Pharaoh Cuttlefish

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.