Equipment: Sony a7RV camera, Sony 28-60mm lens at 49mm, a Nauticam WACP-C wide-angle conversion port, Nauticam housing, Retra Pro X strobes
Settings: 1/250 sec, f/22, ISO 400
Location: Sea of Cortez, Baja California Sur, Mexico
As a young dive instructor in Indonesia 13 years ago, I would scour identification books during downtime and create a bucket list of encounters. At the top of the list was the blue dragon (Glaucus atlanticus), an incredibly ornate pelagic sea slug. These small yet magnificent mollusks live in the open ocean and are at the mercy of wind, tide, and currents. As they float upside down just beneath the surface, their blue-striped bellies point upward while their metallic backs are counter-shaded when seen from below.
Seeing a blue dragon remained a pipe dream until this year, when I was on assignment in the Gulf of California, documenting the unusual cetacean diversity around Mexico’s Baja California peninsula. We should have been looking for whales, but my friends mentioned that blue dragons had been seen in the area. So we temporarily abandoned the ocean giants to search for the 1-inch dragons.
Finding this minuscule animal in the vast open ocean seemed like an impossible task. Fate, however, was on our side. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I eventually gazed at two blue sea dragons feeding on a blue button, which is another fantastical creature.
Most existing pictures of blue dragons are taken from above, usually when they get trapped close to shore. This underwater perspective adds something new to the rare imagery of blue dragons.
© Alert Diver – Q1 2025