All posts by b.campbell65@yahoo.com

About b.campbell65@yahoo.com

Bruce is a NAUI dive instructor and an avid underwater photographer who began diving 10 years ago. He has been fortunate enough to travel throughout most of the Caribbean where he has photographed sea creatures ranging from nudibranchs to whale sharks. He hopes to begin doing more diving in Southeast Asia in the coming years. Bruce's photos have graced the covers of several magazines and can be seen at www.flickr.com/photos/bcampbell65/ or bcampbell65 on the photo stock agency shutterstock and on adobe stock. View all posts by b.campbell65@yahoo.com →

Have you ever been diving in St. Martin?

Its been a while since I was last in St. Martin, or St. Marteen if you prefer. It is not a place that many divers go, but it is a place that attracts a lot of yachts and super-yachts. We were there sailing on a catamaran that was part of the Trade winds fleet. One of my favorite dive sites on St. Martin was a place called turtle reef. Now if you look on most maps of the island you will not find a dive site called turtle reef. We dove with a shop called Octopus diving. They picked us up at our boat which was anchored in Grand Cass. They were well prepared and whisked us off to the diver sites for the days diving.

We did not have far to go. I had not even finished kitting up before we were there. The buoy marking the dive site was not much bigger than a plastic coke bottle. You would probably only find the site if you knew the gps coordinates. After our briefing, Keith and I were ready to get in and see what the site had to offer.

Our expectations were high that we would see a turtle. Viz was pretty good and the site was basically a small pinnacle that rose from the surrounding depths to within 15 feet of the surface. It was a sunny day with lots of light. The site was full of fish life. There were grunts galore, but for much of the dive, no turtles.

But towards the end of the dive the dive master spotted a turtle heading to the pinnacle from much deeper blue water. It was a rather large hawksbill turtle and he was not at all concerned about the presence of a couple of divers.

Would I go back to turtle reef? Of course, any day you get to dive with turtles is a good day.

Have you ever noticed how loud scuba diving can be?

A lobster unafraid of scuba diviers Have you ever noticed that we become accustomed to the sounds around us? Many times we get to the point that we stop hearing those sounds. I was thinking about how I had almost completely blocked out the sounds of the birds on my way to work the other day. Now that might not have been a bad thing particularly since they were a bunch of grackles who don’t have a song, and sound more obnoxious than a gaggle of crows. Nevertheless, it occurred to me that in addition to grackles that there are a lot of other sounds that I have either learned to tune out, or just do so out of self preservation. I take the 5th as to whether I tune out family members.

But I digress. Now when all I took were still images underwater it did not occur to me that noise might make a difference in the quality of the images that I was able to capture. In retrospect, there are probably quite a few images I missed being able to capture because either I or those who were diving with me were too noisy. Yes, I have shot more than my share of fish butts, and I suspect that many fish butt images were a direct result of the enormous amount of noise that open circuit scuba diving makes.

Nevertheless, when I started shooting video it became painfully obvious just how noisy open circuit scuba diving is. I am reminded of that line from Star Wars where Darth Vader says to Skywalker: “Luke I’m your father”…. To me that’s kind of like the sound that scuba divers make breathing on open circuit. In the track below I did not strip off the audio track so in case you have not noticed how loud scuba is, you can hear for yourself.

Now even breathing as slowly and quietly as I could, the grunts and school masters were plenty happy to swim away from me. I’m going to chalk it up to noise, because that beats the alternatives. So historically my process with video is to strip off the audio sound from the video clips and either submit it without sound to my stock agency or if I am going to use the clip for personal use, add a soundtrack. Sometimes my choice of music is a bit questionable, but sometimes it captures the mood I feel when I look at the clip.

So next time you are diving, there probably is a reason the fish seem to be swimming away from you… you are just too noisy.

Do you have a favorite crustacean?

The shell of this fellow was easily a foot across — Channel clinging crab

According to my critters book the crustaceans in the Caribbean can be divided into shrimp, lobsters and crabs. Now assuming we are just talking about seeing these critters underwater, I tend to find the variety of crabs to be the most interesting. Now that is not to say that I do not find the various lobsters to be interesting, its just the variety of crabs seems to be more diverse and that is interesting to me. There are about 45 varieties of crabs in the Caribbean. The largest of which tend to be the channel clinging crabs. I have seen them on quite a few dives in Belize, Mexico, Cayman islands and Dominica. That is not to say they do not live elsewhere in the Caribbean, they do. I just have not had the opportunity to see them.

