Archive for June, 2010

Purple Haze

Fri, Jun 25th, 2010  |   Places, Adventures 4 Comments

Some of the most amazing sights I come across in my travels are above water.

Take this sunset for example:

sunset in port moresby

I took this picture last year in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, just outside the yacht club. I’m a huge fan of diving in PNG, but I don’t think most people would associate the city of Port Moresby with the word “beautiful”.

Well, on this evening…just before we departed for the Eastern Fields…Port Moresby was certainly beautiful.

The entire city was bathed in a breathtaking, iridescent purple glow at sunset.

Underwater Festival 2011

Thu, Jun 24th, 2010  |   Musings 1 Comment

underwater festival 2011I’ve just enlisted to help out with a really ambitious project, which is part of the Underwater Festival 2011.

In short, between 2 and 11 September next year, participants in over 25 countries throughout the Oceania and Asia regions will participate in a simultaneous underwater photo shootout and compete for $100,000 of prizes.

(I just realised I don’t know which country’s $ this means, but it doesn’t matter…there’s a lot up for grabs!)

The top 100 photos will be put on display at the inaugural Oceania Dive and Travel Expo (“ODEX”) scheduled for 30 September to 2 October in Brisbane.

I’ll be one of the photo contest judges, and I may be putting together a trip in Tonga to coincide with the shootout period.

See the Underwater Festival 2011 website for more details.

Futo Harbour

Sat, Jun 19th, 2010  |   Places, Adventures 12 Comments

Rainy season has officially hit this part of Japan. The skies are overcast, and it poured rain yesterday. The winds are strong too, so it looks like it’s going to be difficult to go out to sea.

Bummer.

This is what the harbour looked like less than 48 hours ago:

futo harbour

Threadsail Filefish

Thu, Jun 17th, 2010  |   Marine Life, Places, Adventures 1 Comment

I was able to take a short break this morning to spend some time watching a threadsail filefish (Stephanolepis cirrhifer or カワハギ in Japanese) scrounging for food in the sand at about 15 metres depth in Futo harbour in Izu.

Note the funny little wrasse hanging around hoping to score some leftovers.

The currents have been doing odd things this year. Among other things, the Kuroshio current hit this part of Izu earlier than usual, which means the water is a bit warmer than normal.

The water today was a relatively warm 21ºC. Last year at this time, it was 19ºC at the surface, and about 17ºC at 15 metres.

As a result, the squid mating I photographed last year (here and here) isn’t really happening right now. There are some squid around, but not in the same numbers and frequency as last year.

Trip Announcement: PNG

Mon, Jun 14th, 2010  |   Featured, Places, Adventures, Trips, Workshops 7 Comments

Since putting up my video of the amazing diving in the Eastern Fields of Papua New Guinea last week, I’ve been planning a series of new adventures with Craig on Golden Dawn. It’s taken a few emails and Skype conversations, but we’ve finally worked out the details.

I’m planning to visit Papua New Guinea twice in the coming months, first in June 2011 and second in January 2012.

blenny

Note: If you’d like advance notice of trips like this in the future, please sign up for my trip e-newsletter. I won’t spam you!

June 2011 Itinerary: Port Moresby to Milne Bay to Walindi
Some time ago, I received a brief email from Craig that went something like this: “Tony, Wow! You gotta see this!” Nothing more. No response to my: “See what???!!!” email for a few days. (This is normal behaviour for Craig.)

As it turned out, he had just dived some reefs on the Papuan Barrier Reef, not too far from Port Moresby, but far enough that no one dives there, at least not on a regular basis.

Now…Craig gets easily excited at times (picture a little boy with knee-socks getting a colourful candy lollipop), so I usually have to calm him down and ask pointed questions to figure out what’s what.

Fortunately, Bob Halstead was also on the boat at the time, so I was able to get independent confirmation for Craig’s enthusiasm.

Craig had stumbled upon some amazing reefs.

Most of the time when people tell me they’ve come across “amazing” such and such, I’m sceptical. But if there’s one thing Craig knows…it’s unspoiled reefs. Bob is no slouch either.

Craig later elaborated, telling me that of the sites he’s dived/ marked, one is a deep passage with a two-stepped wall that has a stunning vista comprising row after row of very large fans. He saw lots of large mobula and eagle rays, wobbegong sharks, silver tips and grey reefs.

Another location apparently has at least 20 bommies like Suzie’s. If you haven’t dived at Suzie’s, here’s a photo to give you an idea of what it’s like:

lionfish at suzies bommie

So basically, it’s a “Wow! You gotta see this!” kind of place.

[Update 19 June: Just received another update from Craig, who's out in this area right now: "Just wanted to let you know about a new discovery. We just finished a dive...and it's awesome!!! We had a large population of female grey reef sharks, 20 plus easily, a few species of grouper, including a giant grouper, 8 or 9 eagle rays flying in formation, mobula rays, many huge dogtooth tuna, some with mackeral and other species of jacks, rainbow runners galore, fusiliers and the list goes on...Truly spectacular!!!"]

We planned the June 2011 itinerary specifically so that we start in Port Moresby and explore the “Wow! You gotta see this!” reefs first. To date, Craig has dived the reefs twice, so there’s still plenty to explore and no doubt new things to discover. If you’re an adventurer at heart, this trip is for you!

Diving along the barrier reef will naturally takes us over to Milne Bay, which is, in my experience, some of the most amazing diving anywhere…critters like you wouldn’t believe, as well as beautiful corals and big stuff too (there’s a manta cleaning station). It’s been a few years since I’ve been to the area, not because I haven’t wanted to go, but because there aren’t many dive operators there now.

Back in the day…there were several liveaboard boats and a couple of land-based operations, so Milne Bay was relatively easy to dive. These days…not so much. Quite a shame, as it’s a world-class destination.

I filmed a documentary in Milne Bay several years ago with NHK of Japan, along with Dr Eugenie Clark, Bob Halstead and Rob Vanderloos. It was an absolutely amazing experience (to say the least!) with my only regret being that I wasn’t able to spend more time in the area.

From Milne Bay, we’ll head north to Kimbe Bay, ending up at Walindi Plantation Resort. Again, there are great reefs along the way that are almost never dived (see the common theme?), with lots of unspoiled marine habitat and no other people around…absolutely perfect for photography.

Of course, that’s a lot of territory to cover, so we’re dividing the trip into three sections:

1. Port Moresby to Milne Bay (31 May to 7 June)
2. Milne Bay (8 to 14 June)
3. Milne Bay to Walindi (16 to 26 June)

Here’s a map to make it easier to get a handle on the geography (click the markers for more details):


View PNG June 2011 in a larger map

Essentially, this makes it possible to get on or off the boat for any of the segments, or hop on board for two or even all three segments of the trip. (The international airport is in Port Moresby. Alotau airport is at Milne Bay. Hoskins airport is at Walindi. Good planning, no?)

As a bonus(?), Bob Halstead will be joining us for the trips. Bob is one of the pioneers of diving in PNG, and in particular, he knows Milne Bay like no one else. Bob is articulate, well-spoken, knowledgeable, and perpetually struggling for a half-decent comeback when I insult him. He’s quite a fish expert, and even has a couple of fish named after him (small, nondescript ones of course). Even more amazing, he still uses a film camera. Well, he knows how to push the shutter release in any case.

All kidding aside, Bob is a treasure trove of information and experience, particularly with regard to the areas we’ll be visiting. I have the greatest respect for him, and it will be a pleasure and an honour to have him with us.

Pricing for the trips is as follows:
1. Port Moresby – Milne Bay (31 May to 7 June)
Cabin 1 US$2800/ person
Cabin 2 US$2625/ person
Cabin 3 US$2450/ person
Cabin 4 US$2800/ person
Cabin 5 US$2800/ person

2. Milne Bay (8 to 14 June)
Cabin 1 US$2400/ person
Cabin 2 US$2250/ person
Cabin 3 US$2100/ person
Cabin 4 US$2400/ person
Cabin 5 US$2400/ person

3. Milne Bay to Walindi (16 to 26 June)
Cabin 1 US$4000/ person
Cabin 2 US$3750/ person
Cabin 3 US$3500/ person
Cabin 4 US$4000/ person
Cabin 5 US$4000/ person

Click here to see the cabin layout on the Golden Dawn.

Please get in touch via my contact form if you’re interested.

purple queen anthias

January 2012 Itinerary: Eastern Fields
I probably don’t need to write too much about the Eastern Fields, as I can let Craig do the talking in the video I posted.

What I can add is that the Eastern Fields atoll system, like the areas I described above, is not over-dived, is not over-fished, and is not sitting next to areas suffering from over-development.

In case you haven’t noticed, I like travelling to unspoiled places. I don’t mean “unspoiled” in the over-Photoshopped-vacation-brochure sense. I mean truly unspoiled…as in, “almost no one has ever been there” and “you definitely won’t see anyone else underwater there” unspoiled.

school of barracuda

The plan for January 2012 is to do two trips. On the first trip, we’ll visit several of the best sites around the Eastern Fields. Depending on how the weather and water look, we may dash over to another reef system called the Ashmore’s. The exact itinerary will be a judgement call based on prevailing conditions.

The second trip will concentrate on my personal favourite dive site in the area, Carl’s Ultimate…a site named after my friend and mentor Carl Roessler.

It’s a small bommie in the middle of a channel that gets swept by nutrient-filled currents. To say the marine life is “amazing” is like saying the Great Barrier Reef is “big”. It’s a major understatement.

Devoting most of an 8-day trip to a single dive site would normally be madness, but believe me, once you see this site, you’ll want to stay.

carls ultimate

I’m co-organising the Eastern Fields trips with Eric Cheng and Wetpixel again, so there will no doubt be lots of photographers on board!

Prices and dates are as follows:

1. 10-20 January 2012, Eastern Fields
Cabin 1 US$4320/ person
Cabin 2 US$4050/ person
Cabin 3 US$3780/ person
Cabin 4 US$4320/ person
Cabin 5 US$4320/ person

2. 22-30 January 2012, Carl’s Ultimate
Cabin 1 US$3456/ person
Cabin 2 US$3240/ person
Cabin 3 US$3024/ person
Cabin 4 US$3456/ person
Cabin 5 US$3456/ person

Click here to email Dan Baldocchi, who is handling the bookings for these trips.

An overview of trip logistics from our previous excursion can be found here, and here is a trip report that Eric posted after our trip.

My trips videos from last year’s excursion are here and here.

Summary
Trips aboard Golden Dawn are always an adventure, with lots to see, terrific food, wonderful conversation and unforgettable experiences.

All of these trips will be dedicated to photography.

The waters of Papua New Guinea are teeming with marine life, and you can’t get to many of the places we’ll be visiting except on a liveaboard. Even better, at any given time, we will probably be the only people in the water!

If we find some place or thing that everyone wants to spend time on, we’ll adjust accordingly. Similarly, if we see that conditions aren’t right, we’ll move on and look for a more suitable location.

In other words, we’ll have a plan, but we’ll go with the flow to maximise fun, safety and photographic opportunities.

Let me know if you have any questions, and I look forward to sharing an adventure with you!

lizardfish face

Ketchuppy?

Fri, Jun 11th, 2010  |   Funny Stuff, Musings No Comments

Every time I trawl through my virtual mountains of data, I come across images I’ve completely forgotten, like this one:

ketchup bottle

It’s the label of a ketchup bottle aboard Golden Dawn.

Question: Is “ketchuppy” a real word???

Credit for spotting this grammatical conundrum goes to Julie Edwards, who seems to have an unusually keen eye for oddball things!

Behind The Scenes

Thu, Jun 10th, 2010  |   Equipment, Technique, People 4 Comments

In the process of cleaning up my folders, files and such after wrapping up the editing for my Eastern Fields video, I came across this snapshot I took of Craig right after I finished interviewing him:

craig dewit

What you see in the foreground is a Canon 5D Mark II with a 17-40mm zoom lens, which I used to record the interview.

The furry thing on top is a Sennheiser MKE-400 shotgun microphone, which helped to reduce distraction from ambient noise (engine, aircon, people yelling, boat horns, etc.).

I mounted the camera on Golden Dawn’s steering wheel using a Gorillapod…certainly not the ideal configuration for the purpose!

But I didn’t have a proper tripod, so I had to make do with what was available, and the steering wheel was the only platform with sufficient height to get the angle of view I wanted. Balancing the camera and keeping it from flopping left and right was a bit of a challenge.

Doing the interview was probably the most difficult part of gathering material for the video. I knew that I wanted to get footage of Craig describing his personal experiences and feelings about the Eastern Fields to use as the backbone of the storyline.

But Craig is incredibly camera-shy, and kept coming up with excuses to avoid being interviewed. Finally, when he ran out of excuses, I had to wait a good 30 minutes while he showered, shaved, powdered his nose, and otherwise tried (in vain) to pretty himself up.

In case you’re interested, I set exposure and focus manually, striving for low depth of field. I think the aperture was something like f5.0, or thereabouts. Shutter would have been around 1/60 to 1/100. The frame rate was 30fps by default. I think ISO was 400, and the biggest technical challenge I had was controlling the overblown areas behind Craig.

I recorded the interview prior to having manual control of audio gain (a function which came with a later firmware upgrade), so it was paramount to keep ambient sound levels constant. Fortunately, no one else was around, and it was a quiet day in port, so we did everything in a single take per question, over a period of about 20 minutes.

Now…lest you get the (mis)impression that Craig always appears as Captain-like as I so deftly portrayed him, allow me to point out that you’re more likely to spot Craig in situations like this:

craig dewit
(Note: I didn’t take this picture. I don’t know who did. The file came from Craig. I bet he’ll regret giving me a copy after he sees this.)

Lost in Translation

Wed, Jun 9th, 2010  |   Funny Stuff, People, Trips, Workshops 1 Comment

I just received the following photo from my friend Dr John Potter:

hydrophone

More interesting than the photo is John’s “explanation” of what this is:

“The picture is of a 30m long oil-filled tube containing an array of 4 state-of-the-art hydrophones with preamplifiers, spaced 2m apart (hence the aperture of the active part is 6m). The oil-filled tube allows the array to be neutrally buoyant and either towed or hung vertically in the water with the minimum pickup of flow noise. There is also a portable 96 kSa/s 4-channel recorder in the centre of the image that will record sounds up to 48 kHz from the array onto an SD card. Since the oil-filled tube is 30m long, we can deploy the 4 hydrophones at the depth of our choice up to about 20m below the surface. This will allow us to record humpback sound at close range, without disturbing the whales, with the highest quality and with the possibility to measure their range and source levels. Think of the 4 hydrophones as being able to record a kind of surround-sound, hyper-stereo, THX acoustic landscape.”

After reading this a couple of times, I think it means: “It’s a kick-a** hydrophone that we can send down to 20 metres and record really cool whale sounds.” though I’m not entirely certain.

Anyway, we’ll be using this high-tech gadget on the trips that John and I are running together in Tonga soon, with the objective of kicking off what we hope will be a long-running project to understand more about acoustic communication among humpback whales. (More explanation about our trip/ project here.)

There are still a couple of spots left on the first trip from 29 July to 4 August. Drop me a line if you’re interested in helping me decipher John-speak for a few days.

Adventures With Craig

Tue, Jun 8th, 2010  |   Featured, People, Places, Adventures, Video, Multimedia 17 Comments

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been completely occupied putting the following video together:


Downloadable copy available via my iTunes podcast. Music by Alain Thomas via Musicalley.com

I shot all of the video footage and most of the photos during a month-long stay in Papua New Guinea last year aboard the MV Golden Dawn, a trip I co-organised with Eric Cheng and Wetpixel.

Of note…I captured all the video footage with DSLR cameras, using a Canon 5D Mark II underwater and a Canon 7D topside. This is also the first time I’ve edited anything with Final Cut Pro and Motion, both part of Apple’s Final Cut Studio software collection. (So cut me some slack if you see mistakes/ areas for improvement! I think I did an excellent job of making Craig look. No simple task by any means.)

In case it’s not obvious, the waters of Papua New Guinea are absolutely amazing. I’m planning a few more trips with Craig for June 2011 and January 2012. We’re still ironing out specifics, but check back soon for details!

Note: For contrast and comparison, here’s another video I posted earlier from the same trip, with footage taken with a very different type of camera.