spacerisland news

spacer Home  ::  news  ::  news article
spacer


 

Wild fish using tool

One of our dive team staff members, Oko was reading the following article in National Geographic and surprisingly had seen the same thing on Lady Elliot Island last year.

A blackspot tuskfish off Australia has its mouth full as it carries a cockle to a nearby rock, against which the fish was seen repeatedly bashing the shellfish to get at the fleshy bits inside.

A recent study in the journal Coral Reefs says the picture—snapped at a depth of nearly 60 feet (18 meters) in Australia's Great Barrier Reef in 2006—is the first ever taken of a tool-using fish in the wild.

Professional diver Scott Gardner was just about out of air and swimming back to the surface when he heard an odd cracking sound nearby. Swimming over to investigate, he spotted the foot-long (30-centimeter-long) fish at work.

"When Scott showed me his photos, I said 'Wow, this is quite amazing,'" said study co-author Alison Jones, a coral ecologist at Central Queensland University in Rockhampton, Australia.

Oko contacted Alison Jones with his photos to her amazement.
Oko says “This fish is solitary and spotted mainly around lighthouse bommie and sometimes 2nd reef up to mooring 2 area on Lady Elliot Island”.

What an amazing find!

 

                 
x    
                 
x
image by Oko
 

Credits
publication: Internal News

author: Sonya Mroz
date: 28/10/2011

more news ..

spacer







Quinton Marais resort photography

Lady Elliot Island Eco Resort Australia Free Call 1800 072 200cP O Box 348, Runaway Bay, Queensland 4216, AustraliacP +61 7 5536 3644 cFax +61 7 5599 5783xreservations@ladyelliot.com.au

This site is optimized for 1024x768 or 1280x1024 screen settings or above. If you are having trouble fitting this website on your monitor screen, you probably have the old 800x600 setting - right click the desktop to alter the size.

This site uses Macromedia Flash flash symbolclick to download flash player