Dive instructor and underwater photographer Craig Wiger snapped this incredible image of a Nassau grouper at a cleaning station, with its mouth and gills so wide open you can see the sea though the back of the fish’s head.
Wiger, who works for Little Cayman Divers, was diving on the Donna’s Delight site on the island’s famous Bloody Bay Marine Park last week when he came across the grouper.
“This was right at the morning, in 25 feet of water. You can see the dive boat in the upper left of the image,” he told the Compass. “I swam right up to the grouper at the cleaning station and it did this almost immediately and then stayed like that for 30-40 seconds. I was stunned.”
He shot the photo with a 8-15mm fisheye lens at 15mm.
“Because the fisheye is so wide, the grouper is almost touching the dome port, I’ve barely cropped the image at all,” he said.
At cleaning stations on reefs, fish and other marine creatures gather to have parasites and dead tissue removed from them by smaller animals, such as gobies and shrimps. It’s a sort of underwater car wash or spa, where fish can park up, open their mouths and gills, and wait for a cleaner, or several of them, to come along and tidy them up.
The fish that’s getting cleaned, and its cleaner, have a symbiotic relationship – the tiny cleaning animal gets some free food and the fish gets a mini spa treatment.
The cleaning stations, which usually remain in the same spot on the reef, also offer great opportunities for photographers to capture images such as this one.
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