Shortfin Pipefish (Cosmocampus elucens) – Blue Heron Bridge, Riviera Beach, FL
The first time I ventured under the bridge, every single animal I saw left me awestruck. The huge variety of life, the colors and patterns, the concentration of unique animals. After about fifty dives, however, I became jaded – passing over beautiful urchins, sea stars, and hermits in search of more elusive subjects. One particularly sought-after creature is the Pipefish, a tiny, slender relative of the Seahorse. These little fish are incredibly hard to find and many times even harder to image because they are so small and usually get lost in their surroundings. On this particular night dive under the East side, I was shooting a Brown Grass Shrimp (Leander tenuicornis) which was molting right in front of my eyes. A cool photo-op and an intriguing behavior that had all of my attention… Until I glanced to my left and almost didn’t believe my eyes. This gorgeous iridescent Shortfin Pipefish (AKA Diamond Pipefish) was coiled up like a snake, watching me photograph his shrimpy friend. I took a moment to make sure this was real life, I had never seen a fish like this in all my time underwater. I simply stared at the creature, which stood out from the brown Bugula algae with its brilliant, colorful paint job before I realized I should probably start lining up for shots. Its not often in a place like BHB, with such incredible underwater models, that I find myself completely uninterested with everything else around me – this Pipefish did just that to me. I’m happy with these images as the fish proved to be an exercise in photographic versatility, moving in and out of algae, threatening to disappear into holes, giving me short opportunities to fire off exposures, but luckily I was able to find myself in the right spot with the right settings a few times. I may never see another Diamond Pipefish, but I will surely never forget the one that I did encounter.
Canon G15, Nauticam NAG15, Inon s2000 (x2), Sola Photo 800, Nauticam CMC-1
1/500 sec, f/8, ISO80