Photography 3David Hirschowitz Philippines

Deep sea diver and photographer

David Hirschowitz is usually to be found

under-water around the Caribbean

Cayman Islands. Here he reports back from a diving expedition on the other side of the world in the Philippines.

On land, the exotic Philippine islands around Puerta Gelera and Dumaguete are covered with tropical rain forests. Our diving resorts were highly professional, well-staffed, well-equipped, and the people running them very knowledgeable about diving matters as well as about the local flora and fauna. The resorts were quiet because of the effect of the recession. On the positive side, this meant that the ratio of dive masters and instructors to guests was often one to one.

Most of the diving was done from small, fast speed boats reaching sites in less than ten minutes. We were usually on our own or with two other divers and had most sites to ourselves, with three or four dives a day. The conditions were generally good. The water temperature is similar to the Caymans – 28 to 30 degrees, but the visibility isn’t quite as good as the Caymans except for some smaller islands we went to on day trips when conditions were superb. Not infrequently there was current, especially around the full moon, and we did quite a few fast drift dives, a real photographic challenge!

The main revelation was the sea-life. The coral is glorious and pristine, from large bommies to substantial walls. Coral types and colours surpass the Caribbean. The fish and invertebrates are even more mind-boggling.

Start with the nudibranchs (photos: above left and right). I had probably seen six or eight types in my entire previous diving experience. In each of the first few days, we were seeing that many new types of nudi, in every colour of the rainbow. We soon grew blasé and stopped photographing them unless they were a new type.

The abundance and variety of the fish also surpasses our own. The small reef fish are similar but there are more types of butterflies, wrasses, gobies, anthias, box and cow-fish, and there are plenty and varied moray and other eels (photo: ribbon eel, above left). There are huge shoals of yellow snapper, batfish, catfish and jacks. We saw very large individual groupers, snappers and jacks. Anemone fish (photo: above right) are everywhere and in every colour, matching or contrasting with their anemones. And our new found foe, the lionfish, was on every dive, sometimes in large numbers. We spotted five or six different variants, including the spectacular twinspot. Scorpion fish (photos: above left and right) and stone fish are commonplace, including the extraordinary devil-scorpion and leaf-scorpion. Other oddities we photographed included the star-gazer, crocodile fish, robust pipefish and most amazing of all the ornate ghost pipe (photo: left) - we saw these in three different colours.

Two separate night dives were devoted to seeing the wonderful mandarin fish (photo: left) which come out every dusk to mate – such stamina! The much larger males fight and then posture with the females. They look like cartoons with their bright colourful patterns.

And then there is the muck diving. I wouldn’t have believed there would be much interest in skimming across a grey featureless sandy bottom in conditions which often left much to be desired, but the experience is fascinating and often exciting. You never know what you will find: gobies, their heads poking out of holes, some living and working in symbiosis with a near blind shrimp; colourful blennies; jaw-fish nursing mouthfuls of transparent eggs, each egg showing the eyes of the embryo (photo above right); sea-horses - grey, yellow, green and black; and a mimic octopus pretending to be a banded sea-snake with two tentacles aligned and waving in a line with the other six tentacles buried.

Of the banded sea-snakes (photo: right) we saw three variations, white/black, blue/black and yellow headed. All are highly venomous but thankfully non-aggressive. I saw both ordinary cuttlefish and also a giant cuttlefish, unfortunately not the famous flamboyant. Shrimps were abundant, from the giant mantis (photo above left) at about four inches diameter (we never saw its length as it spends its time in a hole showing its claws and mouth-pieces only) to the tiny mostly transparent salt and pepper shrimp, less than half an inch long. (Photo left: transparent shrimp on sea anemone.) Crabs were equally varied including porcelain, orang-utan, decorator and hermit crabs, all smilingly photographic.

I could go on and on, but can’t end without a word on the frog fish (photos, left). I had seen one before – a black one, in Hawaii. Here we saw about ten, ranging from a half-inch orange spotted to an eighteen inch green and red monster. There were also white and red, chocolate brown, black, yellow and I can’t remember what else.

I did about sixty dives, four at night, and took around two thousand photos. Now I face the task of sorting them.

Regrets? Only that we didn’t find the flamboyant cuttlefish and that my photographs of the truly tiny iconic pigmy sea horse were a failure. I wasn’t sorry to leave, I was dived out and overloaded with the gob-smacking biodiversity. If you get the chance, dive in.

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The trip to the Philippines, with three other photographers, was organised by Ocean Optics, probably the premier underwater photographic supplier in the UK. At both Porta Gelera and Dumaguete we stayed at the Atlantis Diving Resorts where the accommodation included all creature comforts and superb food.

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David Hirschowitz

July 2009