29 Jul, 2008

The venomous spines on some of these fish are best avoided - if you can see them.

It was a pleasant surprise to see that the swell had finally dropped when we arrived at Sodwana Bay on South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal coast this morning.

Because of this we decided to head out to Two Mile Reef, one of the more popular reefs here in Sodwana Bay.

Two Mile Reef covers a huge region, spilt into various dive sites. We chose to dive in an area called Anton’s Cave, because it offers the best structure and marine life in this particular area.

Anton's is a pretty reef with some high pinnacles that attract a variety of fish species.

Deep gullies and cutaways provide perfect refuge for many juvenile species and some smaller reef fish.

This whole area is covered in corals, from hard to soft varieties, and layered with soft sponges providing cover for many reef predators, like those in the Scorpaenidae family.

Firefish, stonefish, scorpionfish and paperfish all belong to this family. Most of them have venomous spines.

These fish are solitary reef-dwellers which use their camouflage to good effect to catch their prey, lying in wait on the sea bed. The devil firefish and the broadbarred firefish, on the other hand, are free-swimming species.

Unfortunately we did not see much in the way of pelagic fish (fish that inhabit the upper layers of the open sea) on this gentle dive.

– Barry Skinstad, Earth-Touch crew © Earth-Touch

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