Photo of the Week: June 25, 2012

Hi Gang!

So there I was sitting at my computer minding my own business when I received an email from Captain Steve. I always like hearing from the Captain, but to be honest, I found this email to be a little troubling. Captain Steve had just been out diving on a pinnacle named Monolith that is on the backside of Lanai where he took a few shots of a longfin anthias. He sent me copies of those images, and boom, I felt a pang of instant jealousy!

I have dived Monolith a few times, and I have enjoyed some good photographic success with longnose hawkfish. But my efforts to find a longfin anthias did not pan out. No doubt, they are a gorgeous fish. I suppose I should look at Captain Steve’s success as a reason to get back to Maui as soon as possible, so rather than feeling jealous, I’ll work on trying to find a way that my schedule allows me to get back to Hawaii. Actually, I’ll still probably feel a bit of jealousy. Those were really nice images the Captain sent me.

Naturally, the two longfin anthias images Captain Steve emailed to me sent me on a mission looking through my image library so I could find a way to properly reply. I decided to use this week’s POTW as my reply. It is a shot of a stocky anthias, Psuedanthias hysolosoma, I created on a dive in Fiji. I thought I might as well try to make the Captain feel a little pang of jealousy, but then I realized that he has a trip to Fiji planned for this September. I suppose I’d be better served just concentrating on my photography.

In any case, the stocky anthias is a member of the sea bass family (Serranidae), a grouping that includes approximately 450 species of bony fishes that are commonly referred to as groupers, basses and fairy basslets. The stocky anthias is an Indo-Pacific species that ranges from the Maldives to Somoa, north as far as Taiwan and south as far as the Great Barrier Reef. The stocky anthias is usually encountered in reef communities at depths between 20 and 165 feet.

As is the case with other anthias, stocky anthias tend to gather in groups. Some gatherings include more than one thousand fish, but there are smaller, more organized subgroups referred to as harems that exist within the larger gathering. Harems typically consist of a single dominant male, up to a dozen or more females, and can include one or two subdominant males that are less brightly colored, less active and less territorial than the dominant male.

All anthias are protygynous hermaphrodites, meaning that all individuals are born as females. If the dominant male in a harem perishes or is otherwise removed from a population, the largest female will usually be transformed into a male in short order. However, this transformation sometimes leads to physical confrontations with the next largest male. Males, like the one featured as this week’s POTW, are larger and more colorful than females.

As is the case with most anthias, the stocky anthias can be tricky to photograph because the fish are constantly on the move. Getting the shot often requires a lot of patience, persistence, and a camera and lens that auto-focus relatively fast. I created this week’s POTW image with 105 mm lens mounted on a Nikon D300. I used the 105 mm lens as opposed to a 60 mm lens because I find it really difficult, if not impossible, to get close enough to the constantly moving fish to fill my frame when I try to use a 60 mm lens.

I hope you enjoy this week’s POTW! And I hope the Captain and those that go with him get a chance to photograph a stocky anthias on their trip to Fiji, and that I get another crack at the longfin anthias on Monolith before too long.

See you next week,

Marty