Tag Archives: scuba diving

Macro, swim throughs, Uncategorized, wide angle

Have you been to the Solomon Islands?

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Brian after navigating the Cathedral dive passages swims into the deep blue ocean

Our 10 days of diving in the Solomons with the Master liveaboard was amazing. Some things about the trip are quatifiable, 37 dives in 10 days is, a pretty big number of dives. The countless thousands of fish we saw was impressive. We saw large schools of jacks, fusiliers and barracuda. But the diving wasn’t just about the numbers. There were many story lines along the way that standing alone could make great stories. Consider one of the dives we did was named Simon’s dive site. Simon lives in the Florida islands and is quite a naturalist. He has among other things replanted coral on the reef on his property and has gotten the government to recognized his property as a nature preserve. His efforts have helped grow stag horn coral in places where it appears to have either not existed or which may have been in existence but needed to be reseeded. With growing reefs come critters. We did a night dive on Simon’s reef. Among the things I saw was a nudibranch that was enormous, almost 10 centimeters in length. Now I have shot this same species of nudibranch in other places such as the Philippines, but I don’t think I have ever seen one this large.

But the trip wasn’t just about nudibranchs or small critters. One of the things that stood out in my mind was just how healthy the reef was on all of the sites we dove. In paticular, the wide range of hard corals struck me.

But the soft corals were also quite abundant. Not since I dove rainbow reef in Fiji had I seen so many different colors of soft corals on any dives. Red, purple, yellow, orange and white soft corals covered many sections of the reef.

And of course there were a number of the usual suspects that you find in the coral triangle, such as clown fish.

Nemo’s eye

But of course the thing that keeps me coming back to diving is the friendships that are formed by diving with people from all around the world.

Coming up for a break in the Cathedral dive site
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    Have you been diving on the Lesleen M?

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    Turtle on Deck
    Turtle on deck

    My grandfather used to say quite often “Sonny using the right tool for the job makes all the difference.” My grandfather was a very skilled repairman who could take almost any mechanical device apart and repair it, most of the time without any schematics, diagrams or other description of the devise. When he took something apart he was very systematic. When he was done dissembling a device it looked like an engineer’s exploded schematic of the device. Of course for him the device went back together with no left over parts and almost always worked better than when he found it. Coming from my grandfather, advice about using the right tool for the project had significant meaning to me.

    On the other hand, some of my family members motto has been adapt and change to meet the situation. Or if you don’t have the right tool for the job, improvise.

    So I guess it is somewhat telling that one of my reoccurring nightmares is going on a trip to take pictures of whales underwater and discovering the camera rig is set up for macro or worse yet super macro. How many pictures of a whale’s eye do you need or want?

    The same thought applies to ship wrecks. When I think about shooting a ship wreck I am thinking about what is the environment like where the wreck is located?

    Papa doc with diver — Freeport Bahamas

    Is the reef near the wreck, is the reef interesting? Has the wreck begun to grow over the wreck?

    The tugboat with encrusting corals — Curacao

    In preparing for a recent trip to St. Lucia I had looked on the internet to see what the most important wreck off the coast of St. Lucia was. I found some reasonably helpful information about the Lesleen M which pointed out that the Lesleen M Wreck is an old cargo ship that was sunk in 1986. The resulting artificial reef is home to numerous species of coral and aquatic life. The Lesleen M Wreck lies evenly on its keel. The wreck is approximately 165 feet long and rests at a depth of at a depth of 60 feet. From inside the engine room of the Lesleen M Wreck, there is a ladder that takes you into the cabins of the main deck. I think that is a reasonable good description of what I saw when I dove the Lesleen M.

    But wouldn’t you know the day I dove the Lesleen M instead of having my wide angle lens, I had a 105 mm macro lens. So how did I adapt and adjust? I had no choice but to shoot macro. Here are few macro shots I took.

    green moray in your face
    Green moray in your face, Lesleen M St. Lucia

    And there were a few other interesting shots…

    queen angel fish on the wreck
    Queen angel fish on the wreck of the Lesleen M

    But alas, no pictures of what I would call an underwater wreck. I guess I will have to go back.

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    The Sea of Abaco

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    Preserving the creatures of the Sea
    Preserving the creatures of the Sea

    In the Bahamas is the sea of Abaco. It is surrounded by Little Abaco in part, Great Abaco and several small Cayes. The sea of Abaco is very protected from storms and even when a substantial storm arrived on the last day of our sailing trip, it did not make the water very rough for sailing. Marsh harbor is the largest town in the area and has an airport and a nice harbor. The sea of Abaco is roughly 30 feet deep at its deepest and it appears that most of the diving is done in the “cuts” where water flows in and out of the sea. In the “cuts” the fish life is impressive. One of the fish that we found quite frequently were Nassau groupers.

    Although groupers may make great tasting dinners, their stocks are under significant pressure from over fishing. Hopefully, groupers will not go the way of the dinasauers. They are the puppies of the sea, and can be remarkably friendly. Gary, as I referred to this fellow liked my camera and spent several minutes posing.