Pacificklaus Guide to Muck Diving in the Philippines
What is Muck Diving
Muck diving is the art of spotting (and photographing and filming) often small, well-camouflaged, unusually looking marine critters living in sand or seagrass habitats. Muck diving is distinguished from visiting the beautiful coral reefs which are more often the destinations of underwater ecotourists. While less stunningly beautiful than coral reefs at a first glance, muck diving sites contain an unique and absolutely visually striking fauna of fishes and invertebrates.
What Marine Life Will You See
Once your eyes start to get used to looking for small creatures in the sand, you will spot such bizarre and interesting creatures as the flamboyant cuttlefish, devil stonefish, Ambon scorpionfish, multiple species of gobies, dragonets, ghost pipefish and a variety of sea slugs such as nudibranchs.
Here is a Flickr album with some of my best muck diving shots. Strange creatures! You’ll get the idea:
Muck Diving at Night
Muck diving at night is in many ways an enhanced version of muck diving. A fauna with unusual adaptations for life in the sand is replaced & supplemented with an even more unusual fauna. Critters which would have to fear death by fish predation during the day come out when teh sun sets. Mollusks, flatworms, the most fine-limbed crustaceans, all animals which would quickly fall prey to fast, visually hunting fishes, all emerge at night. The muck fauna turns it up a notch once the sun sets. Dive sites which are interesting during the day are sometimes absolutely positively stunning by 8 pm.
Here is a fresh new video I shot this year in the Philippines:
Diving Procedures for Muck Diving
Generally, to enjoy the underwater world you want to be a diver with calm demeanor and good buoyancy, and you want to pay good attention to nature around you. Muck diving essentially needs you to do the same things – but more of them. In detail:
- Go Slow: You can swim over a coral reef and enjoy the view. Swim too fast over a muck site, and you’ll miss most. Be water (Bruce Lee)? Be slow in the water.
- Study beforehand what you might see. Look at ID books and online resources to prime your visual system to spot the small and well hidden animals which you will encounter. Even if you are diving with a competent guide/spotter, this will help you enjoy the dive more.
- Don’t cause a silt out. Nobody likes you if you stir up so much sand that the critters are covered. Move in a controlled manner, use the frog kick.
- Show diving courtesy. If a guide spots a rare critter, take a few shots, and then let someone else looks. This is more important than on coral reefs, where the whole scenery is full of pretty fishes.
- Don’t harass small critters. No poking, moving, scaring to get a reaction. Please.
Muck Diving from the View of an Underwater Photographer
Taking – mostly macro – photographs of muck creatures is challenging. A key strategy is to stay low, and to get the subject in focus while the background, way behind it, is blurred out. This doesn’t always work, though. Patience goes a long way. Following rule 5 from above does too. Generally, I found that you have to pick your spots in the muck, and it’s sometimes just not possible to get a decent image of an animal if it decides to flee, dig itself into the sand, or stay in a crevice under a piece of dead wood where you can’t get a good view of it with your camera.
Naturally, macro setups are the preferred way to shoot in the muck. However, wide-angle close focus shots can look great sometimes too.
Muck Diving from the View of a Marine Biologist
The biology of muck diving is a field where scholarly marine biology has a lot of work left to do, which is great. The scholarly term for “muck” is “soft bottom habitats”. The key concept here to me is that the muck creatures are not fishes and inverts which belong on the coral reef and which were displaced by a few hundred meters and now have to live in the sand. The soft-bottom sites are unique ecosystems, not pieces of ocean real estate which unfortunately don’t have corals. The “muck” is its own type of very rich & biodiverse habitat, not “sand, sadly lacking a coral reef”.
The muck fauna has unique evolutionary adaptations to life in the sand, such as camouflage, hiding under the sand, being extremely venomous, or digging burrows. For example, the Ambon scorpionfish looks like a ball of filamentous algae, exactly like the ones which occasionally drift about in the shallow portions of muck sites. This camouflage is very specific for sandy planes which have these algal balls, and it can only work there. The Ambon scorpionfish is a highly specialized inhabitant of tropical shallow-water soft bottom habitats. And the same goes for every other fish or invertebrate you’ll encounter in the muck. The devil walker fish? A venomous stonefish with a tendency to dig itself into the sand up to eye-level: a behavioral strategy which only will work in the muck. And so on…
And, the anthropocene, the age where humans are determining the dynamics of the biosphere, is evident in the muck too. The plastic, the bottles and the old tires which sometimes become homes for some of the tiny shrimp or gobies in muck sites all come from human activities. It’s not a good thing to find trash in the ocean, of course, but in the case of muck it sometimes fits in, in a bizarre way. And yes, THE popular science book about the ocean in the Anthropocene is James Reimer’s and mine “25 Future Dives”:
I also want to point out that I frequently see “artificial reefs”, metal or concrete structures dumped into the ocean at muck sites. “Artificial reefs” can have very good uses in some situations, where coral reefs are rehabilitated after disturbances like typhoons, BUT they don’t belong in muck/soft bottom habitats. In some cases, “artificial reefs” have created interesting dive sites there, but these are different from the original muck fauna, and have at least partially displaced it.
What Are the Best Places to Muck Dive in the Philippines?
The Philippines are located in the coral triangle, the world’s center of marine biodiversity. This high biodiversity is also very apparent in muck diving sites. I spent a lot of time muck diving in Dauin, and over the years I put together a map with info about the different dive sites of Dauin:
Anilao in Batangas, a few hours (how many? Well, Manila traffic) by car south of Metro Manila is another well known Philippine muck diving destination. There is even a dive site called “Basura” – trash in Tagalog – and yes, while there is a bit of trash, in-between there lives a fantastic muck fauna. I had a great time diving with Ayanar Resort, here are the shots I got while diving with them:
The island province of Romblon is a muck diving location I haven’t dived yet, but I have heard good things, and seen lots of interesting crustaceans from the area. The images I see online are from species we don’t get in Dauin, so that would make a trip to Rommblon especially interesting. The Three P Beach Resort seems to be the place to dive with in Romblon.
What Are the Best Places to Muck Dive in the Wide World?
I had a top time diving in Gilimanuk on the western end of Bali. Named “Secret Bay”, the site is a relatively shallow, silty area, quite some way off the main touristy locations of Bali (which I also enjoyed!).
Flickr album with my Secret Bay shots. Don’t tell anyone about it, it’s secret:
And, of course, Lembeh Straight in Indonesia is famous for muck diving. I haven’t been there yet, it’s high, high up on my 2-dive list. It’s good to still have dreams. Blenny Watcher covers the area’s muck very well. As with Dauin and Anilao, the Lembeh Straight is right in the Coral Triangle, and has a wealth of protected, sandy bays, ideal for the muck fauna to thrive.
This is documentary which I filmed two years ago, with lots of footage and some more detailed thoughts on the adaptations the muck fauna has evolved. And, yes, I might re-upload without the music sometime.
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Best Fishes,
Klaus
