29/03/2021
😲🥰
You could be looking at history in the making!
During a leisure dive off Anilao, Mabini, Batangas, our Senior Campaign Manager, Danny Ocampo, encountered what he thought was a juvenile batfish or a sailfin tang. Danny was able to take just two photos of the fish before it swam away. Unbeknown to him, his photo of this fish could be the first and only known photographic record of the species in the Philippines.
The fish in question was identified by fish ecology and taxonomy expert Maybelle Fortaleza as the sailfin velifer (Velifer hypselopterus). According to Kent Sorgon, also a fish ecology and taxonomy expert, veliferids are very uncommon and even museum specimens are few. “As far as I know, no photographic record for this species exists for the Philippines,” claimed Kent. Jasmin Meren, a curator of the National Museum of Natural History, remarked that V. hypselopterus specimens were collected in the country in the 1970s.
As the center of marine biodiversity, there could still be more hidden wonders off the waters of the Philippines. We should do our best to restore our ocean and address its most pressing issues, which include illegal fishing, habitat destruction, and the climate crisis.
*Note: This caption has been updated with information from the National Museum of Natural History. While this photo may no longer be the sole available record in the Philippines for this species, it is still certainly one of our only few photos of this elusive fish in the wild.
