places he would never venture into if he were exhaling cascades of bubbles, such as under coral heads.

However, it was the ability rebeathers gave him to get close to the shyer residents of the reef that fully sealed the deal. ‘I was trying to take an image of a fairy basslet,’ said Alan. ‘I was concentrating hard, looking in a certain direction, when I got a sixth sense that something was looking at me and I turned around; there were about five or six red groupers looking over my shoulder to see what I was staring so intently at. Normally these groupers are difficult to get within shooting range because they are very wary. But these were sitting like parrots on my shoulder! ‘Often, I would return from my dive, where I had been off by myself with one on the boat’s truly wonderful guides, and hear what the group had seen and realise I had seen six or seven sharks which they hadn’t or a manta had come right up to me, yet completely avoided them.’ Modern digital cameras and rebreathers are, Alan thinks, a perfect mix. In many ways, he preferred the days of film when it was 36 frames and you were done. ‘Who wants to spend the whole dive taking thousands of useless images and never actually seeing anything’, he argues. But he also remembers that all-too-frequent experience when he had used up all his shots on a film camera and his elusive prey would appear and happily swim around him. www.divemagazine.co.uk

CORAL TRIANGLE The unique and dramatic dominance of sea anemones across wide expanses of Sumba Strait, Flores, Indonesia presents another mystery. While the surface water temperature of only 22 ºC (six to eight degrees less than the average for the region), caused by substantial upwellings and very strong currents that can reach eight knots, may be key factors, the full reasons remain unclear

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CORAL TRIANGLE A mass spawning of nudibranchs. While all nudibranchs are functioning hermaphrodites (they each have both sets of sex organs) they do not self fertilise and they need to pair up to breed

‘Perhaps your body language changes when you actively stop hunting for your target. You relax, and so do the fish. Not great for photography, but wonderful for marine encounters. However, with a rebreather and a digital camera you get the best of both worlds. You can stay down so long you are far more relaxed. You can also take as many images as you want but still have time to really look and to observe your surroundings. It’s magic.’ As Alan’s portfolio grew with more and more unique images, the idea of doing a book on the reef life grew more pressing. A marine biologist friend put him in contact with Dutch scientist Sancia van der Meij, an expert on coral reef diversification, and he found the partner he needed to help him hone his theories about what he was witnessing while underwater. They decided to focus on the Coral Triangle, using his images to illustrate its awesome, but fragile, diversity. While the threats to the region such as blast fishing, cyanide fishing for aquarium sales, run-off pollution and the impact of global warming are part of the book’s backdrop, 54

Alan is far from despondent. He says: ‘For reasons the scientists don’t yet fully understand, the Coral Triangle is proving far more resilient than expected. You see ever worse mass bleaching in areas such as the Chagos archipelago far out in the Indian Ocean, or on the Great Barrier Reef down in Australia. However, in the Triangle I have only seen relatively few patches of bleaching, and with those areas when I returned a year later, you could already see signs of recovery. ‘I’m used to giving talks about the civil engineering projects I have been involved with, and I love doing so about the marine world to the locals who are just as passionate as I am about the underwater environment. If the head of a village asks me to take pictures of the reef so they can show the children what is down there, I’m happy to do so and give them a flashcard of my pictures.’ He said that the marine reserves that are policed, such as Komodo, are proving to be increasingly effective. And he hopes his book is just one small part of the effort to raise awarness to keep preserving the reefs across the Coral Triangle. n

Alan, diving on a Poseidon rebreather, encounters a manta ray

At The Heart Of The Coral Triangle Celebrating Biodiversity, by Alan J Powderham & Sancia van der Meij, CRC Press, £40.99, ISBN 978-0-367428-16-7 www.divemagazine.co.uk

A DIVING LIFE

DOING IT WITH PASSION Diver, teacher, cave explorer, filmmaker, photographer, conservationist, campaigner. Valentina Cucchiara is all of these and more. She talks to Mark ‘Crowley’ Russell about her extraordinary career

Cenote Aktun-Ha a few days after a hurricane. Dissolved tannic acid causes a deep red glow which turns to orange as it becomes diluted. Photo: Valentina Cucchiara www.divemagazine.co.uk

