Diving Izu, Japan

Located an hour from Tokyo is the amazing National Park of Izu. Besides being a wonderful place to camp, hike, or surf its also one of the best places in Japan to SCUBA dive. Not only does Izu play host to such big sea life as Manta Rays and schools of Hammerhead Sharks, its also known as the best place in Japan for small sea life. So last weekend I headed over to Izu for some a bonding time with the macro setting on my camera.

Izu is the most visited park system in Japan, and also the most dived place in Japan. The parks cover a massive area over the Izu peninsula, and most anywhere along the cost has wonderful diving. Fellow ALT Mike and I drove over to Shizuoka Prefecture Friday for two days of diving near the town of Nishiizu. We dove with the fine people at Dive Shop Exile, who knew way too much about the sea life in the area. The holiday weekend before had been very busy for the shop, but this weekend Mike and I were the only ones there.

The actual dive area was about 15 minutes from the shop, in the next small town over. There was an entire dive service center set up for the large number of dive groups that come every day. The nice part was that all the dive sites were about a minute away from shore by boat, around several little rocky islands (as you can see in the picture at the top).

This particular dive site was known for its small creatures. Seahorses, frog fish, nudibranches, snails, shrimp. Fun things to photograph. The underwater landscape was quite the mix. Some areas very sub-tropical with kelp and sea grass, while other areas seemed tropical with sea fans and fields of giant soft coral. While quite beautiful the visibility was only around 10 meters, so photos of the underwater landscape were near impossible to take. Luckily there were much better things to take photos of.

Such as these seahorses. Yes, I saw seahorses. Two right next to each other. On two separate occasions. A big orange one and a little white one. I believe the white one is pregnant. You’d think that such slow and non swimming fish would be easy to photograph, but not so. They were quite difficult to get a picture of. Luckily we also ran across a third sea horse who stood quite still.

A popular fish to photograph at Izu is the frog fish. There are many different types in the area in many different colors. We came across two hanging out together on a wall, as well as some solitary ones. Frog fish are quite strange, using camouflage to hide on rocks and then luring fish in for the kill.

This frog fish was found under a boat docked next to the SCUBA center. Post lunch Mike was mulling around near the water and spotted a very big frog fish on a rope. I got in and took a few photos, and soon after there was a line of people waiting to snap a few shots. I was told that not only was it a rare frog fish, but one of unusual size. Plus unlike most frogfish this one was swimming.

Besides just swimming around rocks we also swam in several large caves inhabited by strange fish, like the pineapple fish on the left. I also was able to get close enough to these two gobies to take a decent picture.

At one point we ran across this cute little baby cuttlefish. It darted around changing colors and shape.

I saw many a hermit crab in the water, this one quite large. On the right is a sea cucumber crab. It hides in the mouth of the sea cucumber for protection. Our guide was able to coax it out for a photo. It was so small that I nearly didn’t see what our guide was pointing at.

To my surprise we saw many big spider crabs (or maybe they’re shrimp?) living on sea fans. We also saw a few very small shrimp living on long blades of grass coral. My pictures of them turn out horribly.

Living on the soft coral were some beautiful snails. These things were smaller than a fingernail but quite stunning in their own way. What you see on the outside of the shell is the snail’s membrane. When in danger the snail retracts its membrane into its shell. The last photograph shows two of the same species of snail with various levels of membrane exposed.

This dive area attracts a certain type of SCUBA diver, the nudibranch lover (sea slugs). In one diving I saw more species of nudibranch than I had during my entire trip to Palau. They were honestly everywhere, especially in the caves. Our guides were quite good at finding them, so I had ample time to take a lot of photographs. I’ll do another entry with around 50 photographs of just the nudibranch I saw, but for now here are 14 different species.

And in case you wanted to see Mike and I, here you go. Yes, my wetsuit is a really really really ugly color.

Usually I take some video while diving but because I was mostly taking pictures of little tiny things I didn’t bother taking any clips in Izu, plus the water was too murky for any landscape type shots.

So 6 dives in Izu were most certainly not enough. I’d go back again if I had the time and the money, though mostly the later. If I’m around for another summer in Japan I’ll give Izu a try or two. If not, I am most certainly content with seeing sea horses and heaps of nudibranches.