Lighthouse Reef: Abundance, Intimacy, and the Unexpected
Category Archives: wide angle
Have you been to the Solomon Islands?
Have you been to Thunder Dome?
Not far off the coast of West Caicos, which is part of Turks and Caicos, is a failed media idea that nevertheless still makes a very interesting dive site. Thunder dome was intended to be an underwater set for a television show that was based on what most scuba instructors would tell you is a fairly dangerous practice; i.e. mixing skin diving with compressed gas. The concept was that contestants would dive down 30 feet to a set which had a bubble system that spilled out pearls. The contestants would gather the pearls and when they needed more air they would go to a “mermaid” with a regulator connected to compressed gas, essentially a scuba system, would take a breath or two and continue collecting pearls. The object was to collect the most pearls and take the fewest hits of compressed gas and that contestant would win the most money. What could go wrong with that? Well, plenty. None of the contestants appear to have been trained scuba divers so presumably they had never heard the number one rule of scuba diving: Don’t hold your breath? Why—- because by breathing compressed gas and changing depth a person risks an over expansion injury; i.e. you could over expand your lungs so much they burst, among other serious injuries. Fortunately, while the production company did make a pilot or two, someone finally woke up to the risks of the project and killed the project. Nevertheless, the production company left the set for Thunder dome where it was in Turks and Caicos. The dome and other set pieces have made an interesting man made reef structure. Thirty years later, the set makes a very interesting site for certified divers.
While I was exploring the set on scuba, did I look for pearls, yes, but not so much. I figured they would be hard to find and after 30 years had probably been pretty picked over. But there was still plenty to see because in the last thirty years quite a few sponges and corals had claimed the set as their new home.
Although Thunder Dome was a failure as a television show, it nonetheless does make for a very interesting dive site to explore. So if you get to Turks and Caicos Thunder Dome is definitely a worthwhile site to dive.
Have you been diving in St. Martin?
Warm blue water with a ton of marine life to me is a great hook to go visit an island. In early July 2022 we sailed around St. Martin and got in a pedestrian 8 dives in a week. Nevertheless, we still saw a good variety of reef live. Some of my favorites were the turtles. All were green sea turtles but there were quite a few of them. Most were eating on the reef. Only one was swimming apparently looking for a meal.
But we also saw a variety of fish. Some were the usual pretty grunts that would show up in relatively large schools.
But the colors on the reef were not limited to browns and yellows. Instead there were also reds and other colors.
And of course, often on the edge of visibility there were grey reef sharks patrolling around the divers.
Have you ever been to the feeding of the Hammerhead Sharks in Bimini?
During a few months a year, primarily from December to March, it is possible to see great hammerhead sharks in Bimini. Sure I had taken pictures of sharks underwater before, but never hammerhead sharks.
In my preparation for the trip, it looked to me like the likelyhood of getting a picture of a great hammerhead without going on a dive where the sharks were being fed, was a very low probability. You have to ask: “What self respecting apex predator would want to be around a bunch of noisy open circuit divers?” The answer it seemed to me was a very old decrepit deaf hammerhead and then that would probably be a fluke. So that meant in all probability I would have to be on a dive where the shop feed the hammerheads in order to get them to come in close enough to photograph. That determination, limited the shops that I could dive with to one in Bimini. As sometimes happens, one of my friends Michelle, with DXDivers was running a trip out to Bimini to dive at the Big Game Club with Neal Watson’s shop. So I signed up for the trip and talked David, one of my dive buddies into joining me.
So, before my trip I started by looking at images that had been taken in Bimini. What I noticed was that where available the camera settings reflected the images had been shot on 16mm fish eye lenses. Having shot a 16mm lens for several years it occurred to me that it is a great lens if you can get close to the subject, but not so great if you could not get reasonably close. It also occurred to me that it was probably a bad idea to swim towards a shark that was feeding.
A few years ago I had added to my lens collection a 16-35 f4 zoom lens. The optical characterisitics of the lens I think are quite impressive because it renders a good rectilinear image as long as there is a good amount of light. I had shot the lens behind a 9 inch Zen dome and the optical characteristics were quite good. Given that I thought there was a pretty good chance that the sharks might be a ways away from me when peak action occurred, I opted to bring along the 16-35mm lens and the Zen dome. Now the down side of the Zen dome is that it’s enormous, and weighs several pounds. It also requires a substantial extension tube. My camera rig without the Zen dome weighs in at about 35 pounds. The Zen dome with extension tube adds another 3 pounds or so but also changes substantially the buoyancy characteristics of my rig. And it takes up about almost a third of my dive bag. So now I had to think about what portion of my usual gear was I going to leave home?
In general the images that my review founds that I liked had been shot on full fame DSLR cameras. The ISO’s had been set at between 100 and 400. The fstops used had been between f7 and f14. I also noted that the shutter speed tended to be in the range of 1/200th to 1/250th of a second. The vast majority of the images appeared to have been shot with flash, although for most of the images I could not determine what flash unit or units had been used.
