Category Archives: wide angle

Fiji, Uncategorized, wide angle

Have you been to Paradise?

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Rainbow reef in Tevouni
Rainbow reef in  Taveuni with loads of soft corals

For the most part, when I travel, I usually have a pretty good idea of what I expect to see when I arrive at my destination.  Typically before I leave to go to a destination, I have looked at one or more photo sites to give me  a sense of what I may be able to see, and shoot, when I get to the destination.  Many times I have done some research on the accommodations that we will be staying at to make sure we don’t get an ugly surprise.  It is rare that I am surprised, and even more rare that I am pleasantly surprised.  I suppose based on all of the traveling I have done, I am spoiled and have very high expectations.  And yet, a pleasant surprise is what we found in Taveuni at Paradise resort.  

In five days of diving, I did 15 dives, 3 dives a day, and each of the sites we saw were different and I did not grow bored with the sites becoming too similar.  Fiji is famous for being the soft coral capital of the world.  Paradise Resort which has relatively quick access to rainbow reef is in my mind the epicenter of soft coral diving.  Keep in mind, to be interesting there must be a pretty good current that runs through a dive site with soft coral to adequately feed the soft coral and keep them open and beautiful. 

Most of our dives we did on slack high or slack low tide, so the current was not completely rippin’.  After one of our dives one of our guides pointed out a place where the current was racing through near where we had been diving.  The current looked to be well over 5 knots and if we had been there we would not have been there long!

Soft corals and a blizzard of fish

If you want to be able to push a big camera through the current, be prepared to bring your big blade fins.  I wore my dive rite fins and left most of the people on our trip behind.  Split fins may be comfortable, but leave them for water that doesn’t move as much. And be prepared to be well fed at the resort.  Big engines need lots of fuel!

Back at the resort there are opportunities to shoot macro shots, with nudibranchs and the house reef has resident blue ribbon eels and other macro subjects. 

A juvenile anemone fish trying to hide in an anemone

During the week, we saw sharks, but because there is no feeding of sharks in the area.   The white tip sharks did not approach our group and were content to sleep just off the wall in water too deep to dive.  We also saw two enormous Napoleon wrasses that each would have weighed well over 300 pounds.  We saw several dozen pilot whales on our way to several of the dive sites and a pod of dolphins as well.  Sure it would have been interesting to get closer to them than 20 meters while on the surface, but I was quite content to be able to observe them from afar.  So when will I go back to Paradise Resort, as soon as I can find  space in my schedule.  I will plan on spending at least two weeks there next time.    

Rainbow reef after the storm
Bahamas, wide angle

Hurray it’s shark week again

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Grey reef shark
Grey reef shark swimming overhead

In my opinion, apex predators are very interesting.  From what I have observed they are curious and will investigate what they think might be food.  If there is food in the water they will take an easy meal.  

This is why you wear the suit-
This is why you wear the suit

Sharks unlike people do not have hands which might otherwise allow them to tactically check out potential meals.   So what do they do, they taste potential entres with their mouths.  Now that might seem bad, it can have a bad effect on anyone the shark chooses to sample.  

Grey reef shark at shark junction
Grey reef shark at shark junction

So I keep thinking they sure are interesting but I ill try to avoid becoming a meal,  

 

St. Martin, Tobago, Uncategorized, wide angle

Have you seen the array of colors underwater?

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Orange Elephant ear sponges off the coast of little Tobago

I admit it, as a photographer the first thing I see in an image is color.  Some people see texture, some see composition, but I see color.   Growing up,  most of the time I spent in the water was either in a pool or in a fresh water lake. Ok if you are lucky a pool is a nice color blue and a lake is some what clear and you can see fish.    Imagine my surprise the first time I went snorkeling in the Caribbean.  Lots of colors in sponges and fish and coral.  Continue reading Have you seen the array of colors underwater? →

British Virgin Islands, wide angle, wreaks

Have you had a chance to dive the RMS Rhone?

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In the British Virgin Islands, in my mind there are two iconic dives.   The dive site known as the “Indians” is near a three rocky outcroppings that bear the name the Indians.  The aquatic life is about as close to an aquarium as I can remember diving.  Great variety and abundance of underwater life.  

But, the iconic dive in the BVI is the dive of the RMS Rhone.  When the ship sank only one porthole remained intact.

The magic port hole
The magic port hole

Nevertheless, the rest of the ship which has been submerged for more than a century is still in relatively good shape.  Here is a link to what I wrote about the dive of the Rhone several years ago.

 http://www.campbelljournal.com/rhone.html

I hope I get to go back to dive the Rhone again in the near future.  

Bahamas, wide angle, wreaks

Have you seen the Sea Star after the hurricane?

