The Stories of My Best Shots #30, Hunting Squid
I put a lot of my photographs are on Flickr. There, the photo enthusiast community views these shots, comments on them and adds them to their favorites. The more of that happens, the higher ranked in my personal photostream the shots get. I’d like to introduce my 30 best shots, today starting at #30.
Two years ago, I was diving in Mactan, Cebu, province, Philippines. When you fly into Cebu City, the “Pearl of the South” of the Philippines, you land on Mactan International Airport, on Mactan island, connected with mainland Cebu by two long bridges. Mactan is a place of historical significance: after messing with the locals, explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed there by legendary chief Lapu Lapu. Today, it has its share of large hotels for Koreans tourists and dense, poor urban settlements. The people are very friendly like everywhere in the Philippines, and you can get great mangoes and good Korean food, but it’s not your archetypical tropical dream island.
But, wait till you are underwater!
The diving in Mactan is top. On its east coast, facing away from Cebu City, the ocean is surprisingly healthy, given that it’s so close to a large metropolitan area. After a biodiverse seagrass and bommy area, the reef drops off to 50 meters or more. For night dives, the shallow area is great. And on one of these night dives, after already a good 40 minutes of being amazed at marine life, my friend and dive guide Julian pointed his dive light at a mid-sized goatfish.
That was basically the light at the end of the tunnel for the goatfish. The tunnel you see when you die, you know.
Immediately a large squid grabbed the goatfish, and made off into the dark of the nightly ocean. I realized what had happened and swam after the hunting cephalopod. These animals can swim by undulating their fins (slow), and by jetting out water from their mantel (fast). However, with the goatfish stuck in its mouth, the fast propulsion system was blocked and I managed to catch up with the squid. That’s when I took this shot.