Sixth blog from 55 dives in 17 days and nights of diving at excellent Crystal Blue Resort, Anilao, Philippines January 20 - February 5, 2024

I had more wonderful photo subject per dive on this trip than ever before. Our guide, Jhomer was part of the reason, the other was simply the abundant supply of exotic sealife. The pictures below are a sample of the incredible number of Frogfish I saw on this trip, they ranged from about an inch- nlength up to about 10 inches for Giant Frogfish. There are many species of Frogfish in Anilao and it is a challenge to identify them from photos. Below: Small Yellow Frogfish, maybe 3 inches long

Orange Frogfish:

A larger Yellow Frogfish, below:

Above, Frogfishes with matching sponges. They are ambush predators, they sit still and wait. They also have short "rods" with lures attached, like Anglerfish, to lure in the fish they suddenly engulf. Below: A pair of Orange Frogfish

Below: Though I shot several Black Frogfish they are really difficult to photo, can you find its blue eye?! The next photo down I've zoomed in to show it.

Below: White Frogfish

Below, two sequential photos of a Pink Frogfish. If you look carefully you can spot its thin alternating orange and clear "fishing rod" and the lure is up in the water directly above the eye, slightly further above the eye than its mouth is below the eye, it looks like a clod of grayish gunk...

Below: Giant Frogfish face closeup

Look at this incredible Frogfish! Below:

Below: Small, juvenile Warty Frogfish, maybe 3 inches long:

Below, a couple more small Frogfish:

One of the coolest, most sought after local subjects is the amazing Hairy Frofish. I got to see these on three dives during my stay. The coolest thing is that during one of these encounters the Hairy Frogfish was actively fishing with his wormlike lure jiggling from his fishing rod. Almost enough to make me wish I wasn't too lazy to attach my gopro camera and shoot video (the camera I shoot with, a Canon T2i Rebel, can also shoot excellent video but its a pain to switch back and forth and I didn't want to tie up the subject for too long..). Photos below, first two, you can see that the Hairy Frogfish is well named:

Below, you can see the lightcolored wormlike Frogfish lure up above his/her eye in this photo:

In the next photo you can see the light colored wormlike lure above the Frogfish's eye and mouth. The second picture is cropped close to make it more obvious. Marvelous subject! Below:

Here's some more of the wonderful creatures on this trip. Below is a Bobbit Worm. I was amazed at how aggressive it was. Our guide waved his pointer stick over it several times and the Bobbit worm came up out of its burrow about a foot with lightning quick strikes. It was about 3/4 inch in diameter. If you look closely you can see its sharp striking arms extending out to the right and left, it can instantly cut a fish in half.

Another cool subject on the same night dive was a fast moving Fire Worm, so named because you really don't want to make contact with it, below:

We also saw a variety of flounders and soles: