There have been a few finds lately at my local spot in Falmouth (and in other places in Cornwall) of the fantastically coloured Rainbow Slug Babakina anadoni. I have tried in vain so far to find it, but I did manage to find another species of Seaslug last Friday: Aeolidia filomenae. It is the opposite of the Rainbow Slug; large, not small, drab, not extravagant, and common instead of rare. More of an understated beauty I guess, and still a nice find! This species feeds on anemones (mainly Beadlet Anemones but also Snakelocks Anemones) rather than the Candelabrum hydroids the Rainbow Slug prefers. I am not very good at spottting nudibranchs so the plan is to keep looking this spring and find more species!
There was little wind last Saturday and a superlow tide so time for some rockpool macro! Above, a Purple Topshell Calliostoma zizyphinum; common but and pretty. I liked the background which was achieved using a relatively shallow depth of field (f/8). I took my time exploring a small patch (core body temperature slowly decreasing) as this is the only way to find creatures that are smaller than topshells. I spotted a St. John’s Stalked Jellyfish Calvadosia cruxmelitensis and took the same shallow depth of field approach (f/5.6). Lastly a pretty little mollusc: the White Tortoiseshell Limpet Tectura virginea. (It is only about half a centimetre long, so I had to use my CMC-1 wetlens for extra magnification.) This species is found on calcified red seaweeds on which it grazes. Their colouration is amazing (I especially like that the growing edge of the shell looks very different). Similar-sized Blue-rayed Limpets (see this recent post) are much more often photographed than this species – what can I say, Tortoiseshell Limpets are the hipster’s choice!
Easterlies (bad viz) and low tides meant some macro photography in the rockpools this Saturday. The water is getting chillier but staying in for two hours is still possible. I returned to a subject I tried my hand at before: the tube feet of a Green Sea Urchin (Psammechinus miliaris). The 60mm macro + cmc-1 wetlens plus some cheeky cropping gets me close, although I always want to get even closer! I was happier with the results than the previous times, so I posted it on instagram (@an_bollenessor). Below a more zoomed out view of the underside of the urchin, yours truly in the water, a common brittlestar, a small brittlestar, a pheasant shell, a tiny nermertean worm which might be this (thanks David Fenwick!) and a detail of a redspeckled anemone.
I have a lot more pics from this year to put on the blog but those have to wait, as I want to post some photos from last Saturday first, when there was little wind, a low tide and some sun! The viz was not great as expected, so I brought the macrolens and went in search for some small critters. No special finds, but I was very happy with my shots of a common little mollusc the European Cowrie (Trivia monacha). Most people will be familiar with this species as beach finds of empty shells, but not know how it looks like when it is alive, when its mantle covers most of the shell, it shows its striped tail at the back and a siphon and cute little eyes at the front. I used a shallow depth of field (f/4) to get rid of the ugly cluttered background, which worked well if I may say so myself (I need to try this technique more often!).
Many other critters were found too and I took shots of a selection. First, a Sea Spider, all legs and crawling away. A tiny mat of colonial tunicate that looked like a persian rug on drugs. A quick shot of the ubiquitous (if you know where to look – on kelp fronds) blue-rayed Limpets and a stalked jellyfish. Finally, I spent a lot of time taking shallow-depth-of-field AND slow shutter-speed photos of a scorpion spider crab in a snakelocks anemone to get some sort of ‘artistic’ shot. It did not really work, but it was fun nonetheless and I will have a go at it again. After almost 2,5 hours in the water I stumbled back to the car to get changed – an afternoon well-spent!
This is a weird little hydroid and so only has a Latin name to go by: Candelabrum cocksii. It was first described by Cocks in his ‘Contributions to the fauna of Falmouth’ in the 1850s and it is quite common locally. I find them mostly as pictured here, but sometimes I see them with their foot extended, going from a centimetre to 8 centimetres or so in length. This allows them to rove over the rock surface in search of tiny (crustacean) prey. Their mouth is located at the end of the trunk which is covered in ‘capitate’ tentacles (see the pic below for anatomical labels). The white spheres are gonophores used for reproduction. It should be possible in summer when these hermaphrodites reproduce to see dedicated clasper tentacles holding the embryos, that would be cool (to me at least!). Btw, I remembered I posted about this species not even that long ago! See here and also see this link and this link from fellow enthusiasts across the pond who likewise have been fascinated by Candelabrum.
