Ready to Hatch

He is holding his children in his mouth, and they are looking out.

The jawfish lives in a burrow in the sand and rarely leaves it. When a female lays, the male takes the clutch into his mouth and keeps it there until they hatch, turning the eggs, aerating them, spitting them out and gulping them back for days on end. He does not eat while he carries them.

These are a couple of weeks from hatching. Look closely and each egg has a pair of eyes.

Dauin's black sand looks empty until somebody points, and the guides here point. Getting this frame meant lying flat on the slope, in surge, with a snoot narrowing a single strobe to the width of the fish's head so the sand fell dark and the eggs lit up like a mouthful of pearls. He watched the whole time. He did not close his mouth.