Jay (on left) is one of the giant clam experts at the Marine Lab, in this photo she is tagging the clams that will be re-stocked in the Apo Island Marine Sanctuary.

These giant clams aren't fully grown, though when they are released into the wild they typically grow much faster than they do in captivity--up to 10 cm per year.

Here's a batch of sequentially numbered clams with the SUML tags on them. Sort of like the preferred currency of The Flintstones.

The new home of this batch of giant clams was to be the Apo Island Marine Sanctuary.

These tomato clown fish probably didn't know they were about to get some new neighbors.

Here's a few more clown fish from the Apo sanctuary.

You can tell the Apo sanctuary is in good shape by the number and diversity of fish species that live there.

The smallest fish really depend on the branching corals for safety and cover from predators.

Analie Candido, an Apo Island native who studies at the Silliman Marine Lab is shown here laying out the transect for a coral survey of the sanctuary.

Marine Lab staff make regular measurements of the progress of the recovery at the Apo sanctuary as a part of their ongoing studies of the health of the reefs here.

Skunk anemone fish like this one are usually pretty good photo subjects.

Here's another shot of the underwater skunk.

Analie carried an underwater slate board to write on and record the measurements of the corals there.

Renclar, another grad student at SUML used his knife to cut back some of the prolific soft corals that had encroached on the protective cages that house the growing giant clams. The cages are in place to protect the clams from predators until they are large enough to survive reliably in the open reef.

Inside the cage, small fish and nudibranches hung out with the clams.

You can almost imagine one of those clams eating the yellow fish, but clams just strain plankton out of the water for food; they aren't particularly carnivorous.

This little guy blended in quite well with the white sand of the sanctuary floor.

Here's another shot of Renclar's knife intervening to clear out the cages so the giant clams will have better inflow of fresh seawater.

Here's a barracuda-eye view of Renclar and the giant clam cages on the bottom of the Apo marine sanctuary.

Damselfish are really common in the Apo sanctuary.

Especially around branching corals like these.

I found this white-eyed moray eel near the edge of the dropoff in Apo's sanctuary.

This shot caught my eye because I thought it was cool to see how each species had it's own space, with a small buffer just to keep the neighbors on friendly terms.

Fishy eyes peer out of almost every hiding spot among the corals.

Sometimes the close up surface of corals like these seem like a cratered lunar landscape.

Here's another close up of the corals.

The variety of species and colors sometimes is too much to take in at once.

These sea fans filter the water for food.

Another close up of some branching corals in the sanctuary.

This tiny clown fish really blended in well with the bright orange anemone that it lives inside of.

I haven't seen as many of these orange anemones, but they really are pretty photogenic.

These tiny catfish can sometimes be found in swarming schools, usually close to the bottom because they scour for detritus. Be careful of them though because they are apparently poisonous.

For some reason this school was swimming higher up in the water column.

After a day of stocking giant clams and visiting the Apo Marine sanctuary it was time to head back to Dumaguete.