Ever wonder what would it be like if someone is watching you getting intimate with your partner?
We did exactly that; with the mandarin fishes.
One of the highlights of the trip to Manado was to see the mandarin fish mating. I never seen mandarin fishes mate since I started diving, so you can see that I’m overly excited over this.
Before the dive, the group of us were joking that we were intruding the privacy of the fishes by watching them mate. And worse still, most of us went with our cameras; some were taking photos, some were shooting videos!
Those who did not have a camera, went with torch lights!
Initially we were supposed to do the mandarin fish mating dive (the only purpose of the dive was to see them mate) in Lembeh Straits. We planned for 3 day dives and 1 sunset dive for the mandarin fish. But when we surfaced at the end of our third dive, we were already running out of time. We didn’t have enough surface interval time for the mandarin fish dive. Almost everyone was doing 70 minutes per dive on average.
Our dive guide, Melky told us that we can also do the mandarin fish dive back in the house reef in Manado the next day. But, it wouldn’t be that fun.
There are only about 5-6 mandarin fishes in Manado compared to those in Lembeh Straits. Apparently, there’s a whole big bunch of them in Lembeh and it would be like watching a mass mandarin fish orgy.
But, at least that’s better than nothing. We have 1 diving day left, so we have to do our mandarin fish dive in Manado. Otherwise, I’ll need to wait for the next trip there.
So, Manado it is; the Laras Casse House Reef.
To see the mandarin fishes mate, we needed to be on time. Otherwise we’ll miss the spectacle and wait for the next day, or worse still the next trip. The sun sets at about 5.15pm and everyone needs to be in the water by then.
5 minutes to swim to the dead coral rubble where the mandarin fishes stay. Another 5 minutes for the dive guide to position us at our best position around the dead corals so that we can have the best view of the fishes mating. The depth was around 9.8m.
The surroundings were getting very dark once we were all in our position. We waited…and waited.
After a few minutes passed, we still did not spot any mandarin fish getting out of the dead corals. No torch were lit up, otherwise they will shy away.
And suddenly there was this big male swimming out of the corals followed by a few smaller females. I think they were just flirting around and waiting for the right partner to mate. The bigger males will always try to fend off the smaller males and it seems like the females too, prefer the bigger males.
Each time the torch was shined towards them, they immediately went back into the corals.
So we waited. All torch were switched off. We could still see but it’s quite dim. We waited for them to mate before shining the light at them. Slowly, they emerged from the corals, side by side with female resting on the male’s pectoral fin. This time, even with our torch shined directly at them, they still mate as though no one was watching. I guess it’s getting late already and they need to get today’s job done!
After a while…it went BOOOMMM!
Everyone was screaming. But with the regulator in the mouth, all I heard was Hmmm..Ummmm…Hhhuummm!
The mating was successful and the eggs were release. It was be seen in the video towards the end.
This video was shot by one of the divers in our group, Ah Boon. I was positioned at the worst position possible and all I saw was the backside of the fishes. And to make things worse, my mask fogged!
All thanks to the excitement to watch them mate that I forgot to wash the mask earlier.