(or): Really, Arthur… more fish… how long are you going to swim around looking at fish, and are we really going to have to look at every picture of a fish you took?

Hey, I am trying to mix it up a little. This time I am going to give you some actual pointers about how to get good pictures… because those fish do not cooperate at all, let me tell you…

You are swimming around, just sort of floating face-down on the surface, and you spot a fish. Hey, you think to yourself, that is a nice looking fish. I don’t have a picture of one of those yet… so you snap your first picture. Amateur mistake. You are still too far away. And you are looking at them from above, which is the most boring view of a fish.

You take a deep breath and start diving down… one fish turns on its side. That is a good angle, but you are still too far away.

You are now close to the fish, but of course, being the rascal that it is, it tries to swim away, so you get another lame top-down view. Go ahead… chase it… they love it when you do that…

And then there is that magic moment when the fish turns… still trying to get away from the creepy intruder in its underwater realm… and you get a side view… or close to it… that will let you compare it to the pictures on your dive card… once you are back home and have put the pictures on your computer so you can zoom in on them… and you can correctly identify the fish in question… unless it looks like 5 other kinds of fish, or the colors don’t really match up with the pictures of fish you are comparing it to, or maybe the colors are right, but the shape is wrong or the fin is in the wrong place… stupid fish.

Anyway, that is an ornate butterflyfish… and we already saw a picture of one of those, but hey, you are learning stuff, right?

Oooh… there is a striking fish that we haven’t seen before… let’s dive down and take a closer look… remember to take lots of pictures… because most of them are going to come out bad for one reason or another. Yay for digital cameras.

Hey, we are getting good at this. That right there is a threadfin butterflyfish… turns out there are a lot of kinds of butterflyfish.

But you know what never happens? You never just swim around the corner of the reef and come face to face with a nice fish, a cooperative fish, a fish that has such a unique shape and distinct coloring that it is easy to positively identify just by looking at your dive card…

Well what do you know? Look at that. A bluespine unicornfish… just floating there… turned sideways… waiting for me to take its picture…

Oh thank you, bluespine unicornfish… I think I love you.