Canon Elan IIe, tripod 380EX flash w/ bounce card Sigma 105 EX Macro Fuji Provia 100F Exposure unrecorded

The Emperor

I think it really began when I noticed that the water in the nearby sound was bioluminescent at times. Late one night when I had biked down to the river, the wind was chopping the water pretty roughly, and I noticed that waves breaking over the rocks on the shoreline would give off a very dim blue-green glow for a moment. Thrashing my hand about in the water would produce a cloud of color, which fascinated me. I started wondering how to capture this on film, since the effect was much dimmer than moonlight and lasted only a fraction of a second, far too insignificant to just snap a pic.

So I collected some water and brought it home to set up in an aquarium, wondering if I could get the same effect in controlled conditions and possibly set up a continued turbulence that would allow for a very long exposure. But when I couldn't reproduce the luminescence, I started experimenting with putting things in the tank, like seaweed and such, to create an 'environment', thinking that perhaps the bioluminescent organisms (called Dinoflagellates) might need certain conditions to display.

And with the seaweed came a few snails, hermits crabs, and some 'regular' crabs (I have no idea what their species are), among them this guy. I'm never one to pass on an opportunity, so I retained them in the tank as photographic subjects, and rather abruptly I had a mini ecosystem going.

At the time of this photo, my buddy here measured roughly 1.5 cm across his carapace, and was the largest of the crabs I had caught (remember, this were simply riders on the seaweed I was originally after). In the several months following, he had grown to many times that size, measuring more than 4 cm across the carapace, and he ruled the tank for a while until I released him for being too big. I have a small plastic rod that I use to rearrange things in the tank without having to reach in there, and on occasion we would engage in a tug-o-war since he would aggressively attack the rod when the mood struck him.

Meanwhile, I have yet to capture the bioluminescence on film, but I'm still trying.