Pygmy Seahorses, Bubble Corals, and Other Creatures of the Deep




August 26, 2006 - Marissa 3 and Diaz Wall, Off Samal Island. It was Jo's graduation dive for his Open Water Diver certification, and Papa's birthday the next day, so all three of us showed up at the dive shop again to get more entries for our dive log and have Papa try diving for the first time.


Finally saw the rare pygmy seahorses that I didn't get to see last time, plus some other micro stuff. Of course, with all my focus on getting good macro shots of the micro stuff, I got separated from the others with almost no air and practically non-existent visibility at nearly a hundred feet. Fortunately, I wasn't too high on nitrogen to remember how to ascend properly (didn't remember the safety stop, though, because didn't have a watch). At the surface, I discovered the others weren't too far off, after all. All's well that ends well =P BUt definitely need to be less autistic in photography next time.


After that, I started memorizing the taxonomy of all the things I've been shooting underwater and realized how horribly I've misidentified everything in my last album =P


More pictures to come, since I've had five more dives since this one =D

Comments

  1. XXXX YYYYSeptember 11, 2006 at 2:17 AM

    wow, i love the sea... these are awesome, neerish...
    God's creation is so breathtaking, don't you think? :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. XXXX YYYYSeptember 11, 2006 at 2:20 AM

    Oh! Nemo and his dad? =)

    ReplyDelete
  3. angie nellasSeptember 11, 2006 at 3:12 AM

    :D H.denise ..yes :D cuuuuuuuute and stubby creature at your fingertip

    ReplyDelete
  4. Manang KaiyenSeptember 11, 2006 at 11:07 AM

    whoa, very intersting shots...fascinating. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. angie nellasSeptember 11, 2006 at 7:01 PM

    Hippocampus bargibanti diay ni ...heheh..dili H.denise:D

    ReplyDelete
  6. Jeneen GarciaSeptember 14, 2006 at 9:27 AM

    hehe. thanks angie! my sole book on philippine coral reefs doesn't have this one in it =) trust you to know exactly what it is.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Jeneen GarciaSeptember 14, 2006 at 9:29 AM

    yep yep! it's AMAZING underwater. everyone should learn to dive =D (although as a friend pointed out, we're probably not meant to be diving because otherwise God would've given us gills =P)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Boljoon: More Reasons to Return

Image
8 and 9 June 2007. When editor Kristin Llerin asked me to write about Boljoon for the Cebu Yearbook, I asked, "Why ME?". I'd just written an article on it a few months before for the Lifestyle page (supposedly, it was what inspired the Yearbook editors to feature Boljoon in the yearbook), and I felt I had written all I had in me to write about Boljoon, after years of yearning for it. I'd explored all I wanted to. It was a closed book, as far as I was concerned. "Because you like to travel!" she said. Fine. It was MY Boljoon, after all, so I thought it might as well be me. When I got there on a Friday morning (the first weekend of the schoolyear, and I was already on another "vacation" :P) to interview some government officials, I discovered that there was an archeological dig going on in front of its historic church, and that there were actually still a couple of places I hadn't been to...which some of the locals hadn't even heard of, eit...
Read more

Being Brown... again

Image
In 2002, I wrote an  #essay for one of my Sun.Star columns titled "It Ain't Easy Being Brown" . In March 2016, I suddenly got requests from university students in different parts of the  #Philippines  to interview me about this essay for their class. The essay wasn't online and they had to ask me for a copy, so I have no idea how their teachers thought to assign it as a text. In October 2017, I was contacted by students from yet another school telling me that they had chosen the same essay to make a  #shortfilm  on for a school competition. Again, no idea how they got hold of it. But since my essays are  #autobiographical , it was basically a film based on my life. Sharing it now because it's just so hilarious 😂 especially their portrayal of my parents. It's so amazing what kids can do with the technology these days. This is the  #poster  they made for the film. You can read the (very short) essay first . And then watch the  #trilingua...
Read more

It Ain’t Easy Being Brown

STRANGER THAN FICTION by Jeneen R. Garcia Published in 2002 Never fails. Every time I walk down a grocery’s toiletries section, an overly eager, mestiza sales lady blocks my path, wielding the latest whitening product. It’s as if I had a sign on my forehead saying “In Need of Whitening: Approach at Will”.  It’s weird how even in this age of political correctness and Naomi Campbell, Filipinos still automatically equate beauty with fair, cancer-prone skin. And have you noticed how they use naturally white people like Lucy Torres and aforementioned sales lady to endorse their product, in a strategy to make us brownies insecure? In fairness, it’s generally easier to find something that’s bright than dark. It’s less straining to the eyes. Bright surfaces reflect instead of absorb light, making everything else around them brighter. My mother most of all has always wished my skin were whiter. She says I was born reddish, and was worried I would take after my kayuman...
Read more