Loïc Lehygge is a wildlife and nature content creator based in Paris, and one of the newest DIVEVOLK ambassadors. He grew up on the Ardèche, in southern France, and this summer he went back with a canoe, a phone and a SeaTouch 4 Max Platinum housing to look for a fish most Europeans have never heard of. This is his story, in his own words.
Some species you don't meet by chance. The apron, or Rhône streber (Zingel asper), is one of them. This small percid fish, endemic to the Rhône basin, is today one of the most endangered freshwater fish in Europe. From a historical range of roughly 2,200 km of watercourse, only about 365 km remain occupied today. The IUCN Red List classifies it as Critically Endangered at the global level, and it has been protected at the national level in France since 1988. Today it survives in only a handful of disconnected river systems. The two largest populations are in the Ardèche - where I filmed mine - and the Durance basins; smaller ones cling on in the Loue and the Swiss loop of the Doubs.
Finding it is already a story. Filming it underwater is another one. And I did both with a phone, inside a DIVEVOLK SeaTouch 4 Max Platinum housing.
Why the Apron, Why the Ardèche?
I'm from Ardèche. The river and its gorges aren't some exotic backdrop for me. It's home. And that's exactly where I find the strongest subject: we so often chase the spectacular on the other side of the world while a species on the brink of extinction lives in the stream next door, ignored by almost everyone.
The Gorges de l'Ardèche are one of the last strongholds of the apron, and a scientific population survey was carried out there this early summer. The fish ticks every box of what I love to document: endemic, secretive, largely unknown to the public, and directly threatened by river fragmentation, dams and pollution. It lives on the gravel just upstream or downstream of the rapids, a bottom-dweller that flattens itself against the stones and vanishes at the slightest clumsy approach. In other words: the opposite of an easy subject.
Getting There: 36 km by Canoe
There's no shortcut. Vehicles are banned inside the natural reserve, so the only way down is the river itself: 36 kilometres of canoe to work the gorge from top to bottom.
The descent tells its own climate story. The water level had never been this low so early in the summer, and green algae were already blooming across the shallows. You don't need a graph to grasp the stakes: you read them straight off the riverbed, in water that's warmer, lower and more choked than it should be at that point in the season. The apron's habitat is exactly the kind of cold, clean, oxygen-rich gravel run that a warming, shrinking river erases first.
Two Days to Find One Fish
The first day, nothing. I worked spot after spot for the target species and came up empty.
That evening, still nothing. But I wasn't unhappy: I got to photograph the elusive European eel, another fish in obvious decline and itself listed as Critically Endangered. A consolation that's a subject in its own right.
It was only on the second day, as I was about to call it quits after checking yet another new spot, that I saw it. Alone on the sandy bottom between the gravel, while I was actually filming something else: the impact of paddle strokes scraping the rocks. Having only ever seen the apron in photographs before, I could only doubt it was really him. With populations so reduced across such a limited range, you don't know what you're going to find until it's in front of you.
And no wonder it was so hard to find. Look at that camouflage. Motionless on the riverbed, it blends into the sand, the stones and the underwater plants until it all but disappears.
That's the whole thing about this kind of work. You don't produce the encounter. You put yourself in the right water, long enough, and stay ready for the two seconds when it happens.
Why DIVEVOLK for This Kind of Terrain
A housed DSLR, over a multi-hour session in a mountain river reached only by canoe, is a handicap before you've even started. Heavy, bulky, impossible to slide into fifteen centimetres of water without scaring off everything that moves. And the rig itself is so constraining that, at least for me, you end up thinking twice before getting in the water. A phone is already in your hand: slide it into the case and go.
It also means one device covers the whole range. On the Vivo X300 Ultra I can shoot up to 8K, work in macro or wide-angle underwater, and switch to the telephoto once I'm back above the surface, all on the same setup. For a fish this hard to approach, not having to swap gear mid-session is what lets you stay on it.
The SeaTouch lets me do what a big housing can't: lie flat on the bottom, wedge sideways into a crevice, push the lens right down among the gravel where the apron actually sits, without spooking it. Being light, it turns a physical constraint into an advantage. On a 36 km paddle where every kilo counts, that's not a detail.
