Periwinkles

Posted on July 6, 2025 by An Bollenessor under Macro, molluscs

Long time no post – the idea was to spend time taking photos during spring and summer and enjoy the underwater world vicariously by blogging in autumn and winter. However, something terrible happened on my only dive of 2025: my underwater housing sprung a leak! The housing was not flooded to an extent that it damaged my camera but it needed to be repaired before I could get back underwater. Unfortunately there is only one place that can do that, backscatter all the way in California, and even more unfortunately, U.S. customs decided to keep my package on a shelf for over a month. I have never seen an octopus in my decade of diving but of course people reported eight or so per dive last month so I was feeling very sorry for myself!* Anyway, I have been confined to the shoreline so far. To cope with that, I bought a weird chinese macro-wide angle lens to play with which I will post about later. I also used my ‘normal’ 60mm macro lens (sometimes with a Raynox lens attached to the front for extra magnification) and took some time to focus on periwinkles.

At the top and below a Flat Periwinkle (Littorina obtusata or maybe L. fabialis – distinguishing is very hard as it requires investigating differences in penis shape!). As you can see the locations are not always glamorous, but if you zoom in you can still find beauty!

Flat periwinkles tend to be most active above-water, followed by the smaller Rough Periwinkle (Littorina saxatilis – below) with the Common Periwinkle (Littorina littorea – below that) only occasionally moving about.

Finally, a tiny species the Small Periwinkle (~~Littorina~~ Melharaphe neritoides). Probably overlooked by most, as it is tiny (up to 8mm, usually smaller) and hidden between barnacles (or even nestled in empty barnacle cases) high on the shore.

* and no, I could not bring myself to go diving without a camera…

Two Fish in Flushing

Posted on March 11, 2025 by An Bollenessor under eggs, fish, Flushing, rock pooling

Continuing the theme from the two last posts with some ‘topside’ photos of rockpools. We had a very low tide recently which called for some rockpooling on our local shore here in Flushing. We looked (as always) for anything that we could find, but trying to get some ‘close-focus-wide-angle’ pics of fish with the Panasonic Leica 9mm lens was the main aim. Above a Male Tompot guarding eggs (see pic below) as well as a male Connemara Clingfish (no eggs spotted), recognizable by the bright red cheek markings. I have not been underwater very much, but have a bunch of macro photos of snails and stalked jellyfish that I will put on the blog next. (And remember, I post more frequently on instagram: @an_bollenessor!)

Fish Portraits

Posted on February 7, 2025 by An Bollenessor under fish, Flushing, Macro, rock pooling

Last weekend the weather was rubbish but the tide was low, and so we went over to our local beach in Flushing for some rock pooling. I did not bring the underwater housing, but just the macro lens and my cygnustech diffuser. Above a little clingfish – this could either be a Two-spotted or a Small-headed Clingfish; they are very hard to tell apart if they are not breeding males (see pic below for scale, I had to use the extra magnification of the Raynox clip-on lens for this one). Below three other fish species: a Tompot Blenny, a Common Blenny (or Shanny) and a Montagu’s Blenny (which is from an earlier post, but I wanted to complete the set here).