The Teeny Tiny

Today, I went small. 

Because it was raining for a good part of the day, I decided to work on honing my photography skills. Over the past year, I have learned to take highly detailed photographs of tiny organisms that wash up onto the beaches, here. For example, I have photographed the remains of bryozoans: tiny, colonial organisms that thrive in the waters, here. Their name means: moss animal, which I like. Up until today, I had only photographed the remains of dead colonies. Here is an example. This photo shows an invasive species of bryozoan, commonly called 'coffin box bryozoans'. The specimen is about the width of a dime.

Today, I tried my hand at photographing living bryozoans. I had the opportunity because they attach themselves to aquarium glass. Here is a picture of my very fancy set-up. The albino lobster was in an advisory role. By the way, this is a research station, not an ordinary aquarium. All of the creatures in the aquaria are released in October each year.

My camera is a Sony a7iii and the lens is a Sony macro G OSS (90 mm)

 I am working on getting even clearer photos, but this wasn't bad for a first try:

Each of the cells you see is an individual bryozoan zooid about 0.5mm long. They catch plankton with their fans. It's fun to watch them through the camera. There's a surprising amount of movement within the colony.

Here is a tiny colony just starting out. It will grow significantly. It looked like a tiny dot on the glass. 

I also photographed some spirorbis (calcareous tube worms). Again, I had only ever photographed dead ones like those on this specimen (this entire specimen is only 2 cm long--each tube worm is the size of the head of a pin):

Here is a living spirorbis I photographed today. Again, it is no larger than the head of a pin:

It was so much fun watching these tiny organisms wave their fans around to catch plankton that I made a very low-budget film for all to enjoy. This is simply filmed with my camera video function as the quality will attest to. I sped it up 8X for your viewing pleasure. You can find the video at this link.