Although I’d hoped to see a wobbegong shark while scuba diving in Raja Ampat, Indonesia, I’d kept my expectations low. After all, in the underwater world, Mother Nature is in charge – you can’t just demand your wish list of what you want to see.
Thankfully, my dive guide Yeray Moreno knew exactly what to look out for to maximise our chances of setting eyes on this weird-looking shark.
As we approached an overhang with tiny fish swarming around it like confetti, Moreno started swimming towards it. Not with the gentle amble of a diver idly perusing the reef but purposefully, as if he was looking for something specific. And he found it.
He looked round and called me over, signalling 'shark' by putting his hand to his forehead like a shark’s fin. I hoped he didn’t hear my excitable squeal. Despite clocking up just shy of 300 dives, I’ve still not mastered withholding my slightly pathetic squeak of joy when we see something really epic.
Wobbegongs are ambush predators. They love hideouts surrounded by small fish such as glassfish, Moreno told me after our dive. “They’re not after them,” he says, “but what they do is wait for the predator of those little fish to come by… and then they catch it.” Sometimes they even eat other sharks.
I glided down to the shark’s level and there it was: a tasselled wobbegong. Despite the anticipation that I might see one of these curious sharks, I wasn’t expecting it to be so beautiful.
The intricate patterns dappled across its brown body wouldn’t look out of place on a pair of 70s curtains and its fleshy beard was nothing short of bizarre, but I was transfixed.
Both its markings and the tasselled skin flaps around its head help this carpet shark blend into the seabed while it waits to pounce on its prey.
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Seeing the moment of an attack is rare. “You don't really see them actively hunting,” says Moreno. “However, we do see them swimming sometimes from hideout to hideout. Depending on the current, they like to be where there’s more fish action.”
They also are quite territorial,” he says, “They have their [favourite] hideouts and change from one another.” As head of experience and conservation at Rascal Voyages, Moreno is lucky enough to dive Raja Ampat’s reefs regularly enough to get to know which hiding places the sharks prefer to lurk in.
If I hadn’t been with Moreno, I could easily have swum right past it. And many divers and snorkellers do.
“Funnily enough, I've seen plenty of times people just diving over the coral and they completely ignore them because they blend in,” he says. Despite its large size, the individual tucked neatly under the coral ledge remained perfectly still for several minutes (wobbegong sharks don’t have to swim to breathe).
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To make them even harder to see, they can change colour to match their backdrop.
“When they are on sandy bottoms, if they're a little bit exposed, they would change their pattern and colour to be very pale,” he explains. “And when they’re in a hideout – like the one we've seen – they’re usually a bit darker.”
During the rest of our week-long trip, the tell-tale clue of a flurry of little fishes near a suitable hideout revealed several more wobbegongs, much to my delight.
Melissa Hobson travelled courtesy of Rascal Voyages | Image and video credit: Melissa Hobson
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