The Countdown to 1000 – “Slow Going in the South Seas”

2 more confirmed, 47 to go.

 

I know it may seem like I’m way behind, but it usually takes a few weeks at least to get fish IDs confirmed and correct. And there is the added complexity that I am on a business trip to Latin America right now, trying to get caught up between late flights and incredibly bad airport food. (I normally believe that anything can be made edible with the addition of enough hot sauce, but in Mexico the hot sauces are a bit more serious than ours, much less a condiment than a chemical.)

 

April 18 was a slow day of fishing in the estuaries of eastern Singapore – there had been some days of torrential rain, and the water was muddy and relatively cold. (Bear in mind, if it gets much below 80 there, the hooded sweatshirts come out.)  Still, among some interesting fish that that I had caught before, the Fish Gods blessed me with two new critters. These were the remarkably unexciting Toothed Ponyfish (952), and the much more interesting Giant Mudskipper (953). The Mudskipper is a smallish but savage predator that inhabits shallow mud flats and can run on its pectoral fins. Cute as they may be, they have a terrible attitude and can bite off the end of a human finger. Something like my cousin Chuck.

 

 

                                                                   Toothed Ponyfish

 

 

 

                                                         Cute, isn’t he?

 

 

 

                                                 Maybe not so cute after all.

 

 

And just for those of you snide types who are snidely commenting about these fish being somewhat on the small snide, KISSLINGER, I am including a photo of a queenfish I caught on this same weekend. So there.

 

 

 

 

 Cheers, Steve

 

PS – World record update – although species were hard to come by, I have scraped up two possible world records so far on this trip. I have included a photo of the more interesting of these two, the savage and unnatural Sicklefish.