Description

Recently I was lucky enough to spend an entire month diving in the Philippines, I visited many different dive spots and one of the first was a little place name Balicasag Island, you get there by going to Bohol Island, then making your way to Panglao Island. Yes that is a lot of islands, but hey, that is where all the cool divers are these days.

I absolutely love Frog Fish, I even made deals with all our guides that for every Frog Fish they find I’d buy them 1 beer at the bar. Not a bad deal if you can find more than one in a dive, but what makes this shot special for me was that I found this one. I’d stopped to inspect a Nudi Branch, took a photo, looked down and saw this bright orange ball of ugly hiding, kind of tucked inside, the sea fan you can see in the background of the shot. I was super excited, we do see Frog Fish in Thailand but almost always they are hidden so deep in crevices and holes that photos are a near impossibility, this one was fair game and in a decent spot.

I spent some time taking photos of this subject, I just love the way they look, move and to me they show a lot of personality. This little guy at first was facing away from me and not moving, so I let the other people in my group come in and have a look. Now I don’t know if they disturbed him or if it was just his time to change places, but he started shifting around and came front on, I might have pushed people out the road at that point, I’m not sure. He started to crawl over the sea fan, think he wanted to get somewhere a bit more camouflaged but not before I was able to capture some very nice shots of him both from the side and the front.

This shot is my favorite because it clearly shows the membranes connecting his dorsal spines to his skin, many scientists believe this adaption allows them to mimic Flatworms and or Nudibranch, which other fish know taste like an old sock and some are poisonous to boot. Plus he just looks cool.