Alert Diver Category: Encounters

To the delight of the divers staying at Tawali Resort on the shores of Milne Bay in Papua New Guinea, Anna’s hunch turns out to be right on track.

OUR RECENT UNDERWATER ADVENTURE began with a fanciful quest to track down an inconspicuous little fish no larger than a nickel. In many ways our mini mission to find the seldom-seen dwarf seahorse (Hippocampus zosterae) seemed more like a weekend lark of carefree youngsters than the stalwart band of seven men and women tugging on wetsuits along the hardpan shoreline of the seldom-explored shallows of Florida Bay in Key Largo, Florida. 

SINCE THE LATE 1800S, debate among marine taxonomists has swirled around the species status of the stately little Caribbean sea basses in genus Hypoplectrus, commonly known as hamlets. At the heart of the controversy is the essence of taxonomy: What defines a species?