What I could not tell from the images that I reviewed was the relative depth that the shots were taken, but I could see that most were taken where the sharks were swimming over the white sand that is common in the Bahamas. My guess was that the water depth was about 30 feet. As it turned out my guess was pretty close, 26 feet on one dive and 24 on the other.
I next considered strategies for getting sharp focus of the hammerheads as they came in to feed. What I have noticed from other efforts at “shooting sharks” was that they are fast for underwater animals, and their movements seemed to me to be somewhat unpredictable. So It seemed to me that what I wanted to do was be able to use was three D tracking and to try to get focus on the eye as best I could. With some sharks I had noticed it was hard just keeping them in the frame if they were moving quickly. As one of my friends video demonstrates hammerheads are very fast in the water. https://www.instagram.com/reel/CZ5mYuFAt5y/?utm_medium=copy_link
It also occurred to me that continuous focus mode might help, but the limiting factor was that underwater strobes only recycle so fast. To try to help save the strobes, I used a relatively low manual strobe power so that if I shot more than one image at a time there was at least some hope that the strobe would fire a second and maybe a third time before recycling.
I also decided I would take a somewhat different approach to shooting the sharks. In most of the images I saw the angle of the shot placed the shark alone over the sand, with few if any divers in any shot. It seemed to me that the reality was that because the sharks were coming in to be fed there were divers who should be included in the shot along with the feeder.
It wasn’t until I was mid-way through the first dive that it occurred to me that the story really was the interaction between the feeders and the sharks. No it is not ballet, nor is it a bull fight because hopefully everyone goes home with the same number of bits that they came to the feed with. Instead, it is a delicate effort to respect the sharks while at the same time demonstrate the pure power and strength that the Hammerheads have that have allowed them to survive millions of years as apex predators.
So were the actual dives somewhat like what I expected? I would say so, but like vacations, you still have to go and see for yourself in order to enjoy them.
Have you been to Silk Caye?
Not long ago I visited Silke Caye which is south of Placencia in Belize. I had been to Silke Caye about a decade ago and when I dove there then the wind was howling and the water was pretty stirred up so underwater photography was a real challenge. This time Hurricane “Grace” had gone by to the north, but had still managed to stir up the water. Nevertheless, we still went diving. We had a warm day, but the trip out was basically windless and the water was glassy calm. We got out to Silke Caye and received the obligatory briefing from the park ranger about where you can go and where you can’t go within the park. After the briefing the snorkelers stayed on the island of silk caye to snorkel. Calling it an island is probably an exaggeration because it is so small it only has three palm trees and a single camp style toilet.
Meanwhile the divers got back in the boat and we motored out from the island maybe another couple hundred yards to a wall where we did our first dive. We back-rolled off the boat and started down. If you have been to Belize you are probably aware that the segment of the Meso American reef which runs by Belize tends to have a lot of soft corals which include sea fans and and sea whips. Yes, there are hard corals, but oftentimes they are surrounded by the soft corals.
One thing I noticed after a while was that there seemed to be a substantial decrease in the numbers of native fish stock on the dive. There were squirrel fish who were pretty well ensconced in the holes in the reef. But, what I did not see were the large numbers of grunts, snappers and other smaller reef fish such as blue chromis. We did find several lion fish which we speared . We also saw several nurse sharks one of who followed out group for much of the dive.
When we first came across the nurse shark, I thought well if we get one pass we will be pretty lucky. Well fortunately I was wrong. We would swim a ways and he would circle back to check us out. He tended to swim right through the group of divers. So I began dropping down to the level of the soft corals and positioned myself so he would swim right to me. In all he made maybe a dozen passes during the dive. Sometimes he would turn just as he got to my camera. A couple of times he swam under me.
So at least on the first couple of dives we saw a lot of nurse sharks and soft corals but not as many native species of fish.
Reflections on the RMS Rhône wreck
Thoughts about repetitive diving?
Do you have a favorite undersea animal?
Have you been to the Cistern dive site in BVI?
The first dive we did in British Virgin Islands (“BVI”) in 2018 was at the Cistern point off of Cooper island. We dropped down behind the boat and swam to the mooring line. We dropped to the bottom which was at 27 feet at the mooring ball. The area around the mooring ball was mostly sand. It looked like the cat. 5 hurricane last year had beaten up most of the hard coral. But the hard coral is slowing making a come back.
The soft corals are ok, but a bit sparse. It was a sunny day to start, but later in the dive the sun started to go behind the clouds, meaning that I had to turn up the strobes a bit . I found quite a few large lobsters in various overhangs. They looked to be in the 5 + pound range.
There were several dips in the ocean floor. I dropped down to see the various animals hiding in the hole in the reef. The fish seem to be making a bit of a come back. We saw several scrawled file fish. I saw one queen trigger fish. I saw quite a few box fish and one adult barracuda. We saw three large tarpon near a cave mouth. Inside the cave were some silversides and there were two lion fish hunting the silversides.
Later in the dives we got reasonably close to the tarpon.
Late in the dive we found a turtle. I took quite a few shots of him and got a few with my daughter Megan in the picture.
Near the end of the dive we found one spotted moray who was pretty well hidden.
