Below Freshwater

Far too many photographs of freshwater animals and plants are taken in tanks, and so are, at best, only an approximation of natural habitats.

Sue Scott has specialised in getting into freshwater, mostly in Scotland, with her underwater camera and snorkelling or diving gear, to get up close and personal with the animals where they live, or the plants in their habitats. In real life, freshwater isn't always crystal clear – but a lot of the 'murk' is critical to the food webs that support all life in freshwater, and so it is an important element to any picture.

A sample of her work is shown below, but publishers are more than welcome to get in touch to discuss their requirements in more detail.

Note that this website only allows us to display extremely low resolution images; all the photographs displayed are available either as 35mm transparencies or as high-quality digital images with a minimum size of 2GB.

All images copyright Sue Scott

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SALMON UNDERWATER A fine salmon resting up in a deep pool during its autumn breeding migration up a Scottish river to breed.	FRESHWATER MUSSELS A group of freshwater (pearl) mussels in a river in Wester Ross: sadly this sight is becoming increasingly rare because of persistent illegal mussel collection.
MUSSEL RIVERS Above: Freshwater mussels in their natural habitat in a fast-flowing Scottish river. Right: An unusual above-and-below image of a Scottish mussel river, showing freshwater mussels in their typical habitat – trying doing that photo in a tank!
	GREAT CRESTED NEWTS Looking almost like miniature dinosaurs, these two photos show great crested newts in full breeding display (male on left, female above), photographed by Sue at about midnight in a specially-created pond in Fife.
SIGNAL CRAYFISH "Oversexed and over here", the signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leviusculus) is an American species that has been introduced into several Scottish river systems, leading to the local extermination of the native freshwater crayfish.	GETTING UP CLOSE Sue Scott in snorkelling gear getting a close view of freshwater mussels for the photographs shown above.
SLENDER NAIAD (Najas flexilis) This plant is scarce in Britain, growing mainly in peaty lochs like the one where Sue took these photos in South Uist in the Western Isles. Underwater, the plant (right) looks quite different from specimens collected from the surface using a hooked grapple.	SLENDER NAIAD
COMMON TOAD (Bufo bufo) Most underwater photographs of toads are taken, conveniently displayed, in tanks. In their real habitat, they look quite different, like this one trying to hide from Sue's lens in a pond.	COMMON TOADS (Bufo bufo) These two were photographed in the mating grasp called 'amplexus' by Sue snorkelling in the peaty water of the toads' pond habitat.

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