A green way out of the crisis!

Due to dramatic changes in the economical, political, psychological and collective subconscious states of Greece and its' inhabitants, we have not updated this blog-spot and must apologize to our wonderful readers and followers across the globe! Before I continue to the main theme of this post, I must dedicate one of my favorite songs to all of you, sending summer vibes and rhythms, but most importantly  lots of love to wherever you are! keep on searching!

                                   

                                

 But we must not forget the fish!

This beauty is one of the 5 species of mullets that thrive in the wet land. Let us introduce the beautiful Liza aurata! Mullets are quite hard to identify even for specialists, however we are pretty sure this is her, because of the comparatively thin upper lip, the long pectoral fin, the yellow spot, small scales and nearly scaleless pretty face! Mullets are a very prized food source and in Greece the female gonads of certain species are very highly sought after due to their quality and high price. The delicacy made from the female roe is called "avgotaraxo" and can be sold as high as 200 euros per piece, preserved beautifully in bees wax! This beauty of a mullet can reach the size of 59 cm , but usually around 30 cm. It is found from Scotland to Cape Verde; in the Mediterranean and Black Sea. Also in the coastal waters from southern Norway to Morocco, and rarely off Mauritania.This species breeds from July to November only in the sea, and its minimum sustainable size for consumption is 20 cm! Always respect this size and the breading season. We must all be left alone while breeding, right?!

3..2..1.. take-off

“We're all familiar with birds that are as comfortable diving as they are flying but only one family of fish has made the reverse journey” inform us “The Journal of Experimental Biology”. Reading more about an experiment done at Seoul answers all the questions that query us when we first watched the flyingfish’s flight over the sea. At the work of two scientists of Seoul National University ,that made the aerodynamic experiments, we can read all that interesting things.
"For the first time, we have performed a direct wind-tunnel experiment to investigate the aerodynamic properties of flying-fish flight and provided qualitative and quantitative data for the flying fish flight. Force measurements were performed for the real flyingfish models with different wing morphologies. The aerodynamic performance of flying fish is comparable to those of various bird wings, and the flying fish has some morphological characteristics in common with the aerodynamically designed modern aircrafts. As the lateral dihedral angle of the pectoral fins decreases, the lift coefficient slightly increases. In addition to the enlarged pectoral fins, the large pelvic fins have an important role in enhancing the lift-to-drag ratio and longitudinal static stability. The enhancement of the lift-to-drag ratio from the pelvic fin is attributed to the jet-like flow existing between the pectoral and pelvic fins. For both solid and water surfaces, the drag coefficient decreases and thus the lift-to-drag ratio increases as a result of the ground effect, indicating that the flying fish obtains substantial advantages by gliding close to the sea surface."

Nelly didn’t expect such a rare meeting while she was ascending from a dive at Kardamili region at Southern Greece. Usually she met jellyfishes or schools of small fishes in similar situations. Suddenly she thought that a bird splashed down over her bubbles trying to catch one small fish that moved carefree near her surface. Watching better she thought that the world had turned upside down (like at the POC 3 movie) and the birds come underwater! Ohhh look that fish it has enormous fins that look like wings tried to say at her buddy who swam nearby her. She realized that she was watching a flying fish, a fish that she had first met while fishing with her grandfather when she was child. Fastly she took some very nice pictures and later shared them at the social network. There I saw the pictures and that make me excited because it was the first time that I saw a u/w picture of a flyingfish. That fishes rarely come near the shore to make company at divers as they prefer the open sea. I find it hard enough to descry which specie it is because at Greece there are several similar species of flyingfish. I think it’s the Cheilopogon heterurus but as far as I search I cannot be sure. Thank you Nelly for sending us that pic!

For our Fathers...

