The danger comes when they break cover. This baby Queensland grouper
may be just a few centimetres long now, but one day he'll weigh half a tonne.
That's if he lives that long. He can't stay hiding forever. It's dangerous like this camouflaged stonefish that force all life down here to find somewhere to hide.
A surprising refuge is this highly venomous Stoke's sea snake. It's picked up some hitchhikers, baby trevally, and become a mobile nursery. And wherever it goes, they go. With hiding places at a premium,fish will go to incredible lengths to hide down here. and none more so than this. The pearl fish is vulnerable out in the open,so while not feeding it must conceal itself. But it has a particular taste in hiding places. This is a sea cucumber, which feeds on the sea floor. Its body is basically a living tube. It sucks in sand at one end, extracts anything edible and passes waste out the other. Just what the pearl fish has been looking for. But not the mouth end. It's drawn to the odour, or the other end. Sea cucumbers are repulsive to most predators so the pearl fish is safe inside.It'll stay there until it's time to feed again. It doesn't harm its host, but the bad news for sea cucumbers is that pearl fish are happy