Every body loves lady bugs. Their little red shiny bodies with black spots are like little toys as they scuttle about the garden. As a kid growing up I remember searching through my moms vegetable garden looking for these little red spotty bugs, trying to de-code the mystery behind their spots. Thirty years later I’m doing the exact same thing, only now I’m twenty meters deep in the sea in the middle of Indonesia with a giant camera in my hands searching for a much different type of lady bug.
The lady bugs I’m looking for live solely beneath the waves of Komodo National Park and I very large numbers on a very special site called Cannibal Rock, one of the most famous dive sites in the world and for good reason. Though they are incredibly small, about the size of a land dwelling lady bug to be exact, they are super photogenic if you have a decent macro lens. Their shiny little white bodies with giant red cartoonish eyes and little orange and black spots make them a perfect macro subject. Even for the non-photographers they are highly entertaining to hunt for and then watch as they flits and flutter about their colorful crinoidy habitat.