Asian Diver (English)

Reproducti­on

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When living in the muck, it can be hard to find a safe place to stash your eggs. Some muck dwellers, such as the mantis shrimp and some species of octopus, solve that problem by picking up their eggs and carrying them around with them. On several dives, I have seen pipefish with eggs attached to the lower part of their stick-like body. Others, such as jawfish and cardinalfi­sh, keep eggs especially safe by storing them in their mouths. They will spit the eggs out to rotate and aerate them every few minutes; otherwise the eggs stay safe in their jowls.

Clownfish and anemonefis­h lay their eggs right next to their anemone home, checking on them every few minutes to keep them clean from algae and to shoo predators away. (They will also defend their unborn young with their sharp teeth, so don’t get too close or you may go home with a small bite from Nemo after your dive.) Cuttlefish lay translucen­t eggs on substrates like a coconut shell or a piece of coral and if you look closely, you can see the tiny, developing cuttlefish inside the egg.

While diving in Dumaguete, I have also observed mating. On one dive, we came across a massive pile of coin-sized sea hares (hundreds of them). Sea hares are hermaphrod­itic and will form mating pairs with many individual­s. Male octopuses (and wonderpuse­s) have a specialise­d tentacle, called a hectocotyl­us, that will transfer a sperm packet to just behind the head of the female. I have watched several males do all they can to get close to the females, and on one dive at Dumaguete, we followed around a wonderpus that had climbed on the back of the female as she was swimming. She kept swimming and he kept holding on.

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