The Sea Hares (Aplysia punctata) are still out in force. They are great characters, with faces like Star Wars extras, crawling over seaweeds and each other. Here another batch of pictures!
When the viz is bad, I take my macrolens (sometimes with the Nauticam CMC-1 wetlens for a bit of extra magnification) out to the pools. Sometimes I stick to the surface of rocks and seaweeds (to look for stalked jellyfish for instance), but other times I turn over rocks under water to see what hides beneath. Quite a lot! There are larger animals, such as Topknots and different types of crabs (and Worm pipefish as pictured here) but mainly they are quite small (around a centimetre or even less). See the selection below (Tricolia, Bittium and Limacia were not from under rocks but I had to make the grid fit!).
I cheekily ordered a larger dome port last week (8 inch instead of 4 inch), which should suffer less chromatic aberration (unsharp corners), but also make it easier to compose splitshots (or ‘over-under’ shots) where the top half is above water and the bottom half below water. I played around with this type of shot a bit before with the small dome (e.g. see here and here) but it should be much easier with a larger dome. Anyway, the weather was such that I did not immediately have a go at it, but this Tuesday I figured I could give it a try at Fistral Beach in Newquay, which has some good rockpools that are not directly connected to the sea at low tide and might be still enough. It was bloody hard to get a decent shot in the deeper rockpools I tried first, as the difference in ambient light above and below water really necessitates the use of strobes to result in an even exposure, As I struggle with strobe lighting for normal shots, this was a bit too much to ask. My fallback was the ‘cave of dreams’ a rather grandiose name for a small overhang containing scarlet and gold cup corals (Balanophyllia regia) and Yellow hedgehog sponges (Polymastia boletiformis) (amongst other sponge species). (Check out THIS OLD POST on the cave of dreams with some decent pics I took with my old Canon Powershot camera.) Crouching down, I could barely fit under the overhang. The picture above looks like it is a substantial scene, but I could only submerge my domeport halfway! Using strobes would have been too finicky and probably result in quite unnatural light, so I bumped the ISO to 400, lowered the shutterspeed to 1/30 and used a 6.3 F-stop to get sufficient exposure using my micro four thirds Olympus camera. I needed to go down to a shutterspeed of 1/25 and a 5 F-stop for the close-up shot below. Here is to more experimenting this spring/summer!
A while ago I played around with taking pics of the underside of a buoy, which was fun, and so i wanted to practice this some more. My mistake the first time (see here) was to use a fast shutterspeed (the buoy was bobbing about after all) which made the water look unnaturally dark. I tried again this weekend and it went a bit better, although I already know I can improve things. This time I thought it would be nice to put some names to the amazing fouling biodiversity (I did this before for some seaweed images, see here). Crustaceans (tube-dwelling Jassa), Sponges, Bryozoans, Seaweeds but especially a lot of Tunicates (seasquirts; both solitary and colonial species). David Fenwick (of AphotoMarine fame) had a quick look to help with some IDs; there is a more there but this was not meant to be exhaustive. I have underlined species that are invasive. Anyway, I am sure I will post more of these types of images: the buoys are always there and these organisms do not swim off when you try to take a photo!
Had a nice snorkel yesterday; the weather was good and with the seaweeds growing I was tempted to go for the wide angle lens but in the end I was cautious and went for macro (where the visibility is not as important). Lots of stalked jellyfish and some nice chameleon prawns but I had trouble aiming the strobe right somehow. I turned over some rocks and found a large ‘worm ball’ wriggling frantically. It was hard to estimate its size but might have been 10-20 cm. It is a Phyllodocid worm, possibly this one. I also managed a closeup which really shows off the lovely green and blue colours.
An Bollenessor 