Vacuum Feeding
I was in Coron, Philippines to photograph the very shy but incredibly adorable dugong. There were about 40 dugongs living in the area, where seagrass is abundant, however, there was only 1 dugong that allowed scuba divers to come near. The locals call him ‘Aban’. Every morning, under the supervision of the guide and marine park police, we looked for Aban in his feeding ground. I waited patiently until he started feeding before I approached. There was a limit of 15 minutes of swim time per person with Aban, but it was enough to take some closeup portrait photos of him. In this photo, Aban sucked in the seagrass together with a lot of sand before it chomped the grass off. Opportunistic yellow pilot fish picked off any parasites or small crustacean found in the plume of sand.
Mok Wai Hoe, Singapore, Singapore
