Gato Island: Explosion of Color

Colors of the deep, who knew?

 Scuba Diving Gato Island, Philippines

   Since the discovery of a thresher shark dive near Malapascua Island, adventurous divers have been flocking to the golden sand shores of this little tropical island north of Cebu, Philippines. Everyone wants to see big animals like the threshers. Those in the know come here for two reasons; thresher sharks and tiny macro critter hunting. The place to go for the latter is a nearby rock, jutting straight up out of the clear blue water, covered in dense jungle. Terns squawk as they fly in and out of caves and overhangs, but the real wildlife lives just underwater. Gato is famous for sea snakes but also houses treasures like sea horses, nudibranchs, frogfish, and even little white tip reef sharks. 

  Colors and patterns of all kinds shock the senses as you dive around the island. The shallows are best for nudibranchs and frogfish, while the sea horses like it a bit deeper.

Wild patterns of a pufferfish

Rare painted frogfish

   Somewhere in between we came across cuttlefish and schools of squid as well as the local sea snakes. These snakes used to live here in the thousands but demand from the Orient for meat and supple skin for boots meant an open harvesting season on these salt water snakes. Tens of thousands were collected from this one island in a short period of time. I felt lucky to have seen a few trying to make a comeback. Now the island is protected. The Philippines are learning slowly but surely that ecotourism is the sustainable way to go.

Pink Anemonefish

Seahorse Shadow

  I did two trips out to Gato Island during my stay because I liked it so much. Over the course of three dives I collected all of these photographs and more. As you can see it is an underwater photographer's paradise.

This eel was coiled back, ready to spring

Family of Coleman Shrimp

Sometimes macro critter hunting can be a tough game of where's waldo

Crinoid shrimp

Electric orange and green nudibranch

Gato Island Sea Snake!

Close-up of the neon orange rhinophores

This seahorse was hunting upside down!

Eel Nudibranch, named after the way it undulates like an eel as it swims

One of my favorite frogfish to date

Almost out of air, I had just enough to snag a photo of this bright orange frogfish