Banded Weed Fish / Photograph by Martin Wallis

On Saturday the 3rd of July, 2010, while everybody else was participating in the 1st annual underwater Olympics, held by Global Dive, I decided to sneak off and have a dive to make up for disappointing photographic results from the previous dive a week earlier.

The venue was Matheson Bay, Leigh. I hadn’t dived this site for a few months, so was keen to see what I could find.

I headed off from the shore to where there is a break in the rock wall that cuts across the bay, and slowly swam in a north easterly direction from there.

There was no current and the visibility was quite good for the area at about 6 metres. I had my 60mm macro lens on and was slowly searching all the rocks, nooks and crannies, and kelp for anything small.

Then, out of the corner of my eye I saw what at first I thought was an unusual looking piece of kelp.
Upon looking more closely, I discovered that it was a fish. It had its head pointing down and its mouth seemingly attached to a rock on the bottom and its upside-down body was just swaying about in the water in such a way that it looked like a piece of kelp, attached to the rock (see photo insert).

I assume this behavior was the fish attempting to camouflage itself.I fired off a number of shots which didn’t disturb the fish in the slightest.
It had no inclination to move at all.

I wasn’t particularly happy with any of the shots, so decided to spend a little more time with this fella.
I shooed it along a little and re-positioned myself for some better shots.

My settings for all of the photographs I took of this guy were ISO100, f8 at 1/60thsec with strobes set to ¼ power.
I probably spent another five minutes or so with this fish before continuing with the rest of this two hour dive.

My max depth on this dive was 5.5m, and I photographed this guy in between 4-5m.

more information on Martin Wallis Photography – Banded Weed Fish

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