Thanks, Wolfgang

Sony A7R5; Sony 90mm f/2.8 macro lens; 1* Backscatter MF-2 flash with snoot; 1/200s; f/20; ISO100.

A bit about me. I'm a wildlife and underwater photographer. I recently got back into diving after a long break and I've been rebuilding both my kit and my catalog, which is what pushed me to finish this. My Lightroom catalog has six figures of photos across land and underwater work, almost none of it properly keyworded, and the gap between "card full of dive photos" and "knowing what's actually in them" is the problem I was trying to close for myself.

What it does:

Select photos in Lightroom, click Match, review the results. It writes scientific name, common name, a structured keyword hierarchy (Nomen > Family > Genus > Species), IPTC captions, social-ready captions with camera settings and location, star ratings for match quality, and color labels for confidence. Everything runs locally on your machine, no uploads, no cloud.

The aquatic side covers 15 packs: fish (35,000+ species), sharks and rays, nudibranchs, corals and anemones, crustaceans, cephalopods, echinoderms, jellyfish, sponges, and more. There's a one-click "Select Underwater" option during setup that installs the full aquatic set. Dive region filters (Coral Triangle, Red Sea, Caribbean, Mediterranean, and others) narrow suggestions to where you were diving, and GPS from your photos is used automatically when present. When a match is close between two species, it flags both and lets you pick rather than guessing.

What I actually need from this community:

• People willing to run it against their own dive catalog and tell me honestly where it gets things wrong. Nudibranchs, juveniles, regional variants, cryptic species, wherever you have expertise and suspect a generalist tool would struggle, that's where I need eyes.

• Feedback on the UW workflow itself. Not just accuracy, but whether this is a useful thing to sit inside Lightroom or whether it belongs somewhere else in a dive photographer's process.

• Opinions on which taxa or regions feel most underserved by current ID tools. I want to prioritize where the tool would do the most good.

Beta testers get a lifetime Personal license in exchange for honest feedback. More important than testing, I'd love to hear thoughts in the thread from anyone with opinions on marine ID tooling, whether or not you want to try this one.

Happy to answer questions here. If anyone would rather discuss privately, DM me. Mods, if anything about this post is off, let me know and I'll adjust.

Brett

What want to know is:

In what climate they usually grow?

Tropical? Sub tropical?

I am visiting Raja Ampat on feb 2026 therefore I built a web app based on iNaturalist data to help me to know more about the marine life in this area and have a little tool to communicate better with local guides. Please note that your guide knows the ocean best. This app is only a bridge to help clearly convey your wishlist to them and a way to do the homework before dive trip.

How it works

• Filter: Select your travel month and region (North/Central/South) to see common species.

• Build List: Click the heart icon (❤️) on the card of any critter you want to see.

• Share: Click the heart icon in the top-right corner of the page to generate a QR Code or link.
  

Instead of scrolling through random photos on your phone, you can just show this list to your guide so they know exactly what to look for.

Try it here: https://raj.ljy.app

please sUploading Attachment...

(The link is free to use. Feedback is welcome!)

If you have recommendations on good ID books to cover fish, reef creatures, corals, nudis etc, post them here and we'll compile a list which is pinned.

BOOK LIST

EUROPE

Blennies of the Mediterranean Sea: Biology and identification of Blenniidae Clinidae Tripterygiidae (Francesco Tiralongo)

Fauna und Flora of the Mediterranean/Mittelmeeres (Riedel) - available in Spanish, Italian and German

Nudibranchs of Britain,Ireland and Northwest Europe    by Bernard Picton and Christina Morrow

MIDDLE EAST/GULF/RED SEA

Coastal Fishes of Oman (Randall JE)

Red Sea Reef Guide (Helmut Debelius)

Coral Reef Guide, Red Sea.  (Lieske/Myers)  A bit dated, but has some good descriptions of organisms, and covers mammals, fish, and invertebrates.   

