It started with a kiss

Turn down the lighting, put on the Barry White and lets get jiggy with it. Not exactly how a nudbranch mates so lets have a look at what they do to reproduce. To start with its not like they need to find a mate of the opposite sex as they are hermaphrodites. There are limits on how much we know about mate selection, is it looks, personality, a gold-digger or just after a one night (actually closer to one minute) stand. Either way on finding the mate they need to get into the right position. So what is the right position? They are not overly adventurous with both having a gonopore on the right hand side of the body.

The starting point is side-by-side and begin to position themselves for the turn. Perhaps this is the smooth talking stage with some light petting.

The nudibranch at the top was the instigator here and began turning to the right, sliding over the head of the mating partner.

With the turn being complete they line up to commence mating and the exchange of sperm through the gonopore.

Once the act has been completed they separate ways, no exchange of phone numbers, no selfies together and definitely no meet the parents to worry about.

Acro-anglerobics

Part of diving and photography is to understand the actions of the subjects you are looking to get images of. For some its fairly obvious that its a mating ritual. Take the cuttlefish for example, they dance around, flash some colours and get jiggy with it. Whilst their appendages may not be human you get the idea of whats going on..

But coming across this striate anglerfish doing a one arm handstand in a sponge, you wonder what was going on its mind. There's no missus anglerfish nearby, so perhaps he's just showing off or keeping trim for when she does come along.

The one below was going for a little walk, then began to lean forward on its front legs and kick its back legs in the air. If you have ever seen a friend 'do the worm' on the dance floor, then its kinda like that. 

Whatever they are doing its pretty amusing to watch.

Anglers below the anglers

Chowder Bay in Mosman, NSW is a small beach with a pier in Clifton Gardens. The pier has shark nets to section off an area for swimmers to be able and enjoy the water without fear of man-eating sharks. I do say this very much tongue in cheek but Sydney harbour does have a number of bull sharks, including a relatively recent attack on Paul De Gelder.

The net became encrusted in soft coral and sponge growths and a new home to whites seahorses. Above the surface, fishing is permitted on the ocean side of the pier. Its popularity with fishermen seems to be increasing with a multi-cultural contingent setting up numerous rods looking to catch dinner. Under the water you often find the heads and filleted remains of their catches.

I imagine the words of David Attenborough saying "but nothing goes to waste in the oceans". It seems there is a small ecosystem that lives off the remains of other fish, which in turns attracts predators to feed. When you compare the main pier with the pier on the other side of the bay, you see the increase in species and numbers of fish that feed on the free meals.

I always look out for anglerfish, some of them you see by the wreck in middle of the bay. Others are in and around the pier. Its been a while since I had seen them and after seeing other people images on social media, you start to question your eyesight. Finally it happened, I found the striate anglerfish I was looking for. 

The moment you the angler you need to ensure that the current is working with you as the silt on the bottom is prone to kick up with slightest movement and the hairy nature of some anglers leave them prone to have the muck stick to them like velcro. Generally they are hiding away under a piece of sponge, but not Usain Bolt, this guy was a sprinter but rather than running away from me, he ran towards me. It could have been the focus light or the reflection of himself in the dome port, but either way he was on a mission. A slight bit of surge would leave him rocking from side to side with bis hair swaying in the water. He regained his balance and then decided it was time for some fishing. The lure on his head came out and started to dangle it in the hope that he got a nibble. 

Whilst he didn't actually get any dinner, you can see in the image below how they open their mouth wide extending it forward and with a big gulp or sucking motion, inhale their meal.

The amazing thing with anglerfish is their diversity. Whilst they sit under the same family (Antennarius striates) and yet they differ significantly which is what makes them so cool.

From the little hairless yellow/orange ones

To the bigger but less colourful (and very hard to find) grey ones.

To the bigger redder ones, its really hard to know whether they start off their lives small orange and bald but then begin to transform in colour and texture with age, or whether they just happen to have their own genetics that separate them evolutionary. Like most creatures in the ocean, dollars to study them in detail are limited, so a lot of information is from the people that dive and record them at the weekends. 

