Do you like to see pork fish?
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So what is it like to dive in Anguilla?
Imagine this: clear blue warm water. Loads of fish, and a wreck or two to explore. Sounds great, it is.
We sailed a catamaran into Anguilla and tied off in a small bay waiting to go diving the next day. Where we moored was near a small mini wall so we got out of the boat with our snorkels and explored the mini-wall. There were a lot of fish, mostly sergeant majors, but some puffer fish and few grunts. I was feeling lazy so I didn’t take the camera. I figured I would wait until the next day to rig it and used it for the dives we would do the next day.
In Anguilla they require that you use a local dive shop to lead the dives. They say that it is required in order to make sure the divers don’t abuse the reef. I suspect it is really more about keeping the local economy working.
Nevertheless, we the following morning our dive guide arrived and we then went diving on the MV Commerce. The Commerce had been sunk about 20 years before as a purposefully sunk ship. It was a cargo ship before its sinking. It was in relatively good shape for having been down as long as it had, but there were places where the hull had rusted away and there were many places where sponges and coral had grown over the hull. As we were diving I noticed a turtle swimming over head and he appeared to be swimming to the bow of the wreck.
I wasn’t quite sure where he went after he crested the top of the ship so I keep exploring the wreck slowly making my way towards the bow of the ship.
After rounding the bow, I began swimming down the port side of the hull. It was there I found the same turtle. He looked like he was about the take a nap. So as not to disturb him, I made sure that my approach was down below the top of the hull. I estimated about how far down the hull I would have to swim and then I popped over the hull with my camera and took his picture.
I got off only one picture before he swam away. Sometimes it pays to be stealthy.
Have you ever noticed how loud scuba diving can be?
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.
What are the odds?
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.)
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. Â 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.
Now in the middle of the day to see a free-swimming moray eel is fairly uncommon. Â 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. Â I watched this pair swim together and chase several smaller fish into holes in the reef. Â I did not see them have any success in hunting. Â 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. Â 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. Â Of course the opposite could be true. Â 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.
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.
Have you been to Mantaville off the Kona Coast?
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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
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turned it on and pointed up.
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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.
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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.
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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
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the same area for most of the dive albeit I was having to work to stay there because the surge kept blowing me about.
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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.
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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.
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I snapped off a couple of shots and just stood my ground. He keep coming and coming. I kept shooting.
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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.
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Oh well that is the thing about large animals. They are rare, unpredictable but very special to see in person.
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.
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?
I have had a chance to swim through quite a few swim throughs that ranged from feeling pretty wide open to feeling really claustrophobic. Â 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. Â Sometimes I have to bring the strobes in pretty close to be able to get through the available space. Â 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. Â I need about 5 feet wide to be able to get the strobes through without bringing them in close to the camera housing. Â I need about two feet vertically to be able to get the tank strobes and me through the available space. Â I can do about 2 feet by 3 feet but that feels really tight.
I’ve seen some pretty interesting responses by divers. Â Some are quite at ease and just seem to go with the flow of the swim through. Â Others, well they can get pretty spooked and bolt through the swim through. Â That happened in a swim through in Cozumel and as it looked as if two divers were swimming on top of one another. Â 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.
Now off the coast of Kona, Hawaii are a number of lava tubes that create some interesting swim throughs. Â The lava tubes ranged from very wide to very small. Â Each was different. Â Below is a link to a small sampling of the tubes into the blue that we saw.
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. 
Have you seen Manta’s at night?
Not long ago, I had a chance to do two night dives with the potential of seeking manta rays off the Kona coast. The first night I was all geared up and we were swimming to the site. Just before we reached the site I looked up and a manta buzzed right over my head. My initial thought was: wow, this could be good. The manta made two passes and I took a couple of shots that were ok, but I was hoping there would be a few more passes so I could hone my timing in on the manta’s pace. I was actually quite surprised at how fast he blew by me. Yeah, I know I am slower that a turtle, but that manta was fast. Well, as happens with many opportunities to watch for animals, you can wait and you can wait. The manta made one more pass about 35 minutes later and that was the end of it.
Well I could not complain. I had seen a manta. I had gotten off a few snaps and I wasn’t even that cold in my 2mm shorty. But my hopes were that on Thursday night we would see more than one manta and they would make more than a few cursory passes.
Well we were lucky. We saw at least 10 mantas and they were pretty active for our 70 minute dive. Now the environment at the second site was totally different. Night one was just a few divers and one manta. Night two there were 20 dive boats, at least 60 divers a lot of snorkelers and 10 mantas making a variety of passes. There did come a break in the action early on where the mantas seemed to stop making passes through the site. It’s about that time I got into it with a photographer who decided she was better than the rest of us. All of the divers but one were circled around the lights that were on the bottom of the ocean and they were facing inward. Not her, she put herself inside the circle and faced outward shining her lights in any diver’s eyes that were close to her. I was within three feet of her and I was not happy. After one of the local instructors chewed on her she still wasn’t moving. It is rather hard to cuss some one out through a regulator, but it is a helpful talent I have developed. I’m guessing she got my message because after I finished telling her what I thought of her behaviour, she flipped me off, and she moved away from me. Now, it might have had something to do with my shining my 4000 lumen video light in her face, but she moved off not long after I was done “talking to her”. Nevertheless, inspite of the challenges, I shot over 200 images and a little bit of video during the dive. Some of the images were very good, and some were interesting. The whole scene had a rock concert feel to it. At about 50 minutes most of the divers had cleared out. The last 20 minutes were awesome. So here is the link to the video from the show.
Do you like night dives?
For a person who is largely visually oriented, night dives can be a little bit disconcerting, particularly the first several times. The first night dive I did was in an advanced scuba class in a Texas lake. The visibility might have been 15 feet and at night I was lucky to be able to see the fins of the diver in front of me. I probably stayed pretty close because even with a bright underwater torch there was not much to see and even then I didn’t want to get left behind. At one point we turned out all the lights and the dive instructor cracked open a chemical light to simulate bio-florescence. It was interesting but it would be years that passed before I had a chance to see bio-florescence in the ocean.
Roll forward several years and I had a chance to do a night dive in Playa Del Carmen. I had just started shooting a digital camera underwater and was still at the stage of chasing sea creatures in hopes of capturing an interesting image. Well I learned on a drift dive at night that was not a good strategy because we ran out of reef pretty quickly.
Roll forward a few more years and I was introduced to “glow diving” in the Cayman islands. The concept was shine a blue light on corals and other creatures and see whether they had any luminescence. This time I was moving pretty slowing and acquired a few interesting captures.
Well after that trip I started studying bio-luminescence and found that there is actually quite a lot written about the subject. I also made a few contacts such as Fire dive who pointed me in the right direction for further inquiry.
Assuming I can keep TSA from breaking my filters I think there is quite a bit more to see in my night dives than I would have ever guessed.