The Daily Bucket is a nature refuge. We amicably discuss animals, weather, climate, soil, plants, waters and note life’s patterns.
We invite you to note what you are seeing around you in your own part of the world, and to share your observations in the comments below.
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April 2019
the Caribbee
Biodiversity in a healthy coral reef is pretty spectacular. My visit to the Caribbee immersed me in that, even this remnant under threat. Let me show you just two of the distinctive creatures I saw there this time.
Spotted drumfish are native to tropical waters of the western Atlantic, not too common to see in the Caribbee but that’s mainly because they hide quite well. In fact the adults are rare sightings. If you keep an eye out you’ll see the juveniles in coral crevices — partly due to their stripey pattern, but mostly because of their movement. Spotted drums swim in circles, and the younger they are, the more circly their swimming.
The juvenile above was swimming like this:
(as always, if YouTube doesn’t default to HD with your device, you can change to that using the settings wheel in the lower right for better resolution)
The younger they are, the more drums can be seen. That might be due to winnowing of the population (bigger fish eat them) or perhaps their brisk swimming movements catch my eye more.
Usually they are lone fish. Once on this trip I saw three swimming together!
See their distinctive swimming:
Spotted drums are nocturnal feeders so in the daytime when I’m swimming around to see them they are resting in hidey holes, waiting for dark when they come out to feed on small crustaceans and worms (en.m.wikipedia.org/...). Nocturnal predators on the reef, like octopus, eels and sharks, are more likely to pass them by than the daytime predators.
Baby reef critters are common sightings. Often they are very different in appearance from the adult stage. The Spotted drum is somewhat different but still recognizable. Adults lose the long swirly dorsal fin, and are — spotted!
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There are many other youthful fishies I could show you too, but today I’ll close with an unusual sighting this year: a Yellow-headed Jawfish incubating its eggs. Jawfish live in vertical burrows they excavate with their very large mouth, coming up to feed on passing food (www.montereybayaquarium.org/...). They are extremely skittish, retreating to their burrows at any sign of a predator nearby. Divers look like predators, being big. On the reef, a general principle is big fish eat smaller fish. On this trip we saw two different Jawfish hovering above their burrows with eggs. It’s the dads who incubate, protecting their fertilized eggs in their mouth! Dad needs to come up into the water to aerate the eggs, turning the mass around in his mouth carefully, risking death to them and himself. He can’t eat for the week it takes the eggs to hatch either. Once the eggs hatch into tiny tiny baby Jawfish, they are sent early on to go out the excavate their own burrows. Our dive guide told us about some tough love she saw once: a baby Jawfish repeatedly tried to find shelter in an adult’s burrow, to be firmly driven off each time. Back and forth — please?? Ultimately the baby managed to dig its own tiny hole in the sand nearby and hunkered down there. Usually multiple Jawfish can be seen in a patch of sand, but I’ve noticed they are of a similar size. One patch had half a dozen youngsters so small they’re barely visible in video. I’ll show you the dad instead.
As always, behavior can best be grasped by video. Our dive guide Gay noticed him and pointed him out to us.
The diversity of critters on the reef is staggering, and the Caribbee is a relatively simple coral reef ecosystem, having less time to evolve species and interactions than tropical Pacific reef communities. Even so, the complexity of roles and behavior is a sign of the health of this particular area. Little Cayman Island, where I visit the Caribbee reef, has strict protection from many of the threats to coral reefs elsewhere such as overfishing, pollution, development pressures, and invasive species. The Jawfish need waters clear of the sedimentation coming from building projects, otherwise their burrows are smothered and food sources decline. They need coral sand, much of which comes from the activity of Parrotfish. I hope to swim there for as long as I am able. My fear for this reef, and coral reefs worldwide, is the global threats: ocean warming and acidification. Even the most rigorous local protection can’t stop that. Political action by us all must be taken, and aggressively, if these ecosystems are to survive our generation.
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