Photo of the Week: April 30, 2012

Hi Gang!

I have wanted to share this week’s POTW for a while. It is a photograph of a male gold-specs jawfish (Opistognathus randalli) guarding the fertilized eggs of its mate by holding them in his mouth. I captured this scene off the island of Mabul in East Malaysia.

The gold-specs jawfish, also commonly known as the gold-spec, goldspeck and gold-eye jawfish, is a commonly seen species in rubble areas in the Western Pacific in the area ranging from Indonesia to the Philippines to eastern Borneo where I created this photograph. Gold-spec jawfish are found in association with the sea floor at depths that range from 15 to 100 feet. Full-grown adults attain a maximum length of just over 4 inches.

The gold-specs jawfish is usually discovered by divers when the fish sticks its head out of its burrow or when it rises up out of its burrow and hovers in the water column where it feeds and keeps in contact with other members of its species before making a quick retreat. Males are highly territorial and it is not unheard of to see males locked in jaw-to-jaw combat in an effort to defend their own burrow or to take an existing burrow from another male.

After spawning, the male gathers the fertilized eggs of his mate and incubates the eggs in his mouth for a week to 10 days before they hatch. It is believed that the male either does not eat, or eats very little, while he is holding the eggs. Males can be seen spitting the egg ball out of their mouth and then quickly taking them back in an effort to oxygenate the eggs. At other times the male will duck down into his burrow and spit the eggs out of his mouth so he can remove bothersome debris and otherwise maintain the burrow. This Mr. Mom is definitely a candidate for a Good Housekeeping Award.

As is the case with other jawfishes, gold-specs are relatively shy, and when divers get too close for comfort they are quick to retreat within their burrow. Their wariness seems to increase when they are mouthbrooding. What this means to photographers is that a macro lens with a longer focal length (perhaps a 100 mm lens) is usually a better choice than one with a shorter focal length (a 50 or 60 mm lens)

For this shot I used a Canon 100 mm macro lens on a Canon EOS-1DS camera. The bottom was highly reflective and with my Ikelite DS-125 strobes turned up to half power I was able to get plenty of light on the fish from an estimated shooting distance of two feet, even though my f/stop was closed down to f/32.

My best guess is that these eggs were very close to hatching. You can see the rather large, well-developed eyeballs of the embryonic fishes that are inside of their individual eggs. As many as 400 eggs are contained in a single egg ball.

I hope you enjoy this week’s POTW!

See you next week,

Marty