The Seahorses of Dominica

Sites such as La Beam, Coral Gardens, Scotts Head and Champagne Reef offered very different experiences. Each had its own character, its own depth profile, its own community of animals.

Scotts Head, at the southern tip of the island, was one of the most dramatic. The underwater wall there dropped away steeply, and at depth the reef gave way to open blue water. Giant barrel sponges clung to the wall, gorgonian sea fans spread across the current, and the coral communities were among the most varied I encountered anywhere in the Caribbean.

At Champagne Reef, the volcanic activity added another dimension. Gas bubbles rose through the water, creating the extraordinary sensation of swimming through a natural underwater jacuzzi. The warmth, the movement of the water and the visual spectacle made it unlike any other dive site I have experienced.

But the most memorable encounters were rarely the most dramatic. A frogfish tucked into the background, almost invisible against the sponge it had chosen as its resting place. A coral shrimp moving deliberately through the branches of its shelter. A tiny invertebrate almost invisible against the substrate.

And, if I was lucky, a seahorse.

When I found a seahorse, I would approach slowly, settle into neutral buoyancy and try to position myself without disturbing the animal or the surrounding habitat. This sounds straightforward. In practice, it requires a level of body control and patience that takes time to develop.

Underwater photography requires patience at the best of times, but photographing a seahorse demands something more: control, restraint and an appreciation that the subject is not there for the photograph.

The photograph is a privilege of the encounter.

I never moved an animal to improve a composition. I never touched the reef or the surrounding habitat to clear a frame. If the photograph required me to disturb the animal, the photograph was not worth taking.

This is not simply an ethical position. It is also, in my experience, the only approach that produces photographs worth keeping. An animal that has been disturbed does not behave naturally. A seahorse that has been moved from its chosen anchor point is not the same animal in the same moment.

Many seahorse species face conservation pressures, including habitat degradation, incidental capture and exploitation in the international trade in dried seahorses.

I encountered dried seahorses during work and travel in the Philippines and elsewhere in Asia — in traditional medicine markets, sold alongside other marine animals. The scale of the trade was striking. These were not occasional curiosities. They were commodities, sold in quantity, with little apparent awareness of or concern for the living animal behind the product.

I am not in a position to quantify the impact of that trade on wild populations. But I can say that seeing a dried seahorse in a market, having spent time watching living seahorses in the reef, changes the way you think about the connection between what is sold and what is lost.

It is one reason that photographs of living marine animals matter to me. They can help people see an animal not as a specimen, a product or an abstract conservation statistic, but as a living part of an ecosystem.

The diving, fieldwork, photography, conservation and observations from those years eventually contributed to Observations on Dominica, the photographic book I created in 2005. The book brought together several aspects of the island: its underwater environments, sea turtles, whales and dolphins, landscapes, history and people.

The underwater photography period began in 2003. The main period covered by this story — the diving, the seahorse encounters, the reef exploration — runs from 2003 to 2005. The book was created and published in 2005.

Looking back, it is easy to remember the dramatic encounters: the large animals, the deep walls, the volcanic vents and the moments that made a dive feel like an expedition.

But the seahorses remain among the encounters I remember most fondly.