Just about every dive center I’ve visited in the Indo-pacific region has a ‘Nemo City’ or, if named before a certain small animated fishes exploits, an ‘Anemone Garden’, and for an underwater photographer, they are always a good thing.

Whenever I have a travel piece to do or a more specific diving article to complete I look for a mix of shots, with plenty of close-up images mixed in with more general reef and diver pictures.  Given that everyone recognises a clownfish and they are such good subjects, getting a few clown portraits on my memory card is always worthwhile, especially if I’m struggling to find other subjects.

Always a useful fish for a portrait

These pictures from the southern Red Sea feature the region’s endemic clown, Amphiprion bicinctus, in very high numbers hosting within a large and presumably clonal group of Heteractis magnifica.  I had trouble estimating how many individual ‘nems there were; I got to about fifty, but that’s not too reliable.  As you’ll see there are also a good number of Three spot Dscyllus (Dascyllus trimaculatus).

How any two fish could decide upon a territory and begin the egg laying process baffles me, it looked like a gloriously complicated mess of fish and tentacles!