More Lumpies!

Well, one good thing about diving in the PNW in the winter is it coincides with Lumpie Season. I’ve shared some other photos of Pacific Spiny Lumpsuckers before, but in the past few weeks I think I have managed a better set of photos that really captures these charismatic little balls of armoured fish.

I especially like the shots of them looking straight at the camera, but I find they are a little shy about that and often will turn sideways more readily than face directly at me. I am guessing this is probably because they are not the greatest of swimmers and are trying to keep a straight escape route ready to go. One of the photos I pulled some Photoshop magic and fixed one of the Lumpie’s eyes to make it look a bit better, see if you can figure out which one…

Also included is a shot with one with a parasite of some sort in its gills, and of course Legoman makes an appearance to give you an idea how small these fish can be. They do get bigger than the one with Legoman, but we also found one recently that was “golf ball sized” and that was considered “enourmous” – haha!