Too Small To See (Almost)

Toward the end of a dive last week, I spent a few minutes watching some kind of ornate worm pulsing around in the water column.  I didn't bother shooting it -- even though the viz was good, there was enough sand in the water that any images taken with nothing but water in the background would have looked like they'd been shot in a blizzard. 

At some point, though, the worm unexpectedly set down on a piece of kelp, and just like that, a non-photo op turned into a minor photo op.  I spent the next minute or so shooting it while it worked its body into a spiral, extended its arms out in one direction, pulled them back, then extended them in another.  I liked the shapes it was making but, in fact, had no idea what I was shooting.  I didn't even know that I didn't know what I was shooting.

When I looked at the shots later on, I saw that when the worm settled down, it had very purposefully reached out and grabbed a tiny ball of muck.  It immediately released the muck ball, then reached out in the opposite direction and grabbed a minute piece of seaweed covered with some type of creature ... an entoproct, endoproct, exoproct ... one of those procts just beyond my grasp of marine biology. 

Over the course of the last three photos I took, the worm worked the creature around in its arms, pulled it toward and then finally under itself.  It was at this point that I happily swam off, having no idea what was happening in front of me. 

If only I had taken one more shot, who knows what would have happened next.  The worm might have jammed it into its mouth like John Belushi downing a burger.  It might have twirled the seaweed around in its arms, eating it like an ear of corn.  Or the proct (?) might have somehow defended itself, causing the worm to spit it out like a bad egg. 

Looking at shots like these, it's impossible not to wonder how many times life and death struggles have happened right under my nose without even being noticed, because they just happened on too small a scale.  My guess is a lot.  And since my eyes aren't all that bad, my other guess is that I'm not alone here. 

There aren't a lot of solutions to the problem, though, so I guess it's not worth driving yourself crazy over (I'm going to shoot every single thing I see, no matter what, just in case!).  I guess the best option is to just pay more attention to opportunities when they come up and be happy when we do end up shooting something good that we didn't know we were shooting.