Philippines: Visayas - February 2008
Dear English-speaking readers, this page is an automatic translation made from a post originally written in French. My apologies for any strange sentences and funny mistakes that may have been generated during the process. If you are reading French, click on the French flag below to access the original and correct text:
Français Come on, a little article just to help you see the tiny and very shy seahorse-pygmy that I had photographed in Sogod Bay...since many of you have been unable to find him.
A tiny seahorse, hiding in the gorgonians...
This tiny "sea horse" lives hidden in gorgonians, whose appearance and color it imitates. L'Hippocampus bargibanti has little pinkish-mauve bumps, to better deceive its predators and... underwater photographers!
I could admire this one in Sogod Bayin the Philippines, in the south of the island of Leyte.
Without our Filipino guide Pedro and his lynx eye, we would never have been able to distinguish the creature, wrapped around its gorgonian branch. The famous seahorse-pygmy is about as big as the nail of my little finger...
Obviously, with my compact camera, focusing on such a small subject in the interlacing "branches" of gorgonian is a bit of a mission impossible.
Here it is again!
Updated 15 April 2008 : I add the magnified and processed image on the way back, below... The quality is not extraordinary, but we can distinguish it better, no?
Updated: May 2016
About eight years after this very first picture made at that time with my modest compact camera, I have made a lot of progress with seahorses... 😄 I invite you to visit the link below, with pictures taken at Canon Eos 7D, in March 2016, in Triton Bay (West Papua, Indonesia):
