Grouper Ouch!

Little Cayman has 3 resident groupers at the Bloody Bay marine park who enjoy interacting with divers.

This is a closeup photo of the biggest - nicknamed "Paddie" by the locals:

Now I know why! He's looking for a nice big cleaner wrasse or diana hogfish and a diver looks like the next best thing!

Hint - look around his/her eye.

Cheers

James

That's gotta itch.

Did you see them chasing the squirrel fish around? For some reason they just delighted in chasing just them!

When they were following you around if you pointed at a squirrelfish they would take off after it like some kind of retriever - but only if you pointed at a squirrel nothing else would do.

Yeah, they still do that - Paddie especially. He was like a trained Lab retriever. I got to play the pointing game w/ him/her. I also have a hilarious story - when I was shooting super-macro of a flamingo-tongue, I was concentrating and looking through the viewfinder for a while. I kept hearing this grunting sound of my left but I just ignored it. After a few minutes Paddie got frustrated (it was him grunting!) and charged right into the area I was photographing. I couldn't get him/her to get his/her nose out of there! It was hilarious - I laughed my a$$ off.

This is by far the most intelligent fish I've seen and I've seen a lot of them. He wasn't doing it for food or cleaning - he just wanted attention and wanted to play!

Cheers

James

itching all over looking at the photo!

Beautiful shot.

I agree, very nice shot!!

What exactly are those itchy things? Will little cleaners actually eat those? Or just "big" cleaners?

Hopefully Paddie will do his job as good marine ambassador for nassau grouper populations - because they are in such a sorry state in the Tropical Western Atlantic as their spawning aggregations have pretty much been whiped out, except for several remaining groups and they don't recieve near enough protection (but Cayman is stepping up to the task!).

Thanks James, neat picture and I like Paddie! Carol B)

I think they are parasitic isopods Carol. There appear to be a few different types. I think the one in the lower right is a different species than the ones up upper left which are definitely isopods.

I've seen juvenile hogfish cleaning larger fish and I think they are just the trick for these suckers. The only problem is that I doubt the groupers would let them near their eyes - but who knows.

Cheers

James

Excorallana tricornis tricornis (that's not a typo - it's genus species subspecies) in the isopod family Corallanidae. It's a well known parasite on nassau groupers. Infestation rates are highest on the big ones right after the mass spawning events - probably a good time for the isopods to reproduce & spread from grouper to grouper. Fishermen in some areas won't take groupers postspawn in part because of this pest. Highest densities of the isopod are found in the folds of the mouth, nasal cavities, eye sockets, and mouth, and in the throat & gills according to this paper: Semmens, B.X., et al. 2006. Isopod infestation of postspawning Nassau grouper around Little Cayman Island. Journal of fish biology 69: 933-937

http://www.reef.org/data/isopod_JFB.pdf