Snorkeling in summer is nice because it is sunny and warm, but the seaweeds are turning a bit manky. That has its charms too though!
Above: Furbelows Saccorhiza polyschides. Middle: Thong Weed Himanthalia elongata covered in epiphytes (Ceramium?). Bottom: seaweed assemblage with Red Rags Dilsea carnosa, Irish Moss Chondrus crispus, Forkweed Dictyota dichotoma, Harpoon Weed Asparagopsis armata, Sea Lettuce Ulva lactuca and other species.
Matt Slater of the Cornwall Wildlife Trust wrote a very nice piece on seaweeds for the magazine ‘bloom‘ and I supplied some photos. I had not read the magazine before, but I was impressed, lots of interesting articles for anyone interested in plants.
I had not been in the water for many weeks due to bad weather, work and laziness, but as the sun was shining last Tuesday and there were indications from social media that the plankton bloom had gone, I went back in for a snorkel. The water has warmed up, although the viz was not as good as I had hoped. I swam a bit further than my usual shallow rockpools to explore the kelp forest. Pollack, wrasse, mullet and sandeels swam about. I noticed a line with crabpots starting very close to shore, something I had not seen before. Unlucky spider crabs and some lobsters could be seen in the pots. Below a Spider Crab that was still free….
After exploring the slightly deeper waters I went back into the pools where the viz actually cleared up a bit. Seaweed-wise, things have deteriorated a bit compared to early spring, but it was a very nice swim around all the same!
A quick posts of some wide angle photos I took at the start of this month. The seaweeds were just past their prime but still looked nice and the viz was really good. It was great to slowly swim through the water in my usual spot between the rockpools ‘proper’ and the kelp forest. Just like swimming in a giant aquarium! Not too many fish or other animals to be seen. I always manage to suprise one big resident Ballan Wrasse. Other than that there were tiny Pollack and some Two-Spot Gobies. I have not been in the water since because the weather (wind) has not been great; maybe next week! Btw, I am also on instagram: @an_bollenessor.
It has been a wile since I last posted. This winter was long and dreary, the sea choppy and grey. I managed to do some rock pooling, and took a bunch of pictures, which I probably should have posted… The good news is that a mishap with my camera housing last year resulted in Olympus giving me a new model housing + a new model camera to fit (OMD EM1 mark 2) AND a new dome, lucky me! Regular readers of this blog know I get very excited in March, as this is when the seaweeds look at their best. This week the tides were low and the wind conditions favourable (the sun was not always out unfortunately), so I made sure to go in the water every day. The water is cold (9C), especially after being in for 2 hours, but it is all worth it. The seaweed growth was lush, with species literally growing on top of each other. I tried to shoot with strobes, but this proved too difficult and switched to natural light. Keeping ISO at 200, I aimed to lower shutter speed to 1/30, managing an F stop of between 5 and 8, depending on cloud cover. I now get the hang of that, but it is difficult to keep photos well-exposed, with enough depth of field and maintain sharpness. Below some examples. I am lazy and will not add seaweed names (but see the Seaweed Gallery page at the top if you are interested). When the tides are low again at the end of next week I hope to go out again!
A while back I was lucky to be one of the two winners of the Hilda-Canter Lund prize (see this post). An exhibition featuring seaweed photography organised by the British Phycological Society at the University of Nottingham has now been opened (outdoors rather than indoors for obvious reasons). The nice thing is that the organisers have also put the exhibit online, if you are interested, please click this link.
After posting this photo on the Seaweeds of the NE Atlantic group, I received a lot of positive replies, and Jason Spencer-Hall, Professor at Plymouth Uni and president of the British Phycological Society asked me to submit this photo for the annual Hilda Canter-Lund Photo competition. This award was established in recognition of Hilda Canter-Lund, whose photomicrographs of freshwater algae combined high technical and aesthetic qualities whilst still capturing the quintessence of the organisms she was studying. I am pleased to say I ended up as joint winner (there is always a micro-algae and a macro-algae winner), prize money included! The caption:
Carpodesmia tamariscifolia (Bushy Rainbow Wrack) framed by Himanthalia elongata (Thong Weed) in a rockpool in Falmouth, Cornwall, U.K.
