AD 2017 Q4
Alert Diver is the dive industry’s leading publication. Featuring DAN’s core content of dive safety, research, education and medical information, each issue is a must-read reference, archived and shared by passionate scuba enthusiasts. In addition, Alert Diver showcases fascinating dive destinations and marine environmental topics through images from the world’s greatest underwater photographers and stories from the most experienced and eloquent dive journalists in the business.
Alert Diver is the dive industry’s leading publication. Featuring DAN’s core content of dive safety, research, education and medical information, each issue is a must-read reference, archived and shared by passionate scuba enthusiasts. In addition, Alert Diver showcases fascinating dive destinations and marine environmental topics through images from the world’s greatest underwater photographers and stories from the most experienced and eloquent dive journalists in the business.
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ENCOUNTERS<br />
DRAGON RO<strong>AD</strong>, PART 2<br />
Text and photos by Ned and Anna DeLoach<br />
By a stroke of luck our group<br />
of five is sharing the divers<br />
lodge at Eaglehawk Neck on<br />
the Tasman Peninsula with<br />
members of the Reef Life<br />
Survey (RLS). This Australian<br />
team, on its annual trip to monitor local fish<br />
populations, just happen to be the go-to gurus<br />
for finding fish in southern Australian waters.<br />
We jump at our good fortune, asking about<br />
handfish even before the final handshake.<br />
Long before our plane from Melbourne<br />
landed in Hobart, we were fixated on finding<br />
a handfish, an evolutionary oddity that prefers<br />
to walk on its fins rather than swim. These<br />
relatives of deepwater anglerfish and frogfish<br />
are a big reason why we ventured so far<br />
south — into the very epicenter of the rare<br />
4-inch fish’s range. But based on what we hear<br />
shortly after arriving, our chances of finding a<br />
handfish aren’t so good these days.<br />
It seems that spotted handfish, the most<br />
common of the family’s 14 species, have<br />
been in decline for decades because of<br />
scallop dredging and urban renewal, which<br />
has stripped away much of their preferred<br />
habitat. And the more obscure red handfish<br />
hasn’t been sighted for some time. A few<br />
patchy populations of spotted handfish are<br />
believed to still exist along the banks of the<br />
wide Derwent Estuary that slices Hobart in<br />
half, but nobody is sure exactly where we<br />
should look. Then, out of nowhere, the Reef<br />
Life Survey folks appear. As beer tabs pop, a<br />
pair of surveyors, happy to share knowledge<br />
with fellow fish worshipers, sit at the end of<br />
the communal dining table sketching a napkin<br />
map for Dave Robson, our Tasmanian host.<br />
Threatening skies shadow our drive to the<br />
trendy Hobart neighborhood of Sandy Bay<br />
the following morning. A sloping tree-lined<br />
lane leads us to the entrance of a concrete<br />
ditch built to channel runoff into the muddy<br />
shallows of the estuary. Shortly afterward<br />
Dave arrives, pulling a trailer full of scuba<br />
tanks. Together we make our way down to a<br />
small leaf- and Styrofoam-littered beach of<br />
drainage silt to survey our entry point. Our<br />
fingertips come out of the water tingling from<br />
the cold, and a drizzle begins. In my nearly<br />
50 years of diving I can’t remember a less<br />
appealing place to dive.<br />
Everything is somber except us. To a<br />
person we’re primed to plunge into the<br />
Derwent on a seemingly senseless adventure<br />
to find a strange little fish few have heard of<br />
inside or outside of Tasmania. Each member<br />
of our group has a slightly different reason<br />
for being here: Richard adores animals of<br />
every type, Yann revels in the hunt, Wendy<br />
wants to see and do it all, I make my living<br />
documenting marine life, and Anna is the<br />
queen of the arcane. What we share is the<br />
joy of finding sea creatures that strike our<br />
fancy, and at the moment our fancy happens<br />
to be handfish.<br />
Visibility is worse than expected. Like<br />
a schooling fish, I stick close to Yann and<br />
Anna as we blindly search for hollows in the<br />
soft bottom where driftweed collects and<br />
handfish hide. Wendy, Richard and Dave<br />
wander off in another direction. We have<br />
hardly seen a fish, much less a handfish, for<br />
20 minutes when Wendy somehow tracks<br />
us down and leads us to the first of what<br />
will turn out to be three spotted handfish<br />
found on the dive. Roused from its weedy<br />
patch, the appropriately named fish ambles<br />
away on seven fingerlike fin rays. An hour<br />
later we emerge from the Derwent, chilled<br />
to the bone, and wade to shore, where diving<br />
friends of Dave wait with the most welcome<br />
cups of hot chocolate of our lives.<br />
Back at our apartment the handfish<br />
celebration is still under way when Anna<br />
gets around to checking her email. She<br />
dances back into the room with news of<br />
a red handfish sighting by RLS members.<br />
Spotted handfish<br />
(Brachionichthys hirsutus)<br />
34 | FALL <strong>2017</strong>