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The first shot in the series that would eventually lead to “King of the Hill”: The crab wasn’t in an ideal spot yet and the anemone was tucked too far down into the tube to be aesthetically pleasing. Patience and perseverence were eventually rewarded!
 

In September 2025, my wife and I picked up life and moved across the world. Unlike past times, this move was a little different. First, we closed my art gallery in Florida and the rest of the underwater photography business, and handed the reins over to a new gallery owner and business partner in a move that, I like to say, makes me now 98% retired. Second, this move might just be permanent. Of paramount importance to me was freeing up my time to dive the way I want to dive, and shoot for me, rather than for the print. After exhaustive research and visiting several different parts of the world in search of the spot that would tick the most marks off our wish lists, we settled on the Tulamben and Amed region of Bali. Like any trip, whether for a week, or for the rest of our lives, cameras were assembled and we were underwater within 12 hours of touchdown!

When I say that I wanted to free myself to dive and shoot as I like, I sought out a place where shore diving was as prevalent, if not more prevalent, than boat diving. This allows me to go in at dawn or dusk or 3am, allows me to stay as long as I want, and allows me to dive without a group or a guide constantly nagging me (“Are you okay?”, “How much air do you have?”, etc.) I want to continue observing a bulldozer shrimp and goby pair without taking a single photo for 90 minutes if I want to, because I can come back tomorrow if I want to! Ahh… yeah, retirement rules! And really, what I love most about this schedule is I’ll see something amazing, and I’ll just return to it over and over and over, sometimes with different lens setups or gear, and just work on my schedule until I get what I want.
 

Originally, I planned to shoot the crab with the Nauticam EMWL but I didn’t ever quite get what I was going for
 

One of my primary interests over my 30-plus years as a professional underwater photographer has been interspecies relationships and symbiosis. This applies to paper nautiluses riding jellyfish in blackwater diving, just as it does to lice living on the face of a whale. I’ve always felt that a relationship between two creatures is far more powerful than a great portrait of either species alone. After all, a photo is not just supposed to be aesthetically pleasing; it also needs to tell a story, and the more it can do so without a caption, the better.

As a result of this healthy obsession, I’ll usually cover 1/100th the distance of any other diver, and anyone who’s ever wanted to dive with me has never returned for a second dive! I’ll inspect every tunicate for a shrimp or a goby with eggs, every cucumber for imperator shrimp, every man-o-war for the man-o-war fish, every clownfish for a tongue louse. Even most paid guides get incredibly frustrated with my slower-than-a-nudibranch pace! Finding these hidden (and sometimes unexpected) relationships takes time—and results in far more disappointments than successes.
 

A flock of sexy shrimps often adorned the tube of my target tube anemone, and while they are cool critters, they were not the subject I was after
 

Having seen a harlequin swimming crab (Lissocarcinus laevis) up inside the tube of a different retracted tube anemone a few days before, I became obsessed with learning about visualizing how my shot would look if I could find the perfect scenario. I even sketched out my vision, as I often do (though if you saw it, you would know why I’m a photographer rather than a sketch artist!). In it, I drew the crab on the sand below the tube, because in my experience, that’s where they always were, scavenging detritus, often along with a few sexy shrimp waving their booties in the current. I had visualized the shot using my normal lens choice for all muck diving, the Nauticam EMWL with 160° objective lens, so in my mind, I was going to be about 5mm from the crab, focus point near the bottom, and aiming drastically upwards to get a blue background, and maybe even switching to a vertical orientation.

I had seen this exact tube anemone on multiple dives over the past months. Sometimes, it was tucked in; other times, it was partially or fully extended. It usually had a few sexy shrimp living on its base, but not always. Once it had an ugly decorator crab on it. But on this day, everything just seemed to line up: better-than-average visibility, minimal current, a great subject sheltered under its stinging umbrella that felt completely unafraid, and anemone arms that were at least partially extended.
 

An ugly—really ugly!—decorator crab sheltering on the same tube anemone
 

My vision was to use the EMWL with 160° objective lens from 5mm away, but on this day, I had planned on just macro with an Nauticam SMC-3. So I flipped the SMC-3 out of the way and set out to make the visualized composition by backing waaay up, perhaps two or three away—definitely further than I’d normally prefer!

To minimize backscatter, my first thought was to bring the strobes as far forward as possible, so as to not illuminate the water between the lens and the crab. And without diffusers, with the strobes up close to the crab, I was able to more precisely aim the flash just slightly below the crab, so as to not illuminate the entire anemone. This made for a very forward-heavy setup with lots of wobbly shake, so, wishing I had a tripod, I ended up bracing the camera housing against the fine sand. Tulamben shore diving is already notorious for fine sand clogging housings on the best of days, so doing this was just adding insult to injury.
 

A pretty harlequin swimming crab at the base of an interesting anemone. Not quite the vision I had in mind for the final image!
 

A different harlequin swimming crab on a different tube anemone, but not in an ideal position—one shot and I moved on
 

Yet another harlequin swimming crab in a tube anemone—snooted this time
 

But the crab was happy to oblige. Over the next 20 minutes or so, it barely moved a muscle, although it was awake and would occasionally groom an antenna. By the time I got everything in position, I realized the anemone was slowly expanding and bringing its arms into full glory. Five minutes in, after I had my settings right and had fired a few test shots, it was fully extended, and both the model and the photographer were finally ready to get to work. And yet, it’s amazing how fast I can bring a tank from a third down to almost nothing when I’m excited, and soon after, I was forced to leave for my safety stop. No problem: I live just up the road, so I’ll just return in a day or so, right?

Well, like I mentioned, that tube anemone lives a pretty dynamic life. When I returned after a few days, there was no harlequin swimming crab to be found. And in the many times I’ve been back, there have been new temporary residents, but none has been as pretty as that crab in the photo. Lesson learned: When it’s hot, drop everything and get back to it immediately, because Mother Nature does not wait for it to be convenient on our schedule! Still, there are plenty of tube anemones out there, each with their own cool color, from yellow, to red, to purple, and I look forward to many more years of shooting them in ways that I haven’t even thought of yet!
 

The final result, “King of the Hill,” was the Gold winner in the Traditional category of DPG Masters Underwater Imaging Competition 2025
 

To see more of Gug’s award-winning work, please give him a follow on Instagram and visit his website, www.gugunderwater.com.