Our first diving encounter with this iconic animal in over 500 dives.

Red Snapper, quite unexciting underwater until the strobe lights them up and shows their vibrant colour.

Tubbataha still has a very healthy soft and hard coral reef, attributed to the active protection against fishing by the Rangers.

I love the reef, full of life in every nook and cranny.

Schooling fish are always lovely to see, if you approach slowly and calmly you can sometime get amongst them.

Getting involved.

Something above startled the school straight towards me, fortunately.

Inquisitive Hawksbill turtle looking at his own reflection in the camera dome.

Typical scene in Tubbataha.

Healthy reef with many small fish.

Feather Stars are crinoids - a marine animal in the class Crinoidea, one of the classes of the phylum Echinodermata, which also includes the starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins and sea cucumbers.

These beautiful little fish dart around so unpredictably, it takes quite a few shots to get a pleasing composition.

Hippocampus Denise. This colouration is locally referred to as the Christmas Tree Pygmy, and it’s easy to see why.

Another beautiful anemone fish.

Hairy Squat Lobster on Giant Barrel Sponge, thoughtfully coming to the edge of the sponge for a photo.

Lovely Common Clownfish retreating to the protection of his anemone.

Pregant Male Pygmy Seahorse on fan coral.

Another of these amazing little shrimp.

Better known by its nickname, here we have an Orang-Utan Crab on an Anemone. These interesting little creatures are usually very difficult to distinguish in their environment, but i was fortunate here as the gentle swell of the ocean parted the anemone so that i could capture some interesting details.

Here we have a peacock Mantis Shrimp protecting eggs.

Shrimp. Say no more.

Tiny nudibranchs with wonderful colours. I used the Retra LSD snoot for this shot to isolate the subject from the background. Much trickier then you might think.

We spent 2 whole dives checking out the beautiful pink fan coral and it's inhabitants (Hippocampus Bargibanti). These guys are tiny (maybe 10mm tall), and superbly camoflagued. But with persistence we counted 12 or 13 on this coral. Amazing

These Shrimp are amazing and colourful and have the most complex eyes known to man. They are also very timid, be sure it takes lots of patience and a little luck to get a photo like this.

The most common nudibranch that we encountered in the Philippines, but undoubtedly one of the most photogenic.

This little guy was running around on this sea cucumber.

Approach these movement sensitive fans slowly and gently so they don't retract into the coral host. Beautiful shapes and colours.

These transparent shrimp are elusive to photograph due to their transparent bodies.

Amazing little Shrimp, they cut an arm off a Starfish and feed on it. Don't worry, the starfish grows it back.

Love the look of these anemones. The semi transparent skins really illuminate nicely.

Beautiful Common Clownfish.

A pair of beautiful nudibranch.

A most unusual green and white curly anemone hosting a yellowtail anemone fish.

These beautiful inquisitive creatures are truly amazing. Tip to tip wingspan can approach 6m, yet they glide effortless and so gracefully through the water checking out the divers on their own terms. 

I've been fortunate enough to spend many dives playing with them at 'The Boiler', and it is undoubtedly my favourite memory of these trips.

Roca Partida sunset dive. Amazing.

A close encounter with the amazing giant Manta an accompanying clarion cleaners.

Dive Site ‘Landslide’, Wolf Island, Galapagos.

June 2016

This is the photo i was hoping for when we planned our trip to the Galapagos islands.

A close encounter with this Hawksbill turtle near Darwin Island.

It's pretty rare to see a pod of transient Orcas in the Galapagos. It's even rarer to jump in the water with them to catch a few photos. This was taken with a 16mm lens - the juvenile at the top of this four passed about 2m underneath me. I never felt in danger. I found out later that no wild Orca has even harmed a human. Sadly humans do not reciprocate this statistic. Beautiful, graceful intelligent creatures.

Only found here in the Galapagos Islands, these amazing evolutionary creatures have developed unique ways of surviving in hostile conditions.

I loved this dive as we went off in the opposite direction to everybody else, and it paid off nicely when we happened acrosss this lovely hawksbill turtle.

I really enjoy these colourful chaps, and with some luck and persistence you can get a lovely non distracting contextual background.