Category: Photo of the Week

  • Photo of the Week: Painted Greenling (and a Bonus Hermissenda Nudibranch)

    Photo of the Week: Painted Greenling (and a Bonus Hermissenda Nudibranch)

    Those who have been following this blog for any length of time will recall that finding tiny surprise creatures in a photo is one of my favorite things in the whole world.

  • Photo of the Week: Atlantis Submarine

    Photo of the Week: Atlantis Submarine

    Ever feel like you’re being watched? Of course you have; we all have. Ever hear a strange whirring sound underwater, and think, “Oh, I’m just being watched by about 50 kids in a tourist submarine?” No? Me neither.

  • Photo of the Week: Cyclosalpa affinis

    Photo of the Week: Cyclosalpa affinis

    DID YOU KNOW that the salp, while it looks like a jellyfish, is actually a tunicate, a member of the phylum Chordata, and is more closely related to vertebrates than it is to jellies?

  • No Wolf Eel Left Behind

    No Wolf Eel Left Behind

    On Saturday, I got up at the ungodly hour of 4-something-a.m. and made the pilgrimage up to Long Beach to catch a charter out to dive the UB-88 submarine wreck. Sometimes, I think I’m doing “leisure” wrong.

  • Red-Eye Medusa Jellyfish

    Red-Eye Medusa Jellyfish

    Finding a Red-Eye Medusa Jellyfish (Polyorchis pencillatus) on the El Rey wreck in San Diego, California.

  • Photo of the Week: Black Sea Nettle Jellyfish on the USS Hogan Wreck

    Photo of the Week: Black Sea Nettle Jellyfish on the USS Hogan Wreck

    Regular readers are by now aware of my obsession with the black sea nettle jellyfish. I worked a dive charter a few weeks ago and spotted my first black sea nettle of the summer from the confines of the boat. It was all over–from that moment on, I lived and breathed black sea nettles. (Seriously:…

  • Dreamy Nudibranch

    Dreamy Nudibranch

    The kelp forest can be a pretty dreamy place. The light coming through the kelp canopy has an ethereal beauty, and the gentle sway of the kelp stalks in light surge could rock you to sleep. I wanted to capture that surreal, unearthly quality in this week’s nudibranch photos.

  • Photo of the Week: A Wolf Eel on the USS Hogan Wreck

    Photo of the Week: A Wolf Eel on the USS Hogan Wreck

    The USS Hogan wreck is pretty much the perfect San Diego dive site–the conditions are usually excellent, the sea life is abundant, and the depth and distance from port are such that the site has an air of exclusivity to it. It’s also so rife with wolf eels that it almost–note I said almost–renders them…

  • Photo of the Week: The Hitchhiker

    Photo of the Week: The Hitchhiker

    If I’d had the ocular fortitude to spot the microscopic amphipod hitchhiking a ride on this nudibranch’s back, I would have spent all damn day shooting those two little guys. However, I never even saw it until I was home, my gear was rinsed and drying, and I was on the computer, heavily cropping this…