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It's my pleasure to introduce a scuba related book my friend Dr. James Reimer and myself wrote: 25 Future Dives. We explain environmental problems in the form of dive briefings: coral bleaching, plastic trash, invasive lionfish, and many more. We also have a few "fun" chapters, such as the one...

Let me know if you come up with a good answer please. There could be some trade-off, that carrying all these chloroplasts causes some kind of strain on the organism?

I am taking a different approach to popularizing marine biology of the "muck" fauna here: instead of explaining all I know about the biology of the animals I film underwater, I ask questions about them which come to my mind. All filmed on Negros Island in the Philippines, in sand and seagrass...

I am lucky enough to be able to night dive on Negros Island regularly. The sand/soft bottom habitats ("muck") are unsurpassed imo. These days the water is so rich in plankton that it feeds a lot of the critters the Philippine muck diving is famous for. This week, during a single dive, we saw...

Thank you! It's a TG6, in the Olympus housing, and a cheap-o gorilla tripod. and two no-brand dive lights. The lights are supposedly 2000 lumen, but they aren't. I always found that power in macro videography is not a major factor. I always try to get very close to the subjects, and never max...

All dives are nice, but in some there is more action than in others. Last week an eel knocked my camera out of my hand, and I witnessed a wrestling match between two crabs, plus a fire worm feeding on a crab. Negros Island, Philippines, at night. Enjoy:

Update: cleaned the o-ring again with lots of attention to any sand grain there might be, applied grease, the housing was ok during a 1 hour dive to 18 meters. I still don't quite understand how a leak can happen after 20 uneventful minutes, the "grease bridge" mentioned above sounds most likely?

Very good information, thank you!

That's a possibility, good point. Still, why after 20 minutes at ~ 18m, not right away?

Good news: It was my TG6 which experiences a leak, and it's fine. But, I would like to understand what was going on. I had in fact cleaned the o-ring and grove before the dive, re-lubed with original Olympus grease, and re-inserted. I do a lot of beach dives, so there is some fine sand on the...

Sea Explorers has great guides, but in reality most dive shops have DMs who have been diving in the area for many years and will find you a great collection of cool critters. I also like the scene here in that many folks share tips where to find what, between dive shops. Right now a lot of...

I'm happy to be back on Negros Island, and have had some reasonable success filming the muck diving world of Dauin and of adjacent Zamboanguita. For your viewing pleasure: Goby behavior, a robust ghost pipefish, and a waspfish: I always enjoy spotting a waspfish, very cryptic. Then, I came...

I can recommend People and the Sea in Malapascua, Cebu, and Marine Conservation Philippines, in Zamboanguita, Negros, as environmental NGOs which take in volunteers. Both have a few projects going where they accept volunteers.

Small fish larvae have difficulties feeding because of the hydrodynamics at such small sizes. This likely explains their high mortality. The physics of this problem the fish face are not trivial, and we try to explain them with some humor. An analogy which is sometimes used is that the feeding...

A team led by Dr. Rene Abesamis, UP Marine Science Institute, led this year's survey of the coral reefs of Apo Island, Negros Or, Philippines. The survey investigated the fish diversity & biomass and the coral cover. Surveys of Apo have been running for 40 years now, started by the late Prof. A...

I had a bit of free time lately to shoot some of the underwater wildlife here in Dauin in the Philippines. Number one, I now have figured out how to always find these basket stars during night dives in "Luca Sanctuary". There are three individuals of them, two large ones and one juvenile. I...

Well, the insights are at least new to me: The well known sardines are not just sardines (but there are several species of them!), but also jackfish. My friend, fish biologist Prof. Kent Carpenter, explains which species are present. Also: likely human run-off brought the fish there in first...

Agreed. I used to live very close to Atlantis for a while, even the spot in front of them on its own is amazing.

Apologies for the delayed reply, crazy busy times... No, we simply noted every species we saw. I have been looking at small fishes for a very long time. This was by invite of the marine park authority, we passed the data on to them.

I made a video about the bobtail squid. There is excellent science about it and its symbiotic bacteria, which seem to spread around the world in a different way than the cephalopod itself. I shot the footage off Negros Island (Dauin and neighborhood) in the Philippines with an Olympus TG6. Enjoy!