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THE ODD BEAUTY OF EELS

Saturday, May 14, 2022

In today’s newsletter, we dive with top undersea photographers along the world’s best coral reefs, we follow a historic Everest climb, catch an Icelandic baby boom … and count sheep in Australia.

PHOTOGRAPHS AND VIDEO BY DAVID DOUBILET AND JENNIFER HAYES

By Marie-Amélie Carpio

Capturing underwater beauty is routine for David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes, who have explored some of the most spectacular reefs on the planet. Yet a colony of garden eels they encountered off the Philippines coast brought back memories. “I began my career at National Geographic in 1971 with a story on garden eels in the Red Sea,” said Doubilet, a Nat Geo Explorer. Taking these images, he said, “was like coming home.”

Garden eels are both social and shy. They live in individual burrows yet form colonies and rise together out of their burrows to feed on plankton carried by the current. (Pictured above, a two-spot wrasse and a cornerfish, unthreatening to the eels, swim through a colony.)

“It’s mesmerizing to watch hundreds of eels waving and undulating in an ancient exotic dance,” says Doubilet. Yet “that ends abruptly when the eels detect the slightest movement of an unwelcome intruder. The vast colony vanishes back into the sand as if it never existed.”

To capture the scene above, the photographers had to—quite literally—disappear.

“Jennifer settled on the Trojan Horse strategy,” Doubilet explains. Hayes placed a rock the same size and color of their camera housing near the edge of the colony and left it for a day. The eels apparently accepted the rock—and rose from their burrows. The next morning, she put the camera housing there, left—and then filmed.

See their full story and images. Here are a few undersea images below.

Dinner interrupted: A hawksbill turtle stops eating sponges to confront its reflection in the lens. The turtle finds the sponges tucked under coral.

The vibrant coral: A pink soft coral and a bone-colored chalice coral are surrounded by anthias off Pescador Island, near Cebu. The photographers say the healthiest reefs in the Philippines are as vibrant with life as any they have seen.

Trying to save the young: A titan triggerfish, exhausted after battling to defend the eggs in its nest, lies down in a last attempt to save its young from moon wrasses. The robust corals on this reef attract a stunning array of sea life.

Here’s the full story.

A version of this interview was originally published in the French edition of National Geographic magazine. The undersea photographic exploration has been supported, in part, by the National Geographic Society.

Reader, please consider supporting our storytelling by subscribing to our magazine and unlimited digital offerings.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

PHOTOGRAPH BY @NORALOREK

Time to grow: Iceland had a big increase in births last year, running counter to birth rates in many other wealthy countries under COVID. That’s good news for Snorri Magnússon (far right, in blue), who has been giving swimming lessons to babies since 1990. “Crisis seems to be the time when Icelanders increase their fertility,” government demographer Anton Örn Karlsson tells Nat Geo. (More than 140,000 readers have liked this image since it was posted on our Instagram page last weekend.)

STORIES WE'RE FOLLOWING

A photographer who was slain on the job was among a team just awarded a Pulitzer Prize

A new Everest summit is raising awareness of elite climbing’s historic imbalance

Don’t miss a super-long total lunar eclipse Sunday night

Is that a ‘lost’ Picasso in the home of Imelda Marcos?

See the caves where Buddhist treasures lay hidden for centuries

Think you’re smart? Try this week’s news quiz.

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

PHOTOGRAPH BY STÉPHAN GLADIEU

Recycling the runway: There’s no shortage of waste in the Democratic Republic of Congo: plastic bottles, milk tins, rubber slippers, exhaust pipes. So artists are taking a stand, using the trash to protest its drain on the country’s natural resources, Nat Geo reports. For several years, Stéphan Gladieu has photographed Kinshashan artists wearing the garb they create from garbage. Pictured above, Shaka Fumu Kabaka’s toothpaste tubes symbolize viruses.

FROM TRASH TO TROUSERS

IN A FEW WORDS

QUOTE

Embrace everything and go along with it.

Marcus Yam

Photographer, just awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his work from Afghanistan

From Malaysia to Buffalo, New York—and the world

LAST GLIMPSE

PHOTOGRAPH BY CARY WOLINSKY, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

Sheep, sheep—and more sheep: “Repetition is an of element of photography that I sometimes find myself drawn towards again and again (no pun intended),” writes photo editor Heather Kim. “When it's used strategically, repetitiveness can create an enchanting rhythm.” This image is just one showing repetition in attractive ways in the latest Photo of the Day archival collection. We first used this photo from Australia in a May 1988 National Geographic story about the history of wool.

SEE VINTAGE PHOTOS

This newsletter has been curated and edited by David Beard, Jen Tse, and Monica Williams. We had special help today from Beata Nas, Darren Smith, and Amy Kolczak. Amanda Williams-Bryant, Rita Spinks, Hobbs Bell, and Jeremy Brandt-Vorel also contributed this week. Have an idea or a link? We’d love to hear from you at [email protected]. Thanks for reading!

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