Capturing the Moment

Imperial Nudibranchs Hawaiian Day Octopus    After muck diving in the Lembeh Strait Heidi and I were very excited to do a bit of muck diving closer to home. So we headed back to out favorite spot last night in hopes of good conditions and lots of nudibranchs! We were in luck. Even though there is a big north swell giving us a bit of surge we had a great dive. All of these pictures were taken in less than 15ft of water in a rocky, sandy bottom environment. Kangaroo Nudibranch Trembling Nudibranchs I shot all of these with a Canon T4i in an Ikelite Housing with one DS161 sub strobe. The hardest part of capturing a good picture on this dive was nailing it quick enough before the plankton swarmed the light. At several points the pictures came out totally black because I lost all light from my strobe. That's a lot of plankton.  Gloomy Nudibranch Snow Goddess Nudibranch Jeweled Anemone Crab Juvenile Spanish Dancer Nudibranch

  I can't believe I spotted this guy. If he hadn't of been all by himself he would blend in perfectly with the surrounding algae. This is a Marionia hawaiiensis , a seldom seen nudibranch found in very shallow Hawaiian waters. I found this guy in about 3 inches of water, in a tidepool at night.   We only have a two foot tidal change here in Hawaii but all of the lava rocks form perfect tide pools if you catch it right. What a lot of people don't realize is the volume of incredible creatures you can see in the pools, especially if you go out at night with a flashlight. Last night we had a -0.27 tide due to the nearly new moon. The trickiest part of getting these pictures was trying to get my huge underwater DSLR housing in the water but far enough away to be in focus. Those lava rocks are pretty sharp when you lay down on them. I just hoped the dedication and bruises would pay off.