Frogfish

I recently had the great privilege of spending a week in Puerto Vallarta diving with Dr. Alicia Hermosillo. Ali is absolutely the expert on the opisthobranchs (sea slugs) of Bahia de Banderas and personally discovered and described quite a few of the species found there. Watching her is amazing as she has an incredible ability to find tiny and well camouflaged critters. In 6 days of diving she found 64 different species of sea slugs for me to photograph. We also found some more accessible subjects. Her friend Natalia found this frogfish on the last dive of my trip.

I'm not 100% certain of the species but it might be the Sanguine Frogfish Antennatus sanguineus. Lighting was a bit of a challenge as it was sitting down in a bit of a crack in a rock with its left side shadowed by a ledge above it. In some ways it would be nice if the left eye had a bit more light on it but on the other hand maybe it's a bit more dramatic not being evenly lit.

The translucent bit between the eyes is a lure which the fish uses to attract prey. It looks very much like a small shrimp as the fish waves it back and forth.

Nikon D200, 105mm VR Micro, Subal Housing, 2x Sea and Sea YS350 strobes
ISO 100, f20, 1/250th strobes at full power.

Full gallery (heavy on the slugs) is here:
http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/v/travel/pvr/

And if you really like sea slugs there is a galley of all the slugs I photographed in a sub album here:
http://www.baue.org/images/galleries/v/travel/pvr/allslugs/