This Santa Claus Pygmy Seahorse is a special color morph of the Hippocampus Denise Pygmy found in Indonesia, specifically Raja Ampat — and one of the smallest of all sea horse species. It is about the size of a thumbtack, and as you imagine can be very hard to find, not just because of their size but also the way they blend in to the sea fan they live on. They start out black and once they find a sea fan they change color to blend into that fan and live there for the rest of their life.
After 52 hours and 3 flights later we landed in Raja Ampat and hopped on a boat to start looking for seahorses and other sea life unique to the coral triangle. Living on a boat, making 4 dives a day and spending more than 5 hours underwater every day, sometimes in very demanding conditions. On one of our night dives about 60 feet below the surface we were on the hunt for these tiny creatures, we would swim along the reef only able to see what we shined our lights on looking closely at sea fans that fit the profile for our pygmy seahorse, we were getting low on air, below a 1000 psi, my dive buddy saw one last fan he wanted us to check. So we swam over to it and it looked good, then started slowly waving our hand next to the fan looking for signs of life and there he was… a Santa Claus Pygmy Seahorse! I adjusted my lights and framed up a couple of shots, I didn’t have time to review them and see if they were any good because we had to surface, where the tender was waiting to take us back the the boat.
Equipment & Settings: Nikon D810 in a Ikelite housing with 2 Sea & Sea strobes a Sigma 105mm macro at f22, iso 400 at 1/125th sec.