The vibrant paintings below are the work of Kumataro Ito, the chief illustrator aboard the USS Albatross as it undertook the monumental task, for the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, of surveying the aquatic resources of the 7,000 islands of the Philippines. The Tokyo-based Ito cuts a somewhat mysterious figure on the expedition. We do know that he was on board the Albatross for a total of about 16 months, in three separate stints, during which he sketched and produced final paintings of about seventy nudibranchs, and over a hundred fishes. In 1912, following an invitation from the director of the Philippines expedition, Ito lived in Washington DC for up to a year, where he illustrated fish from North America and the deep seas of the Phillippines. Before his involvement with the Albatross, he had established his reputation as an illustrator of sea life with the publication, in Tokyo, of Fishes of Japan (1903–7). Though he was properly attributed in that book, he was very seldom so in those that followed the Philippines expedition.