My Top Three Underwater Videos

I’ve recently invested more time and energy into my Pacificklaus YouTube channel, I’ve been having a really good time diving, spotting interesting animal behavior, filming, editing and narrating. I believe I have recently refined quite a few aspects of nature film-making. However, the videos which are most popular on my channel are still the ones a few years old. Let’s check them out:

Number 3

I really like gobies. Hence it’s just right that among my top three videos is one with gobies, to be precise several Valenciennea puellaris, fighting. There is a mated pair of these gobies, which fights off an intruder. Quite sophisticated behavior for such small fishes, to fight in a team, especially since the fight was over after a few seconds.

 

Number 2

I spent three great summers as a visiting professor at the Marine Science Institute of the University of the Philippines, Dilliman. The UP MSI is active in breeding giant clams, to restock wild populations.

I was working on gobies when at MSI, but I still found the time to shoot a video about the institute’s clam breeding efforts. The clams being in outdoor aquaria, and being triggered to spawn by injection allowed me to get some spectacular close-up shots. I also wrote a nice photo feature for Hakai about the topic.

 

Number 1

This is a curious video: I was diving in Dauin, Negros Oriental, just testing a new housing for a compact camera which a nice friend had lent me. I went on an easy, shallow (solo) dive on a reef I knew well. The housing was set up with a special ring flash meant for getting evenly illuminated macro shots, however when I spotted a marine turtle I decided to start filming it. I hadn’t noticed an angry trigger fish approaching me from behind, which started chasing me. Fortunately I didn’t stop filming when that happened…

Enjoy the cranage!