This post is dedicated to the memories of Hectors' Father Socrates, and my Father, Makis. They are the people that first introduced us to the glory of the Sea. Both of them were passionately in love with her. Every moment of their leisure time was spent by her side, being active fishermen and seamen. We continue to dive for their memory, my Father passed away 12 years ago and still to this day I dedicate every jump into the water to his memory.
Socrates died yesterday.
May he rest in peace, we will always remember him.
In the days our Fathers explored the Sea, the sight of big fish from the Grouper family was very common with fish reaching massive sizes. Nowadays it is very rare to see big specimens unless you are lucky to visit Marine Protected Areas, or other remote areas that have not been overfished. This photo of the Dogtooth Grouper was taken in North Greece and is far from the maximum size of 78kg reported as the maximum weight in Fishbase.org. The inquisitive fish on the right corner is of course a very common Eastern Mediterranean Inhabitant, the beautiful Coris julis, but he will have to wait for his turn on a separate post.

The fish that fishes....Το ψάρι που ψαρεύει!

The biodiversity of fish shapes and forms reminds me of the
immense shapes and forms found in the rain-forest insects!
This month we offer for your viewing and icthyological pleasure
the magnificent Angler fish or Peskandritsa in Greek.
Another synomym is the Monk fish, with the females of the species
reaching the spectacular length of 2m, 40 kg!
To encounter even a small specimen is a fantastic experience,
firstly because of its mouth, which basically makes up most of
the body! The angler fish gets its name from a small fishing appendage
found on the top of the head, which originates
from one of the three modified dorsal spines.This fishing lure
attracts mostly small fish, however the angler fish with its
massive mouth can engulf fish as big as itself, and digest them easily in its expandable stomach! On the first photo we can clearly see the seaweed like
appendages, circling the mouth which can change color depending on the
environment, making this fish another master in camouflage, whether it is
lying on sand or rocky bottoms.
Another strange aspect of this animal is the use of its modified pelvic and pectoral fins as legs, which it uses to move around, along with a sudden burst of its tail.
On this video provided by our good friend Michalis, you can see this behavior on minute 2. The monk fish is highly commercial, however its status is not evalluated yet for the IUCN red list. It is always sold skinned and without a head, so basically
what you eat is the tail... not a lot from such a big fish, so it is best left alone
lurking on the sea bottom, fishing other small fish or even sea birds!

Sandy bottom delights

This time we were looking for sea horses but instead we found rays, many many rays!
The sandy bottom realm sounds quite boring, divers stay well away of it, but the sandy bottom hosts an array of very interesting and beautiful inhabitants. Today we present the skate/ray Raja radula,one of the most common rays of the Mediterranean,with some evidence towards its endemism in the area, as the specimens found off the Atlantic could have been misidentified with other similar species, not very hard to do with these rays.
This ray is completely harmless to humans, it has no thorn, like the sting rays and no electricity like the torpedo rays, however the skin around the tail is quite rough, hence its common name, rough ray.
This fish inhabits shallow water until the depths of 300 meters,and this particular specimen was photographed in Stratoni at the depth of 10 meters.All in all, on a 50 minute dive, we spotted 4 animals laying on the sandy sea bottom.
They prefer to eat any type of bottom animals, making Stratoni a haven of food for them!
They are oviparous, laying oblong egg capsules with stiff pointy horns on the ends (mermaid purses). About 80-154 eggs are laid by an individual in a year. Because of insufficient data on their populations it is listed as Data Deficient on the IUCN Red List.

Triggerfish journeys

Photo by Vasilis Mentogiannis

After all these years of diving, travelling and exploring the seas of the world, this was the year I said with the most certainty that even if I only dive here,in Greece, for the rest of my life and nowhere else, I will be happy and content!
Dive Greece Baby!
The beauty of our sea is not only very well hidden and currently very fragile but also it is very little acknowledged. One example, is a completely exotic animal the Triggerfish, which usually lives in tropical seas. The Grey triggerfish (Γουρονόψαρο η Βαλιστής) is a resident of the East and West Atlantic, all the way down to Argentina with rarer occurrences in the East Mediterranean.

Balistidae is a family containing 40 species but only Balistes carolinensis (synonym Ballistes capriscus)can be found in Greece. As a family, these fish are most extraordinary, with colorful lines and spots, especially in their Indopacific range. Their name, triggerfish, comes from the locking mechanism of their anterior dorsal fin, which is composed of 3 spines that fit inside a groove, while only 2 work as a trigger. When the first, (anterior) spine is locked in place by erection of the short second spine, then it can only be unlocked by depressing the second, “trigger” spine.

Another peculiarity of the triggerfish, is their aggressive behavior against other fish in small aquaria, or divers when they approach a nest of eggs. At this point, it is advisable to swim away from the nest and not over it, as their territory is conical reaching to the surface. If you add the aggressive behavior of these fish, along with their strong, fused teeth, you have one vicious, unnecessary bite! Some strong attacks have been mentioned from bigger, more tropical species, but for the Grey triggerfish this has not been reported.
Balistes carolinensis prefer to eat small crustaceans and mollusks from the benthos. Their skin is very tough and leathery.
It seems that this particular individual is a juvenile, because the tips of its caudal fin are not elongated yet। As an adult it can reach the size of 60cm! Their reproductive season is in the summer, when spawn is placed inside a crater on the sand, and is guarded by the female (male in the tropics), a sure sign you should swim around and not over the nest!
The color of the Grey triggerfish is mostly grey with brilliant fluorescent turquoise dots on upper half of body and median fins, and irregular short lines ventrally. There may also be three faint irregular broad dark bars on body and a narrow pale transverse band on the chin.

This particular beauty was hanging out under the traditional fishing boat (kaiki) Agios Nikolaos, the boat that broke the embargo to Gaza in the summer of 2008 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gRscVeNbDo&feature=related.
The second expedition took place this year with tragic consequences....



The boat was anchored next to the Isle of Modi in the NE Peloponnese, but that is a whole different adventure soon to come on Medi Sea!
Until then, thank you Vasilis for capturing the elusive fish!

the third, the unknown the luckiest.

While swimming at Chorto bay in the Pagasitic gulf, I had the chance to check the marine life that lives associated with the Aplysina aerophoba sponges. I wasn’t alone, as this tiny fish had the same interests with me. It is the third, the smallest and the most unknown common fish species of the genus Serranus in the Eastern Meditteranean Sea.

Scientists of Ichthyology give it the humble name Serranus hepatus. I don’t think that this defame matters the fish, as its famous cousins are famous because fishermen catch them with hooks. It doesn’t feel unhappy of this because it knows that it’s better being an insignificant swimmer, than fried and famous. You can differentiate it from the Serranus cabrilla by the big black spot on its dorsal fin.

More information about our friend can be found in studies made by Abdoulaye Wague (in Greek click here) and Murat Bilecenoglu (in English and Turkish click here) .

Pompanos as companions

This summer, never was I lonely on the shallow dives. The minute I jumped in the water 3 beautiful Pompanos(Trachinotus ovatus, Litsa, Mavrolitsa or Gofari in Greek) appeared immediately and were our loyal followers throughout the dive. They swim very fast, in a most elegant fashion and their curiosity is high, coming very close to swimmers without fear.
Their tail is fork shaped as is typical of the carangids, with a black spot on the tip of the caudal, dorsal and anal fins. They also have 3 - 5 dark spots on the front end of their body. The biggest specimen recorded was measured at 70 cm, although most commonly at 35 cm. Its distribution has been recorded from the Eastern Atlantic, Bay of Biscay, British and Scandinavian waters (rare) to Angola, including the Mediterranean Sea and offshore islands.
They usually swim in small schools near the coast in shallow waters, over sandy or muddy bottoms, unlike their other relatives of the amazing family Carangidae, which are mostly pelagic. They mostly prefer to eat small crustaceans, mollusks and fishes.
For this reason they are easy to spot and photograph.
Pompanos have a high salinity tolerance and are in the process of being farmed in China although they have a low food conversion rate, with trials being made to grow them using soyabean and fishmeal.

