Bad Hair Day
Orangutan crab anemone close · Size 3 cm
Three centimetres across, and in need of a haircut.
The orangutan crab is named for its coat: a mat of fine red-brown hairs that traps silt and debris until the animal looks like a piece of the reef that has learned to walk. It lives among the tentacles of anemones and bubble corals, where the fur is camouflage and, possibly, a larder.
On this dive the current was running, and the hair was in its eyes. The tentacles around it are the anemone's, lit soft and pale; the crab is picked out with a single strobe fitted with a light-shaping device, angled steeply so that the beam grazes the fur and lights the hairs rather than the body behind them. Without the snoot the animal disappears into its own coat. With it, you can count the strands.
An orangutan crab close in among the tentacles of a bubble-tip anemone, its orange hair backlit, Bangka.
$300Sizes belowChoose a size
Prices in US dollars; shipping is a flat $25 to Canada and the United States. Printed to order and shipped from Canada. Framing is not offered: shipping glass across a border is a bad idea for everyone.
Eight lines from the dive
Photographed in Bangka Archipelago
Postage is by the tube, not the sheet
Postage is the largest single cost in a print order, and it is charged by the tube. A second print travels in the same one.
