"I have known Dylan for a couple of years now in my capacity as Editor of Marine Habitat magazine. As an expert in the field of marine aquatics, Dylan has always proven to be very approachable, responsive, knowledgable on the subject matter in question, and professional in the way he conducts himself. He is a pleasure to be acquatinted with."

Dave Pitt - Editor - Marine Habitat

Asian Geographic Issue No. 88 Issue 3 Money Edition (2012) Pages 96-98 (Conservation section)

Fishy Business - Meet the hard-up fishermen catching the real Nemo

 

Sample of text:

If you've seen the movie Finding Nemo, you have been introduced to the fact that cute marine aquarium fish such as the clownfish depicted in the movie are actually caught in the wild. Unless you dive much deeper into the subject, you may not realise that in the real world, between two hundred and three hundred million dollars worth of wild coral reef fish like Nemo are caught from tropical seas each year, bound for home fish tanks, via the international marine aquarium trade. The people that really catch them, are mostly penniless village fishermen, risking their lives on a daily basis, earning their living with unsafe improvised diving equipment. To get an accurate picture of the situation on the ground, I decided to join some Filipino aquarium fishermen for a day, and see for myself just how they really collect fish like Nemo.

 

 

Asian Diver Issue 120 (Issue 3 of 2012) Pages 38-41

Deadly Diving, Filipino Style

 

Sample text:

Ask yourself the following: Have you ever wanted to enjoy unlimited diving without running out of air and without the expense of purchasing a rebreather unit? What follows is exactly what happened to me when I attempted one of the world's most dangerous methods of diving; compressor diving, Filipino style; After reading this article, perhaps you can decide for yourself if you'd like to give up your precious scuba gear, head offshore in a plywood boat and plunge into the deep armed with nothing more than a pair of shorts, a length of fractured garden hose held together with tape and supplied with air from an ancient rusting compressor. Oh and did I mention, there is no regulator or mouthpiece on the end of the breathing hose?

 

 

Tropical Fish Hobbyist (October 2012) Pages 94-101

In at The Deep End! The Story of How I Built My Own Public Aquarium in the Philippines

 

Sample text:

Have you ever watched those television programs about adventurous families that decide to give up their safe suburban lifestyles and regular nine to five jobs to go and start a new life running a guest house on a tropical paradise island? Well, in the following story I will share with you how I came to drag my family across the globe, escaping from a gloomy English winter to establish my own public aquarium in the hot and steamy Philippines. I figured if these people I'd seen on the TV could manage a guest house in Fiji with no previous experience; my seventeen years of working in the public aquarium industry should give me a decent chance of success in starting a modestly sized public aquarium. In a country where average people can barely afford to eat fish, let alone pay just to look at them swim around a tank, was I being overly optimistic with my plan for a public aquarium in The Philippines?

 

Marine Habitat (Awaiting publication September 2013)

Don't Mention the P Word

 

Opening paragraph:

Following an era of being the world's leading aquarium fish exporting country, "The Philippines" became a dirty word in the marine aquarium industry, after the 1960s saw the development of a new and damaging means of fishing in the island nation, with divers using spray bottles of sodium cyanide to rapidly stun and capture reef fish, at the expense of damaging the coral reef habitat and yielding poor quality weakened aquarium fish for export. So, would you buy your next aquarium fish from a Filipino? Find out how spying on Filipino fishermen in a lagoon in Saudi Arabia changed my perception of Philippine aquarium fishing, and how they taught me to catch marine aquarium fish for myself...

Here are a few of the images that I have captured to support my written material.