Volcanoes, roses and a prince.

On little Santa Maria beach,Paros, if you swim at the depth of 4-5 meters and deeper, on the sandy parts you may notice a lot of small hills with a hole in the top. These “volcanoes” are nests of marine animals. Bivalves or worms are the most possible inhabitants of the volcanoes but until now I didn’t have the chance to check it. When the volcano is dirty,it has the same behavior with all the volcanoes. It explodes and you can notice small stones throwing away from the hole.
Of course, and as in every lonely planet, except from the volcanoes you can also see roses. The roses of the area are alive and have a worm inside them. They are spiral tube worms but for we will talk more about them in future posts. So the volcano is dirty and the rose alone? Of course not! Our planet has its capricious prince, the little weever. It is capricious because if you annoy him it will give you his poison. (stop the pain by putting the injured area in hot water 44C to 49C). It spends its day by laying over the volcano and negotiating the terms of volcano cleanliness with the worm, trying to help the rose with the existential thoughts. That's how our friends spend their day on the sandy beach.

When the roses ideas make our hero tired, he prefers to bury himself instead of going away.

The volcano is such a good place for scanning around and resting.

The hard thing is to convince the worm to let you clean the volcano.

Casting: The little prince : Trachinus draco
The rose : Sabella spallazanii ???
The volcanoes : species from phylums Annelida or Mollusca.

Check the history and the wreck-story of the original inspired author at wikipedia

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

When I went to Athens on late of June, I met my father who showed me some pics of the strange fish that live under his boat. It was a pic from the anchoring rope of the boat where you could see three shadows standing by the side of the rope. Exactly in the same place (in the same rope) and before 2 years I had first met the Cornetfishes that live at Mediterranean sea. I met them as we were coming back from a dive with Elina, and as we were getting out of the boat I spotted the same shadows from my fathers pics. Fast and cautiously (because it was illegal to dive there as there where running construction works) I slid into water for two minutes to take these pictures. In the pics you can see one of the small cornetfish from that contact. It has a very strange tail with a membrane being in the place of the whiplash that usually exists at the end of the cornetfish tail.
My last contact with the invading alien "ehmm sorry fish" ,was before one week during a wonderful night dive. I spoted a big fat cornetfish (I think it was bigger than 1 meter) by some Poseidonia plants, at the depth of 15m. I don’t know why the fish was extremely friendly towards us. Maybe it was tempted by our wonderful character, but I mostly believe that our powerful lights helped also. It changed its color (when it was alone it was striped) to a bright green-blue and started moving between us and hitting our masks with its mouth! I petted it and took some nice pics before we let it continue to its hunting for little gobies and other small fishes. I have to remind you that the Fistularia commersionii is one of the species that invaded the Mediterranean sea through the Suez channel. In the picture you can see Linda petting the fish. Linda has her birthday today and she draws fishes while she is studying biology and diving. So Happy birthday buddy and hope you soon reach thousands of dives and have close encounters with all the lovely marine animals.

The magnificent 7

Some songs stuck in your mind at such a point that you easily remember them even if your see a number that is at their title.
Scuba diving in shallow water is one of my favorite habits. There so much light there (guys we are still in Greece) that you don’t need to use strobes to make nice pictures. Also you can see all these schools of juveniles making their first walks around the sea grasses. Small sea breams, wrasses and goatfishes are everywhere and as you have a friend with long patience or the same tastes, you can enjoy a lot scuba diving at 4 or 5 meter. Also it is a good way to be more familiar with our equipment as it harder to control your buoyancy. These schools of young goatfishes make to us excellent company at a June dive as it drove us to all the young wrasses of the area.

