'Sharksucker' Grabs a Ride on Scuba Diver's Flipper
A scuba diver enjoying a trip to the Solomon Islands caught sight of a clingy remora fish hitching a ride on the flipper of another diver, with footage of the determined sea creature shared to Instagram on January 17.
Victoria-based diver Jules Casey, who frequently posts footage of what she sees below the waves to her OneBreathDiver Instagram account, was on a two-week trip to the Solomon Islands when she spotted the remora.
Speaking to Storyful, she said that her time in the Solomon Islands was “the trip of a lifetime” and that she “experienced many incredible encounters, this being one of them”.
She said her group’s dive guide was showing them around a “beautiful reef when this juvenile remora decided to join us”. Casey said that for the following “15 minutes” it worked itself around her dive guide’s “fins and up his legs before eventually going its own way.”
Remora are also known as suckerfish or sharksucker, thanks to their ability to attach themselves to, or keep within reach, of sharks and other large marine animals. According to Britannica.com they “feed on the leavings of their hosts’ meals or, in some instances, act as cleaners by eating the external parasites of their transporters.” Credit: Jules Casey via Storyful
Video transcript
[NO AUDIO]