With all things photography and diving, there is always one holy grail that I am yet to get a good image of and thats the black angler. I have seen and had the opportunity to photograph plenty, some too big for the 100mm  macro lens I use with viz too poor to get a decent image. Others where the angler is so black (and not hairy) but sucks every ounce of light you blast at it, laughing at your feeble attempts to get contrast and finally the time when you think you got the shot. You check the histogram, zoom in and everything is perfect. High giving yourself you move onto another subject only to find when you download it that some gremlin got into your camera and replaced your perfect image with one that is terrible. I am yet to work out how that happens, but its always with black anglers. Until next time..............

Battle of the blues

It was 1999 when I first returned to Sydney, Australia after my parents moved to England around 1980. I spent about 4 months diving the East coast of Australia from Sydney up to Cairns. It was during my dive master course with Prodive that I first encountered the blue bottle jellyfish, known in Europe as the Portuguese Man-o-war (Physalia physalis). It was a windy day with a swell coming into Gordon's Bsy. Trying to get students that resemble a baby giraffe standing for the first time to get into the water with their dive equipment on. Their balance and poise terrible, not listening to instruction and to add to the drama a heap of these blue jellyfish being swept in. I remember using my fins to push them away to try and create a corridor for the students to get in but got one around my tank neck that stung me. 

Fast forward to 2006 and I (finally) moved back to Sydney and in addition to diving decided to try my luck at surfing. When the swells hit from the NE we got good wave action and some good rides, but low and behold we also got blue bottles.

Fast forward in time again to 2018 and I wanted to get an image of a blue bottle. Whilst highly annoying when you are in the water they have a beauty which is strange for such a simple organism. Matty Smith put them firmly in the public eye with his epic image of an above/below composition which needless to say won awards.

I needed to get my bluebottle on!

I started shooting more macro in the last 2 years and sold my soul to the nudibranch devil. I want different shots, new species and the chance to increase my collection. I was reading about a nudibranch that floated on the surface and ate the blue bottles. Now thats a cool nudi! They have a blue colour to them as well as they feed on the blue bottles storing stinging cells within its own tissues as defense against predation. Is it better to get stung by the jellyfish or the nudi that eats the jellyfish?

This weekend we had the strong E/NE swell and winds so I decided to get my gear, an old screw top supplements jar and a garden hand shovel and headed to Collaroy beach. It wasn't long before I found the blue bottles, but only came across the single Glaucus atlanticus (blue serpent nudi). Once I had these specimens that had washed up packed away I intended to head to a rock pool but this time of the year, people are out till late, so that was off the cards. I decided to try North Narrabeen lagoon. It gets closed to the open ocean and was hoping that it would be both clear and relatively free of people. Again, not quite so, but I did manage to find some space and began taking images (to much amusement of passers-by) using my Canon 5D MKIII and 100mm macro in a Nauticam housing with 2 x Inon strobes. I tried and tried but with very limited results. I needed to pack up and get home as we were going out for dinner, but I kept thinking on how to get the shot I wanted. I realised I needed to be more prepared for that shot but I wanted to optimise my specimens and get an image.

I got home and poured my sea water, blue bottle, blue serpent nudi cocktail into a black container and went for a topside image, attached my macro ring flash and started shooting as soon as we got back from dinner. A nice controlled environment with clear water is what a studio shot is all about. I used a low angle with a reduction of -1 exposure on the flash to keep reflection low and ensure I wasn't illuminating the bottom of the container. 

Bare Island Pygmy's

I was first shown the pygmy pipehorses of Kurnell but it was the ones at Bare Island that first got my attention. Experienced local divers like Michael McFadyen and Kim Dinh had posted images on social media and that started my journey. 

Kurnell is about an hours drive from my home on Sydney's, Northern Beaches. If you have ever driven in Sydney you will know the traffic is terrible and the parking horrendous. Planning your dives has to be first thing in the morning otherwise you run the risk of not being able to park, which means no diving or if you are lucky then you will probably spend the entire day at the dive site.