Now you see me, now you don't! Lessons in camouflage

The sea is a unique ecosystem hiding many suprises. You may be passing over a 2 kilo octopus or a 1m fish and not see it unless your eye is trained to make out their unique shapes from the exact same color background.
Camouflage is employed by fish, cephalopods, shells and other animals, in an attempt to protect themselves from enemies or carnivores that want to eat them.
For example, at two meters of water in front of a busy swimming area, swimmers have no idea that below them lie hiding two masters of camouflage, a juvenile Sepia officinalis and one of the few species of Scorpionfish that live in the Mediterranean.



Did you spot the cuttlefish (soupia)?

check out a new small video of the same animal playing with another baby cuttlefish just before the middle of the clip
on our you tube channel


This scorpionfish, Scorpaena porcus as the name suggests, has a potent poison on its spines, causing the biggest and strongest men or women to cry like babies for approximately three days, if they are unlucky enough to accidentally tread on one.
It is in no way aggressive and relies purely on its camouflage to get its' food, by sitting as in meditation, completely still
waiting for an unlucky fish or crabs to swim by and then opening its gills slightly, creating suction.
The poison is used purely for protection, for bigger enemies. Scorpionfish are quite hard to identify, but we know this one is Scorpaena porcus because the tentacles over its eye are longer than it is wide, and it lacks the bottom chin appendages!

Red Soldierfish, the guardian of ancient amphoras

Sargocentron rubrum, has been established in the Mediterranean Sea since at least 2002, as recorded by the CIESM Atlas of Exotic Fishes in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Red Coat Soldierfish arrived via the Suez Canal, becoming a very common fish in the southeastern but also southwestern Mediterranean, and is the only species of the family Holocentridae that has moved to our seas until now.
This specimen was photographed off the South Coast of Cyprus, over a 4th century BC wreck, which was carrying the most precious wine of the time, from Chios.
The archaeological excavation of the wreck was conducted by the University of Cyprus, in collaboration with the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus and the THETIS Foundation.
This photo was taken at a depth of 45 meters during the expedition in May 2010.
In Greece its distribution is in the most southeastern parts, like in Kastelorizo, where the population is very active.
A survey conducted on an artificial reef of the coast of Israel found its biomass to have increased from 64% in 1985 to 95% in 1995 (E Spanier, Changes in the Icthyofauna of an Artificial Reef in the southeastern Mediterranean in one Decade, Scientia marina, 64 (3) 279-284). The author speculates that this dramatic increase in Israel and other neighboring sites, is either due to the competitive exclusion of autochthonous species by Lessepsian migrants, taking over spatial and food resources, or another possible explanation could be the over-fishing of the targeted, commercially important, groupers and sparids.
The wreck of Mazotos, off the coast of Cyprus, is definitely acting as an artificial reef amongst the vast sandy plains of the sea bottom, but, thankfully, due to its protection as an archaeological site, it is not fished very often, with the exception of rogue fishermen/looters
This beautiful fish cannot be mixed up with any other in the South Mediterranean, well until any more decide to change oceans! Its skin is very rough with hard scales, and the spine on its cheek is venomous, so look, but never touch
It is usually found in coastal reefs, wrecks, caves or cracks of rocks and very often occurs in aggregations.
They feast on benthic crabs and shrimps but even small fishes

Colonies and immigrants

Didemnum sp. colonies can been found from the very shallow water up to the depth of 15 meters. These are the colonies of the tiny ascidia which love the light (photophile). There are thousands of them in every colony that you meet. A colony can be found over seaweeds, inside the P.oceanica or on rocks. I have met them in both very polluted water and in very clean. It’s hard to identify the species by the photographs but these photos seem to be of the Didemnum commune. The increase of the sea temperature seems to have given new opportunities to Didemnum sp. to emigrate to new places of the endless sea. So, as we nicknamed ascidia in previous posts, these long cousins have a similar behavior with us. They make big cities and then they leave them behind to find new worlds for development.

