Bigeye Trevally

Photo: Kassie Sullivan · © all rights reserved

Bigeye trevally gather in dense, slowly rotating schools around the Hakkai Maru's mast and bow section, creating one of the most photogenic large-fish aggregations in Rabaul. These schooling predators use the wreck as a daytime refuge, their eyes adapted for the reduced light levels they favour, before dispersing at dusk to hunt across a wide area of the harbour. Schools can number several hundred individuals, their silver flanks catching ambient light and fragmenting it into shifting patterns as divers pass through.