When I was writing first couple of posts about Thailand I found it really difficult to name the creatures I photographed under water, since searching the Internet is almost impossible if you don't know the name of the thing you are researching. I tried Google search by photo as well, but with mixed results. So I decided I need a good book on the subject and last week I got it - the Indian ocean reef guide by Helmut Debelius. Just for good measure I also ordered the book Birds of Thailand, I know it will come handy. For some 20 years I already own the Red sea reef guide by the same author, I bought it when we went on couple of diving holidays in Egypt.
But my new book, as any book, has finite number of pages and not all the fish fit into one book. I was surprised how much usable information I was able to find in the Red sea reef guide, but mostly in my 4 small books about the reef life of Maldives, which I bought on our first and second trip to Maldives more than 25 years ago. Thinking back I'm still so happy that they were available in resort souvenir shops and that I had the wits to buy them, even if we had to transport them home in our suitcases.
When searching for clues I also referred to my trilogy of book I have about Caribbean, even to find similarities and maybe determine to which family a certain creature belongs to.
You can't even imagine how happy I was to solve this!
When I successfully narrow the search down to genus or family, I also use plenty of Internet resources. Some are really great and I'm in awe of how much work and time some people must put into all these databases.
One of my favourite is http://www.seaslugforum.net/ , but you need to know the name of the slug or at least the family to which it belongs to to get to the information.
I very much like the https://www.diveandrelax.com/koh-lanta-marine-life/ , their database is maybe not the biggest, but it is exactly of the area where we were.
Another great resource about Thailand waters is http://thai-scuba.com/wp/project/marine-life-archive/ , it came very handy.
Another very comprehensive source is https://www.fishbase.se/search.php , it takes a bit of work to limit the search to area or species that one wants, but it is not too tricky. Here I found all the fish in their database that were reported from Thailand: https://www.fishbase.se/country/CountryChecklist.php?&what=list&trpp=50&c_code=764&cpresence=present&sortby=alpha&ext_pic=on&vhabitat=saltwater&showAll=yes . It is quite a long list with lots of photos, but when you know nothing about a fish you are interested in, you just have to browse through all the photos in hope you see what you are searching for.
Here is another resource I found useful: https://reefguide.org/home.html . Here one can find also the reef inhabitants from other tropical seas, not just Indo-Pacific.
And here is another surprisingly large and comprehensive database, https://www.diverosa.com/home.html . There are so many beautiful photos there, either organised by family or by diving trip where they were taken. If I understand correctly, this is the work of two enthusiastic divers and I have immense respect for what they are doing.
When browsing their photos, I discovered one that helped solve the 7-years old mystery. In 2017 we were on holiday in Thailand on Koh Tao. I took these photos of creatures that I had absolutely no ideas of what they were, they just didn't look even remotely similar to anything I've seen so far. And on this site I saw the familiar photo with the name as well - these are the sponges, named Pink pufball sponge (Oceanapia sagittaria). The sponges have a stalk, that is not visible on my photos and usually look like some pretty flowers. The balls are where they expel water, but the majority of the sponge is actually hidden under ground.
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