A goby in the muck

So, it has been a couple of months I haven't visited Kalogria in Chalkidiki, and luckily Hector visited me so we went!
It was wonderful to be in the water again, but unfortunately the sight we saw was not a very pretty one. Ok the sea bed was covered by the seasonal weeds but the shock was that of very sick sponges ... that were covered by a white slime, that looked like it was suffocating the sponges, causing them to melt....we are looking into what is causing this and will keep you posted. In between the slime, a lonely Thorogobius ephippiatus looked kinda confused....
The leopard spotted goby is one of the easiest gobies to identify because of his pale fawn body and distinctive dark purple or black spots. It has a relatively large body, reaching a maximum length of 13 cm, and the breading males are darker in colour with a conspicuous light-pale blue edge to the dorsal and anal fins. These gobies love to eat amphipod crustaceans and worms.
Most often you will find them in ledges and crevices in vertical rock faces down to a depth of 40m. This fish was photographed at 25 meters.

Looks like a ghost but it is a long cousin!

Tunicates or sea-squirts or ascidians is common names that we use for the members of the class Ascidia (or class Ascidiacea). This class belongs to the phylum Chordata which is the phylum that belongs and “our” class Mammalia.
Cione roulei, Lahille, 1887 is also known as red tunicate. It seemed very strange to me when I first see it at Paros. I don’t think that it is common to find this animal at the eastern Mediterranean. It is strange and I didn’t understand that it is a tunicate at first sight. It has an inner and outer part of the animal. The outer part looks like a cloak or a ghosts sheet. If you touch it the inner red part will move while the outer not. I find them at less than 5 meters depth and this animal prefer living at deeper. After I found the impressive couple of the first photo I continue swimming around to find more of them. I found one without obvious ghost sheet and one without color inside. I think that all this are C.roulei but I cannot be sure because I left them there. In next posts we will learn more about tunicate biology and meet more members of that class.

happy 2010

2010 first step by the Giant Goby

Gobius cobitis is the biggest fish of the about 20 species of the family Gobiidae in the Mediterranean sea. That’s why I chose him for doing the first step of our blog for the New Year. I read on internet that it is considered as a protected animal in G.Britain but I think that this is a little bit strange. I met him as his was doing his midday walk away from his rocks. I don’t know if he was hunting anything because his feeding is very variable between green algae, crustaceans, insects and polychaeta. He lives in the intertidal and very shallow water between rocks and hides in small caves if any annoying photographer disturbs his silence ;-). His large size (up to 27 cm) sometimes fools naturalists as they believe that it is a small grouper or whatever else they think. Fishbase calls him chondrogovios (χοντρογωβίος) which is a name I have never heard and means fat-goby. A fisherman was calling this fish Petrakis (Πετράκης) and I find it much more gentle but I am not sure if this can be considered as a local name.

Santa gifts.

Santa gifts sometimes are real extraordinary. You can find them inside your camera’s memory stick with no explanation how they exist there. This photo is this kind of gift.
It is something completely unusual because I have seen a lot of pictures with S.saurus bite so big victims to his jaws. But this is not a S.saurus it is a Trachinus radiatus which has a much smaller mouth than S.saurus. And the most impressive is that the victim is not a small Sparidae fish or a C.chromis but a juvenile of the family Rajidae!!! Most of the times that I don’t take a nice picture of an interest subject I think “next time will be better”. Unfortunately for this subject I don’t think that will be a next time. But who cares? The sure is that sea will always impress me with the strange behaviours of her habitants and if the sea wants we will be there for a lot of years inform you for all the strangeness of the Eastern Mediterranean Inhabitants.

Have a nice new year with a lot and wonderful dives!
May the next year be fairer for marine animals?

the king of blennies

One uncommon and endemic in the Mediterranean sea specie of blennie is Salaria basilisca. Blennie-basilic is very similar with Salaria pavo but it has small differences in the white marks of her body and it doesn’t have the ring behind the eye that we can see at S.pavo. It lives in the very shallow water hiding in small caves and it is hermaphrodite. It born as a female and as it get older turns to male. The head of the male individuals can grow that strange “crown”. Probably can stay over the tide level as does the S.pavo .