My Philippine Fauna Musings: Gobies, Crabs , Geckos and Frogfish
The great enjoyment of living in the tropics – the Philippines, specifically, is the amazing fauna I see underwater and on land. It doesn’t even take long expeditions or lengthy trips up the mountains to see fascinating critters. A brief walk to the tidepools, or even just looking up to the ceiling, where geckos frolic at night, lets me observe interesting animals. A scuba dive, and it doesn’t have to be deep or unusual in any way, brings me fact=to-face with the amazing marine fauna of the Philippine archipelago.
I have photographed and filmed a lot of the Philippine fauna over the last few years, and these are the highlights: Firstly, I observed and shot a lot of shrimp gobies. Learn more about these small fishes and their symbiosis with shrimp here:
I had the pleasure to photograph and film a lot of crabs during the last few years. Crabs are vastly under-appreciated as creatures with complex behaviors. They seem to be driven by a constant sense of fear … no surprise, given the many fishes and humans who want to eat them. I don’t eat crab btw, I generally don’t eat wildlife, either from land or “seafood” anymore, but crabs always struck me as food with a very small amount of meat which is hard to get to…
When living in the Philippines, you will constantly be surrounded in the evenings by geckos, fascinating little lizards which can walk up walls. How do they do it? It’s actually not quite clear. Read about the scientific dispute about gecko foot physics here:
Frogfish: (almost, unless you love gobies) every muck diver’s favorite species. Read about their behavior and evolution here:
