Pocket

A seahorse standing on the bottom of the Lembeh Strait, in water the colour of tea.

The thorny seahorse is a little longer than a finger, armoured in points, and given to standing upright on rubble with its tail hooked round anything it can find. It does not swim so much as drift and hold. The strait's visibility that day was ten metres and the bottom was dark; the animal was lit with a snoot that lit nothing else.

This is the one frame on this site not made with the big camera. It was taken on a compact, a pocket camera in a small housing with a close-up lens clipped on the front, on a dive where the serious kit had stayed on the boat. The seahorse did not know the difference. The picture does not show it.