Okay, I’ll confess – I think I have a (slightly) obsessive personality. Fortunately, the stuff I tend to obsess over is generally pretty positive. I don’t obsess about my weight, our kids, money, cleanliness, nor, the biggie these days – aging (although I have to suppress regret about all the sun worshipping I did when I was young and stupid – as an example I used to go Spring skiing with baby oil slathered on my face! What a doofus!).
I was a bit nuts about our amazing cat Simon Fraser, who sadly was hit by a car a couple of years ago and killed while I was away traveling. I really loved that furry little dude, and I still can’t look at pictures of him without feeling deep sadness. Don’t get me wrong – I love our dog too (needy creature that he is) but that cat was something else. Even non-cat lovers thought he was an awesome beast…
When I dive, I don’t think I am overly obsessive about my gear, my pre-dive routine, nor my dive profiles. I love to dive – any place, any time – and I can even be entertained by diving in a backyard pond (and I’ve got the pics to prove it ;^).
The only thing that I am a little nuts about is anemonefish. Seriously. I can’t seem to swim past an anemone without stopping to watch them as they flit about, rubbing themselves on an anemone’s tentacles to slather themselves with the toxins from the anemone that protect them from predation by other reef creatures. These little fish have just got so much, er, personality (anthropomorphize much JG? ;^)
Some varieties, particularly Saddle Back Anemonefish, are pretty brazen little bastards, and will swim metres away from their host anemones to nip and ping divers (which hurts!). Others, like the adorable False Clown Anemonefish (Nemos), are more the stay-at-home type, but become quite animated when divers approach – flitting and swimming up and down in the water column a foot or so above their anemones, in a constant dance that makes them tough to photograph. Others still are quite reclusive, and will dive into the tentacles of anemones, and maybe peek their heads out every now and then to see if you are still camped over them.
This little fish – a Pink Anemonefish, is one of the latter types – generally quite reclusive but will make a tantalizing momentary appearance every now and then, before diving back into the long tentacles of the anemone to hide. Shooting these little fish (they are at most 2 inches long) requires patience, and some luck…
