A few years back I travelled to the South Pacific and journeyed around the Mamanuca and Yasawa islands off the coast of Fiji.  Naturally, my camera came along and I managed to get a few inspiring shots.

My first target was the gorgeous Oxymonacanthus longirostris.  I’d only ever seen O. halli in the Red Sea, so it was nice to compare the species.  I ended up having to snorkel to shoot this fish and didn’t have any power in my strobes so had to whack up the ISO, but managed a few half-decent images.

On the same day I wanted to try the difficult art of ‘under and over’ images, where a wide angle lens behind a large dome port can capture the scene below and above the water.  This worked well enough, but it works better when you have a more striking subject than a straight forward reefscape.  This one shows how much algae there is growing onto the reef though.

Amazing crinoids and softies

My visit was towards the end of a local bleaching event and some areas of reef around the islands were showing stress, but it was interesting to see how the corals were growing.

My first wild Lemonpeel