Yes - this little snail is actually called a Flaming Tongue (Cyphoma gibbosum).

We saw plenty of these little snails on a lot of the dives on this trip, and while they certainly weren't moving much, they were difficult to photograph.

One challenge was because of their diet, which consists of the polyps of soft corals. The soft corals are often branching off in many directions (much like a small bush with no leaves) and thus getting a good angle to shoot through those branches was not always easy.

Exposure always seemed to be difficult too - here you can see I ended up with some weird shadows and a still somewhat darkened shot. I'm not sure if it was the soft corals or the mantles of the Flamingo Tongues that caused the problem, but I definitely struggled getting a good clean exposure.

Regardless, they certainly are interesting little critters. While they are snails, the colorful pattern you see is not the shell which is actually white (or off-white) with no pattern - it is actually the mantle of the snail wrapping up and over the top of the shell. It can be retracted back into the shell, and for whatever reason, Mike (our dive master) always seemed to find the retracted ones while we always found the regular ones.

Also visible in this shot is the damage these snails cause as they eat the polyps on the coral - leaving whitish scar tissue. The polyps do grow back, so the damage is not permanent.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/120th sec at f/16. Image Stabilization on. ISO 200. Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite 161 Strobe in TTL Mode. Raw conversion in Photoshop CS5.

- Bill