Pharaoh Cuttlefish

Photo: Aishwarya S Kumar · CC BY-NC

The largest cuttlefish in the Indian Ocean reaches 50 cm along this wall, hunting fish and prawns with hypnotic chromatic displays that momentarily freeze prey. Males engage in spectacular colour-flashing competitions near the wall's sea-fan clusters — one side of the body signaling aggression to a rival while the other simultaneously displays courting colours to a female. Dutch Bay's sheltered conditions make cuttlefish encounters reliable on nearly every dive, in contrast to the more exposed sites where surge and current displace them.