Anilao, so abundant and so scarce

It was such a happy feeling when we at the latest possible minute confirmed our trip to Anilao. The four of us had already been there and we absolutely knew what to expect, especially because we had what I believe is the best dive guide in Anilao to show us the critters again.

You can’t get disappointed there. I remember talking to a group of 8-10 Americans who had flown for 20+ hours to see a pygmy seahorse for the first time, after being divemasters and owning dive shops for almost 50 years. Well, in Anilao, the pygmy was the 1^st picture of the trip, along with bumblebee shrimps, some beautiful nudis and a frogfish. It’s hard not to get excited when you see all of that in the first 20 minutes of your first dive there.  And yet I feel hesitant to recommend Anilao to my friends, even the more experienced divers, since I know not everyone enjoys these minute attractions and may deem them uninteresting or too hard to see.

I can’t blame them, liking the big guys is easy and they are hard to miss. I mean, can you imagining going on a dive and not seeing a shark that was there? Or a manta? Now, a bumblebee shrimp could easily be missed (in fact I think not many people who have been to Anilao have seen them) and when we see small animals like skeleton shrimps or ladybugs, Jackie usually says “I’ll see them properly on your picture, later”, not because she’s not interested, but they are really physically hard to see. I think this is what’s fascinating about Macro: the fact that these amazing animals are hiding in plain sight, that there’s even a tiny possibility that there may be  new species to be found (like the Lembeh Sea Dragon that was discovered not too long ago) that have always been there and were just missed by everyone.

Well, this time I saw the Simplex shrimp for the first time. I had been to that dive site before and wouldn’t have spotted that little guy if it had landed right on my mask. It’s a spectacular critter and I loved the challenge of photographing it. It’s very small – maybe half a centimeter long – so it’s difficult to even see its head from its tail on the viewfinder; illuminating it is a challenge and it is obviously camouflaged in the sand and it keeps moving; finally, there was a bit of a surge and there were some hungry catfish lurking around us so we had to had to try to stay in one place and cast away the predators since this was not dinner and a show.

My friends, like Jackie, also preferred to “see it on my picture, later”. Luckily I had the right equipment and was at the right place at the right time so I managed to take a pretty good picture of the little fellow. I was told and later confirmed that it is not even on any critter identification books so I feel kind of special for taking its picture (let me keep my illusion, please).

But maybe that’s the real reason I feel discouraged to recommend Anilao to the uninitiated:  for selfish reasons, I would like to keep it as unknown as it is right now so that I may enjoy its secrets myself.