Q IS FOR QUEER UNDERWATER CREATURES : A-Z Challenge

Welcome to Day 17 of the A-Z Blogging Challenge. My theme is:

'Wildlife Encounters'

One of the prime areas to find seriously queer or weird creatures is the Lembeh Strait in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. I have had articles published about this location in Australia’s Sport Diving Magazine and in a newspaper in Spain. Here are a few random extracts from these publications in no particular order:

I was finning slow and low over the black sand.

A flash of electric blue caught my attention. I had been about to swim directly over a blue ring octopus. 

I was far too excited by the sighting to consider the implications of my near collision with one of the most dangerous animals in our oceans.

Pfeffer's flamboyant cuttlefish pulsed yellow and purple when we approached. Longhorn cowfish and helmut gurnards skimmed fast and low.

Frogfish - or anglerfish - in an unlikely range of colours remained motionless no matter how closely we approached; stoical and somehow dignified despite their absurdly comical appearance.  

Hairy Frogfish

I fell for the hairy version big-time. Of course it's not hair at all but skin filaments.  Nevertheless the hairy frogfish looks cute and cuddly enough to pet.

Lethally camouflaged dragonets, waspfish, scorpionfish and lionfish required constant vigilance as we homed in on likely spots in our search for critters. 

Snake eels hole-up in the sand with just their heads protruding. As we were photographing one a ghostly spaghetti-like tentacle emerged from the sand.  It quested blindly for a few seconds before vanishing again.  Never has the underwater world felt as alien as it did for those few eerie moments.

As a dive destination, North Sulawesi is a great place to find unusual, rare and beautiful animals (or queer underwater creatures, if you will).

See you tomorrow - I'll be heading west. Can you guess where and what the next animal will be?



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