Tiny Monsters

A larval cusk-eel, genus Brotulotaenia. Credit...Steven Kovacs

There be monsters in the deep, especially at night but these are young and tiny yet truly wondrous to behold.

An inch-long larval lionfish off the coast of Palm Beach, Fla. “What’s really fascinating is when you send the scientists something and they have no idea what it is,” said Steven Kovacs, a local dentist and blackwater photographer. Credit...Steven Kovacs

For most scuba divers, few places underwater match the visual thrill of a kaleidoscopic coral reef teeming with colorful fish. For Jeff Milisen, a marine biologist and photographer in Kona, Hawaii, there is no better place to dive than an open stretch of deep ocean. At night.

“There’s a whole lot of nothing,” he said. “There’s no bottom, no walls, just this space that goes to infinity. And one thing you realize is there are a lot of sea monsters there, but they’re tiny.”

Read on if you dare. :)

 

A bony-eared assfish (Acanthonus armatus). Credit...Steven Kovacs