Basket Star on Gorgonian

What a marvelous creature! Thanks for sharing Clinton, never seen anything like this. 120 ft deep, yikes that's a long way down!

What an interesting animal! The curls on the basket star are really cool and I like the way that you have framed the image with the gorgonian.
Nice one...

Welcome to NPN

I would be scared to take me 120 feet under, let alone my camera equipment! Great shot of an interesting specimen. Most of us will never see such a subject in the environs and I bet I speak for others when I say it would be nice to know a little more about the biology and situation. Are the tight coils the normal status or is that a reaction to you? You have good detail and I find it pleasing and surprising that you were able to get that nice color at that depth without a "flashed out" look.

Hi Clinton and welcome to NPN What an incredibly unique image to start off with. We do not see many underwater images in the Fauna Gallery and as far as I can remember a Basket Star is a first! Is underwater photography your speciality? This image is not only unique it is also aesthetically very pleasing with all those curled tentacles and the way the gorgonian is complementing the main subject. Very well done, hope to see more of your images here.

Thanks for the good words. Underwater is definitely my specialty and I'll be posting more. I shoot topside as well but very few of those images rate with what's on this site so I'm going to be studying what the rest of you are doing before posting too many of those.

A few more details.

ISO 100, f11, 1/250th, Strobes at half power.

The dark background comes from shooting low so there isn't anything illuminated by the strobes behind the subject. At this depth with this exposure you're not capturing any natural light.

Basket stars are quite uncommon at diveable depths in California though you'll see lots of them in relatively shallow water up in British Columbia and Alaska. Small ones like this tend to climb up on gorgonian corals to get up of of the bottom. They feed by extending their arms into the water column and tend to be unfolded at night or when it's really dark. Big ones with all their arms unfolded look like satellite dishes. This juvenile is only about 4" across. Big ones can be several feet. There are similar species in the tropics.

Underwater critters fascinate me, mostly because we don't see them as often as we do land critters. This is very well done - great comp, colors and excellent work on getting the light to appear so natural. I love all the details in those curled arms. I look forward to seeing more of your underwater shots. BTW, welcome to NPN

Outstanding, just outstanding!

Mark Capurso

Hi Clinton,

Welcome to NPN and to the Fauna Gallery in particular. I really hope this is on the first of many image posts (and comments!) you contribute.

Like the others have said - this is a really unique and interesting first post. Love the "curls"! Thanks also for adding more technical and biological detail - it's always nice to know more about both of these when we're looking at an image.

Besides the uniqueness of the subject, I really like the simple but quite harmonious colour scheme and how it's set off against the inky black unknown in the background.

Thanks for sharing this and hope to see many more images from you in the future...

Brad

This is an amazing creature Clinton!
Can you give us some information on it's size?
Congrats on an excellent capture

Really like the details and the colors. Never have seen one of these.