At the end of the dive an eagle ray that was easily 6 ft across came through the site. He was missing a tail.
I swam hard for both the turtle and the eagle ray. The turtle wasn’t too hard to catch. The ray was pretty fast and it was hard to get close to him.
I was a bit tired after the dive since the swim back to the boat was through some surge and the wind had picked up and was blowing us away from the boat.
The new housing and strobes worked well. I took over 200 images on the one hour long dive. Maximum depth was 42 feet. Viz was maybe 50-60 feet, less at the beginning and end of the dive. Better in the middle of the dive.
Have you been diving in the Exumas Cayes in the Bahamas?
The Exhumas are a group of islands that are part of the Bahamas that begin about 30 miles of the southeaster tip of New Providence island where Nassau is located. The Exhumas are a beautiful chain of coral islands. On one side is the Atlantic Ocean, on the other side is the Gulf. On the Gulf side it is easy to sail in 20+knot winds and the water is still relatively calm. On the Atlantic side, with the same winds whip up the seas and it is easy to have 5-6 foot swells.
By staying on the gulf side of the islands, we managed to move relatively effortlessly without getting beat to a pulp by the seas. The diving on the gulf side, well it was relatively shallow, but the sea life was relatively diverse.
Red tipped sea goddess nudibranch, of course shows up while I have a wide angle set up on the camera.
The creatures also included a rather large slipper lobster, who I thought was as large as I had ever seen.
For diving, it was important to be at the dive site ready to dive either on slack high or slack low tide. Most sites are near the channels between the islands. if you try to dive the sites without being on slack tide you are going to be doing a serious drift dive with currents ranging from 2-5 knots. Given that we were not particularly well set up for drift dives it meant that we had to time our dives well to be on slack water. Of course in between we were able snorkel and saw eagle rays, green sea turtles and even swimming pigs and native iguanas.
Most days early morning and sunsets were spectacular.
Do you remember the King Cruiser accident?
The only wreck dive in the Phukett area of Thailand, is near the Phi Phi islands. The MS King Cruiser was a car ferry. On May 4, 1997 it sank off the West Coast of Southern Thailand. The ferry was operating between Phuket and the Phi Phi Islands in southern Thailand when she hit a submerged collection of rocky pinnacles at Anemone Reef, 10 miles off Phi Phi Island. The impact tore a large hole in the hull, and the vessel sank within two and a half hours. Nevertheless all of the passengers were rescued.
The ferry was on a regular crossing in normal conditions, and the Anemone Reef was charted and well known by captains in the area. This has led to various unproven theories as to why the accident occurred. Theories include insurance fraud due to the owners experiencing financial difficulties on the unprofitable route, and also that local dive companies paid the captain to sink the vessel as, up until that time, there were no wreck dives around Phuket. The captain was found to be negligent.
The vessel sits upright on a sandy bottom in around 30 meters of water. Originally the shallowest part of the wreck rose to ~10 meters, but today most of the superstructure is collapsed making the shallowest part of the wreck currently deeper than 18 meters. The wreck remains largely in one piece, although all of the upper deck has collapsed.
When we dove the King Cruiser we had a calm day, with very small surface waves. Although we were diving the wreck at slack high tide, the current around the wreck was moving. Getting to the mooring ball with my camera was a chore. We all descended on the mooring line which ties to the wheelhouse. Once we got to the wreck, the wreck for the most part blocked the current. The thing that struck me was that the first school of fish we was a school of giant porcupine fish. Now in the past I have seen a couple of porcupine fish swimming together but I’ve never seen a school of several hundred swimming together. Now here was the disappointing problem, besides the current moving pretty quickly where the porcupine fish were swimming, viz was maybe 20 feet. Instead of burning my air to try to get a picture that would at best have been difficult to see the school, I opted to follow individuals around as they swam around the boat. 
As we dropped down over the leeward side of the wreck it was pretty obvious that the hull was covered in oyster shells and other mollusks. I could see an enormous number of sea urchins. That was reason enough to be careful not to touch anything. But there were also other reasons like lion fish and stone fish on the hull. If you look closely beneath the lionfish in the middle of the screen you can see the tail of a stone fish who is right next to a sea urchin. 
Soon we were in the mist of an enormous school of big eyed snappers. The schools of fish were crazy and the were everywhere.
As we made our way around the wreck we found the ship’s propeller which is at about 93 feet. 
The current near the bottom was not nearly as strong as it was towards the top of the wreck so I stayed near the bottom, but had to watch my deco time. I stayed over 20 minutes at 90+ feet and then had to move up once I got back to the leeward side of the ship.
Where there were once windows in the ship there were large cutout where you could look in and see some of the schools of fish. 
When I reached the stern of the wreck again it was time to start the ascent. No I didn’t go into deco, but I did have to do three stops to avoid doing so. This was a very good dive to be diving a shearwater dive computer since it made determining the end and stops on the way back up very easy.
All in all the King Cruiser was an interesting dive. I was really wanting the rebreather so I could have extended my bottom time and not had to rush through certain parts of the dive.