Red Sea Marine Life.  (Andrey Ryanskiy)  Names and pictures only, but contains some unusual and newly identified species.  Digital copies also available from https://reefidbooks.com/

Reef Fishes of the East Indies, Vol 1-3 (Allen/Erdmann)

Marine life of the Pacific Northwest (Lamb/Hanby)

Coastal Fishes of the Western Indian Ocean  https://saiab.ac.za/publications/coastal-fishes-of-the-western-indian/

SOUTH EAST ASIA

A diver's guide to Underwater Malaysia - Macrolife (Ferrari)

A diver's guide to Underwater Malaysia - Reef Life (Ferrari)

PACIFIC

Reef Fish Identification - Tropical Pacific (Allen/Steene/Humann/Deloach)

Reef Creature Identification Tropical Pacific (Humann / DeLoach)

Nudibranch & Sea Slug Identification Indo-Pacific  (Gosliner/Valdes/Behrens)

Reef and Shore Fishes of the South Pacific (Randall JE)

Fishes of the Great Barrier Reef and Coral Sea (Randall/Allen/Steene)

Guide to the Sea Fishes of Australia (Kuiter)

Micronesian Reef Fishes (Myers RF)

Shore Fishes of Hawai'i (Randall JE)

Coastal Fishes of the Pacific Northwest (Lamb/Edgell)

CARIBBEAN

Reef Fish Identification - Florida, Caribbean, Bahamas (Humann/Deloach)

Reef Creature Identification - Florida, Caribbean, Bahamas (Paul Humann) 

Reef Coral Identification -  Florida, Caribbean, Bahamas (Paula Humann)

Caribbean Reef Life  (Mickey Charteris)

GENERAL

Whelks to Whales (Rick Harbo)

Cardinalfilshes of the World (Rudie Kuiter & Toshikazu Kozawa)

APPS LIST

Fishes of the east Pacific : https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fishes-east-pacific/id494644648

WEB SITES

Corals of the World Information, identification, distribution and taxonomy of reef building corals 

I’m unsure if this is a Weedy scorpionfish (Rhinopias frondosa) or not.

It looks quite similar to me but for the images I see I’m not sure.

What do you think?

Taken on Tulamben, Bali.

Thank you.

I took a picture of a seafan in the Philippines, Bohol to be precise. It does look like it would be covered in tiny bubbles:

Does anyone know, what these tiny bubbles (skeleton shrimps for reference) are?
Thanks!

I am having quite a hard time identifying some frogfish, I’m not sure if they are juveniles from any species or simply a little frogfish, lol.

For reference I’m looking a quite good webpage only for frogfishes but I’m struggling knowing which specie could it be. I’m struggling basically with almost any frogfish image that I have.

Frog Fish Web

Any tip?

Taken with Olympus EM-1 Mk III, Olympus 30mm lens and Backscatter HF-1 strobe.

Does anyone recognize this fish from Sogod Bay? I have the focal distance recorded as 0.2m on the Oly 60mm macro, so it must be fairly little. The shape looks a bit like a triplefin, but the shape dorsal fin isn't very clear to me. Alas, I don't have a picture from the side.

Can someone please help me ID for:

1. The brownish worm.

2. The worm being eaten by an anemone.

Eilat, Israel, 4m on a night dive.

Sony A7RV + 90mm w/+12.5 diopter

For all the divers who regularly explore our Sydney coastline and harbour this book is a must. Orders available

https://sydneyharbourfishes.company.site

From yesterday dive in Costa Brava, mediterranean sea.

Any tip?

TIA

Tim

I am not suggesting it is something unusual.  I just do not see a good match in the book I have for an ID.

Crab

The main part of the image is some kind of camouflage crab, legs to the right. Encircled in red is... well, is it a shrimp?

We had Klas Malmberg, pretty big in Sweden's uw photo world, with us on the trip and it was he who pointed out that there's a shrimp. I forget the name. I should trust him, he knows his stuff. I just.  What do you say, is that really an animal? I mean, I can sort of convince me that it is. But. I just.

Guys, I (almost) did it. I tagged all 4500 pictures from my Philippines trip in April/May with the names of the species photographed. Almost: four pictures of two species are missing 🥴.

1) I found this critter while diving in Bohol, looks a bit like an orang utan crab and a hairy shrimp had a really good time together. If I recall correctly, this little guy was about 2cm (plus minus a lot? 🙈). I managed to take three pictures (photographically I'm not really happy with the perspective, but hope they allow identification) before he decided to hide.

2) Some kind of box crab maybe?

All pictures taken with Sony 90mm / A7IV, Backscatter MF1+OS1. No editing done. If higher resolution would help, let me know and I'll upload it somewhere at 100% res and link it.

All help in identifying those little crabs is highly appreciated! 🙏🙏🙏

Best,
Fabian

Is this guy a porcelain crab? Looks like it but with pointy ends for some legs.

Thanks

Bill