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A
nna and I had
been talking for
a decade about
taking a diving
trip to Japan,
but we couldn’t
quite muster the gumption to put
a package together. Our reluctance
had come to a quick end by the
time Richard Smith finished
showing us images from his recent
visit to Japan’s Izu Peninsula and
the southern island of Hachijo-
jima. One after another, fish we
had never seen or even imagined
popped onto his laptop screen. He
saved the best for last: an exquisite
seahorse no bigger than a button.
Eleven months later, five of us,
including Smith, find ourselves
clutching a thick rope as we shuffle
backward down a slope toward
a lava-lined cove. The water is
turbulent from the early effects of
a typhoon that’s spinning its way
up from Micronesia. Once we’re
underwater and away from shore it’s
smooth sailing. We disappear into a
world of fishes so offbeat it is as if we
are on another planet.
Along the edge of a canyon we
come face to face with a whiskered,
bony-headed boarfish the size of a
platter. A pair of equally outrageous
morwongs peers out from a
ledge. Nearly every fish is new
to us — new damselfishes, new
butterflyfishes and new blennies.
After an hour our guide, Kotaro,
rounds us up and herds us back
toward the entry point. That’s when
it dawns on me that I had totally
ON ANOTHER PLANET
32
|
WINTER 2016
ENCOUNTERS
Below:
Dragon moray
Opposite, clockwise from
top left:
Striped boarfish
hanging out beneath a
ledge; undescribed Japanese
pygmy seahorse; fairy wrasse
displaying courtship colors
JAPAN: PART 1
Text and photos by Ned and Anna DeLoach