The cryptic and the deep

I, like so very few marine biologists, like looking for small cryptic (secretive and/or camouflaged) fish and often go deep to find them. Over the course of 41 dives so far in Guam, I have seen numerous species which had not previously been seen in the park. We are currently working on setting up a full species list for the park which we can then publish as a technical report. The old list had around 150 species. So far we have 302 species listed! While some of the old lists have questionable IDs, our list even has voucher photos of most of the species. Some of these fish are small and cryptic fish and others were seen when Mark and I went and did a technical dive to 200 feet on our day off. Below is a sampling of some of our cool cryptic and deepwater fish we have seen as well as a few fun invertebrates.Clearfin lionfish- a relatively commonly seen cryptic fishLeopard blennyCoral banded shrimp- a type of shrimp which makes its living cleaning the parasites and dead tissue off reef fish papuan scorpionfish- close-up of the same fish as the top photo. Deepwater seafan of a wall at 200' Engleman's lizardfish Spotfin lionfish- no the picture is not upside down, this fish like many cave dwellers, spends much of its day upside down next to the cave/ crevice ceiling. In this case defended by their venomous spines Reef octopus Yellow cardinalfish Mark- narqed and excited about being at 200' Yellow-speckled chromisAnd finally, my favorite find so far, a surge dottyback. This fish was found in about 7 feet of water inside a small cave in the reef.