420 Dive Log Australasia OCTOBER 2026

A female spotted guard crab, Trapezia rufopunctata, holding eggs, in antler coral, Pocillopora eydouxi

Think Small

You begin looking more carefully.

Soon ninety minutes have passed.

Yap became famous for big animals, but some of my favorite dives here involve subjects that could hide behind a fingernail. At a site called Slow and Easy there is no towering wall or dramatic blue-water vista. Visibility can be modest compared with the outer reefs. At first glance there may not appear to be much happening.

Yap has the habitat for this kind of life. Protected lagoons merge with mangrove forests, sandy channels, sea-grass beds, coral slopes and outer reefs. Each supports something different. Years ago, muck-diving expert Larry Smith came to Yap specifically to see what could be found when experienced eyes stopped looking for the obvious.

Then you stop swimming.

The answer was plenty.

A nudibranch appears.

Ghost pipefish, wire coral shrimp, mandarinfish, flatworms, nudibranchs, mantis shrimp, prawn gobies, cleaning shrimp and pipefish difficult even to identify all turned up.

Then another.

A goby stands beside a shrimp at the entrance to their shared burrow. A pipefish moves against a piece of vegetation and suddenly becomes visible only because it moved. A mantis shrimp watches from its hole with independently rotating eyes.

For photographers this creates a peculiar problem.

Steinitz' shrimpgoby, Amblyeleotris steinitzi, has a symbiotic relationship with the Alpheid worker shrimp. The two share a burrow that the blind shrimp maintains while the goby watches for predators.

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Dive Log Australasia #420 Oct’ 26

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