People are in awe at what's out there, I think.
And I think they're also in awe at how small it is.
Everything is, the vast majority is an inch or smaller, and so it's eye-opening, the detail and the the fins these thing have, and the filaments and everything, and the gorgeous colors.
Some of them have just stunning colors and you wonder why.
There's a sea butterfly that has appendages that look like leaves.
Absolutely like leaves.
So things like that I think are fascinating, and you get people thinking about stuff like that.
And that plus the pretty pictures helps.
My name is Linda Ianello.
I'm an underwater photographer.
I've been diving for over 30 years, taking pictures.
I am also the co-author of "Blackwater Creatures," which is a book devoted to the subjects found on blackwater dives in southeast Florida.
Myself and Susan Mears have developed this book for educational purposes so people doing these dives will understand and learn about what they're seeing.
I usually say it's the most challenging underwater photography there is.
Because of that, you can't stay in one position.
Your subject is constantly moving.
They don't wanna be seen.
So you come along with these big lights shining on them, and they may book to the surface or book to the bottom, and they very seldom freeze.
So, you're chasing the subject, and basically what I end up doing is shooting probably 20 or 30 shots until I lose it.
Every one of these has eyes.
And it took me a while to realize that, oh, there's eyes, and if you're shooting something with eyes you should get the eyes in focus.
Well, I swear these little guys know, and you shine your lights on them and they turn their back.
And they're very small.
The shell portion, the center portion, is gonna be like the size of your little fingernail.
So it's really hard to know if you're shooting the eyes or the butt.
So this is another example where you take a whole bunch of shots and try for the eyes and try to get them in focus and do your best.
[speaker] All right, Linda's got her camera, she's ready, she's going.
Linda is in.
These creatures are small.
They're one inch or less.
A lot of them are transparent, so they need a lot of light to take the pictures, and to focus.
They're hard to focus.
So I'm hunting with those lights and using them to focus.
I just focus on the stuff that's in front of me, 'cause I shoot everything.
I'm shooting all of the little creatures I can find.
It's not like muck diving where the subject's gonna sit there and let you take your pictures.
These subjects are moving constantly.
It's gorgeous.
They're just gorgeous.
So there is a definitely a degree of art in these subjects.
The scientists have been a tremendous help, because we started out, we didn't know anything about these, and there were no books on blackwater subjects, except for a few scientific ones were drawings, and it's very hard to correlate a drawing to a live animal.
Couple of the fish scientists started telling us what they were, and three or four of them will start discussions and then eventually someone would say, okay, this is a species.
So it evolved with tremendous help from the scientists.
And then once we got a couple years into it, started communicating directly with scientists, and I provide images for scientific papers.
Anybody that wants any of my images for papers or publications, whatever.
So we built up this rapport with fish scientists and a lot of gelatinous zooplankton people.
So we've got pretty good IDs on those kinds of things.
My whole goal is to help science.
The other thing is make people aware of this environment, because we don't know what's there, and it all has a purpose.
From the very beginning I wanted to know what I was shooting, and I started keeping pretty good records of everything that the scientists were telling us so that I would know, looking back, what that was and who said it, and et cetera.
When we were doing these dives about a year or two in, people were coming and doing the dives, and they were excited, but they get back on the boat, and they say, "I don't know what any of it was.
"I saw all these things but I don't know what it was."
And so we started thinking, okay, we're starting to build up enough images and enough information that we could put together a book that would help.
And specifically for our area, it's strictly things found here.
And I would write up little information about things.
So I didn't want just pictures.
I wanted information and education.
So the more attention I paid to these, I started to build up this resource.
And so we thought, okay, we can do this, we can do this.
And it's worked out.
I think it's helped a lot of people, new people, and it's helped people maintain their interest, that, yes, they can learn about these subjects.
And it's fun on the boat, too, now, that people come up from a dive and I talk to them and I say, "What did you see?
"This is a test, what did you see?"
And we'd go get the book and figure it out.
So it's been very challenging, but it's been productive, and I think hopefully it served a purpose.