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sea star wreck with railng
Sea Star wreck with railing and sun ball
The last time I dove on the wreck known as the Sea Star off the coast of Grand Bahama, the ship was intact and it was relatively easy to circumnavigate around the exterior of the ship.  The ship may have had a small list to one side but it seemed to be otherwise upright and easy to tell that it was formerly a ship.  

In December 2016 a hurricane went through Grand Bahama and did quite a bit of damage on the island, but also changed several of the dive sites that are just off shore from the island.  The Sea Star went from looking like a ship to being torn in about half and left in the shape of an “L”.  It certainly opened up the cargo hold.  

And, while many parts of the ship were almost unrecognizable, towards what was the stern of the ship there were still parts that looked similar to what we had seen of the stern in our previous visit.  And, some of the sponge life was undisturbed by the storm.

 

The new “foot print” of the Sea Star does give some interesting views that previously either didn’t exist or were not as recognizable.  

It will be interesting to see if the sea life that previously grew on the Sea Star re-establishes itself in the coming years.  

Bahamas, Sharks, Uncategorized, wide angle

Turtles

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Some days I think about all the types of certain critters I have seen and then think that I will probably not see something new on the next trip.  It sure is nice to be wrong.  During the last trip to Grand Bahama it was awesome to see a loggerhead turtle up close. 

I had only seen a loggerhead turtle one other time and that was from a boat deck.  The last time I saw one it was only for a brief second because he popped his head up only a few meters ahead of our catamaran and then ducked down again as he saw we were sailing right towards him.  I don’t think I have ever seen a turtle move so fast.  Now he was never in danger because he would have passed between the two pontoons of the boat without any problem.  Nevertheless, because I was close to the front of the boat I could see just how enormous he was.  Most turtles I have seen have been maybe a few feet across the bottom of their shell.  The fellow who swam under the boat was easily 2 meets across the bottom of his shell.  If I had to guess he must have weighed several hundred pounds.  

The loggerhead turtle I saw in the Bahamas raced through the dive site, right past a bunch of divers.  He was huge — well over 500 pounds. 

At first I did not see any reason for why this turtle seemed quite determined to “motor” through the site.  It was only after I took the first shot that I saw why.   Maybe having a grey reef shark following you is no big deal for a turtle that weighs several hundred pounds.  

But then again, maybe having a large shark following you is just an annoyance.  I really don’t know, but even if I had a hard shell, I don’t think I would mess around with those teeth.  So maybe swimming through the circle of divers was the idea after all.  We were the bait. 

 

Oh yeah, the turtle took a right angle after passing me, and the shark just kept swimming straight.  Who says turtles are slow.  

Bahamas, Sharks, Uncategorized, wide angle, wreaks

Nassau Bahamas, wreck diving and shark diving, what’s not to like?

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I was thinking about the dives we did in Nassau and it occurred to me that it was some of the most diverse, and productive diving I have had a chance to do. Day 1 we spent a fair amount of time diving with gray reef sharks. Even before the feeding began the sharks were remarkably cooperative in positioning themselves so that they made interesting models.

Grey reef shark
Grey reef shark swimming overhead

The first day we did two shark divers at shark junction with the Stuart Cove dive shop. Dive one was pretty mellow and while there were quite a few sharks, the 18 divers on the boat never got particularly close to the sharks since they were curious, but at best aloof. The second dive was a shark feed and it was interesting to watch the sharks come in and be fed. There was quite a bit of bumping and jostling for position by the sharks. The divers were all pretty well out of the line of swimming, except for the shark feeder and the photographers who had chain mail suits.

Here is a brief video from the shark feed.

And did I mention the wrecks? There are lots of them and many of them have appeared in one or more movies.
And some of the wrecks are just interesting because their structure has an amazing amount of growth that has accumulated on them.

Anguilla, Uncategorized, wide angle, wreaks

So what is it like to dive in Anguilla?

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Black Margots hugging the hull of the MV Commerce
Black Margots hugging the hull of the MV Commerce

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.  

Sponge and coral growth on the hull of the MV Commerce

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.  

MV Commerce with turtle

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.  

The bow of the MV Commerce Anguilla

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.  

Turtle on DeckI got off only one picture before he swam away.  Sometimes it pays to be stealthy. 

St. Martin, wide angle

Have you ever been diving in St. Martin?

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Exploring turtle reef

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.  

1t-dive-29-of-40

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.  

An amazing amount of fish life

 

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. 

Hawks bill turtle grazing on sponges
Hawks bill turtle grazing on sponges

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

Macro, wide angle

Do you have a favorite crustacean?

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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.

a polkadotted hermit crab
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.

plumed hairy crab
plumed hairy crab

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.

arrow crab hunting for dinner
arrow crab hunting for dinner

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. 🙂

Bioflourescence, Kona, Uncategorized, wide angle

What are the odds?

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arch-with-diver-1-of-1On 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.

Belize, Cayman Islands, Kona, Mexico, Uncategorized, wide angle

Have you seen undersea animals hunting in pairs?

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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