Alexander Semonov, marine biologist and head of scientific diving team at the White Sea Biological Station, Russia, has published a series of unique and beautiful high magnification images of sea stars. He writes:

“This is just small collection of sea stars skin surface with high magnification ratio from 1:2 to 2,5:1 made recently in three different seas: the White Sea, the Red Sea and the Sea of Japan. All those unusual structures at the skin surface is very common for echinoderms, it’s just gills, skeleton elements and pedicellariae. But look at it! I never cease surprised that nature shows amazing things. Variety of forms and colours among starfishes are very huge and you can hardly find two identical stars.”

He cites his education and profession as his main inspirations, and used a Canon 5dm2 in Subal housing, Canon 100mm/f2.8L macro + Canon MP-E 65mm/f2.8 and two Inon Z-240 strobes to capture the images.