Ok - I know I have mentioned this in the past, but during night dives, you quite often get swarmed with blood worms. To be honest, I hate them... they are super annoying, they get in the way of your photos (more on that later), and they can swarm your camera and get clumped up in your strobe and you don't notice it and you put your strobe in your camera case and they all die and your camera case smells horrible (yeah - true and quite disgusting story).

Anyway, there are a couple ways you can deal with them on a dive. First, you can just turn your lights out and swim around in the dark for a while and they go away (I had to resort to this several times this trip. It isn't ideal as it does get a bit spooky being down there with no light at all, but if you stay semi-close to another diver, you can sort of see). Second, you can dump them off on another diver - sort of the same principle here, but you just take your light next to theirs, then turn yours off and swim away... the person with a light on gets stuck with all the blood worms.

And then there's option three... feed stuff with them. This time, it is a banded coral shrimp (Stenopus hispidus) that managed to snag one and have a nice meal on me.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/200th sec at f/6.3. Image Stabilization on. ISO 400. Ikelite Housing and Port and Ikelite 161 Strobe in TTL Mode. Raw conversion and cropped in Photoshop CS5. (mouseover for original uncropped version).

I really should have been shooting with a narrower aperture to get more depth of field, but I did manage to get this one with the focus right on the shrimp's face. Unfortunately, with all those legs and antennae and blood worms swimming around, there is a bit of visual confusion in this shot.

But still, it is one less blood worm in the world, and one happier banded coral shrimp with a full belly.

- Bill

Ugh... Mondays!

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/200th sec at f/9. ISO 400. Ikelite Housing and Port with Ikelite 161 Strobe in eTTL mode. Raw conversion and cropped in Adobe Camera Raw.

- Bill

Ok - time for just an assortment of photos, this batch is of some of the fish we saw on the reef...

Goliath Grouper (Epinephelus itajara)	Hogfish (Lachnolaimus maximus)	Caribbean Reef Shark (Carcharhinus perezii)	Silversides (Atherinidae sp)
Queen Triggerfish (Balistes vetula)	Stoplight Parrotfish (Sparisoma viride)	Blue Chromis (Chromis cyanea)	Nassau Grouper (Epinephelus striatus)

Thanks for stopping by!

- Bill

If you've been following along at home, you'll remember several other entries in this series. I don't know if it a combination of having the macro lens on and really looking at things in more detail, or the slightly reduced peripheral vision I get from wearing my scuba mask (I have a prescription mask, so my peripherals aren't as good), but I just seem to end up being fascinated with the patterns and the beauty in the abstract that I find on the reef...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/100th sec at f/4. ISO 400. Ikelite Housing and Port with dual Ikelite 161 Strobes. Raw conversion in Adobe Camera Raw.

- Bill

While not technically a nudibranch, Flatworms are still a fun find!

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/120th sec at f/4.5. ISO 1250. Ikelite Housing and Port with dual Ikelite 161 Strobes. Raw conversion in Adobe Camera Raw.

This is apparently a juvenile Lined Flatworm (Pseudoceros crozieri) - I was confused on the identification until a bit of research turned up that the juveniles of this species have that orange border that will fade as they grow into an adult (and that tidbit of information is lodged in my brain forever now!).

- Bill

WOOOOO!!!!!

Ok - so we're back from our scuba diving trip! I've got tons (I haven't even counted to find out an exact number) of photos to process. I'm going to try doing them in order that they were taken, but that may or may not hold up. And I have no idea how long it will take me to get through them all either.

Our first dive ended with a wonderful surprise in the form of three Red-Tipped Sea Goddess nudibranchs sitting on a sponge in the space of about 2 square inches. Unfortunately, since it had been two years since I'd done underwater photography, I was extremely rusty and was fighting with the strobes to try and get a good exposure. I did manage to bring back a few, but I'm not thrilled with the results... hopefully future ones are better.

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 1/120th sec at f/5. ISO 800. Ikelite Housing and Port with dual Ikelite 161 Strobes in video light mode (no flash). Raw conversion in Adobe Camera Raw.

For whatever reason, the dual strobes were giving me fits, so I resorted to just using the video lights and shooting with a higher ISO. The result ended up with a bit of motion blur from the slower shutter speed and limited depth of field from the fairly wide open aperture. Unfortunately, since we'd found these nudibranchs so easily, I incorrectly assumed I'd have plenty of opportunities to get other shots of these and other nudibranchs - as it turned out, nudis ended up being fairly difficult to find all week long.

Stay tuned for more as I process other photos.

- Bill

Here's some more angles of that saddleback caterpillar from yesterday - it really makes me think about nudibranchs... Hopefully I'll have some new nudibranch photos to share soon!

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/250 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

- Bill

So I just wanted to stop by real quick to share one photo of this crazy caterpillar I found recently. I was playing a round of disc golf at Moraine State Park when I spotted this guy on the chains on the disc golf basket. I tried futilely to take a photo with my crappy cell phone, and when that failed I resorted the only option I had available to me... I put it in am empty gummi fruit snack pouch that I happened to have in my disc golf bag (don't worry - I've since put a plastic container that I use as a specimen container in my bag for future occurrences since this wasn't the first time I'd wished I had something).

Anyway, after I got it home and did some research into what it was, I am glad that I didn't actually touch this thing. I know caterpillars with hairs like this can cause skin irritation, but this guy is apparently one of the highest ranked caterpillars in terms of medical significance. Here's an excerpt from the University of Florida's Entomology Department's webpage on this species...

Acharia stimulea is best known as a medically significant species. The large spines and potent hemolytic venom rank it as one of the most important North American species of urticating caterpillars, with larvae from the moth family Megalopygidae being the only lepidopterans considered more dangerous (Scott 1963, 1964; Durden and Mullen 2009; Hossler 2010). The spines of A. stimulea are strong, acutely pointed, and hollow. They embed deeply into tissue and break off, and can interrupt healing as the protoplasm from the venom glands dries into the tissue area (Gilmer 1925). The venom itself can cause a systemic condition called erucism or acute urticaria, for which severe symptoms may include migraines, gastrointestinal symptoms, asthma complications, anaphylactic shock, rupturing of erythrocytes, and hemorrhaging (USAF 1982, Hossler 2009). Saddleback Caterpillar (Acharia stimulea)

So yeah - short story... Don't touch!!!

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/250 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

I'll share a few more here soon, but I wanted to get this one posted because this thing is just so crazy I couldn't wait to share...

- Bill

Hahah! I can't believe I haven't used that yet...

Technical Data: Canon EOS 7D, Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro, 1/250 sec at f/16. Canon Macro Twin Lite MT-24EX in ETTL mode. ISO 100. RAW processing in Adobe Camera Raw.

- Bill

As promised, here's the mushroom assortment. No clue if any of these are edible or toxic but they certainly look interesting.

Thanks for stopping by.

- Bill