After a 14 hour plane ride from Dallas to Seoul Korea with a few hour lay over, I was finally getting on the plane to fly to Manila. I had looked at multiple sites to tell me as much as I could digest about what to expect in Anilao in the Philippines. I was hoping I would be ready to shoot as many images as I could in 30 or so dives in 8 days. I’d watched video on youtube and vimeo. I had looked at images on several photo stock agency sites and I had read quite a few articles on diving in Anilao. I have looked at water temperature charts. I had gotten all the scuba gear serviced and had taken out and put together several times the underwater housing for my camera and strobes and lights. And, yet I was still not prepared for the substantial bio-diversity that I would find in diving in Anilao.
Sure I had read that Anilao was within the few hundred miles of where biologists had determined was the highest amount of biodiversity in the world. Of course it is one thing to read it; its another thing to see it.
Fortunately we had a guide Edgar who found the vast majority of critters that we saw. Edgar is outstanding at his job. After getting all set up and riding the boat a relatively short distance from the resort, we dropped in the water. My first thought: well now I see why we are shooting macro instead of wide angle; visibility was maybe 15 feet and where we dropped in was a sandy bottom. After making sure all of our gear was functioning we started to swim away from shore to deeper water — about 70 feet. The bottom was still sandy and yet Edgar was finding odd looking creatures and nudibranchs (Shell-less mollusks) quickly enough to keep four photographers busy shooting images. On the first day or so I was shooting a 60mm lens and going back and forth to a subsee diopter. I had only shot a diopter for less than 20 shots so I was really guessing about technique and how far or close I had to be to the subject. After a while it got easier to guess. And, with the 60mm my working distance to some of the creatures was really close 4-5 inches. Good thing most of the creatures are camouflage experts and don’t rely on speed to survive. They survive because unless you know what to look for they are so well disguised they are hard to see.
At one point Edgar turned over a star fish. It was a pretty blue star fish but on the surface pretty ordinary. But, on the underside of the star fish was a shrimp which might have been about half an inch in length.
Later in the dive Edgar found a blue ringed octopus hiding in an abandoned sea shell. Now I had read that they carry enough bio toxin to immobilized a small army. I took my chances and got in close with the diopter and snapped off a couple of quick shots and decided I needed to move away and not test my luck any further. (As I would see over the week, blue ring octopi are fairly docile, but are deserving of respect. No one had any problems with them but they still deserve a fair amount of respect and I would be the last one to hassle them). I do kinda like to develop the pictures I take and not just take them.
Towards the end of the dive we came across a lemon goby who was going in and out of what looked like an old piece of a log. The log was also adorned with other sea life, but the goby was the star with his bright yellow color.
We saw dozens of other critters during the first set of dives, most all of which I have never seen before. It was a pattern that continued the entire trip.