MACRO LIFE GALLERY

Here you'll find some of the smallest creatures living underwater! Many of these animals are almost impossible to notice without special equipment, unless you're looking for them on purpose.

Triplefin on the coral

Triplefins are shy but very common creatures who live in Asia mostly.

A Slice Of Spice

Change of perspective does marvels to the way corals look.

Pipefish on the Leather Coral

Network Pipefish is a very common animal on the Red Sea reefs. Relative to seahorses they are more swift and elegant though.

Portrait

Anemonefish or clownfish has become extremely popular with the cartoon "Finding Nemo". Despite their cute colors, clownfishes can be quite aggressive, and attack even divers.

Baby boxfish

Baby boxfish keeps it's bright yellow color just for short time in it's life: yellow color will change with time to blue and green.

Heart

Spanish Dancer is probably one of the most beautiful and well-known nudibranches in the world. As it's name implies, when swimming it looks just like moving red skirts of flamenco dancers.

At Lunch

Bluespotted stingrays are searching for food sensing low electromagnetic impulses with those tiny black holes in their skin - ampullae of Lorenzini.

At the Edge

Some animals underwater are so small we can hardly see them, like this Costasiella sp. nudibranch, which is just about 5 mm.

Pink Lantern

The most beautiful nudibranch I've ever seen - Doto sp., Bali.

Mouthful of babies

This photo was taken in Secret Bay – shallow sandy dive site at the northwestern part of Bali, well famous with its weird and rare creatures. And although Banggai cardinalfish cannot be considered a rare or unusual species in Asia, it attracted my attention. I was well aware that this species is a mouth-breeder, which means the eggs remain in the mouth of the fish until juveniles leave the eggs. But as I was watching this school Banngai cardinals hiding in the group of sea urchins, I've realized that something is going in the one's mouth, but I couldn't figure out, what exactly that was. So, I've decided to take a few photos 'just in case'. To do that all I needed is a sharp eye to catch focus and patience to wait till the fish turns to me with it's mouth full open, while all other fishes are out of the way. When I checked the photo later at the full-screen, I was really surprised to see the juveniles hiding in the mouth of the fish.

Thorny

Sea cucumbers sometimes look just like nudibranches, and are of the same size.

Creative Commons License These materials were created by and belong to underwater photographer Natalia Pryanishnikova. They can be used for non-commercial purposes only, with credits to photographer Natalia Pryanishnikova and web-site www.divewonders.com. These materials are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Should you be interested in commercial use of any photo, please, do not hesitate to contact me.