Chomp

An eagle ray digging for lunch off Klein Bonaire, in the autumn of 2009.

Eagle rays feed by finding what is buried. The ray glides over sand, senses something beneath it, and drives its snout in, jaws working, a cloud of sand rising around its head. The spotted back, white on near-black, every animal's pattern its own, stays visible above the cloud while the business happens underneath.

They are wary, and they do not stop for photographers. This one was so busy it did not notice one arrive. Two strobes, wide and pulled back, lit the sand cloud without blowing it out, and the frame was taken from low and to the side so the plume reads as a plume rather than a smear. A second later it lifted off and went, and the sand settled as if nothing had happened.