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Hunting for morsels of plankton, a school of spadefish hovers near the surface off Japan's subtropical Bonin Islands. The turquoise color permeates the water late in the afternoon, as the red rays of the setting sun spread out and grow weak.
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The photographer's assistant hangs on to part of an ice canopy that can reach a thickness of 25 feet in winter, blanketing Shiretoko Peninsula waters. A decade ago these seas were icebound an average of 90 days a year. Today the span is about 65 days.
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Off the Izu Peninsula, a yellow goby peers through the window of its corroded soda-can home, evidence of the 127 million people just above the water's surface.
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Seventy miles southwest of Tokyo, a moray eel slithers through the branches of a soft coral in the cool waters of Suruga Bay. Deep and narrow, the bay plummets more than 8,000 feet.
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If not for its round black eyes, a tiny fish called a goby would be nearly hidden on the trunk of a soft coral in the temperate waters of the Izu Peninsula.
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On a coral reef in the Bonin Islands, an abandoned wormhole is home to a hermit crab. Unlike its mobile cousins that forage the reef for food, this crab stays put and fishes for floating plankton with its feathery antennae.
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Aptly called a sea angel, this translucent creature is a snail whose foot has been modified into a pair of swimming wings. About an inch long, sea angels are an important food for whales and fish in the frigid waters off Japan's northern coast.
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Underneath the ice, spikes meet spikes as an Alaska king crab the size of a nickel crawls over a knobby sea star. After a dozen years, the crustacean will grow to the size of a tractor tire.
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In Suruga Bay a strand of whip coral provides habitat for two shrimps, camouflaged among the polyps. The smaller male leads a female on a single file march.
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A sand tiger shark off the Bonin Islands will soon give birth. During the nine-month pregnancy, the largest two pups will have eaten their siblings for sustenance, a kind of cannibalism unique to this species.
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In the shallow waters off Hokkaido, a barbed poacher crawls across glistening volcanic sand on spiny pectoral fins. Only the females of this cold-water fish sport a distinctive Pinocchio-like snout.
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A lizardfish captures a meal on the sandy ocean floor of temperate Suruga Bay. Both its mouth and tongue are lined with small, sharp teeth, preventing the prey from making a getaway.
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Purple tunicates filter the water for food. They have no scientific name and live behind a single rock in a cave off Chichi-shima island.
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A wrasse cleans the skin of a wrought iron butterflyfish, whose black-and-white motif reminds Japanese of a samurai's kimono pattern.
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The keen eyes of a Steller's sea-eagle seek the flash of herring between ice floes off the Shiretoko Peninsula.
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What looks like a tangle of gnarled cables is in fact a forest of deepwater whip coral in Suruga Bay. Each strand is studded with feeding polyps that reach tiny tentacles into the currents to grab floating food.
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A volcanic beach off Toyama Bay glows electric blue. The light comes from female firefly squid, which spawn in spring, then die and wash ashore, their tentacles lit like millions of aquamarine LEDs.
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