Seen in the Shallows

 

On Apulit Island in the Philippines. During the low tide, you'd be surprised by all the things you can see. Suddenly, it makes sense that so much of the coral is grey towards the shore. It's not just human disturbance, it's simply because for large swaths of the day, the rocks get too much air.

When you see these in the water, they are such a brilliant blue-green, you can hardly tell that they are actually clams. They shrink at the slightest change in water movement. 

 

I suppose if I stuck around long enough, I would have seen one of these faces. Something else that delighted me to no end -- the tiny, tiny baby fish that seem to live under slabs of rock in the shallows, out of harm's way. They were as tiny as a breath mint.

A little whirlpool activity that lets you know that there is a fish inside.

I'm guessing this is when they expel sand out of their hiding holes?

Surprisingly active shells.

Spot the tiny crab!

A close up of a pocket of water on a large rock near the shore.

 

Spot the fish!

Seen in the Water

As someone who loves snorkeling, on of the best things about staying at El Nido Resorts on Apulit Island in the Philippines was the abundant ocean life immediately surrounding the resort.

You could literally look out from your balcony and see fish teeming around coral reefs.

Walk to the end of the path, and you're immediately plunged into a dense thatch of sea urchins.

Clusters and clusters of large sea urchins, needles waving menacingly in the water. They reminded me of land mines.

Everyone at the resort said, "We have sharks here!", conveniently neglecting to mention that they are the non-aggresive, tiny kind. Here, it is trailed by a school of smaller fish.

A lot of cuttlefish bones had washed up on shore.

Scissortail sergeant major?

This were fairly large fish, and were painfully slow swimmers. It was as if they were asleep in broad daylight.

Brilliantly blue and green clams that start clamming up as soon as they sense some sort of change in the water. (As in you, swimming by.)

There were actually hundreds of fish teeming around the coral, but after years of using a digital camera, my Kodak film camera-taking skills were horribly rusty.

If you think you see a face, it's because there was one poking out of a hole in the sand that had been fortified with bits of coral.

Clownfish, which always look absolutely tiny after seeing Finding Nemo on a large screen.

These yellow and green and orange things would close up in an instant if they sensed danger.

The Adachi Park of Living Things -- Aquarium Section

From the aquarium section of the Adachi Park of Living Things.

Clownfish, which always seem tiny if you've ever watched Finding Nemo on the big screen.

Atlantic horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus).

Green spotted pufferfish (Etraodon nigroviridis).

Seahorse.

Spotted garden eel (Heteroconger hassi).

Kingyozaka

One of my favorite Tokyo discoveries is Kingyozaka, literally "goldfish hill". It is a goldfish supplier/cafe in Hongo with a very long history. The business was established over 350 years ago, and the current okami (proprietress) is the seventh-generation manager.

The last time I was here, a group of kids were fishing for goldfish.

There are easily over a dozen types of goldfish, from your standard matsuri (festival) Japanese goldfish, to the fancy ones with puffy faces.

I'm sure it's cheaper to win fish at a festival, but it's said that such goldfish are more susceptible to diseases, and generally exhausted, having been dragged around from festival to festival. That said, I once got five goldfish (one red wakin, two salmon pink fish, and two bulgy-eyed demekin), and they lived over five years.

Visitors are always welcome at Kingyozaka. (I think the logic is that if you've gone out of your way to find the place, and you express a delight in the fish, they do not want to discourage you.) You're even allowed to walk on the planks to get a better view of the fish.

When it's warmer, it's nearly impossible to get a photo of the fish without it being horribly blurred, but the winter cold has calmed them down to the point of absolute stillness.

Nakaochi Virgin

Maguro nakaochi (the meat along the spine of bluefish tuna) from Jige Barracuda in Tsukiji.

The mere sight of this huge slab of tuna was enough to drop jaws, and they dropped even further when we were told to use the edge of a shell to scrape off the meat.

The meat came off surprisingly easily, and tasted better than any maguro I've had in my life. God bless Tsukiji.

When you finish one side, flip it over and start working the other side. This was enough for 5 people to eat very, very comfortably. (I felt a twinge of guilt when I remembered that Japan's consumption of bluefin tuna greatly contributes to declining catch.)

So impressive was the nakaochi that the big tuna head that came immediately after felt anticlimactic. All this (and more) for 4,000 yen isn't bad at all.

Giving Glass Goldfish a Chance to Breathe

My summer earrings: red demekin goldfish, made of glass and discovered at a Shizuoka street festival. Literally "pop-eyed goldfish", telescope eye goldfish aren't the most popular, but I find their bumbling ways entirely endearing.