What Animals Would You Include in Your Underwater Big 5?

[Dive Wananavu Fiji]

Ooooooo some great additions, especially the polar bear and JB. Thanks for the great suggestions and I think I might have a future article topic in mind. And for MaxBottomTime we also LOOOOVVVVVEEEEEE Nudibranchs. Check out our latest article about Fiji Nudibranch ID. Still a work in progress as we photograph new nudi's and finish ID'ing the 3 or 4 we're currently working on.

Fiji Nudibranchs Identification Guide - Scuba Diving Fiji with Dive Wananavu - best Fiji island diving in the Bligh Water

Cheers and keep diving.
-Chris

 

[drrich2]

Not sure I'd 'wish' to encounter all these in person, cage-less, seeing as how some of them are potentially horrifically lethal. But the things in the ocean I'd consider, well, major life events to see would include...

1.) Great White Shark. Magnificent, primal, potentially horrifying. #1.

2.) Orca. The one thing I know that eats great whites. Thing is, I'd probably be wearing a wetsuit in cool water, making me look like a sea lion. Read once that orcas throw sea lions up in the air to 'play' with them (before eating them, I'd imagine).

3.) Giant or colossal Squid - continuing my fascination with big things that can kill me. Again, not really begging for a close encounter with one, but if it happened and I survived unhurt (and dive buddies, etc..., all made it back), would be so cool. A substitute could be one of those Humboldt squid dive with chain mail suits.

4.) Blue Whale - yes, I'd be thrilled to dive with a whale shark, but if you're going to go BIG, go REAL big. The largest animal currently inhabiting the face of the earth.

5.) Yeah, I'll grab the Polar Bear idea given previously, although I'd never dive water cold enough to have one. Almost as unnerving, but perhaps slightly more likely, would be diving & finding a really large crocodile of a potentially 'man-eating' species like the so-called Salt Water Crocodiles of Australia. You could conceivably run across one diving a reef, I suppose? Do you guys remember the video of the guy diving with the big female leopard seal? Now that, too, would be a rush!

Richard.

 

[Skittl1321]

2.) Orca. The one thing I know that eats great whites. Thing is, I'd probably be wearing a wetsuit in cool water, making me look like a sea lion. Read once that orcas throw sea lions up in the air to 'play' with them (before eating them, I'd imagine).

Orca's are pretty smart. I don't think they'd think you were a sea lion. No guarantee they wouldn't want to 'play' though.


I would love, love to see an Orca, though I think it would scare me to be near something so powerful and big. My life dream is to swim with a sea lion.

So my list:

1)Sea Lion
2) Orca (from a safe distance)
3) Pod of dolphins
4) Penguin (hope to snorkel with them in the Galapagos! Not going Antarctic!)
5) Sea Otter

Keep the sharks and polar bears away from me please! (I don't think there are polar bears in Iowa quarries or the Carribean, so I should be good there.)

I also really want to see a Sea Turtle, but those aren't that rare, so they didn't make my list. Then again, sea lions aren't really either- but I just LOVE them.

 

[swimmer_spe]

I do not have a list of what to see. I do have a list of what I would rather not see.
Sharks
Barraccuda
large octopus
large squid
basically, anything that can kill or seriously harm me.

I go into forests, and have seen bears. I do not want to see them, but, I know I might. Just like the list, I would rather not see them, but if I do, I will hopefully survive the encounter.

 

[diverkun]

Flamboyant cuttlefish
wunderpus
sea dragon - leafy or weedy
sea lion
and in the spirit of 'big' 5, mantas

 

[Wingy]

Polar Bears
Orcas
Blue or Sperm Whale
Penguins
Seals

 

[Tortuga68]

Did anyone mention exploding goats yet? I bet they get pretty big before they burst

 

[vladimir]

The coolest thing I have seen is a bait ball. Tens of thousands of bait fish being attacked by a who's who of predators: dolphins, a few species of sharks, yellowfin tuna, and diving birds. That trumps everything else I have ever scene, probably.

The marlin was pretty cool though. You don't see a marlin very often.

Schooling hammerheads, whale sharks, a tiger shark...in fact, just about every non-nurse shark is a bit of a thrill. I saw a few blacktips last week in Tulamben, where you might not expect them.

As Doc mentioned, cool behaviors include any sort of hunting (not abetted by our lights), commensalism (including the common shrimp + goby, the clownfish + anemone, the cleaning station, etc.). I have seen the jawfish incubating eggs...and got a pretty good photo of it (searching for it now). That took patience. I saw an octopus hunting once. He enveloped a whole coral head and proceeded to rifle through its nooks and crannies for food, and then moved on to the next one.

Things I haven't yet seen that I would really like to:

I have over twenty visits to Bali and have yet to see a mola mola. I'm going to have to get more proactive on that one.

Sea lions, otters, seals. When I move back to the States I'm going on a long West Coast safari, or, more likely, a Galapagos trip. With that in mind, a marine iguana.

Orcas. There's an operation in Norway, I think, that does orca dives during the herring migration. I'd have to learn to dive a drysuit...and learn to want to.

Edit: Not my best work, but it is a challenging subject:

This surface shot of the bait ball only hints at the havoc below the surface:

A barracuda with half of the fish it just sliced in two:

Amazingly, a grouper snatched that from the mouth of the barracuda a fraction of a second after the shot.