[vimeo width=”680″ height=”385″]http://vimeo.com/24080492[/vimeo]
We’ve been lucky to follow along on the adventures of the California Academy of Sciences team that is currently on biodiversity expedition of the Philippines and have seen various postings from Richard Ross and Matt Wandell of the Steinhart Aquarium but this short video was a pleasant surprise to us and the CAS expedition team. Rich Ross was able to capture, edit and upload this video of Cespitularia caught in mid-spawn. We’ve seen the work with SECORE monitoring and capturing coral spawning in Curacao and Puerto Rico and have even seen coral spawning videos from NOAA and now its incredible to have this footage of soft coral spawning in the wild. As Ross notes on his Facebook page, “We were totally unprepared to see it. CAS people have been coming out here for years and never seen anything like it, so we figured we wouldn’t either. Very pleasntly suprised.” This video was captured in Anilao.
Anilao is a small barangay (the native term for village) in Mabini, Batangas, Philippines that served as the jump-off point for divers to points of the coast of Mabini and Tingloy back when roads to these areas were lackluster. Anilao is still the generic term for these great dive destinations and is regarded as the birthplace of Philippine diving. It is often called the nudibranch capital of the world.