A DIVING LIFE

alentina Cucchiara is passionate about the ocean. Passionate about its conservation, passionate about spending time below its surface and passionate about capturing its majesty through photography and videography – and that passion burns as brightly today as it did 26 years ago, when she first started diving. A native of Rome, Italy, Valentina was studying biology and intent on becoming a vet when, shortly before graduating, she received an invitation to go scuba diving in the Red Sea. Wanting to spend as much time as possible underwater while she was there, she took her Open Water course at home in Italy before heading out to Hurghada – where everything changed. ‘I went diving and it blew my mind,’ Valentina said when we spoke. ‘I realised later on, when I became an instructor, from the moment I went underwater, it was like home. All this stuff that you figure out, such as buoyancy issues and the like, I didn’t have any of that. I just fell in the water and was like, oh, this is great! I just couldn’t think of anything else but diving, diving, diving.’ Returning to Italy to complete her thesis on the ecology of amphibians and reptiles, Valentina spent the next year taking every opportunity she could to go diving, before heading out to the Red Sea once more, this time to Sharm El Sheikh, where she enrolled on a divemaster course with Camel Dive Club. Within a month, she was back in Sharm to stay. ‘I never chose to become a professional full-time diver,’ she said. ‘But I knew that I needed a break from the academics and to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up. My professor told me, “I can’t guarantee you’re going to have the same position when you get back”, but after my divemaster course I started to get work. I started to get paid to be underwater. I couldn’t believe my luck, and I ended up staying a year without even thinking about it.’ With instructors in much greater demand than divemasters, it wasn’t long before Valentina qualified to teach scuba diving to others. She quickly got a job with Sinai Divers in Na’ama Bay, owned by Red Sea diving pioneers Rolf Schmidt and Petra Röglin. During 1997, her father made the inevitable parental visit to check on his daughter’s wellbeing, so Valentina taught him to dive and made him ‘an ally’ of her chosen path. In November of that year, however, life in Egypt – especially for those in the tourism industry – was thrown into turmoil by the massacre of 62 people, mostly tourists, at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor.

‘Suddenly all the tourists were gone,’ remembered Valentina. ‘The planes were coming empty, getting people, and taking them all out. But I stayed on, and that’s when I started photography. There was a guy called Igor at Sinai Divers. He gave me a course and he let me use his camera. So I spent another month in Sharm, just learning a bit of photography.’ With tourism at a standstill, Valentina was invited by Rolf and Petra to Germany’s Düsseldorf International Boat Show (aka Boot) in early 1998. There, she signed up with Raleigh International for a volunteer coral conservation job in Belize. She was deployed to the deserted island of Coco Plum – now an exclusive private island resort – to monitor how runoff from agricultural practices was affecting the coral of the surrounding reef. At Boot she also saw a short film about the cenotes of Mexico, which made a lasting impression. Valentina at work during the 2021 Sea Shepherd Expedition. Photo: Simon Ager

‘I went diving and it blew my mind. I realised later on, when I became an instructor, from the moment I went underwater, it was like home’ ‘They were showing awesome images of underwater caves which I didn’t even know existed at the time,’ she said. ‘I was really in love with the images, so after Belize I went travelling for a bit and I ended up going through Mexico and I went to dive the cenotes – and that was it. Mind blown again!’ Valentina found work as an instructor in Mexico and was introduced to Jerónimo Avilés Olguín, a cave-diving explorer and videographer with whom she took her first course in underwater videography; now a friend and mentor she still works with, two decades later.

Cave instructor Bernadette Carrion testing a Dive-Xtras Blacktip DPV in cenote Jardín del Eden. Photo: Valentina Cucchiara 59

A DIVING LIFE

In the cenotes diving hub of Tulum in 1998, underwater videography was limited to a handful of staff at a small number of dive centres. With the guidance of Avilés, Valentina stopped working as a dive instructor and began her career as a videographer. ‘For me, diving has always been a series of challenges,’ she said. ‘I had to challenge myself diving in a new environment, with new equipment, new rules. Then I was filming in the caverns, which was a different challenge. I had to use lights and I had to learn how to portray this beautiful environment, which is not so simple.’ 60

Many of the cenotes were virtually untouched at this time, and only a handful of the important archaeological finds that would be uncovered over the next 20 years had been made. During Valentina’s own cave course, Avilés spotted a human skull which, upon investigation, led to the discovery of ten ice-age skeletons, the first human remains to be recovered from an era when the cenotes were above the waterline. Even just getting to cenotes in the first place could be something of an adventure, back in 1998. ‘I remember visiting Nohoch, which is now famous,

Bernadette Carrion hovers over the surreal cloud of hydrogen sulphide created by the breakdown of organic material, which sits between the salt water and fresh water layers of cenote La Orquidea. Photo: Valentina Cucchiara

and it’s got beautiful entry and exit platforms and paths, and you can get there with a car,’ said Valentina. ‘We had donkeys carrying our tanks and our equipment, and we walked an hour and a half into the jungle to get to the water. The whole thing was exciting. It was adventurous; it was challenging, but it was fun. A lot of fun.’ Valentina returned to Sharm in April 2000 for what was supposed to be a short break before taking on a position with a conservation organisation. But the job fell through and she stayed in Egypt, initially working with the video company at Sinai Divers, before starting

her own concession as in-house videographer for Oonas Divers, where she remained until 2005. Forever looking for new challenges, Valentina took TDI and GUE technical diving courses during this time. She also volunteered to film exploratory dives around the previously undocumented deeper reefs of Sharm, including the search for the wreck of the Jolanda, the ship that shed its famous porcelain cargo over Shark Reef in Ras Mohammed. She also began to receive commissions for TV productions, filming Nuno Gomes’ world-record breaking deep dive in Dahab in 2005. www.divemagazine.co.uk