I took this photo of this stunningly beautiful iridescent Rainbow Wrack spring 2020 at a low tide when this rockpool was no more than a meter deep. This species is a perennial that forms a home to many animals, from sponges to tunicates, and is often used by the Bull Huss to attach its egg cases to. Many seaweed species also grow epiphytically on Bushy Rainbow Wrack, such as the invasive red species Bonnemaisonia hamifera on this photo. Photo taken using an Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II with an 8mm fisheye lens and with a single automatic strobe.
Definitely THE photo competition for me and I hope to get more good shots for the 2021 installment (most probably next March/April). As this post is short, below a photo (taken with my old camera) I submitted in 2017 (I managed to forget about the competition in the intervening years). 
A day without wind last Thursday and so time for a look at the seaweeds. As expected, the pinks, reds and purples have made way for browns, yellows and greens. The water was a bit cloudy but with the wide angle lens you can get close up minimising the effetc of the bad viz. Wrasse were tending to nests and tiny pollock swam around but otherwise I could not spot not many animals; the exception was a big spider crab who was as startled as me. Above the common species Thin Sausage Weed Asperococcus fistulosus. Not the most beautiful species but let’s say it looks interesting. To my horror, I discovered that my favourite seaweed Bushy Rainbow Wrack has changed genus and is now called Carpodesmia tamariscifolia instead of Cystoseira tamariscifolia. I hate name changes in general but this just an ugly name! Two photos of this species below as well as one of Bushy Berry Wrack Cystoseira baccata which also has moved genus and is now Treptacantha baccata… After that a floating piece of Desmarest’s Flattened Weed Desmarestia ligulata and some Pale Patch Laver Pyropia leucostica. 
A while back I thought it might be an idea to experiment with flash photography. Using one flashgun (strobe) I set out in my usual spot. I should have tried this a lot earlier! Although supershallow water has enough light to do without flash, a main problem (for me at least) is to balance harsh white sunlight (from above and from reflections from the white sand below) with the darker subject. By illuminating the subject, this effect evens out. I took probably almost a hundred photos of the Bushy Rainbow Wrack above and this one came out alright! Apart from the Thong Weed framing it, I like the row of Thong Weed ‘buttons’ in the foreground. I held the strobe in my hand for this one, and I used my older strobe, as my newerand more expensive manual one just not fires reliably for some reason (still trying to find out what is going wrong). Below some more strobe experiments. I really hope diving will be allowed soon so I can play around more with the wide angle lens and two strobes.
Some long overdue seaweed pics from the end of the seaweed bloom when the tides were low. I took many photos but few, if any, very good ones; sometimes you just are a bit out of luck I suppose. I have also started a Seaweed Gallery page (link also pinned at the top), gathering photos of as many different species I can find here in Cornwall. It is very much a work in progress and not a proper guide at all, but I hope it can help complement exisiting guides. Note that just a photo often is not enough to correctly identify species, so I have kept it at more easily recognisable things. On another note, I recently gave a ‘lockdown’ zoom presentation about my very niche hobby of taking photos of seaweeds for the Cornwall Wildlife Trust. If you are interested you can find it on youtube (I have not watched it back myself as if there is one thing I dislike it is seeing myself talk on video (actually, there is one thing I like even less and that is seeing myself talk on a video that is there to see for the whole world!)). I talked not so much about photography or seaweed biology as I am far from an expert in either topic, but more about how I started out with rockpooling when I moved to Cornwall in 2012, and how this slowly spiralled out of control and ended up with me lying facedown in rockpools year-round taking photos of seaweeds. Anyway, a few species below: Irish Moss Chondrus crispus, Berry Wart Cress Sphaerococcus coronopifolius, Red Rags Dilsea carnosa and Desmarest’s Flattened Weed Desmarestia ligulata. 
An Bollenessor 