A lumpsucker on the Peerievoe
The nudibranch buoyancy test
The nudibranch featured on this page was photographed on one of his local shore dives; the resulting image is the reward of advanced buoyancy skills and taking advantage of calm weather.“ You have to pick your days for your subjects, and surge is obviously terrible for small creatures,” Billy says.“ It was a lovely calm day at my favourite site and I knew where the nudibranchs would be. It was one of those shots that felt like a lot of hard work finally paying off.”
Such inshore habitats yield surprises when dived regularly, including rare encounters with lumpsuckers, deep water fish that come into the shallows during late winter / early spring to lay eggs. Billy created this kelpy, atmospheric photo not far from his home on the south side of Shetland, at a site called the Peerie Voe. Here, divers simply walk into the water off a sandy beach entry point.“ Sightings are quite rare, but in 2021 I found a lot of them down on the Peerie Voe,” Billy says.“ It was a bumper year for lumpsuckers. This one was guarding eggs... I still had to keep my distance but he wasn’ t going to disappear. It gave me an opportunity to get a few shots of him hiding in the kelp. I was so chuffed when I came out, because you don’ t see them often; they are such cool subjects.”
Billy often finds subjects in the swaying kelp, including a beautiful golden scorpionfish that allowed him to approach closely.“ Sea scorpions are a really great
While visiting divers rely on liveaboards and focus mainly on shipwrecks, those who live on Shetland have a different perspective. Take, for instance, up-and-coming photographer Billy Arthur, 41, a BSAC Sports Diver who works as a technician on the wind farms. Billy learned to dive while travelling in Australia, taking up snorkelling on his return to Shetland“ just to get in the water”. What he discovered, almost literally in his own back yard, has transformed the way he sees the world.
Having started taking photographs with a point-and-shoot camera in a plastic bag housing [ yes, they are a thing, a bit like a dry bag with a window ], he was driven by the challenge of photographing some of the creatures close to shore. Nudibranchs he found especially difficult to photograph, requiring fast cameras, lights and specialist lenses. As with many underwater photographers before him, Billy went through various camera upgrades as he set about trying to capture quality images of elusive sea creatures.
Carronella pellucida nudibranch, a serious test of the photographer’ s buoyancy
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