Weird Critters of the Night

We had scheduled night dives pretty much every night except for one so I took advantage of it and did the second day night dive at ND Saporkren located in Waigeo Island (see map).

I thought the water temperature would cool down but no, it was still 83 degrees! We had three groups dive that day and one of the groups spotted another wobbegong shark. Alas, I didn't see it but I saw many other cool things.

Highlights included a number of seahorses, four at one time.

Here's a photo of one of them.

I also saw a frogfish which was quite difficult to spot, as it blended with the sand and foliage.

I saw an octopus with just it's head peering out of the sand, behavior I haven't seen before.

And my favorite, a bobtail squid!

There were other numerous critters such as various small scorpion fish,

a porcelain crab,

a very tiny cuttlefish, about an inch in size,

and even the leaf slug (Costasiella kuroshimae) famously known as Sean the sheep! Although this version seemed to be female due to the pink dots on its body so I called it Gabbie (an ode to my nephew Sean's girlfriend :-)

Check out more of my photos of the night critters here.

Thanks for looking!