420 Dive Log Australasia OCTOBER 2026

The dorsal fin of a grey reef sharks, Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos, cut the surface off the island of Yap. The grey reef shark is a species of requiem shark, one of the most common reef sharks in the Indo-Pacific.

It is the gray reef shark holding still in the current while a tiny wrasse swims between its teeth.

From the airplane at night you cannot see much of it.

There are a few lights on the island and then darkness. Somewhere below are the mangroves, the channels and coral walls. Mantas are still moving through Mi’l Channel. Sharks are riding the current along the outer reef. Small creatures are emerging from holes at Slow and Easy. Farther offshore, animals are beginning their nightly journey upward through black water.

It is mandarinfish rising from coral at dusk.

It is a shrimp riding a jellyfish through black water above an abyss.

It is a mangrove passage so narrow the forest closes behind you.

It is stone money too heavy to steal and too valuable to need guarding. It is children learning dances from people who learned them from the generation before.

None of it stops because we have left.

The airplane turns toward Guam.

Yap disappears behind us.

And it is the reef.

For now.

Always the reef.

This is the Ophioblennius-stage larva of a salariinin blenny, Istiblennius sp. The fish is just two inches long and was photographed in open ocean at 50 feet with bottom at 4000 plus feet below.

Trumpetfish, Aulostomus maculatus, a reef predator is swimming behind a yellow boxfish, Ostracion cubicus, using it as a blind to ambush prey,

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Dive Log Australasia #420 Oct’ 26

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