One of the many highlights of my recent visit to Lankayan island in Borneo was finding this little fella – the jawfish. Lankayan is a macro divers’ heaven – macro being the diving jargon term for Very Small Things which divers take great delight in both finding and photographing. Personally I’m more of a Big Things fan but the sheer abundance of amazing species at Lankayan gave me renewed interest in scanning the reefs looking for tiny critturs.
Lankayan’s jawfish are renown because they grow much bigger in this patch of Borneo than elsewhere. The jawfish pictured is about the size of a fist. (Click the image for a non-cropped hi-res 150k version). Usually, they’re thumb sized. As you can see in the bigger photo, the jawfish constructs an elaborate hole from coral which it then lives in. I wish I’d shot a video because the capitivating thing about jawfish – apart from looking like an extra from Star Wars – is that their faces are so expressive. Their huge eyes give them a grave and wise look, and as divers hover at a respectful distance from their lair, they turn slowly in their hole to observe each diver in turn, seemingly unphased by these comparatively huge bubblemaking creatures trying to get a look.
It’s quite bizarre having a fish make eye contact with you.
When they’re fed up with all the attention, or if someone clumsily collides with the coral, the jawfish slowly sinks back down its hole which is very deep. Peering down it, I saw that it’s at least half a metre in depth and could comfortably accommodate a human arm if anyone was so hideously stupid as to try and do so.
The grail for divers is to find a jawfish who is incubating its eggs in its mouth – you can see a spectacular photo of this on Murray Kaufman’s Photography site. (it’s second row on the right). He took this picture at the Borneo resort of Kapalai, which is near Sipadan, one of the world’s best dive destinations.
I had a cursory hunt on the net for a page of good info about jawfish, as I know very little beyond what Lankayan’s dive guides told me, but could only find somewhat depressing pages about keeping jawfish in aquariums. Any good jawfish links appreciated.
I’m writing a full report about Lankayan and its sterling conservation efforts for Asian Diver magazine, so I’ll post the link here when it gets published.
More on jawfish:
Spike | Google | Amazon UK | Amazon US | Wikipedia | Open Directory
