Anthony Holley

Anthony Holley is now retired from a series of underwater scientific and photographic expeditions in the 1990s to the South China Sea (including looking for wrecks around the Vietnamese Spratley Islands) and the Java Sea.

Anthony hired a Nikonos III on his ninth dive in Malta in 1984, taking some good octopus shots, which he took many years to improve. Having been a keen land photographer, his first very basic Hanimex film camera was quickly superseded by a Nikonos V. He was introduced to nudibranchs on his first dive with 1:1 extension tubes back in Malta, not really being able to see the critter that the dive guide was frantically pointing out. It was only on studying the slide that he saw the baby nudibranch next to a larger one.

The Nikonos V, along with a 15 mm and other lenses, a Nikonos III, and land camera gear, were all lost when Anthony was shipwrecked in the South China Sea in 1994. The insurance claim paid for the latest Nikon F90 camera and lenses, SB25 strobe and Subal housings and ports, which he had been hankering after for a while. The 105 mm macro lens was a delight to use for varying sizes of nudibranchs and the later addition of a custom made ring flash made it even easier.

Nudibranch hunting took off in 2002 at Mantanani Island, off NW Sabah, Borneo, with Gilly Elliott, a friend from the Sipadan days and the then manager of the resort, who was doing nudibranch research in the area. A 3 MP Ricoh Caplio RR30 digital camera in a Sea & Sea housing was used alongside the film camera to aid ID and cataloguing after the dives. Trips including British Columbia, Lembeh and Komodo, Bonaire, Thailand and the Red Sea extended his portfolio.

Fully converting to digital in 2006 with a Nikon D200, again in a Subal housing, Anthony lives and dives in the UK, now making do with a couple of tropical dive trips a year, often to some little island in his favourite Indonesia.

Anthony’s website at www.holleyuwphoto.com is dedicated to nudibranchs, with over 1,200 pictures of 300 species.