A DIVING LIFE

Cave diver Andrea Anton Cantos posing for a backlit shot in Chan Ayim cave. Photo: Valentina Cucchiara 62

A green sea turtle in Ras Mohammed National Park, Egypt. Photo: Valentina Cucchiara

Valentina at work in Chan Hol cave, 2009. Photo: Jerónimo Avilés Olguín

In 2006, Valentina and her now partner, Nick Poole – whom she had hired to work at Oonas while she was away filming – took jobs on board the MV Tala, a GUE-dedicated technical diving Red Sea liveaboard, splitting her time between shooting videos of dive tourists and exploratory research expeditions. She took on work for underwater scooter manufacturer DiveXtras, who went on to sponsor her and for whom she is now a brand dealer in Mexico.

At the same time, in between her professional commitments, Valentina was also volunteering for conservation projects in the Red Sea, including working with the late, pioneering HEPCA director Amr Ali to start a turtle project, and working with an Italian organisation to protect the spinner dolphins of Marsa Alam. It was during this time that she worked on Carl Safina’s Saving The Ocean documentary series for PBS. Volunteer conservation work has been a constant theme of Valentina’s career – willingly dedicating her free time to her original love of biology, a subject she is clearly still very passionate about. ‘I do a lot of voluntary work and I’ve been doing it ever since I started,’ she said. ‘My love for biology always stayed. It’s really difficult to work in biology projects, because there are no funds, so I always end up volunteering, wherever I’ve been.’ Following the Arab Spring of 2011, with Egyptian tourism again in the doldrums, Valentina and Nick returned to Mexico, where she turned her attention once more to underwater photography. Looking at some of her incredible work with a still camera, it’s difficult to imagine that she only bought her first DSLR just over ten years ago – but, as always, it is the challenge of learning new things that is the driving force behind her expertise. ‘I got my first Canon, the 5D Mark II, when I was working on the Tala [in 2009], so that’s when I really started with photography,’ she said. ‘In the past maybe five years, my passion has been photography. It’s my www.divemagazine.co.uk

A DIVING LIFE

Water lilies and free diver Konrad Madej in Cenote Aktun-Ha. Photo: Valentina Cucchiara

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A DIVING LIFE new challenge; it’s where I’m still learning. There’s always a lot to learn in diving, and that’s something that I like. My divemaster instructor told me from the start, he said, “The most important lesson about this course is that you will never know enough. The moment you think that you know everything about diving, is the moment you stop learning.” I still cherish the fact that that’s what keeps me in this world, because every dive is a different challenge.’ The move back to Mexico brought her into contact with one of the organisations most close to her heart, Manta México Caribe, a non-profit conservation group founded in 2013 by Karen Fuentes, which has been affiliated with the Manta Trust since 2015 and is dedicated to the protection of mantas and mobulas in the Mexican Caribbean. Once again, Valentina volunteered her services for free to become the organisation’s official ‘documentarist’.

The association with Manta México Caribe brought her onto the team behind a documentary produced by Fuentes entitled Mermaids Against Plastic, a National Geographic Explorer project for which Valentina was the underwater cinematographer and which won in its category at the 2020 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival. This in turn led to Valentina being able to fulfil a childhood dream and join the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society for a scientific expedition to the Revillagigedo archipelago in early 2021. Rather than the chasing of illegal fishing vessels across the high seas, with which Sea Shepherd is often associated, the expedition to Socorro Island was a three-month research collaboration with humpback whale researchers and members of the Comisión Nacional de Áreas Naturales Protegidas (CONANP) to monitor populations of pelagic species, coral reefs, fish,

Tannic acid dissolved from organic matter after the first heavy rains of the season forms a thick cloud near the surface of cenote Aktun-Ha, causing a red ‘fire water’ effect which dilutes over time to oranges and greens. Photo: Valentina Cucchiara 66

A train of mantas feeding near Isla Mujeres, on assignment with Manta México Caribe. Photo: Valentina Cucchiara 67

A DIVING LIFE

Close encounter with a silvertip shark at the Canyon, San Benedicto island. Photo: Valentina Cucchiara

Free diver Marianna Tombini with her Dive-Xtras Blacktip DPV in cenote Maravilla, Puerto Morelos. Photo: Valentina Cucchiara 68

Humpback whale calf breaching during a Sea Shepherd expedition to the Revillagigedo Archipelago. Photo: Valentina Cucchiara

Eye to eye with a bottlenose dolphin, Revillagigedo Archipelago, Mexico. Photo: Valentina Cucchiara