Now, it seems to me that hermit crabs are the most common crabs I have seen. I have seen them on just about every island or islet I have visited. There appear to be about 11 varieties of hermit crab in the Caribbean, and they range in size from tiny to enormous.

An enormous claw for a polkadotted hermit crab

When I was in Cayman Brac this year, while I was diving on a night dive I looked up under a part of a coral ledge and found a plumed hairy crab. He was very shy and very quickly after I got a shot or two of him he crawled back into his hiding hole in the reef.

Arrow crabs almost always make me laugh because they remind me of daddy long legs, but when they are hunting if they are very successful, they stick their prey on top of their heads and just keep hunting.

For me, some of the most productive dives for finding crabs, have been night dives. I guess that is not surprising since that is usually when crustaceans hunt for food. Inasmuch as it looks like I still have about 30 varieties of crab to see, I am going to have to do alot more night dives. 🙂

What are the odds?

arch-with-diver-1-of-1 On the trip to Kona I did 22 dives during a week spread out over 20 dive sites. The dive sites were sprinkled along the Kona coast over about 60 miles of coastline. Each site had its own unique characteristics, but there were many similarities. The hard coral for the most part looked pretty much the same.

Before each dive we would get a dive briefing and I would alway being listening to get a sense of the types of animals that we might see during the dive as well as about the reef structure and other features of the particular site. Of course, I was always trying to get a sense of whether I should rig the camera for wide-angle shooting or macro. Many times I would ask the crew the night before whether I should rig the camera for wide-angle or macro because it takes quite a bit of time to get the camera set up if I have to change from one setting to another.

For the most part the crew was pretty good at estimating whether the next day would be good for wide-angle or macro photography. Nevertheless, as Murphy’s law would suggest there were times where I guessed wrong. Now shooting a small animal with a wide-angle set up is not the end of the world, it’s just frustrating. (Kind of like being asked to hit off the golf tee with a putter or sink a put with a driver. Yes, it can be done, because I’ve tried it, but I don’t recommend it. For me and golf it just adds another layer of frustration to an already frustrating game.)

halgerda-terramtuentis — Halgerda-terramtuentis, –yes that little blob on the left hand corner with the iridescent skin is a nudibranch

Shooting a macro subject with a wide-angle lens is similarly frustrating. If you get the critter in the image you end up cropping to the point that the image ends up pretty small. And, you rarely get the detail that I would want to see with a macro lens. In this instance, you could count the spots on the little guy’s back. Now he was less than an inch in length so trying to find him was just dumb luck. Nevertheless, there he was on dive 20 and I doubt that anyone else saw him. Now of course, one of my recurring dreams is to be able to swim with and shoot whales, but with my luck it will probably be a day when I’m rigged for macro. I will probably get a good shot of the eye and then be relegated to shooting barnacles on the whale’s back. Oh well it would still be a good story.

Have you seen undersea animals hunting in pairs?

Sometimes when we are underwater, we see cooperation between fish from the same species hunting for food. When I see that kind of behaviour, I think, now that is an interesting cooperative skill. Nevertheless, when we see fish or other animals from different families cooperating to hunt for food together, that is unusual and is well worth watching.

When we were in Hawaii I was somewhat surprised to see a white mouthed moray eel team up with a tivoli to hunt for food.
hunting-pair-2-1-of-1
Now in the middle of the day to see a free-swimming moray eel is fairly uncommon. But to see a free-swimming moral eel hunting with another species of fish is even more unlikely, and certainly is interesting — at least to me. I watched this pair swim together and chase several smaller fish into holes in the reef. I did not see them have any success in hunting. But I could imagine that a ray which could easily get into relatively small holes in the reef could be a very helpful hunting buddy. I could easily imagine the ray either catching and eating a small fish in the hole, or chasing out the small fish into the awaiting jaws of the tivoli. Of course the opposite could be true. the tivoli could chase a smaller fish back to the reef and into the awaiting jaws of the moray eel.

