|
| When we got to Kokoana passage, we heard
that Chris Newbert had seen a pygmy seahorse there in '97. Not have ever seen any
kind of a seahorse, in spite of spending one whole night dive in the Red Sea sorting
through a glade os sea grass one blade at a time, we were pretty stoked. Finding one
was daunting: as you can see, they are very well camouflaged. What you can't see is
that they're maybe 3/8 of an inch long when they unroll their tails, and they almost never
unroll their tails. On the first dive, Betty found a likely sea fan, and began to examine it one branch at a time, while I poked around the wall. After ten minutes, she came storming away from the fan, passed right by me, and found Scott, the captain of the Spirit. He got there with his camera, and pigged the sea horse while I skulked around fuming to myself about why Betty hadn't found me first. She later said she wasn't sure she'd found it, and wanted to make sure. Well, OK, I guess. After having her find confirmed, she rounded everybody up -- one person said she had "eyes like onions." Even when you know they're there, it's hard to spot these tiny animals. We made repeated dives on the same fan, and eventually found four seahorses. Nikon F4, 105mm f/2.8 AF Micro-Nikkor, TC-14 converter, 14mm tube, 27.5 mm tube, Aquatica Housing, 2 Ikelite 200 strobes, f/32, Kodak Royal Gold 100. |
