Photo of the Week: July 25, 2011

Hi Gang!

This week’s POTW is an image of a species of crustacean that is commonly known as a bug-eyed squat lobster. I feel confident that with just one quick look at a live specimen or a photograph that most people will quickly understand where the name “bug-eyed” came from.

The image was captured at Dumaguete during my recent trip to the Philippines with Captain Steve and the gang. My dive guide pointed out the first one, a tiny creature that has a body that is less than one-inch long. I am proud to say that I found the one featured in this photograph as well as a number of others on my own as the trip progressed. But I will quickly say that without a lot of help finding the first one I probably would have missed them all. For a lot of divers that is kind of the way things go on small critter dives. Great guides like we had in the Philippines are invaluable. Not only do they help you locate any number of creatures that are easily overlooked, but even more helpful over the long haul is that if you watch the guides you will learn how to look for and find so many superbly camouflaged critters that live in the refs, sand, and rubble biomes etc.

Of course, it also helps a lot if you know the animals exist so that when a guide points to an animal you have an idea about what you are looking at and what to look for. But having a lot of knowledge about so many amazing looking animals is a bit of a Catch 22 in that it takes time in the water and time looking at the id books to gain an overview of the animals that you might see in the Philippines and other small critter destinations.

Contrary to what their common name suggests squat lobster are not lobsters. They are crustaceans as are lobsters, but squat lobsters are more closely related to a wide variety of crabs than they are to lobsters. But no doubt about it, squat lobsters do bear strong visual resemblance to lobsters.

I captured this photograph with a Nikon 105 mm lens mounted on a D300 camera. I had tried to use a 60 mm lens on an earlier dive but found that because I had to get so close to the bug-eyed squat lobster with my camera system to fill a pleasing percentage of my frame with my subject that I caused the animal to retreat into its hole. So this time I used a 105 mm lens, and it proved to be a much better choice for this subject.

I had to move my strobes in very close to my port in order to get light on the squat lobster’s face. With my strobes out to the side the tiny projections of reef that surrounded the squat lobster’s hole blocked some of the strobe light and cast distracting shadows over the animal’s eyes and face.

I hope you enjoy this week’s POTW!

See you next week,

Marty