This self-proclaimed "heartless killer" one day recognized, from his regular hunting ground—a formerly bounteous marine area—that the globe's grand expanse of nurturing seas are not limitless providers that can forever meet all the predations of mankind. Overfishing and marine pollution, he finally recognized, had been taking terrible tolls. How could he, as an avid diver and explorer of marine vistas, continue to share in the destruction?
Thus, Shieh Shin-shi (Steve, to foreign friends) finally put down his underwater harpoon-gun and took up the camera. He was determined, thenceforward, to take nothing more substantial than film images from the vulnerable seas.
"My cameras really teach me things I could never learn in hunting," volunteered this member of the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI). "The more I engage in underwater photography, the more I learn how to enjoy the beauties of the sea—and the more, then, I realize the importance of marine conservation."
The precipitous cliffs that constitute much of Taiwan's east coastline and the mildly rising west coast topography have differing effects on coastal current flows. Added to this, seasonal differences and varying cold and warm ocean currents offer specific conditions, in otherwise similar marine areas, favoring various categories of sea life.
Thanks to Shieh's more than ten years of photographic explorations in this country's coastal waters, those of us who are ever above sea level can share in his delight over the marvelous undersea spectacles.
Corals, showy coelenterates, abound on Taiwan's seabottoms in multifarious forms and colors.
The "astral" twigs of the star coral (Alcyonium gracillimum) scintillate along the reefs, showing off precision geometries.
Beautiful ornaments are fashioned by skilled craftsmen from the gorgonian corals. But the jewelry store windows are humdrum compared to the coral exhibitions in the marine showcase.
In the shallow waters along the curves of Nanwan Bay, Taiwan Island's southernmost gulf, endless displays of diversified soft corals offer fantasy vistas for viewers in the local, glass-bottomed pleasure boats. The magnificence of this display, according to Shieh, is rarely matched anywhere in the world.
About 300 meters southeast of Shanshui Li, a district of Makung City in the Penghu Islands, stands a 300-meter-long, 40-meter-wide forest of soft seafans, estimated by Professor Tan Tien-hsi of National Taiwan University to be around 600 years old. The "fan forest" spreads over the sea bottom at depths of 66 to 100 feet in crystal waters—a very excellent locale for diving and exploring.
Around another Taiwan offshore isle, Hsiaoliuchiu Island, a similarly magnificent "fan forest" rises in waters 47-52 meters deep—too deep, unfortunately, for diving.
In addition, various coral colonies of comparatively smaller magnitude, but great beauty, are scattered at many other locales in ROC territorial waters.
The corals come in all shapes and colors. Dendronephthya gigantea looks like cheerleaders' pompons, the colors ranging from red to yellow, white, and gray. Alcyonium gracillimum is astral—numerous tiny, pinky "stars" hanging over snow-white "twigs."
Light yellow, semi-transparent tentacles of some pinky, tubulate stony corals, when fully open mimic beautiful chrysanthemums, gently moving in the currents.
Polythoa species, though plainly colored, have very changeable, interesting shapes. When stimulated by such forces as rapid currents, their tentacles shrink—and they become "mushrooms." When the water is calmer, and their marine prey is at hand in large amounts, the tentacles completely stretch out—and they are tasseled parasols.
Some reef-building corals on the bottom of the sea look like nothing so much as a carpet of green grass, an invitation for a comfortable nap—but beware, careless fishlets, of their fatal, stinging cells.
Sea pansies provide wonderful shelter for cohabiting coral fish such as the apogonids, since enemies of these fish, afraid of the corals' stinging cells, dare not intrude. The fish, symbiotic cleaners of the corals, feed on the effiuvia from their prey that the corals fail to ingest.
Corals of the family Poritidae have rather stout stalks, with little radiant tentacles on top; look-alikes of chubby babies' plump little hands, these are, actually, hunters' tools—adept at fish-catching.
Dendronephthya gigantea might be a tossed-aside pile of cheer leaders' pompons. It belongs to the family of soft corals and, besides red tones, comes in yellows, white, and gray.
The varied shapes of other corals are suggested by such common adjectives as staghorn, lettuce, and brain. And the unmissable seafans, of course.
The many brick-red branches (of the most common seafans) group together to form the large fans noted by the viewer. From afar, however, their color seems white, a result of the numerous white coral polyps, like a layer of floss, which shimmer in the water and "cover up" the red.