But the real strength, the one that's always underrated, is that the housing keeps the phone's native touchscreen. Underwater, a decision takes one or two seconds. A fish's behaviour doesn't wait. With a conventional camera housing, if I have to remember which of the housing's own mechanical buttons maps to which function, I've already missed the shot. With the SeaTouch, I shoot. I'm not operating a second machine. That mattered in the exact moment I spotted the apron: I was filming something else entirely and had to react instantly.
There's also a less technical benefit: because the screen stays readable, I can frame from the surface, face out of the water, at least on top-down shots. The real barrier in underwater imaging, the one nobody talks about, is the "can't be bothered" factor. Heavy gear, your head having to go into cold water. Most of my images wouldn't exist if I weren't carrying something this light. Convenience is a creative variable.
The External Shutter: Making the Moment Repeatable
The touchscreen is what brought me to DIVEVOLK in the first place. The DIVEVOLK Bluetooth external shutter is what makes it reliable underwater.
The hardest part of smartphone shooting underwater isn't image quality. It's shutter reliability. Pressure and cold disrupt touch input, and pressing hard on the glass rocks the housing and ruins the frame you just built. The Bluetooth external shutter is a mechanical trigger you can grip even with numb hands. It takes the shutter from "I hope it fires" to "it fires when I want it to."
Technique: Stability, Composition, Light
A few principles I apply in the river, for anyone who wants to try it:
Stability. I shoot prone, almost always. Both elbows planted on a bottom rock, the housing held close to the surface. If I need rigidity, I rest the edge of the housing against a stable stone and use the geometry as a tripod. Never hand-held suspended in the current. That's a junk-frame factory.
Focus. Modern phone autofocus is reliable. Stop fighting it, and save that mental budget for composition.
Composition. Don't shoot the fish, shoot where it lives. I often push the lens to within a few centimetres of the subject, let it occupy a third of the frame, and give the rest to gravel, water plants, and the light coming through. Or go full macro with the Macro Lens PRO.
Light. I avoid the midday zenith. In the morning or late afternoon, the valley walls turn into a giant softbox. To fill in shadows and crevices, I keep a DIVEVOLK SL20 light mounted on the dual handle tray.
Rhythm. Don't chase the fish, and never touch it. Stay still until it accepts you.
What's in My River Kit
- DIVEVOLK SeaTouch 4 Max Platinum, with the Vivo X300 Ultra inside.
- DIVEVOLK external Bluetooth shutter.
- DIVEVOLK add-on lenses, macro and wide-angle, swapped per scene.
- A DIVEVOLK SL20 2000-lumen light on the dual handle tray, for shadows and crevices.
That's it. A light bag, 36 km of river, and a critically endangered species a gravel's throw away.
To Close
Documenting the apron isn't about ticking a rare-species box. It's about showing that some of our most fragile biodiversity lives in the rivers we walk past without looking, and that it's already under pressure from a climate you can read straight off a low, algae-choked riverbed. Two days, one fish. If a light housing and a phone let me bring back those images without disturbing it, then the tool does exactly what it should: it makes visible what is quietly disappearing, while there's still time.
About Loïc Lehygge
DIVEVOLK Ambassador
Wildlife and Nature Content Creator, Paris
Loïc started on land, filming the animals most people walk past without noticing. The more he followed nature, the more it pulled him toward the water, freshwater and saltwater alike. The problem was always the gear: going underwater usually meant a heavy, complicated setup, the kind that makes you hesitate or miss the moment entirely. Being able to take his phone underwater and shoot properly means the camera is always ready, whether he is at a reef, a lake or a river. As an ambassador, what he wants to show is simple: you don't need a huge rig to bring back the underwater world. Just curiosity, and something that keeps up with it.
Follow Loïc on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Facebook.
Freshwater is a growing part of the DIVEVOLK community. See how George Kao photographs Taiwan's mountain streams with a phone, or how Lorenzo Mittiga documents a changing Antarctica. Ready to build your own river kit? Start with the SeaTouch 4 Max Kits.