Similarly, on several occasions I have seen snappers hunt with southern rays. The first time I saw that behaviour was on a shark dive in Playa del Carmen. We were waiting for the sharks to come in when the first pair through the dive site was a southern ray and snapper apparently hunting for scraps. I was just hoping that I was not part of the scraps. Now I have seen the benefit of these partnerships between rays and snappers on several occassions. The ray stirs up the bottom looking for food and the snapper gets the left-overs that squirt out the gills of the ray. I have seen southern rays feeding with a snapper in Cayman Brac, Belize, and Mexico. I suspect this kind of cooperative hunting goes on all over. Regardless of how often it may occur, I still never get tired of observing it.

a-hunting-pair-1-of-1

Have you seen a new coral garden?

When I first started diving finding healthy stag horn and elk horn coral was easy. Unfortunately, finding healthy stag horn and elk horn coral has become more more difficult more recently. You don’t have to look very far in the headlines to see various headlines about coral bleaching. Unfortunately there have been size-able beaching incidents on the Great Barrier reef and around the world. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2014 through the end of 2016 will likely be the longest coral bleaching event ever recorded. The current bleaching event is largely blamed on global warming. There can be a number of causes of coral bleaching causes, which among others include:

oxygen starvation caused by an increase in zooplankton levels as a result of over fishing;
increased solar irradiance (photo-synthetically active radiation and ultraviolet light);
changes in water chemistry (in particular acidification caused by CO₂ pollution;
increased sedimentation (due to silt runoff);
bacterial infections,;
changes in salinity herbicides;
cyanide fishing;
mineral dust from African dust storms caused by drought; and
four common sunscreen ingredients, that are non-biodegradable that can wash off of skin and on to coral.

Continue reading Have you seen a new coral garden? →

Have you been to Mantaville off the Kona Coast?

It was 7:15 p.m. when we got ready to get in the water. It was dark and you could only see as far as your dive light would penetrate. The divers were all pretty excited. As the dive was briefed, we were supposed to try to stay on the bottom so as not to interfere with the glide path of the mantas. It took us about 7 minutes to get from the boat to the place on the dive where we would circle up around a big light which hopefully would attack plankton that the mantas would like to feed upon. The dive master put a sola 8000 in a milk crate and
turned it on and pointed up.
I was just getting situated when I saw a manta fly over my left shoulder. It was all I could do to try to squeeze off one shot before he was out of range. My initial thought was wow, this could be good.
We settled in to the site and I would periodically turn on my video light and search around. I left my focus light pointed up in hopes of drawing in the mantas. Then we waited, and waited and waited. At about 38 minutes into the dive I was bored and thinking that the mantas had just been teasing us.
There was a surge so I dumped all of the remaining air in my BC in hopes of staying on the bottom near the manta light. Staying in one place had proven to be quite tough for me in the surge. Try as I might, I stayed in roughly
the same area for most of the dive albeit I was having to work to stay there because the surge kept blowing me about.
At about the 40 minute mark I turned on the video light, put some air in the BC and started hovering above the bottom. I started hovering in large part because I was tired of getting banged around the coral by the surge. My “robo” camera was like having a sail tied to me and the surge just pushed me around the bottom. I was getting jostled around pretty good and not seeing much.
I was just piddling around checking out the site when I saw someone’s flash go off. I turned in the direction of the flash and could see a single manta swimming through the water column. He seemed pretty close so I took a couple of shots. A few moments later one more manta swam through. This one seemed to like my video light so I just hovered and watched him come in through the view finder, waiting to snap off a picture until I could see he was pretty close.

I snapped off a couple of shots and just stood my ground. He keep coming and coming. I kept shooting.

A few moments after that that the manta had swum through the site and the dive was over based on time. We swam back to the boat and only once on board did I take a look at the images. One really close one and some almost shots. While on board the dive master asked me if I had been hit by the last manta we saw. I said I didn’t think so. He showed me some video he shot that you could see the manta flying at my light and then it looks like I was bumped. Maybe I was bumped but it was nothing compared to the surge.
Oh well that is the thing about large animals. They are rare, unpredictable but very special to see in person.

