Cuttlefish Predation

by Jeff de Guzman

The Idea

My favorite watering hole in Anilao Batangas Philippines (Club Ocellaris Resort), usually produces tons of critter photo opportunities. We had sightings of Ambon Scropion fish, Flamboyant cuttlefish, Seahorses, Saw Blade Shrimps, several types of Frogfish species including the illusive hairy frogfish, wonderpus, mimic octopus and many more. In other words, it was a total lollapalooza of who’s who on the critter wishlist.

We had seen several hairy frogfish at Maiinit, one of the most famous muck diving sites in Anilao Batangas. It is not very often to see hairy frogfishes, so we took several opportunities to go back and take lots of photos of them.

As we were searching for the hairy frogfish, I heard my dive guide Peri Paleracio start to bang his rattle erratically. When I turned towards him, he gave me the hand signal to come over pronto! Peri is a very cool operator and he only gets excited when there is something that he deems “very special”. I took off like a rocket to get to him. But it wasn't a hairy frogfish that he found. He points to a tiny cuttlefish (the size of a chestnut). I thought to myself, "What?! You called me for this! No way!" I start to shake my head side to side. He then points again with more fervor and gestures to me the hand signal for predation. I gave it a second glance ,and low and behold, the tiny guy had captured an even tinier shrimp in its tentacles.

Title: "ita daki mas!" - means "I'm ready to eat!"

The Shot

Based on the size of the subjects, I knew that I needed to slap on my +10 Reefnet Subsee Adapter over my Nikkor 105mm VR lens to get a full frame shot without having to crop later on. I had to act quickly; the cuttlefish wasn’t going to wait around to finish his shrimp sashimi. I quickly adjusted my camera settings, strobe position and power. This took 15 to 20 seconds, tops. The shrimp was now half way into the cuttlefish, I fired several test shots and checked the histogram and exposure, readjusted my aperture and strobe power settings. Now, I was ready! I hovered inches over the muck to get an eye to eye view with the shrimp and cuttlefish, careful not to stir up the silt around me. The cuttlefish now decides to start swimming off. I follow him. He wasn’t going to make this easy.  One of the biggest problems about shooting with a +10 diopter is the extreme narrow depth of field, so now I was faced with a dilemma. If I focused on the eye of the cuttlefish, the eyes of the shrimp would be out of focus, and If I focused on the shrimp’s eyes, the cuttlefish eye would be out of focus. The cardinal rule of taking critter portraits is “the eye has to always be in focus above all else.”  Time was running out! The shrimp was now 2/3 into the cuttlefish.  I decided to focus on the eyes of the shrimp, to illustrate the gravity and despair of the tiny shrimp as he is being devoured ALIVE.