Corals having their mid-morning snack




Well yes, if you didn't know yet, corals ARE animals. And what's more, they're CARNIVOROUS, meaning they eat other animals. And they have harpoon thingies that they shoot out at night to reel in their prey.

However, this one here is the soft coral Xenia, which probably just filters the water for nutrients instead of actively catching tiny animals (called "zooplankton") with stinging cells (called "nematocysts"), the way the hard corals do. And I just found out now from Google that they're actually popular with aquarium enthusiasts because of their "pulsing".

I just thought it was cool how they look like flowers opening and closing :D And I thought you'd find it cool, too, so I took a video of them in action.

Taken off Pulaobato, Balabac, Palawan (near Malaysia) last April.

Comments

  1. Jean UOctober 9, 2007 at 9:23 PM

    That's cool...they look like they're dancing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jemi AquinoOctober 12, 2007 at 9:19 AM

    cuteness!
    like the hands of multi-fingered hundred-handed alien babies,
    leaning to use their motor skills for the first time.
    close, open. close, open. =D

    had van gogh been a diver he would painted them with gusto, too. =)

    HUGS,
    jemi

    ReplyDelete
  3. Pablo Jr RojasOctober 13, 2007 at 7:52 PM

    splendid!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jeneen GarciaOctober 15, 2007 at 3:03 AM

    hey, that's a cool thought :D

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ann DigitalisOctober 27, 2007 at 2:29 PM

    Cool, pulsing xenia in the wild! Great video!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Jeneen GarciaNovember 1, 2007 at 6:45 AM

    thanks, anne :D have you seen any of these where you dive?

    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