Have you been to the M.V. Keith Tibbetts wreck?

I like to dive wrecks. Some wrecks are interesting because of their place in history. For instance, the RMS Rhone sank in a hurricane around the time of the civil war, yet large portions of the ship remain intact or at least visible to divers who dive the Rhone. Other wrecks are interesting because of the services they performed while they were in service. For instance, the Kittiwake was a submarine tender and while only recently being purposefully sunk, still has a number of features that existed from her working days– the re-compression chambers are still on board. The mirrors are still in the bathroom which is something I had not seen in a wreck before.

The Tibbetts is different because it was a Russian destroyer that was purposefully sunk off the coast of Cayman Brac in 1996. It has some sponge and coral life on it, but not as much as I had expected because it has been underwater about 20 years. It is one of the few Russian destroyer wrecks that exist in the western hemisphere. In its sinking, the hull of the ship was apparently cracked. After several hurricanes blew through Cayman Brac, it appears the storms applied enough torque to the ship so that the bow was twisted from sitting upright to sitting at a 45 degree angle. The mid-section blew out and became a debris field and the stern of the ship is sitting at about a 75 degree angle.

Our dive of the Tibbetts was with Liesel from the Scuba Shack dive shop. We came through a swim through to see the wreck unfold before us. It was quite an impressive view. The Tibbetts is sitting on white sand and its contrast with the blue water makes an impressive sight. The forward guns are interesting because sponges have grown out of them.

When we were there we saw quite a bit of fish life. A barracuda of over 5 feet in length was the highlight, but we also saw schools of goat fish an other reef fish living on the Tibbetts. Towards the aft of the ship, and after the debris field, the super structure of the ship is intact and leads to the wheel house.

At the back of the ship are the rear guns. In many ways I thought there were the most interesting because they are still easily recognizable as guns

We swam around the wreck for about 40 minutes before some of our group started to run low on air, so we made our safety stop and ascended to the surface. As soon as I can I would like to go back and spend more time diving on the Tibbetts to see more of the details of its remains. Maybe next year.

Stoney Mesa II, or how much current would you like?

The Stoney Mesa II dive site was as tough as Stoney Messa I was easy.

Raccoon butterfly fish under a coral head

The surge picked up and then the current picked up and kicked my butt. About 20 minutes into the dive Nancy was ready to come up because we were fighting the the surge and then the current kicked in big time.

We came up to the hang bar and I grabbed a hold of it and looked like a flag blowing in the breeze. The current was so strong the hang bar slowly went up to the surface, which kind of defeated the purpose of doing a safety stop on the hang bar. So I let go of the hang bar figuring that I would just drop back and grab the trail line. I did drop back from the boat, but at an incredible rate of speed. I had to kick for all I was worth not to get blown off the site.

By the time I had kicked back to the end of the trail line for my safety stop I was at the end of the trail line. I kicked to keep the line in sight and slowing went up and grabbed the trail line with my left hand.

Now the dilemma: I had to either rely on my Cetacea cord to hold the camera or I was just going to end up hanging on the line until they pulled it in. The current was rippin’. I opted for trusting the cetecea keeper and it held, but it was tough for me to let go not knowing if the camera would stay attached to my bc or what it would do without me using one hand to control the camera. It’s at times like these when I wish I didn’t have quite as much invested in the camera rig.

What a beating. It took just about all the strength I had to pull my self back to the boat on the line. I am guessing but I suspect that the current was an easy 4 knots at that point. It was basically kick as hard as I could, pull the rope with both hands just to get to the boat. Once I made it to the boat I had to use one hand to release the cetecea cord and hand the camera up. That was a challenge. Thirty five pounds of camera gear to hand up one handed, while holding on to the boat with my left hand. I got it done; handed the camera up, and then got on board. I was beat. I’m not a young man, but I still work out 5-6 times a week just to stay in shape so I can dive. That was a hard dive. We had lunch and I took off the next dive so that I could take a nap and rest for the remaining two dives of the day.

