East of the Equator

Interesting finds in the waters of the Honduras banks include an uncommon species of hamlet found in the NW Caribbean, the golden hamlet.  This is none other than the bright yellow fish with a distinctive face pattern, outlined in iridescent blue, found on the cover of my "Reef Fish Identification" book.  

The rubble of these reefs happen to contain the perfect hidey-holes for blennies of all kinds.  They are hard to identify by their heads only, so I have to give them my best guesses based on relative size (all <1"), colors and cirri patterns.  Once your eyes adjust to the terrain, the rock holes were full of little heads poking out and I often observed them make a dash to nab some food.  A photography challenge, I rarely caught them outside of their holes yet I was still in blenny bliss.

There were orangespotted gobies, triplefins and various  juvenile fish posing on coralheads everywhere as well.   Colorful queen triggerfish, nosey angelfish and shy orangespotted filefish posed for the camera.

Hovering very still underwater to get a picture, I would frequently look up into the face of a curious fish wondering just what the hell I was doing.  This made for good practice to get some portraits of gamefish that I might typically only see on the dinner table.  

The abundant (& tasty) hogfish were photogenic and posed with their "rooster" fins or flashed their colors for the camera.

A large spadefish swam by with some friends in a close pass, inviting me to join them in their promenade.

A cubera snapper snuck up on me as I was taking pictures of a juvenile blue tang.  This area was the first time I've seen cuberas in the water.  Their snouts obviously resemble a snapper, but they also have a big grouper-like tail and gray stripes.  This guy was very friendly which was a good thing, since I know their teeth are downright impressive.  

Speaking of teeth, on one particular reef an aggressive barracuda took a few runs at me and then chased me all the way back to the dinghy.  He was either super friendly or guarding his territory, but I certainly didn't the way he was looking at me nor did I want to take the chance that he mistook my camera for a tasty fish.  He must have really liked me since he circled the dinghy for a while.  Oh well, Mark still got his hogfish back to the dinghy without an attack.