A true story told by one of our Miami "scuba club" monthly guest lecturers, a professional underwater photographer.
"As always I slowly drifted down from above. About 35 feet above the bottom, I saw a huge, beautiful octopus multitasking at grabbing pedestrian crabs cutting across his "yard"-- his sand-yard in front of his ample black cave.
At near zero gravity, my knees gently touched down - no sand kicked up. I got my target centered in my lens from about 20 feet away. Not close enough. A good photo had to show well the living textures of the rocks. You know, varied colors of the flat-sponges plastering the rocks' skins, and those dozen beautifully architectured Christmas tree worms, and brown & white crowns of numerous feather dusters. So I "crawled" slowly to within 10 feet and was getting the focus just-so, when he turned and saw me. Zoom!-Into his dark hole. Round & round we went several times, me moving back to 15+ feet separation, him coming out foraging again, then me trying to sneak to 10 feet closeness and him disappearing again. I knew what all good pro photographers know to do. Me and my peers always do -- to get that shot.
So I surfaced to the boat, got my first mate to hand me my tripod. I screwed the camera to the pod and repeated my aimed slow decent. My knees softly landed. I moved to my 10 foot "station", set the inanimate tripod there and holding my air pressure squeeze-bulb trigger I waited & watched 22 feet away. He first peered out, slightly exposed, from his dark hole. A little further out he came. I could tell he was studying the tripod and just as I snapped the perfect UW Photo, in a flash he darted forward and $2,500 of photo equipment disappeared into his meandering cave. There's no telling how many in his neighborhood he saved from being shot that day -- Bad Day at Black Rock.