Juvenile Fish

  • By Frank Melvin
  • •
  • 20 Oct, 2018
This year perhaps with the warm weather there seems to have been a boom in juvenille saithe and pollock. On several dives over the summer there have been large shoals of these young fish in the shallows. This was shot within the

Loch Sunart to the Sound of Jura MPA and may also be taken as a sign of recovery within these areas, similar concentrations were observed within the Wester Ross MPA. On this occasion the the fish were attracted by a yachts anchor chain stirring up the bottom.

Skeleton Shrimp

By Frank Melvin • March 26, 2019

Skeleton shrimp (Pseudoprotella phasma) is a type of crustacean and amphipod, which anchors itself and catches passing food or picks up particles that adhere to its body or that of its host.

For this footage it was a return visit to a site in Loch Fyne where I'd noticed some skeleton shrimp on hydroids around the 10m mark. I came back with the macro setup and three point lighting, spot and fill on the camera with a tripod mounted back/side light. For this sequence I opted for the side light as the back light made the shrimp too translucent. The camera was hand held mostly resting on the ground to give a low angle of view. There was a reasonable current running causing the hydroid to waft in and out of focus. Keeping the camera depth of field over the subject was tricky. Big sensor cameras give a nice look but the narrow depth of field can be challenging at times. The aperture was reduced as much as possible to give a black background without cranking the gain up. More light would have been nice but it's always a compromise between depth of field and cooking your subject.