The large gorgonian seafans, which may reach over two meters high, are too often the objects of collectors: people break off the branches. The soft seafans, though lacking the same attractions for coral collectors, are very vulnerable to destructive natural forces—water fluctuations, and such marine predators as the crown-of-thorns starfish and marine worms. Thus, the enormous stretch of two-to-three-meter, perfectly formed seafans in the Penghu area demonstrates the very favorable living environment. They are a very rare sight.
On rocks in shallow waters, strange, dense white feathers appear. Touch them curiously, and you get pricked. They are not feathers, of course, but polyps—a sort of coelenterate, an aglaophenia species.
Other polyps are camouflaged in the shapes of shrubs, flowering twigs, etc.—beautiful but dangerous. Among them, the most noticeable are the fire corals, which, on a touch, produce a sharp, burning sting.
A likely candidate for a space monster is the medusa, also a coelenterate; though not really dangerous to mankind, it is no friend, attacking swimmers with its notorious, stinging nematocysts. Each year, between spring and summer, medusas, especially the Portuguese man-of-war, proliferate in Taiwan waters.
Though terrible to the touch, medusas are marvelous to look at. Either transparent or pink, they luminesce—a shiny flying saucer, a gauze dance robe, a flat-topped hat, a....In the dark night, they are the "electric lamp bulbs" of the sea.
Clown fish, in photographer Shieh's eyes, are the most comic local marine species. "They actually play with you," maintains Shieh; "sometimes a clown fish keeps bumping your mask—perhaps he spots his twin brother in the glass."
A displaying tubeworm (Spirobranchus giganteus) is but one example of a startling assortment of creatures that can create "fireworks" shows.
If you want to locate this droll fish, find the sea anemones first. They attach to rocks in waters two to three meters below sea level—colonies of sea anemones are look-alikes for beautiful shag rugs. Happy clown fish find a most comfortable home among them. As with the sea pansies and apogonids, the sea anemones offer protection and food, while the clown fish serve as their cleaners. To reinforce the protective effect, the clown fish try to shelter in anemones whose color is close to their own.
Stationary sea anemones, such as calliactis polypus, often attach themselves to empty shells. When a hermit crab takes shelter in such a shell, the anemone is able to travel and, on the move, hunts small prey which it stuns with its stinging cells; the crabs also avail themselves of this food supply.
Some sea anemones resemble nipples. Touch one with your fingers, and it will shrink. And, sometimes, it will spit water. When the transparent cleaner shrimp crawl among them, though, they do not react in this way, according to Professor Tan Tien-hsi: because the shrimps' pheromones, a kind of chemical scent, assert a mutual "amicability."
Cerianthus filiformis is perhaps the only sea anemone which inhabits sandy sea beds. Stretching out from a cylindrical base, its numerous tentacles, tremendously thin and long, flutter in the currents like hundreds of colored ribbons. To stabilize itself, this sea anemone digs its body base 60 cm. into the sand. Divers, so inclined, soon tire of attempts to take one home as a souvenir.
Tubeworms, their multifarious patterns and colors dazzling the eye, are the ornamental "fireworks" of the sea, comparable to some of the firework displays achieved by mankind.
Most tubeworms grow among coral reefs about 10 meters below sea-level—here, a motley feather fan, white, with yellow and brown tinges; there, a multilayer, multicolor fountain-spring; further on, a flower with petals progressively deepening in tone toward its center; further still, a magnificent peacock in his pride.
The most grandiose format is the "spiral tower"—numerous "feathers" arranged as in a staircase, spiraling around a mainstay. Azure blue, yellow, white, red, gray, and even multicolored, these "spiral towers" seem the magic homes of fairy denizens.
So beautiful and delicate are they, even when the colors blend with their environments, that the eminently edible tubeworms attract feeding fishes. To protect itself, a tubeworm can retract its soft, feathery crown of radioles (the major part of the "fireworks") back into its tube; an operculum soon covers the opening to keep out the enemy.
The perky banded coral shrimp are gardeners among the coral, picking off parasites and edible debris.
Since the tubeworms twine tightly through large sections of coral reef—a narrow choice of living ambiences—it is not very feasible for people to attempt to transplant them into simulated marine habitats. Therefore, the open opportunity to enjoy such "underwater fireworks," via glass-bottomed boats in the marine areas of Kenting National Park, draws myriad visitors. The rich coral reef topography here nurtures a marvelous vista of multicolored tubeworms.