On Saturday I arranged to meet Kim and Eddie at Bare Island around 9am. This is a little later than i would usually get there so cherished the lie in. We got kitted up and headed into the water. I am on a closed-circuit rebreather with Kim and Eddie on open-circuit. This allows me a longer dive, but also was the cause of me losing them initially. I descended, got my equipment dialled in and tracked them on the surface. I stopped to take a few test shots and by that stage they were gone from sight. I surfaced, but they had already descended. I knew roughly where they would be, its a relatively simple dive site, follow the reef around the island. My plan was to get ahead of where i think they would be and then turn around to bump into them at some point. It was about 20 mins or so before that happened.

I saw a solitary sea tulip with a fish feeding around the base. I headed over to investigate when a little flash of colour caught my eye. It was a clingfish that settled on the stem of the sea tulip. 

When you start diving with PADI you learn underwater hand signals like, OK, going up, going down etc. When you are looking for macro subjects its slightly different, you have someone like Kim that has eagle eyes for spotting the smallest of critters, and you have me that went and bought a magnifying glass to help him see. Kim patiently showed me this nudibranch with eggs. She was laughing as I tried to pretend to be Sherlock Holmes investigating the area. I saw the eggs (not actually knowing they were eggs) so framed the shot and took the image. After the dive at the car park, she asked if i saw the pink nudibranch. Erm.....what pink nudibranch? I downloaded my images and was fortunate that the depth of field i used in the image had the nudibranch in sharp focus. This is literally a centimetre at most, so surely I can be forgiven for my blindness.

In identifying the nudibranch I posted toy Nudibranch Central on Facebook, Gary Cobb says, "This aeolid was called Trinchesia or Cuthona then Gosliner wrote a paper and placed them under Tenellia. There was a recent paper that wants to put them back and we are waiting for Gosliners rebuttal, meanwhile we go by Tenellia."

With the nudbranch image captured, we headed on to a section of reef with a nice soft coral/sponge section. The hand signal for pygmy was given and I knew we were where we wanted to be. I spotted in my torch beam, then turned it off as the bright light can make them turn away from you. Instead I switched the red light focus light of my strobe on. It's a patience game, of choosing your spot focus point, taking some test shots to get the light directed right and with appropriate power, then wait for it to move into the zone. I will happily spend a long time just waiting, watching and generally enjoying the moment, but when the action happens I squeeze the shutter button. I pretty much know I have the shot when I take it, you want the eye looking at you and that being where the spot focus is targeting. With image captured I left to look for the others.

The next subject Kim found was a painted angler fish. These are fairly small critters and can be on the top of the reef or tucked into the side. This one was about a foot off the floor and wedged into the reef with some weedy substrate partly covering him. There wasn't a huge amount of room to manoeuvre so I was limited to the shot I could get. I use a nauticam housing with a 45 degree viewfinder which allows me to have the camera point up but still see the subject even though the camera is on the sand.

Kim and Eddie's air was getting low so they headed back to shore, I decided to carry on looking out for new subjects. You don't always see something new, you hope, and search and sometimes you get rewarded. The nudibranch collection continues to grow and it was further added to with this one Hypselodoris obscura. Not sure what it is about finding a new species for the collection but ironically on the Sunday I saw 2 more. Not the first time it's happened,

After 2 hours I was done for the day, I surfaced and exited the water and walked back up the hill. Kim and Eddie had kindly waited for me and we chatted about what we saw. I was happy to get the pygmy image, until Kim asked "which one did you get the cream one or the green/yellow one?". Damn ! I only saw the one, looks like I am coming back tomorrow to find it.

Tomorrow (Sunday) came and I got back in the water and headed round to where we found the first one. It felt warm in the water to begin with, but as you turned south the temperature really dropped. This wasn't helped by my dry-suit being a little leaky in the feet and also the neck and wrist seals needing replacing. That being said I had my big boy pants on and knew my objective. I found the spot, and easily found both. They were being rather camera shy today, lots of bum pictures. I spent a long time there waiting, waiting waiting and then snap snap. Yesterdays pygmy pipehorse had moved a little to the left and closer to a piece of sponge/coral which was a nice composition. The cream pygmy pipehorse I wanted with more contrast against a black background.

Mission accomplished !!