April 6, 2014

Seen in the Water

As someone who loves snorkeling, on of the best things about staying at El Nido Resorts on Apulit Island in the Philippines was the abundant ocean life immediately surrounding the resort.

You could literally look out from your balcony and see fish teeming around coral reefs.

Walk to the end of the path, and you're immediately plunged into a dense thatch of sea urchins.

Clusters and clusters of large sea urchins, needles waving menacingly in the water. They reminded me of land mines.

Everyone at the resort said, "We have sharks here!", conveniently neglecting to mention that they are the non-aggresive, tiny kind. Here, it is trailed by a school of smaller fish.

A lot of cuttlefish bones had washed up on shore.

Scissortail sergeant major?


This were fairly large fish, and were painfully slow swimmers. It was as if they were asleep in broad daylight.

Brilliantly blue and green clams that start clamming up as soon as they sense some sort of change in the water. (As in you, swimming by.)


There were actually hundreds of fish teeming around the coral, but after years of using a digital camera, my Kodak film camera-taking skills were horribly rusty.



If you think you see a face, it's because there was one poking out of a hole in the sand that had been fortified with bits of coral.

Clownfish, which always look absolutely tiny after seeing Finding Nemo on a large screen.

These yellow and green and orange things would close up in an instant if they sensed danger.


No comments: