I guess we all started the same way, you get your hands on a book full of beautiful fish or coral pictures and decide THAT’s what I want!

In my case it was the first picture of the Resplendent dwarf angle fish (Centropyge respendens) I encountered in the famous book series “Das Meerwasser Aquarium” from Fossa & Nielsen.  I instantly fell in love with that little fish and its striking coloration.  It didn’t take me long to realize that this dream was really difficult to achieve.  But we are not real reefers if are not determined to get results – right ?!

In one of the phone calls with my fish & dive buddy Jens Kallmeyer I told him about my passion for that fish and that it is impossible to get him.  He just said “Why don’t we go there and have a look?”  I laughed and forgot about it – it sounded really too far fetched.  A few weeks later Jens called me and had a draft plan worked out!  It took us then about 6 months of planning to get to Ascension Island.  You can only get to that island via the British Air Force and need upfront security clearance and long term flight booking.

It was really difficult to get there and to get in the water, but it was even more difficult to finally find this fish! We where almost frustrated that all the effort and cost placed into this project was fruit less.  But our efforts did not stay unnoticed on the island and we where pointed to the right direction.

After month of preparation, thousand kilometer flight, many dives and several thousand Euro spent, we finally found the mystery angel fish!  This is how a happy me looked just after we located the fish:

It was stunning and completely unexpected what we found.  But that’s a long story and stuff for a nice article on day …