Bali
Bali, Indonesia ~ I spotted the Blue Ringed Octopus as it swam across an open expanse of rubble and landed on a small rock. It was late afternoon and the current was quite strong, so I had decided to head back to the shallows where there was more light and where it would be easier to get back to the boat. I spotted the octopus and forgot all about the marginal conditions. We have had more success observing blue rings catching … Read more
Today on Blennywatcher, I’m sharing images of two things that are not related, but caused us some confusion a few years ago. In Beangabang Bay, Indonesia, Ned and I encountered what we were certain was a very large squid egg case. It turned out not to be so, but at that moment we were certain that was what we had. It was long and tubular, similar in color and shape to the Diamond Squid egg case we’d seen in photos. We … Read more
Bali, Indonesia – March 2012 We have this image of a lovely juvenile sole thanks to our friend Mark Willis who found it on a muck slope while the rest of us were photographing nudibranchs and a cool blenny. He had shown it to Ned and several others in our group but by the time I got there, it was lost. Mark showed me the image on the back screen of his digital camera; my pantomimed “knife to my heart” … Read more
Update October 2014: I first heard of Kopi Luwak in 1999, when our chef friend asked me to try to find it for him when we visited Indonesia. As related in my post below, it was nowhere to be found in the areas of Indonesia where we traveled until after it was made popular by a movie. Since this 2012 post, I have seen many articles online about the poor treatment of civets; including taking them from the wild and … Read more
From the Archives: Anyone who has attended one of Ned’s talks about Indonesia has heard the tale of Alfred Russel Wallace, who is today considered one of the most renowned field biologists of all time and the father of biogeography. In 1858, after weathering a bout of malaria while on Ternate, he wrote, “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type.” Wallace’s story and the chain of events set into place by his paper are chronicled … Read more