Although the famous animated film featuring a young clownfish and his father was held in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, Indonesia is the real Nemo Country. The island of Bali welcomes up to six different species of clown fish in its waters; a real hotspot of biodiversity.
In a land blessed like Bali, it is not surprising that even small fish as "Nemo" have decided to settle and establish their permanent home here. Nemo, otherwise known as clownfish or anemonefish live in tropical seas off the Indo-Pacific Ocean, from Japan to the Andaman Sea, the Maldives and the Red Sea. Clownfish live in symbiosis with sea anemones, which are colorful polyps that live on the seabed attached by an adhesive foot, called a basic disk, and the column-shaped body ending in an oral disc and many stinging tentacles. Some species of clown fish are very picky about where they live anemone, while others are more general, so can hold more than a single species of sea anemone.
The use of clownfish in anemone as shelter is a wonderful example of a symbiotic relationship mutualism where the anemone protects the fish with its stinging tentacles, and the small fish fighting against any predator who may be able to eat or harm anemone. The skin of a clownfish is immune against the tentacles, so it can live in security anemone and indulge in food scraps left by the meal of the anemone tentacles and occasional dead anemone.
Clownfish have a strict social hierarchy within their host anemone, with great woman at the top of the company, followed by a mature man and a lot of immature individuals. If for some reason the dominant female dies, the male changes sex to become women, and the first immature fish in the hierarchy becomes the adult male. This strange phenomenon of changing sex is called hermaphroditism and is typical of many fish families. In the film Finding Nemo , when the mother of Nemo was killed by a giant barracuda, father would have changed sex, turning into a great woman, but perhaps this phenomenon was a little too complicated to explain to young people of this film!
In the surrounding coastal waters Bali, it is possible to observe up to six different species of clownfish, perhaps even considering some rare species are difficult to find . Each clownfish has a special place to live, called their habitat; coral reefs, shallow lagoons and sandy bottoms. But all of them follow the same way of life, although some are more aggressive than others when an observer approach. A number of these small fish brave can even bite the fingers or break in diving masks, trying to fight against the potential danger to the anemone and clownfish family.
The most common species in Bali is the clarki Anemonefish ( Amphiprion clarki ). It is a very competitive and general case, an ordinary black and orange with two white stripes, actively defend its host anemone against predators, even very large stressors, including divers. You can find this fish in almost all places, including Nusa Penida, Lembongan, Amed, Tulamben and Menjangan, the most common destinations for divers and snorkelers. The "real Nemo" ( Amphiprion ocellaris ), orange with white stripes, is also present, although less common, but it is easily observed in corals slopes like those present in Nusa Penida (Southern Bali) and Pulau Menjangan, in the north of Bali.
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