Striped Anglerfish

Blogged by Simon on March 01, 2010 5:49pm | Last updated by Simon on July 28, 2010 1:04pm | Category: Underwater Photography | Get a Print Get a Print |

Striped Anglerfish (Antennarius striatus)I used to think of Muck dives as time fillers inbetween “real” boat dives – this has recently changed as we increasingly go night diving from shore. As with anything, you learn more when you take a second look, which is how we found the Striped Anglerfish (Antennarius striatus) sitting on the seafloor of Chowder Bay – and what a find he turned out to be.

Like Frogfish, these critters don’t swim, but ‘walk’ across the sand on their fins. This can look totally innocent at first – they sweep sideways reminding you of floating seaweed, until they change into attack mode in a split second, and literally jump their prey. I have seen one going after a small leatherjacket about half it’s size, biting it’s head off, then swallowing it whole. Three divers around him with their jaws wide open, trying to locate their regulators :)

Camera settings: Nikon D300, 60mm macro lens, two YS-250 strobes one turned away one from the left, ISO 400, f/22 for 1/125s in manual mode. Adjusted for levels, contrast, saturation and white balance in Aperture, some backscatter was cleaned with a clone stamp in Photoshop. I also used dodge&burn in Aperture to darken the background slightly and a clone stamp to remove damage from a water drop that got caught on the inside of my housing (partial flood on this dive which I wasn’t too thrilled about).

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