BLUE RINGED OCTOPUS – RAJA AMPAT

I knew of their existence, but had never encountered one before. And even as I saw it it took me quite a while to recognise this beauty.

So we were diving on Citrus Ridge. A great site where you can find anything from nudi branchs to pygmy seahorses all the way to black tip reef sharks. I was taking pictures of all sorts of macro stuff. Enjoying the smaller things on the reef.

And as I was having a shoot with a tube worm. A inconspicuous creature that most divers tend to overlook. So this lives in a tube and on top of its hear it wears the door closing the tube. At times they come out and make these mucus threads to fish for lunch.

Anyways I was engaged with this worm and once I was done, I happened to look at my left side, where a regular sea squirts was hanging on the wall. I spotted some coral growing on top of that and that amazed me. Since when id coral growing on a squirt instead the other way around? So it took me a little while, probably the nitrogen, before I realised it was not coral. It was actually the cutest little octopus with blue rings.

I shot about 500 pictures of the octopus before I had to come up from the dive. And can you imagine how excited I was to see the result?