As it often happens, depending on the time of day — day or night, we can see completely different animals. We saw this bigfin reef squid during night diving in the Red Sea. They are curious, and in the dark they are very attracted to the light: squids come closer and begin to swim quite quickly back and forth near the light source. They are even caught (and this species is widely eaten by humans) often in this way, luring with the help of bright light.
In general, at that moment under water, I took it for a cuttlefish and until recently I thought so. During the dive, it was difficult to see it detailed, since it still swam at some distance and quite quickly, this also explains the small number and not ideal quality of photographs: I have little experience in photographing such fast objects in low light conditions underwater at night. However, I still like the result and I'm glad that I was able to get these photos :)
As for its resemblance to cuttlefish, this fact is even reflected in its Latin name Sepioteuthis Lessoniana, as well as the whole name of the genus to which it belongs: Sepioteuthis means "cuttlefish squid". This is due to the fact that, like cuttlefish, the entire mantle of these squids is bordered by a large oval fin, which is clearly visible in the photograph. This makes them look like cuttlefish, since most squids have a relatively small triangular fin at the very end of the body.
It's better to watch the photo in high resolution.
OLYMPUS E-M5 Mark II
Exposure time: 1/250 sec
Aperture: F 2.8
Sensitivity: ISO 800
Focal length: 60 mm
35 mm equivalent: 120 mm
You can also see my photos in my blog LJ and in my profile on NatGeo. You can read a short interview with me here.
Wow, this is amazing🤟
Thank you! The underwater world is always striking in its unusualness :)
Wow you got so much detail in that first picture. Thanks for also telling us about the squid!
In terms of focus and depth of field, the photos turned out to be not the best, but at least part of the body in the first photo and the eyes in the second I managed to get sharp enough to be interesting to watch at.
I often see amazing quality underwater photos of this kind, taken at night, when only the main object is lit, and there is darkness of the water around, and I dream of doing these too, but I need more, much more practice :)
Thank you for reading - I'm glad this story turned out to be interesting, because I was unexpectedly and curious to find out that this is not a cuttlefish.
Oh yes, that's really true :)