ASEAN Biodiversity Magazine Cover!

I am super happy about making it on the cover of the ASEAN Biodiversity Magazine with one of my photographs, a picture of a thresher shark! Thanks so much to the friendly folks at the magazine and to Anna Oposa, who got me in touch with them, for making it happen.

The ASEAN Biodiversity Magazine is a great effort at showcasing the amazingly diverse nature of Southeast Asia, to spread the word about the threats it is exposed to, as well as about the laudable conservation efforts underway to preserve this diversity. You can download the newest issue here.

I took the cover picture during last year’s Photoganza at Evolution Diving in Malapascua in the Cebu Province of the Philippines. The place is famous for thresher shark sightings – these elusive & shy animals usually live in the open ocean or too deep to be seen by us divers. Malapascua is one of the few places where we can observe them, since they come to the relatively shallow cleaner stations at Monad Shoal to have their parasites (mainly crustaceans) removed by symbiotic cleaner wrasses (I’d love to have symbiotic cleaner animals in my bathroom, sparing me the need for such boring repetitive acts like brushing my teeth ect.). These sharks look unusual because of their long caudal fin – they use it to thrash through schools of smaller fishes, which they then devour after they have stunned them. Sharks are fascinating – many very unusual species are actually completely out of divers’ views, living all their shark lives at completely inaccessible depths. This book has some fascinating species (in fact all known shark species) on its pages:

This issue of the ASEAN Biodiversity Magazine also features more of my photographs of other marine life. Please read it, learn about some pressing environmental issues, and think about what you can do for the ocean’s health. Not eating bluefin tuna anymore might be a start.