Macro underwater photography at Caño Island: The amazing giant world of the small creatures
Macro underwater photography at Caño Island is absolutely awesome. Macro means large in scale and is a term that is used in relation to tiny creatures. So, what is the reason for such a contradictory definition? Because of the fact that the photographers use macro lenses to allow them to take big, close up pictures of the minuscule.
The term ‘macro diving’ is now widely used in the greater diving community for dives that do not focus on the big stuff.
In Caño Island we have tons of macro life in the sandy area and in the volcanic formation, or even floating at mid water to the surface. Mostly of this macro creatures try to mimic the habitat where they live to avoid predators or waiting their preys.
In this great underwater paradise we can find different species of nudibranchs, seahorses, frogfishes, pipefishes, orangutan crabs, calapa crabs and tons of different shrimps like the harlequin, mantis, skeleton and other tiny ones.
This little guys are super important for the health of the reef since they help to keep the balance of this complex ecosystem. For example, nudibranches eat sponges avoiding with that an over population of sponges; the harlequin shrimp control the population of the sea star on the reef like for example the harmful crown-of-thorns star fish which kill the hard coral. On the other hand, another tiny crabs live in simbiosis with the coral, providing them protection in exchange for food.
Many of divers are always searching for the biggest fish in the reef while other divers prefer to be focus searching the smallest ones and guess… who have more fun? It’s hard to know, but from my view are the second ones, because they can spend more time in a single rock or sand patch and enjoy looking for and finding a lot of those almost invisible beautiful creatures.
How we can protect them? Super easy! Keep yourself away from the sea bottom, look where you kick and practice your buoyancy. If you have problems with that you can take the PADI Speciality Peak Performance Buoyancy course with us and raise awareness to other divers about their behave at the bottom. And remember, patience it’s the key to find this amazing macro sea creatures.
Por Jean Paul Arana,
PADI Instructor de CRAD