Bargibant’s Pygmy Seahorse

Blogged by Simon on November 24, 2009 10:35am | Last updated by Simon on April 19, 2010 11:38am | Category: Underwater Photography | Get a Print Get a Print |

Pygmy Seahorse (Hippocampus Bargibanti)During our stay in Wakatobi, the local divemasters Ben and CJ proved extremely helpful in spotting creatures, pointing out a variety of small critters that are difficult to see with the naked eye because they blend in so well into the background. Soon I began noticing how on all dive sites where we found purple sea fans, they would always closely inspect those sea fans for Pygmy Seahorses and we got lucky on two or three occasions, for which I’m grateful as I am pretty sure I would have never found a Pygmy on my own.

Imagine a creature that lives exclusively in purple Gorgonian sea fans (Muricella plectana) and almost looks like being part of one. The Bargibant’s seahorse’s (Hippocampus bargibanti) body is covered in tiny bumps, that near perfectly mimick the surface texture and color of it’s environment. In fact, it is hard to notice them at all when they’re not moving. Despite being poor swimmers, seahorses are often found in areas of strong current hanging onto the fan’s support structure with their tails, where they remain stationary and feed on zooplankton, sweeping through the current.

Ben had tipped me off about a well known location for Pygmy seahorses before the dive at “Blade”, so i went in with my 105mm macro lens. I ended up spending almost the entire dive at about 22m where we found three. Current was quite strong, which didn’t make taking photos with the 105mm any easier and there was nothing to hold on to. I ended up finning against the current and while trying to get a 2cm small seahorse into focus. In retrospect, a futile exercise and it took me over 30 minutes and 150 bar to take one decent shot. After countless checks on the LCD, I finally had a sharp, semi decent photo so I began the ascent from 22m with a meager 18 bars of air left! This should be just enough to bring me through half a safety stop of 1:30 mins in 5m, from where I surfaced with a stiff breathing 2nd stage to orally inflate my BCD on the surface. An absolutely stupid thing to do of course, I got totally carried away by what I was doing and stayed far too long – do not repeat.

Camera settings on this photo are: f/25 to get enough depth of field, 1/60s shutter time in Aperture prio mode. In retrospect I should have gone into manual mode and dialed faster shutter times here. Back at home, I cleaned my prized shot, that i almost risked life and limb for, of some blur in Photoshop with an unsharp mask and used burn to adjust the background from dark green to black. Hope the results are worth it!

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  1. Tina Mittag
    on February 19th, 2010
    1

    Nice story and my favourite shot of all.
    Keep on the good work!

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