Some 90 scientists and their assistants from the California Academy of Sciences just returned from an expedition to the Philippines where they collected animals for exhibits and discovered potentially 100 new species. The seven-week expedition was to the Verde Island Passage that lies between the islands of Luzon and Mindoro in the Philippines.
Earth Touch’s Wild Oceans episode comes from Sogod Bay in the Philippines and has been uploaded to YouTube in 4K resolution. It features lionfish, nudibranchs, anemone shrimps anemonefish and a mystery fish! Earth Touch are asking that if anyone can identify it, to add a comment below the video on YouTube.
Amanda Cotton has shared this image of a mako shark (Isurus oxyrinchus). It was taken at Rhode Island in the U.S.A. with a Nikon D7000 in a Seacam housing and lit by Inon Z240 strobes with CM diffusers.
Andy Thirlwell posted this amazing image of a great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) at the North Neptune Islands, South Australia onto the Wetpixel Facebook Group.
The Durban Undersea Club hosted its annual Still and Video Shootout this year, with the shooting period being between 1 December 2014 through to 3 May 2015. Geographically, the images had to be taken between Mozambique and the Cape. Geo Cloete took first place in the stills contest. Hearty congratulations to all the winers, and it is great to see so many of Wetpixel’s South African contingent to be amongst the placings!
The journal Scientific Reports has published a paper that documents tiger shark’s (Galeocerdo cuvier) movements over na extended period. Individual animals were shown to make annual, repeated journeys of over 7,500 km in the northwest Atlantic, from Caribbean coral reefs to “high latitude ocean areas” as far north as Connecticut.
A new film, commissioned by retailer Klättermusen, documents a team’s exploration of the Dolinsjö Cave in Sweden. Called “Underground Movement: Cave Diving in Jämtland”, it documents the team exploring 1.7 km of new cave in what can at best be described as “challenging” conditions.
Yahoo News reports that the Republic of Palau has burnt 4 boats that were being used by Vietnamese fisherman to illegally fish in Palau’s waters. They were among the 15 that have been impounded since last year and were loaded with sharks and shark fins, lobsters, sea cucumbers and reef fish.
Underwater photographer Karim Iliya describes his underwater up close encounter with two large humpback whales fighting one another for the mating rights of a female whale. Iliya shot the sequence while in Vava’u last August.
Pasquale Vassallo shared his amazing image of a short snouted seahorse (Hippocampus hippocampus) on the Wetpixel Facebook Group Pasquale captured the image during a night dive in the Mediterranean Sea, in a canal linking the sea of the Gulf of Naples and the lagoon Maremorto - Bacoli at a depth of 2 meters.