A great delight in strolling about the island's beaches is the opportunity to collect so many seashells. With their elegant screw threads, delicate patterns, pretty spots, or shiny luster, the smallest, most exquisite shells are especially prized by little girls, who are most unwilling to part with their small hoards. Such shells are often strung into necklaces or made into other ornaments.
But in the sea, their native place, the living shells may not be at all docile.
Conids, a very resplendent assortment, are mostly poisonous. Wounds caused by the toxic projections of certain large conids may even be fatal to mankind. Collectors should be especially aware of the potential danger in extraordinarily beautiful shells.
Ovula ovum has a distinctively black-and-white "mantle"—black, with neatly arranged, white hexagonal patterns. This pretty-looking cowrie is a fierce destroyer of another pretty living thing—the "sea pork," a fleshy soft coral. As one such cowrie greedily feeds on the snow-white flesh of the coral, Shieh's camera catches the sharp contrast of blacks and white. The contrast disappears when the cowrie, startled, draws its mantle back into a shell almost as white as the "sea pork."
Like the ovula ovum, many living cowries, which belong to the family Cypraeidae, are often wrapped in the lobes of their mantles. Free from accumulated dirt and attached algae or other animals, as on the surface of many other seashells, the shells of cowries are brightly colored and beautifully veined. Smooth and polished, shining with a charming luster, in ancient times the cowrie shells were so cherished they were used as currency.
Window shopping on Taipei streets, we sometimes see, inside a display window, large, decorative, spider-like seashells: Lambis scorpius, as it reaches adulthood, grows a shell with many strange-looking horns.
Triton is a shell-namesake of the mythological Trumpeter of the Sea, believed by the ancient Greeks to blow a wind-horn made from a large shell. Such a shell, belonging to the family Cymatiidae, was historically used in old Chinese armies as a kind of bugle. It is known to the Chinese people as the "conch of law."
This "conch of law" (the triton) is a formidable enemy of the notorious reef destroyer, the crown-of-thorns starfish. Off Oluanpi, the southern tip of Taiwan Island, the unscathed coral reefs owe a debt to these heaven-granted starfish busters.
Starfish, sea urchins, serpent stars, sea cucumbers, almost all echinoderms have a predatory or unpleasant look. The only really decorative relative is the sea lily.
And as the appellation "sea lily" (or "feather star") implies, it cuts a fetching figure. During the Paleozoic Era (395 to 570 million years ago, and marked by an abundance of marine invertebrates), sea lilies were exuberant—gigantic. Over the ages, they have become exquisite—the appendages of some smaller-sized varieties measure only 5cm. long.
Red, golden, blue, brown, yellow, green, white.... The dazzling colors of the sea lilies are mixed on a magic easel. Their textures can be as close and fine as velvet, or thin and sparse as pine needles. Though generally in the shapes of ferns, they are more varied than the ferns of land.
Shieh Shin-shi believes that the richness in hues and forms of the Taiwan area's sea lilies is globally unique. They have become excellent models for his camera.
Corals, polyps, sea anemones, tubeworms, and sea lilies create animated underwater gardens, where butterflies—marine flatworms—flutter, and sea hares—hare-like invertebrates in gorgeous colors—bustle about. And, marvelously, the garden also features "gardeners."
They are the numerous cleaner fish, crabs, and shrimp which maintain the "gardens" by picking off and eating parasites, including attached minute plants, with the aid of such tools as the brush-like teeth of the damsel fish, the sharp-tipped pincers of cleaner crabs, and the slender claws of coral shrimp.
These "gardeners" can be very humble, like the seaflower shrimp, a periclimenes species which is almost all transparent and nearly invisible. Or they can be very fetching and elegant, like the banded coral shrimp, stenopus hispidus; when these white and red-banded shrimp make an inspection tour of their domain, usually in pairs, their very long, thin antennae dance up and down in a showy display.
Photographer Shieh has lifted the veil of the sea for the landbound to reveal the attractive marine inhabitants. More recently, he has been engaged in unveiling a legendary, local Atlantis—a mystical sunken city or castle around the Isle of Tiger Well in the Penghu Archipelago. Although, this effort is still in its preliminary stages, his followers confidently expect additional revelations of the beauties of man's heritage in nature...and also, perhaps, in history.