Our long-standing GfI member Claus Dieter Zander looks back on a long career as a research diver, spending most of his active time diving in the North Sea, the Mediterranean and especially the Baltic Sea. After retiring, he began travelling mainly to tropical seas. He has compiled the incredible wealth of impressions from this period in a report that inspires readers to take an interest in marine biology, diving and observing the abundance of shapes and colours underwater, but also to get to know the diverse and colourful cultures on land.
As a retired research diver
His full report is available for download here (in German): Forschungstaucher 7,1 MB (in higher resolution: Forschungstaucher 17,8 MB)
Excerpt from Figure 49: “Sardine fusiliers [top left] usually stay under shady objects – otherwise they become prey for pipefish [top right], which are also found in large numbers. Bottom: After the dive, my faithful diving companion Ahmed with me. Note the old-fashioned life jacket (nicknamed ‘toilet seat’). The diving day ends with a game of Yahtzee in the courtyard of the Jowhara Hotel in front of the ‘i Dive’ base with the diving guide trainees. In the background is base manager Anke.”
Contents of the report
(Page numbers refer to the report)
- Foreword (p. 2)
- Retirement (p. 4)
- Tropical travels
2001 Seychelles (p. 4)
2002 Dahab (p. 10)
2003 Maldives (p. 14)
2004 Dahab (p. 18)
2005 Galapagos (p. 21)
2006 Dahab (p. 25)
2007 Philippines (p. 28)
2008 Tobago (p. 33)
2008 El Quseir (p. 38)
2009 Cape Verde (p. 42)
2011 Raja Ampat (p. 46)
2011 Dahab (p. 53)
2012 Dahab (p. 56)
2013 Margerita (p. 59)
2014 Dahab (p. 65)
2015 Marsa Alam (p. 68)
2016 Dahab (p. 72)
2017 Dahab (p. 75)
2018 Marsa Alam (p. 78)
2019 Dahab (p. 81) - Epilogue (p. 85)
Fig. 11. Top: White tip sharks spend the day in caves and become active at dusk. The Panama blenny, which lives in tiny caves, is also very common. Middle: The Pacific flagfish is a dominant East Pacific species here; eagle rays are often found swimming in groups close to the seabed, here in the mangrove area. Bottom: The most important cleaner fish in the Galapagos is a butterflyfish, but young wrasse are also often seen cleaning. The parasitic sabre-toothed blenny feeds on the skin and mucus of other fish, which it ambushes in burrows, attacking its victims and biting off pieces of skin.
Training as a research diver
“During my time at the Hamburg Zoological Institute and Museum, I worked as a research diver in the North Sea, the Mediterranean and, in particular, the Baltic Sea. After completing two two-week training courses with the professional divers at the Helgoland Biological Station, I passed my research diver examination in September 1974.”
Retired
“My retirement on 1 October 2001 marked the beginning of my travels to tropical countries. Just before that, I conducted my last course, an internship in fish ecology with five diving students. My wife Renate also joined us as a tourist.”
The tropical journeys
“The main island of the Seychelles, Mahé, offers long, beautiful sandy beaches, but also rocky coasts and marshlands with mudskippers (Periophthalmus) and fiddler crabs (Uca).” (p. 5)
“While snorkelling, I had a special encounter with a crown-of-thorns starfish, whose spines I poked into my knee. By evening, back at my accommodation, my knee was black, but I could see my macrophages from my blood working away, removing the black pigment.” (p. 8)
“On Wolf [a rocky island in the Galapagos], the group lost me once; I then dived to a depth of over 10 metres and enjoyed this solo dive for 30 minutes; when I reached the surface, a boat was immediately there to pick me up. No one had missed me, not even Ramiro, which gave me pause for thought.” (pp. 25-26)
“For me, this diving trip not only provided numerous observations, but also, importantly, a deeper understanding of fish species. These formed the basis for future work, which led to the analysis of symbioses and the biotopes of reef caves and sandy bottoms.” (p. 28)
“Overall, it was an unusual trip, with a wealth of colours, shapes and species never before seen, even more so than on the 2006 trip to the Philippines. Quite obviously, this abundance increases from west to east in the Indo-Pacific.” (p. 53)
“They got to know my way of working: taking photographs (camera on my wrist), taking my writing pad out of my breast pocket, identifying, counting and noting down.” (p. 58)
“So, another eventful diving holiday with scientific and surprising observations.” (p. 75)
Nachwort
“So that’s it, an important and wonderful chapter of my life has come to an end. People always ask me which trip was the best, and my answer is that they were all wonderful and I wouldn’t want to have missed any of them.” (…) ‘So I’ll pick one destination [the Galapagos and Raja Ampat] that fascinated me above water and one that fascinated me underwater.’ (p. 86)
“Had I experienced situations that frightened me? I felt really queasy during the dive among the mangroves of Raja Ampat, because we had to reckon with the presence of dangerous saltwater crocodiles.” (p. 86)
Fig. 24. Top: The European parrotfish is also found in the Mediterranean; Lubbock’s monkfish is endemic to the Cape Verde Islands. Middle: The spotted moray eel is only found in a few island groups in the eastern Atlantic. The robust butterflyfish can also be found on the West African coast. Bottom: Diadem angelfish were previously only found in the western Atlantic and St. Paul, but now also in Cape Verde; this jewelfish is the West African representative of a circum-tropical group of related species.
Fig. 26: The black-spotted stingray can defend itself with the help of venom glands at the base of the sting at the end of its tail. Sea snakes are extremely venomous but not aggressive. Centre: The fringed wobbegong is a nocturnal member of the carpet shark family that spends the day in hiding places. Blue corals are the last representatives of a species-rich group of cnidarians from the Mesozoic era. Below: A richly branched horn coral; you have to look very closely to spot the pygmy seahorse.
Background photo: Gymnothorax funebris (Detail from figure 18), Photo C. Dieter Zander