Daily Log Report for
10
May 1997
Submitted by Richard Pyle
Today was a marvelous
day for fish collecting! We returned to the same place we
had been to the past few days, and began our descent with
the film crew. We took some time getting to depth, so Ken
could get ahead of us and film us dropping down. Upon
arriving at the terrace, Ken discovered he had a problem
with his video camera lights, so he left us and returned
toward the surface. At that point, I decided to drop down
over the edge of the terrace into the black abyss, while
John stayed up at 300 feet to collect fishes. The wall I
descended was incredibly shear. There were lots of sea
fans and other soft-bodied marine life, but rather few
fish. I saw a number of Holanthias
borbonius along the wall, but not much else
until I got near 400 feet. At 400 feet, I saw a
metallic-blue damselfish that might be a new species, and
tried to collect a very beautiful wrasse of the genus Bodianus,
which may also be a new species. I missed them both, and
began a slow ascent back to the terrace. I found
John on the terrace, and we both continued to collect
fishes for a short while, then slowly started to ascend.
We spent over 4 hours in the
water; not so much because we really had to, but because
we wanted to play it safe for decompression purposes.
When we finally returned to the boat, Jack was just
returning from his scuba dive. I excitedly told him about
all of the interesting things we collected, then climbed
into the boat to examine our "goodies". We had
several new species, but the one of greatest personal
interest to me was the large Pseudanthias similar to one that I had originally collected in the Cook
Islands years ago and plan to name after my wife, Lisa.
Of almost equal value was a new species of Liopropoma (a relative of
groupers) that had eluded me for 8 years (both in the
Cook Islands and at Papua New Guinea).