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A DIVING LIFE invertebrates, plankton and albatross. In a region that has only been a national park since 2017, where funding has been cut to leave just seven park rangers for the whole state of Baja California, Sea Shepherd’s presence was invaluable, and exactly where Valentina wanted to be. ‘It had been a dream of mine to be with Sea Shepherd since I was in school,’ said Valentina. ‘I did a lot of voluntary work, but [with Sea Shepherd] it’s always a daunting three or four months away – a long time, and I’ve always had to work. And so this year with the pandemic, I knew I was about to go to Revillagigedos for the first time, and I knew that one week would just, you know, tickle me, and I would just want more. So I talked to Nick and I said, “Look, I’m sorry, but I gotta go”, and I’m super-happy I did.’ Today, Valentina and Nick live in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico, running their company Liquid Jungle Media, creating a diverse array of content, from underwater productions, to aerial imaging and property portfolios. For many people, turning an activity about which one was initially very passionate, into a steady job often dulls the enthusiasm over time, but when we spoke over

‘Betty Blue’ – a fairy tale shot in cenote Corazón del Paraíso, Tulum, with model Betty Brieser. Photo: Valentina Cucchiara 70

‘It’s still my drive, you know? It’s what makes me wake up every morning and be excited about what I do’ Zoom, there was no mistaking the passion that Valentina retains for her work in conservation and behind the lens, even after nearly three decades under the water. ‘I always say I have been so extremely lucky in my life to find a passion that, 26 years later, it’s still my drive, you know,’ she said. ‘It’s what makes me wake up every morning and be excited about what I do. And I still love it. I love it so much that it doesn’t matter sometimes whether I get paid or not. As long as I can continue doing what I love. I have jobs that pay the bills, and then there are jobs that pay much more than money. ‘I’m just very grateful that I’ve had the luck to find this great passion, and I’ve been able to continue with it until now. And I’m never gonna stop.’ n

Lighting a huge chamber in Chan Ayam cave with 60,000 lumens of lights. Divers Matti Lampinen and Andrea Anton Cantos give an idea of scale. Photo: Valentina Cucchiara 71

FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER

ARTWORKS

Michal has accentuated the blue rings of a blue-ringed octopus using the fractal filter in Photoshop. When the octopus is agitated underwater, the rings seems to glow, perhaps indicating that it is preparing to using its lethal toxin

MICHAL ŠTROS

has been taking stunning underwater photographs for more than 20 years. His work has always captured the abstract beauty of the marine environment. During the enforced absence from diving due to the global pandemic, Michal, from his Czech Republic home, decided to take his fascination with the artistic element of his images even further with post-production experiments. He also published a book – The Silent World Through the Lens Of Underwater Art Photography. Here is a selection of his work, some carefully framed and lit to enhance the sheer glory of his subjects, others tweaked and manipulated to create memorable and unique images. You can see more of Michal’s works of art in our Featured Photographer section on our website. Contact info@divemagazine.com if you would like to considered as a DIVE Featured Photographer. www.divemagazine.co.uk

FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER

Using a Retra LSD snoot to light these delicate white-tufted worms makes them appear to be dancing on a darkened stage www.divemagazine.co.uk

FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER

The moody light on the anemone and its brightly illuminated shrimp seems to be from the realms of science fiction rather than underwater

Ribbon eels transition from dark-coloured males as juveniles, to bright blue, then yellow, as they mature into females www.divemagazine.co.uk

FEATURED PHOTOGRAPHER Close in, this glorious, snoot-lit, bearded fireworm is like a firework exploding

An unusual crop of a French angelfish makes a powerful, near abstract image

For a copy of Michal’s book, visit his website – http://michalstros.cz www.divemagazine.co.uk

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DIVE’s Miscellany of Marine Curios # 24. Candy crab, Hoplophrys oatesi

Stare long enough at the branches of a dendritic soft coral and you might catch a glimpse of the exquisite and tiny candy crab. You can usually only see them when they move, as they have a most effective camoulflage, matching the red, pink or orange polyps of the coral host, often complete with appropriate colour bands across their legs. They are covered in spikes and nodules to further blend into the background. They even go as far as decorating their carapaces with living coral polyps. Other common names include the Oates’s soft coral crab, commensal soft coral crab and the Dendronephthya crab. They can grow to as much as two centimetres across, but most are just a few millimetres in size. You, or more likely a skilled dive guide, will find them wherever you find their only home - the swaying soft coral of the various species of Dendronephthya on reefs across the Indo-Pacific. The crab is a monotypic genus of the family Epialtidae - that is, there is only one species, the Hoplophrys oatesi, which was first scientifically recorded in 1893 by Scottish zoologist John Roberston Henderson.

Photo credit: Brad Fish/Shutterstock 82

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