Robert's Ramblings

I always wondered why you had to travel North to find and catch the delicacy we grew up with, the Blue Swimmer Crab (Portunus armatus).

Living on the coast in South Australia you have to travel thousands of kilometers to the west or to the east before you can start following the coastline heading north. This is not the kind of north I refer to. Fifty kilometers north up into the Gulf of St Vincent is enough to come across blue swimmers in their hundreds.

All these years later I think I have discovered their secret, the Blue Swimmer Crab is a tropical species that has become locally trapped here in the relatively warm waters of our Spencer and St Vincent gulfs.

So next time you see these intimating crabs on a cold water South Australian dive just imagine you are in the tropics and try and convince yourself it's not so cold after all.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Blue Swimmer', 1/160s f/13 ISO320 15mm

The ocean is filled with monsters.

I remember when I could count my years on two hands spending holidays with extended family at a little coastal village called Port Parham.

A particular aspect of this shallow coastal location is being able to go out fishing way off the beach wearing nothing but shorts, a jumper and a sturdy pair of boots spending the entire time wading in up to chest-deep water.

After dark the adults would head out with dab nets and prongs and floating tubs of ice and beverages to fish for gar and blue swimmers often not returning until well after we had gone to bed. In the morning they would enthrall us with tales of inky black shapes swimming around them as they fished, of the monster they tried to spear which was like striking rock, and how they were thrown backwards in the wake of its escaping fury.

Every now and then a small fiddler ray was part of the catch, with accompanying stories of being harassed by its big brother as they fled back to shore.

So it is today that every time I see a Southern Fiddler Ray, (Trygonorrhina dumerilii) I am taken back to those carefree days. If there just happens to be an empty can of bourbon and cola left on the ocean floor I smirk as I imagine how the monsters got the fisherman.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Woodstock', 1/160s f/5.6 ISO160 15mm

There is always a school or two ... or three of Yellowtail Scad (Trachurus novaezelandiae) cruising in and around the pylons under the old Rapid Bay Jetty.

Not so common is to find them out on the adjacent seagrass beds. It must schoolies week for Yellowtail Scad.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Schoolies', 1/160s f/8 ISO160 15mm

What's pink and fluffy and tastes great?

The pink spongy mass might look like fairy-floss but that's where the similarity ends, unless of course you are a nudibranch.

This is the first time I have found this species of nudibranch, Ceratosoma brevicaudatum, eating this particular species of sponge. Perhaps that's where it gets its pink spots from!

In this image I have used an imaging style called 'close-focus wide-angle'. Unlike most CFWA images however I have chosen to shoot wide open giving an unusually narrow depth of field for this style.

CFWA is often used to portray a subject in its larger environment however by also using a wide aperture I have separated foreground and background and created a portrait feel.

So back to the nudibranch and its spongy pink lunch on a Rapid Bay jetty pylon, I'm fairly certain it tastes nothing like fairy-floss. Though to a nudibranch, maybe it does!


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Nudi Fairyfloss', 1/160s f/2.8 ISO160 15mm

Leafy Seadragons are beautiful creatures to gaze upon but not always easy to find.

As divers we swim around looking down at the sand, down at the seagrass, down at the sponges and sea-stars and other benthic critters.

This is not the best strategy for seeing a dragon where their intricate leafy body structure blends in with the yellow algae around which they live.

Instead you need to be very close to the bottom and look up towards the sun and just maybe in contemplating the sunshine you will separate a 'leafy' from the leafs.


Photo: Robert Rath, 'Contemplating the Sunshine', 1/320s f/9 ISO640 15mm