Do you like swim thru’s?

blue stripe snappers heading out of a tube-1

I have had a chance to swim through quite a few swim throughs that ranged from feeling pretty wide open to feeling really claustrophobic. For me the one thing they all have in common is I have to think and look pretty hard at them to see if there is a chance that I can get the camera and housing through the available space. Sometimes I have to bring the strobes in pretty close to be able to get through the available space. Now that also means that at best I have to video that part of the dive because trying to shoot stills in such close quarters rarely works. I need about 5 feet wide to be able to get the strobes through without bringing them in close to the camera housing. I need about two feet vertically to be able to get the tank strobes and me through the available space. I can do about 2 feet by 3 feet but that feels really tight.

I’ve seen some pretty interesting responses by divers. Some are quite at ease and just seem to go with the flow of the swim through. Others, well they can get pretty spooked and bolt through the swim through. That happened in a swim through in Cozumel and as it looked as if two divers were swimming on top of one another. Now the good thing was that there was enough space for two divers so it wasn’t too bad, but it did make for an interesting image.

swim through fins-1

Now off the coast of Kona, Hawaii are a number of lava tubes that create some interesting swim throughs. The lava tubes ranged from very wide to very small. Each was different. Below is a link to a small sampling of the tubes into the blue that we saw.

How many varieties of shark have you seen?

As shark week approaches it occurred to me that I have had a chance to dive with quite a few varieties of sharks, and I am not talking about the two legged variety. I hope that I will never forget the first time I saw bull sharks. They are incredibly beautiful animals that move through the water column easier than most people breath. They are so efficient under water a very small flick of the tail will carry them forward with incredible speed.

From fast to enormous size was the next set of sharks with which I had a chance to interact. The first time I jumped out of the boat with my camera in hand I had not even had a chance to turn around entirely when I saw this incredible mouth, almost 6 feet across, coming directly at me. I kicked for all I was worth trying to get out of the way only to realize later that with a small flick of the whale shark’s tail he could easily avoid me. So much for my swimming skills.

It was not until I traveled to Ambergris Caye in Belize that I really had a chance to watch a number of active nurse sharks. Sure I had seen nure sharks laying on the bottom napping while I was diving, but I had not really seen them actively moving around a reef until I was in Belize. Although many people think of nurse sharks as fairly “tame” you still need to be careful because they are big animals and can create some problems if their space is not respected.

The Bahamas gave me an opportunity to interact with grey reef sharks. They are very fast predators and they have a mouth full of teeth, but unless they are being fed they tend be to fairly shy about divers.

Grey reef sharks I think are very photogenic sharks. They are innately curious and will often give divers at least a quick look before they go back to looking for more interesting food.

The most recent type of shark I came across off of the Kona coast. A white tip reef shark. At least the one I found was about 5 feet in length, a juvenile and he was not interesting in hanging out with divers. I barely got a couple of shots off before he was long gone. And, even then he was pretty well hidden in the shadows.

One of the many sharks at Shark Junction

Maybe on my next set of dives I will get a chance to see a tiger shark. I guess we will see if we are so fortunate.

Do you like mud bugs?

Alright I know, mud bugs are technically crayfish, but to me lobsters are just a bigger version. And, fortunately, more meat to eat. I was thinking after a week of diving off the Kona coast that in 24 dives I had seen two lobsters. Now, granted the two lobsters I did see were quite large, probably 5 pounds or more a piece, but that was far fewer than what I usually see when we are diving in the Caribbean.

Maybe I was diving in the wrong place to see them. But it reminded me that what is plentiful in one part of the sea is often times quite rare in another part of the sea. So I guess I should look forward to the next trip to the Caribbean and seeing lots of lobsters.

In this little hole there were well over a dozen little Caribbean lobsters off the coast of St. Vincent. lobster insanity-1

My Dive Travels

Dive travels around the world

All posts by b.campbell65@yahoo.com

About b.campbell65@yahoo.com

Have you ever been diving in St. Martin?

Have you ever noticed how loud scuba diving can be?

Do you have a favorite crustacean?

What are the odds?

Have you seen undersea animals hunting in pairs?

Have you seen a new coral garden?

Have you been to Mantaville off the Kona Coast?

Have you been to the M.V. Keith Tibbetts wreck?

Stoney Mesa II, or how much current would you like?

Do you like swim thru’s?

How many varieties of shark have you seen?

Do you like mud bugs?

About b.campbell65@yahoo.com

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: