Actually…heads down. This is from one of our earliest encounters, with a group of four whales.
When sperm whales socialise, they often bump and rub against each other, and also put their heads together.
Note: Photo taken under permit.
Archive for January, 2010
Whale Fart
One of the things I’ve noticed over the past couple of days is that sperm whales pass gas quite often…at least the ones here do.
Perhaps I’m reading too much into this scene, but it seems that even among whales, when you fart…you’re expected to maintain a polite distance from the group.
Etiquette is etiquette after all.
Note: Photo taken under permit.
Four of a Kind
Among the whales we encountered yesterday was a group of four young males. This is the first time I’ve seen a group of young males like this hanging out together. Male sperm whales leave their family groups and live a mostly solitary life when they grow up.
Note: Photo taken under permit.
What A Day
I seem to have really good luck with sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus).
At various times, I’ve found myself in the mouth of a sperm whale, photographing a sperm whale with a large chunk of giant squid in its mouth…and today, swimming for most of the day with groups of very friendly sperm whales.
It’s been a really long day, and I don’t have it in me to write much more, but as the saying goes…a picture is worth a thousand words:
Note: Photo taken under permit.
Equipment Note: Sweep Panorama
I’ve been using and really enjoying a relatively new function that’s available in Sony compact cameras. It’s called Sweep Panorama, and essentially, this function automates the process of creating panorama shots like the shot below of Eric playing tourist at Chichen Itza during our recent trip to Isla Mujeres:
I took this photo with a Sony Cybershot DSC-WX1 camera.
By using the camera’s Sweep Panorama mode, all I had to do was press the shutter, start at the left end of the area in the photo and move the camera from left-to-right over the area I wanted in my panorama shot.
The camera stitched everything together…automatically producing a nice 3424 x 1920 pixel panorama image covering a much greater field of view than possible with a normal single shot.
I used this function to take the second photo in my previous post as well.
The Sweep Panorama mode works with the camera in either vertical or horizontal orientation (vertical example for the photo above; horizontal example in my previous post), and you can select options to sweep the camera from left-to-right, right-to-left, top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top.
In short, it’s a handy way to capture wide (and tall) scenics quickly without pulling out your DSLR and laptop to stitch images together.
Sweep Panorama works best with non-moving objects, so it’s suited to landscapes, architectural shots and such, but it can handle a little bit of movement. I’ve used a few Cybershot cameras with this function, and the Sweep Panorama mode’s ability to handle movement within the framed scene has improved quite a bit since this function was initially introduced.
I think that the Sweep Panorama mode is available in most, if not all, of the recently announced Cybershot models.
Adios Isla Mujeres
Our time at Isla Mujeres is up, and it’s time to move on.
Our final day on the island has been a restful one, because the wind picked up significantly overnight so it was too strong to head out to sea today. In fact, I watched a perplexed pelican get blown backward this morning. You just can’t argue with Mother Nature.
The three of us spent the first part of the day catching up on sleep and later bidding farewell to the new friends we’ve made, including Rogelio (the boat captain in the blue t-shirt) and Juan (white t-shirt), who took excellent(!) care of us and tirelessly searched the seas for sailfish. They were also fortunate(?) enough to get stuck chaperoning and babysitting us during our excursion to Chichen Itza a few days ago.
I haven’t taken many photos around the island during this trip. We were out to sea by 06:00 on most days, and by the time we got back to land, I was completely wiped out either from swimming a lot and/ or from baking in the sun and being tossed around by the swells.
Finally this morning, I had a chance to take a few snapshots of the dock and the boat we were on.
Before I prepare to pack up (actually, I’m just procrastinating), here are a couple more sailfish photos.
The first illustrates the incredible pinpoint control sailfish have with their spears. On many occasions, we watched in amazement as sailfish skewered their prey like tasty fish kebabs:
A few people wrote to me earlier in the week, expressing the sentiment that it must be scary/ dangerous to be in the water with fish armed with long spears. That’s what I thought too when I arrived here, but after spending several hours swimming among these animals, I am confident that they have perfect control and are completely aware of their position relative to one another and to anyone who happens to be in the water.
It’s always possible for an accident to occur, but if you think about, a head-on collision between a sailfish and a person would probably be just as damaging for the fish as for the swimmer.
Sailfish use their spears to hunt prey, so the last thing they’d want to do is damage and/ or lose the tool they rely on to catch food. Right?
In fact, after the first couple of drops, I was confident enough to get in right among the sailfish and place my trust in their agility, intelligence and self-preservation instinct.
On many occasions, they came close enough for portraits like the one below, photographed with a fisheye lens on a full-frame camera…in other words, the fish was just inches away from me, travelling at blindingly fast speed!
Over the past few days, I’ve heard from a number of people who’ve expressed an interest in visiting Isla Mujeres next year to see the sailfish. Eric and I haven’t figured out our respective forward schedules yet, so we’re not entirely certain if we’ll be back. We’ll figure it out soon though.
If you’re interested in joining us on an adventure here in 2011, please drop me a message via my contact form.
So that’s it for Isla Mujeres. We head to the airport at the pleasant hour of 05:00 tomorrow. Sterling is headed back home. Eric and I are making our way to the lovely island of Dominica…another new destination for me.
Isla Mujeres…Adios, and thanks for all the fish!
Chichen Itza
It’s been a slow couple of days fish-wise, but we’ve been making the best of our circumstances.
Yesterday, the winds were up to at least 30 knots, and the sea was ridiculously rough…both shaken and stirred, so to speak. This is what the harbour looked like at around 06:00:
We decided not to go out on the water (in fact, I don’t think anyone went out to sea yesterday), and instead, we travelled several hours by car to a place called Chichen Itza, a site with ruins from a Mayan community by the same name.
Since this is my first trip to Mexico, it goes without saying that yesterday’s excursion was my virgin visit to Mayan ruins. I was impressed. The ruins of Chichen Itza comprise a large compound. Even though we wandered around for about three hours, we didn’t manage to see everything.
The most prominent and primary structure at the site was quite large, as you can see from this image of me standing in front of it:
And of course, since Chichen Itza is a popular tourist attraction with busloads of people on guided tours streaming in all day long, the three of us did our best to blend in with the other visitors by acting like giddy tourists:
It’s a really good thing that I had an expensive, super-wide lens with me so we could pull this photo off with such panache.
By the end of the afternoon, we were all really tired given the heat, humidity and ground we had covered. Here’s a shot of Sterling and Eric taking a short break, with the main structure of Chichen Itza in the background:
Given our day away from the ocean, we awoke this morning with high expectations. The wind was significantly subdued, and we headed out early to look for sailfish. As it turned out, there wasn’t a sailfish in sight, and from the chatter we picked up over the radio, the fishing boats weren’t having much luck either.
We still have a couple of days left though, so hopefully we’ll have another shot at getting in with the sailfish before we leave Isla Mujeres.
Isla Mujeres, Day Four
We were skunked yesterday…lots of sunshine, but no fish. It happens.
Today however, we had sunshine and fish. Many, many fish.
I’m too tired to write much, but here are a couple of images from this morning. First, a silhouette shot showing lots of sailfish:
There were actually many more fish swarming around us, but it was impossible to fit them all into a single frame.
And here’s a sailfish just about to attack a baitball of sardines:
Me and Eric at Work
Eric put together a nice time-lapse video of us setting up our cameras a couple of nights ago. It actually looks like we know what we’re doing:
Tony Wu and Eric Cheng set up cameras in Isla Mujeres from Eric Cheng on Vimeo.
Isla Mujeres, Day Two
Another fabulous day! Though it was still overcast, the water cleared up a bit, and we got onto the fish nice and early.
The one thing that characterised the day was swimming. Lots and lots of swimming.
The fish (both the sailfish and the sardines they were after) were in the mood to swim…running us around in circles, dodging and weaving back-and-forth…making us work really hard for our shots.
It was worth it though, for shots like this one, which shows a sailfish at the moment it grabbed a solitary sardine separated from its school:
The fish are unimaginably fast, so getting this shot was about 10% experience, 10% reflexes, and 100% luck!
One thing the sailfish are known for is flashing brilliant colours when they hunt. Between yesterday and today, we’ve seen that not all the fish do this, and even the fish that do change colours don’t seem to do it every time they go after food.
I’m not sure if there’s any rhyme or reason to how and when a sailfish decides to flash colours, but if anyone has any insight, please share!
Here’s an example of a sailfish displaying its brilliant colouration:
The sun managed to peek out for a few hours this afternoon, so we’re hopeful that the next few days will bring better light, and that the fish will continue to cooperate.
Take a look at Eric’s day two post here.
Isla Mujeres, Day One
I arrived last night at Isla Mujeres, just off Cancun in Mexico, along with my travel companions Eric and Sterling.
To cut to the chase, we had an awesome first day.
Fortune smiled upon us, as we found a group of Atlantic sailfish (Istiophorus albicans) encircling and devouring an aggregation of bait fish within an hour or so of arriving in the area where this spectacle is known to occur.
The weather was just so-so, and the visibility underwater wasn’t great, but it doesn’t make any difference when you have 20 to 25 sailfish within your field of view, swooping in, under, around and through balls of bait fish.
Woohoo! More soon…hopefully.
Note: Eric just posted a cool video from today. Take a look!
Trips for 2010
It’s been a while since I’ve updated my Upcoming Trips page, largely because I’ve been travelling so much that it’s been difficult for me to hammer out logistical details and communicate with relevant counter-parties.
The year-end quiet period has given me some time to (just barely) catch up, so here’s a long overdue update of some of my trips for the near future, set out in chronological order. (I’m doing my best to keep my Upcoming Trips page updated, so bookmark that page if you want to check back later for more trips.)
The Night Safari Lembeh (27 Feb-6 Mar): I’ll be heading to Kasawari Lembeh Resort again soon, this time for the primary purpose of checking out the night life. As far as I know, this Night Safari trip is the first-ever organised effort to focus on diving at night in the Lembeh Strait. It’ll be fascinating(!) to see what happens late at night, when most (sane) people are asleep.
In addition to David and Sanah from Scubacam, Aey and Mean from FiNS will be on this trip…and Eric Cheng will be joining as well a few days into the trip. If you’re looking for advice about photography or how to prepare your images for print, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better-informed or nicer group of people.
There are still a few spots left for this trip, so click here to drop David and Sanah an email to sign up! More details here.
Humpback Whale Acoustic Research in Tonga (29 Jul – 7 Aug): In addition to the trips I have scheduled to swim with humpback whales in August this year, I’ve been working with a marine acoustics researcher friend of mine to try to set up a long-term study of humpback whale acoustics.
By way of background, my friend Dr. John Potter is a brilliant acoustics researcher who has studied underwater acoustics and marine mammals for over 20 years, pioneering techniques and a new understanding of how marine mammals use sound and how they’re affected by man-made sound in the ocean. John is a frequent consultant to sonar companies, navies, governments and NGOs concerned about the acoustic impact on the marine environment. Basically…he knows his stuff. In fact, he was the marine acoustics expert featured in the movie The Cove.
I first met John when he was the head of the Acoustic Research Laboratory at the National University of Singapore, which he started back in 1996. Among the interesting things he shared with me was an amazing video that he and other PhD friends put together showing the source, directionality and strength of humpback singer song in Hawaiian waters…a short sample of which is below:
Though it may not be immediately obvious, this is ground-breaking stuff. By using rebreathers, video cameras, audio recorders and distance measuring devices, John and the other researchers were able to construct this real-time representation of where a humpback’s sound comes from, how strong it is (in decibels) at various distances, and also the directionality of sound.
Cool, eh? (Actually, even more cool is the fact that John et al were the ones in the water on rebreathers gathering data first-hand!)
After several years of brainstorming and planning, we’re ready to try undertaking a new project in Tonga. We won’t be using rebreathers, but we will be pursuing new insights into the characteristics and behaviour of humpback whale singers.
The basic idea is to use a cross-disciplinary approach of combining data in the form of photos, video, high-frequency (i.e., whale-safe) ranging systems, and custom-designed hydrophone arrays to measure singer size, record their songs and other social sounds, and try to discern whether there are any meaningful correlations between songs and whales.
Our intention is to consider basic but as-yet unanswered questions such as whether bigger whales sing louder than smaller ones, whether some whales have deeper voices than others, what role if any age plays in song structure and singing behaviour, etc.
In other words, John and I would like to combine my knowledge of the whales in Tonga with his acoustics expertise to achieve something meaningful.
In order to undertake this project without having to beg for funds, we’re asking for help from people who’d like to take part in this research effort by joining us for a few days on the water, aboard John’s 52ft (on deck) yacht Jocara, which is now based in Tonga (yes, he relocated his boat to Tonga in 2007 in part as preparation for this), managed and operated by our mutual friend Christy.
We’re hoping to kick off this effort with two back-to-back trips in 2010:
Trip 1: 29 Jul – 2 Aug (4 nights aboard Jocara)
Trip 2: 3 Aug – 7 Aug (4 nights aboard Jocara)
To cover operating costs, we’re looking for four people on each of the trips, with cost/ person at US$1250. This includes everything while on the boat, as well as discussions that John will lead about marine mammal acoustics, and marine mammal photography advice/ discussions about humpbacks in Tonga from me (excludes accommodation, meals, etc. off the boat, and air travel).
While this isn’t going to be as intensive a photography-oriented trip as the others I have planned, we will get into the water at every opportunity, and we will be taking photos and recording video.
If you’re interested in learning more about humpback whales and helping out with cutting-edge acoustics study of whale song, please contact me via my contact form.
To be honest, this is a departure from the type of trip I usually do, but it’s something that I believe will be worthwhile over the long-run in expanding our knowledge about these graceful marine mammals.
As with the humpback whale calf-count that I started a couple of years ago, John and I will make every effort to share via the internet any insights we gather, and we look forward to feedback and contributions from all interested parties.
Sperm Whales, Ogasawara (early-mid October): Following on the incredible success of last year’s inaugural trip to Ogasawara, I’m planning another visit to Ogasawara in October this year.
Among the highlights of last year’s trip, we photographed and video-ed a group of female sperm whales eating a giant squid and possibly teaching the calf in the group how to hunt for squid (which means this year…we’ll have to photograph a giant squid engaged in a life-or-death struggle with a sperm whale!)
On a separate occasion, I swam down and recovered a 351cm segment of a giant squid feeding arm. We also found leftover deep-water octopus parts, swam with dolphins and encountered Bryde’s whales. Come to think of it, we were quite busy!
While in Ogasawara, I also realised that it’s possible to ID sperm whales by markings on their lower ventral areas, and I subsequently compiled a summary of nine individual whales that we encountered. I’m hoping to build on this ID catalog over time, working with the local whale watching authorities to see if we can document repeat visits to the area by these enigmatic cetaceans.
The exact trip dates depend on the ferry schedule between Tokyo and Ogasawara. Last year, the ferry schedule was only announced in July, and the trip was from 8 to 19 October (though I had a good idea of the probable schedule a few weeks prior to the official announcement).
Also, the exact cost depends upon the class of berth aboard the ferry, the number of people on the trip, and the number of days we’re out on the water…so participation in this trip requires a measure of flexibility. A reasonable estimate is Yen 600,000-700,000/ person for 8-9 days on the water.
Yes, I realise that’s not terribly specific…but that’s the nature of the situation, and it’s totally worth the effort and pain-in-the-rear factor when you’re face-to-face with sperm whales. Just ask any of the people who were with me this year!
If you’re interested in going to Ogasawara in early- to mid-October to look for sperm whales, please contact me via my contact form.
The Night Safari Ambon (7-16 Nov): Yes, yes…I’m obsessed with night life this year. After helping to plan the Night Safari Lembeh trip, I realised that the conditions in Ambon are ideal for a Night Safari type of excursion as well.
First, Maluku Divers have just recently opened their new resort, which is located right atop the best muck dive sites in Ambon. This means access to dive sites is easy…and night diving is possible/ practical in the area for the first time in many years.
Second, the new resort was designed and built by my good friend Yos, who coincidentally designed and built Kasawari-Lembeh Resort as well. Yos is a diver himself, and he has really good taste, so I have no doubt that the accommodations and facilities at the new resort in Ambon will be as nice and photographer-friendly as at Kasawari-Lembeh Resort.
And finally, the critter life in Ambon harbour is simply amazing! Need I say more?
I’m arranging The Night Safari Ambon in conjunction with Eric Cheng and Wetpixel, so there will no doubt be lots of experienced underwater photographers on the trip with lots of stories and advice to share. If you’re interested in joining this adventure, please refer to the trip summary below:
Trip: The Night Safari Ambon
Trip Leaders: Eric Cheng and Tony Wu
Host: Maluku Divers
Dates/ Diving Schedule: Arrive 7 November 2010, depart on 16 November.
The planned diving schedule comprising 21 dives is:
7 November: Arrive/ set up cameras
8 -9 November: Normal day-diving schedule
10 November: Transition schedule: 14:30; 17:30; 20:30
11-13 November: Night schedule: 17:30; 20:30; 23:30
14 November: Transition schedule: 14:30; 17:30; 20:30
15 November: Off-gas/ Optional land tour (separate cost)
16 November: Depart
Diving Style: Ambon has a combination of reef and muck diving. For this trip, we will be concentrating on muck/ critter diving, and we will devote much of the trip to diving in the evening and night. Although the resort is situated at the best critter sites, we will dive from boats. The dive sites are located inside Ambon bay, and most of the time, we will be diving in relatively shallow water.
Because we will be diving a lot at night, you will need to bring adequate lighting. A minimum of two torches (three would be better) plus lots of batteries would be a good idea.
Also, while the muck sites are sheltered and shallow, there can be strong current at times. Our night dives will be concentrated during the period between new moon and first quarter moon, so in theory, the current will not be strong.
However, you never know with Mother Nature, so we’ll need to be flexible and adapt to prevailing conditions.
For a better idea of what Ambon is like, see:
http://www.vuvox.com/collage/detail/0b194b887
Also, this is a PDF of an article about Ambon. The text is in Japanese, but the photos will give you more of an idea of what kind of marine life to expect.
http://www.tonywublog.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/ambon.pdf
Finally, the dive sites we will be diving are where the newly described Maluku frogfish (Histiophryne psychedelica) has been found. We will, of course, hope to see this elusive fish, but to date, only a handful of these animals have been spotted, so please manage your expectations accordingly.
Accommodation: Twin-share rooms at the newly completed Maluku Divers dive resort, which is located at the prime muck dive sites at Laha. All rooms have hot water and aircon, as well as two editing desks with charging stations for batteries. The resort is equipped with back-up generators, so we’ll be insulated from power outages on the island. There is no Nitrox available at this time.
Meals are Indonesian fare, primarily comprising fresh fish and seasonal vegetables. If you have any special dietary requirements, please inform us well in advance so the resort can try to accommodate. Please bear in mind that Ambon is a remote location and some things are not always readily available.
Cost/ Person: US$2,495
Deposit/ Person: US$1,000 to confirm
Balance: Balance of payment due 1 July 2010.
Contact Person for booking: Dan Baldocchi
Getting There: There are regular flights to Ambon from Bali, Manado and Jakarta on Lion Air and Batavia Air. While it is possible to make reservations yourself, it’s best to let the resort handle domestic flight reservations, coordinated through Dan Baldocchi. Domestic itineraries and prices generally firm up within three months of the date concerned, so expect that final itineraries will become clear around mid-August.
Power Supply: Power in Indonesia is 230V/ 50Hz. There are charging stations in the cabins and in the dedicated camera room. Plug shape is recessed two-prong, Type F on this page: http://users.telenet.be/worldstandards/electricity.htm
Please note: 110V is not available.
