Terry Gosliner, Gary Williams, and Bob Van Syoc recently conducted underwater exploratory biodiversity surveys via SCUBA in the Philippines at two locations along 12° of north latitude - northern Palawan in the west and Romblon to the east. There are over 7100 islands in the Philippine Archipelago, and of the two regions that were studied, several different islands were visited at each location. The two regions exhibited unique features in species composition, and several taxa of octocorals, barnacles, and opisthobranchs were found that we have not encountered before (since we began field operations in the Philippines in 1992). Roughly 250 lots of specimens were brought back for curation in the Academy's invertebrate zoology collections.
