Fishes of Tubbataha

I recently had the opportunity to dive at Tubbataha Reefs, in the center of the Philippines, in the Sulu Sea. We were on an expedition to catalogue all fish species of the reef. These videos and images show some of the highlights of Tubbataha’s fish fauna … hint: I like small, cryptobenthic fishes.

Also check out my article in Esquire Philippines about Tubbataha.

This one gives a good overview of the fish fauna, including some rarely seen gobies, and footage of a dart fish darting into safety:

A real special treat in Tubbataha was to observe the oceanic triggerfish – rarely seen near reefs to begin with – nesting. They destroyed a few square meters of coral for each nest! Gladly they aren’t aggressive against divers as Titan Triggerfish are:

Photos, Too

This is a collection of photographs from our reef survey:

Tubbataha Management Office & Infiniti

I really want to thank a few people & organizations here: MANY thanks to Prof. Kent Carpenter and the Tubbataha Management Office for inviting me to come on this survey, and many thanks to Infiniti liveaboard for hosting us.

Particularly, I was impressed with the dive operations of the Infiniti, especially their safety thinking. For example, every diver received a EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) – a device which lets rescuers locate you should you be so unlucky that the currents sweep you away. No one needed this device, but it can be a life-saver in the case of an emergency.

The crew was very well trained, and there were enough of them; this made getting ready for a dive really convenient AND in any emergency situation there would have been enough men and women available to intervene.

We dived from zodiacs launched from the dive deck at the back of the boat, and these zodiacs also picked us up after the dives. After no dive did we have to wait more than 3 minutes for a pick-up; and the boatmen in the zodiacs immediately notified the crew on the Infiniti about the divers he had collected. There were a lot of well thought-out little things in regards to diving safety and operations which caught my eye (as a 9-year dive pro). Great job!