Pacificklaus Creative Highlights 2023
The lovely year of ’23 is nearing its end, and in my personal life my highlight was not dying from the bout of dengue fever I had this summer. Yeah! Also, diving the amazing reefs of Tubbataha for the first time was awesome. As usual, I had the pleasure of diving a lot in my home of choice, Dauin in the Philippines. I turned some of these adventures into underwater videos and images, and produced some nice popular science writing on top of that.
Underwater Videography
Filmed in ’21 to ’23, edited, narrated and edited in 23′, I am really quite stoked about “Muck: the biology of underwater sandy habitats in the tropics.”. The full-length documentary has quite some exciting footage, and it should be interesting both for the amateur ocean lover/scuba diver as well as for my academic colleagues in marine biology. The “muck” habitat is notoriously under-appreciated in research, in my opinion. Maybe the documentary will nudge a few people towards paying more attention to it.
Underwater Photography
Taking still underwater photographs was my original art form in underwater image making – this is how I started out in San Diego in the early 2000s. I got some good shots in ’23. This dwarf hawkfish, posting super artsy inside a sponge, is from Tubbataha.
The diver in the background in the image below is my mate Matt, who is a regular star in our – often humorous – underwater videos. The fish in the foreground is a tiger goby, which spends its whole adult life on a black coral (which is only black when it’s dead). Dauin, Negros Island, Philippines.
Popular Science Writing
I enjoy explaining science to an interested popular audience. It’s fun, and there is a value to it, scientific insights should be for everyone, not just for the select few inhabitants of the (sometimes pretty hollow) ivory towers.
In the Philippine edition of Esquire I wrote a few articles about the country’s nature, I am especially fond of this one, covering the invasive janitor catfish. This fish is native to South America and made some of the most polluted rivers of the archipelago its new home. Evolution always keeps a few aces up its sleeve, and this catfish is one.
I also greatly enjoy being able to regularly write for Die Furche, and intellectual weekly published in Vienna. Obviously the articles are in German. This one is about terraforming Mars. I have always been a huge sci-fi aficionado, and it’s great being able to write about actual science, touching on very sci-fi-ish topics.
Support da Channel
As usual: I put out an underwater video or travel vlog out every week or two. If you like my footage, and my ravings which go with it, you will enjoy my books, and – should you be in Dumaguete – high quality prints of my underwater photographs. More here:
Best Fishes,
Klaus
