By Jayne Jenkins
Traveling half way around the world to Bermuda with XT Catlin Seaview Survey provides no guarantee of finding the elusive Sargassum frogfish (Histrio histrio). Fast-forward to Aniloa in the Philippines and I was lucky enough to finally photograph this amazing little fish. This experience would not have been a possible without the eagle eyes of my two great boat operators.
Always in search of this particular frogfish, I was hopeful the rafts of sargassum algae I saw floating past on trips to the dive sites would be housing this animal. Inquiring if the boat crew had ever seen the little frogfish in the algae, I got a disappointing “no”.
During one my dives, the brilliant eyes of Cpt. Jack and Manny had spotted sargassum and, and on closer inspection, they spotted the frogfish moving amongst the surface fronds. After my excitement settled, a huge team effort with my dive guide Webster allowed me to finally photograph the frogfish that had been on my bucket list for so long. The Philippines has incredible diving but this was just the icing on the cake for me. Camera lenses are seldom the perfect choice when one makes random (opportunistic?) finds on a dive, but luckily I had a 105mm lens on my camera - this frogfish was not much bigger than my thumbnail.