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A juvenile spectacled caiman blowing bubbles in a small stream in the Costa Rican jungle
 

For years, photographing crocodilians underwater has been a huge bucket list item for me. On a recent trip to the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, I decided the time to photograph these toothy reptiles in their element had come. There are two species of crocodilian in Costa Rica, and both occur in the Osa’s waterways: American crocodiles (Crocodylus acutus), which can sometimes exceed 15 feet in length, and their diminutive cousins, the spectacled caimans (Caiman crocodilus), which rarely exceed six feet in length. As much as I’d love to photograph the larger crocodilian species, starting small seemed prudent, so I set out with the goal of photographing caimans.

Spectacled caimans are common. The challenge lay in finding an accessible location where the water was clear, caimans were active, and I was unlikely to run into the larger crocodiles. I picked a clear, relatively shallow stream that ran through the rainforest. Since caimans are nocturnal, I returned after dark with a light. On the first night, I didn’t even bring my housing for shooting underwater—the purpose was to walk the river and scout locations. I wasn’t sure how far I would be walking, so I didn’t want to lug a heavy housing and strobes around. Using a headlamp, caiman are easy to find; their eyes reflect light extremely well. When you shine a light at a caiman's eye, it almost looks as if someone is shining a light back at you from the dark.

I was able to identify two portions of the stream that contained caimans: a single pool where a lone male caiman lounged, and a larger pool that contained three or four juveniles and an adult female caiman. By then it was late, and I had an early morning planned, so I noted the spots to return to the following night. However, the next evening a storm blew in. I had gone out to look at the stream only to find it running high and muddy. We were leaving the area the following morning, so just postponing until a different night was not an option. Instead, I napped, setting my alarm to go off every few hours. Finally, luck was on my side—after a few hours of napping, the rain stopped, and not long thereafter the stream turbidity cleared. I grabbed my gear and went sloshing off downstream to my pre-scouted sites.
 

A spectacled caiman rests in the shallows of a creek, waiting to ambush small fish or mammals
 

To my dismay, when I arrived at the first pool with the male caiman, there was no sign of life—perhaps the caiman was hunkered down somewhere or had taken the opportunity of increased flow in the stream to move on to a different area. Luckily, at the second pool, I could see the eye-shine of the juvenile caimans. The larger female that had been there previously was nowhere to be found. Crocodilians are devoted parents, and I wasn’t entirely sure whether the juveniles I was photographing were old enough to be independent of their mother yet, or if they might still benefit from her protection. Moreover, crocodilians can be a bit territorial, so while the caimans I was there to photograph were far too small to see me as a potential prey item, I did not feel entirely confident that my presence wouldn’t elicit a defensive or territorial reaction from the mother, who might still be nearby, possibly hidden somewhere in the pool.

I had my partner, Emma, stand behind me on shore to keep an eye on the water and warn me if the adult female appeared and looked unhappy—I wanted to be able to focus completely on photographing the caimans in front of me without having to look over my shoulder. I entered the water and slowly moved toward the caimans on the far side of the pool. I had been expecting the juvenile caimans to be skittish, swimming to the deepest portion of the pool and diving to the bottom to hide in the tangles of roots and masses of leaf litter.
 

A caiman’s-eye view of a small rainforest stream in Costa Rica
 

Instead, rather than fleeing to the depths, the caimans simply submerged themselves in place, making photographing them much easier than anticipated. I was using my Nikon D850 in a Nauticam housing with a mini-dome and a Nikon 8–15mm fisheye zoom lens to allow for close approaches, as well as Seacam strobes to provide light.

Of the two caimans, I most enjoyed photographing an individual that was sheltering in a section with a mat of floating sticks and vegetation on the surface, which partially blocked the light from my strobes and created a fun effect with dappled light. By shifting slightly, I was able to get a composition where the light fell across the caiman’s eye, highlighting it. Mom caiman never made her appearance and I had a relaxed shoot mostly consisting of waiting for the caimans to move—which they did relatively little. It was an easy entry into the world of underwater crocodilian photography, and happily, it netted me a win in the Freshwater category of Scuba Diving magazine’s 2024 “Through Your Lens” photo contest.
 

The image that won the Freshwater category of the 2024 “Through Your Lens” photo competition, organized by Scuba Diving magazine
 

To view more of Anton’s award-winning work, please give him a follow on his amazing Instagram page and visit his website, www.antonsorokin.com. Also, check out Anton’s fascinating DPG article on capturing some of the most toxic animals on Earth: “Amphibian Fun: Photographing Newts Underwater.”