Clark's anemonefish (Amphiprion clarkii) in a royal purple anemone...some of the host anemones are incredibly colorful, and the purple ones, in particular, can be quite spectacular. This anemonefish is a very young and small individual. (Milinat Pass, Madang)
A Clark's anemonefish surveys the passing world from the comfort of its anemone on the side of a pass in the barrier reef. (Milinat Pass, Madang)
I apologize to those with delicate sensibilities — staring down the barrel of a loaded and ready-to-fire Clark's anemonefish is not for the faint-hearted. This little beast was in the middle of attacking my camera port at the time. This species — the most widely-distributed anemonefish — generally isn't particularly shy about checking out divers and other intruders. I often found that these and other anemonefish species would not only charge when approached too closely but would actually go considerably out of their way to nip and harrass divers. I suppose that it's only fair, considering how much attention some of these anemonefishes must get from scientists, photographers, and other divers, even in this relatively untrod part of the world. (Pig Island, Madang)
A gang of rabid Clark's anemonefish attack my strobes in the lee of a lagoonal island. This particular area of the site was quite interesting — a collection of small patch reefs and ridges scattered across a broad plain of sand that slopes to at least 30 meters — and most of the world-record nine anemonefish species found within the Lagoon occurred here. Clark's and certain other anemonefishes regularly attacked diving scientists I met and dived with during my stay, often nipping at fingers and ears and sometimes drawing blood — at least once, an anemonefish rammed the diver's regulator purge button and gave him a blast of air. To combat the attentions of these little fishes, one of the people studying them began to regularly wear a hood, only to find that they homed in on his lips and peeled the tender skin from them. Being mobbed by anemonefishes while getting a close look or a picture of them is understandable, and the best thing to do then is to respect their distance and back off as quickly as possible to leave the poor little things in peace, but some of these fishes will go quite a distance out of their way to deliver the message that their personal space is vastly disproportionate to their body size. So much for the old idea that anemonefishes are uniformly retiring and reluctant to stray from the safety of their host anemones. (Pig Island, Madang)
A Clark's anemonefish at home on an open-ocean reef. (May Reef, Kimbe Bay)
A Clark's anemonefish nestled down in its anemone. (Susan's Reef, Kimbe Bay)
A Clark's anemonefish resting in its anemone as dusk turns to night on a shallow inshore reef. (Mandarinfish Reef, Kimbe Bay)
A pair of Clark's anemonefish. (Mandarinfish Reef, Kimbe Bay)
A young Clark's anemonefish over a sand anemone that I call a 'corkscrew anemone' (it's got a lot of common names, though authorities Daphne Fautin and Gerry Allen call it the 'beaded anemone'), also known as Heteractis aurora. It's a truly spectacular anemone, no matter what you call it. (Ann Sophie, Kimbe Bay)
The same anemonefish rising above the same anemone. Clark's are the most varied anemonefish in terms of coloration and range between mostly-orange and mostly-black base color with variations on the vertical bars' shading and number. (Ann Sophie, Kimbe Bay)