People in Japan take the passing of the seasons seriously. In fact, there’s a public holiday coming up on Thursday in observance of the vernal equinox, which essentially marks the transition to spring.

One of the things that people traditionally observe and celebrate to mark the coming of spring is the blossoming of flowers, signifying the renewal of life after the long, cold winter. Though clearly there are many types of plants and flowers that re-awaken during this time of year, there are a few specific blossoms that everyone watches and cherishes.

First among these are Ume (梅), or plum blossoms, usually starting in late February to early March, followed by Momo (桃), or peach blossoms, then finally by the most famous of all, Sakura (桜), or cherry blossoms. Celebrations and festivals are held throughout Japan to mark the arrival of these flowers, with the Sakura season being the most well known overseas.

I took Pasta to a nearby Momo Matsuri (peach blossom festival) earlier today. She’s been to this festival a number of times, more for the food and attention she gets than for looking at flowers per se. This year’s festivities seem to have attracted more people than I recall from past gatherings, perhaps due in part to the nearly perfect weather - 20ºC, slight breeze, low humidity and lots of sunshine.

We didn’t stay too long, as it was a bit too crowded, but Pasta managed to bring smiles to quite a few little faces.

I’ve been struggling for some time now to write something about my recent trip to swim with sea lions. Struggling not so much because of writer’s block, but more due to writer’s flood, if there is such a thing.

You see, swimming among sea lions at Carnac Island is at once exactly like all other marine encounters I’ve had (in the sense that I see and learn a lot, have as much fun as possible, and try to return with the best photos possible), yet it’s entirely different too.

Much of my in-water interaction with sea lions took place at a pace and level of frenzy akin to the pandemonium of Carnival in Rio. When sea lions decide to play, they really play. They charge, swoop, twist, turn, flip, roll, glide, duck, twirl…perform just about every acrobatic manoeuvre in the dictionary, and then some. The result, of course, was complete sensory overload, with my brain working overtime to keep up with and process everything taking place.

So even now, I’m struggling to “catch up” with the things I experienced.

The best way I can think of to describe the feeling is like watching an old kung fu flick, where the soundtrack lags behind the video, so you get that out-of-sync sensation, and your brain has to process the time delays to work out which guy is going to whoop which other dude with what top-secret kung fu style based on which exotic animal. Make sense?

Anyway, the bottom line is that each time I’ve sat down to write, more stuff came flooding into my head, making it imposssible for me to figure out what to write…hence, writer’s flood.

One thing that puzzled me for a while was that I don’t recall experiencing this phenomenon after my inaugural sea lion adventure last year. Upon reflection, I think it may have been because I wasn’t observing as closely a year ago as I was this year.

What I mean is that whenever you experience something for the first time, everything is new (duh).

To clarify, in an unfamiliar situation first impressions dominate, so you’re taking in the most basic level of information. The first time you scuba dive, for instance, you’ll probably notice the pretty sea fans, but you might not pick up on the little commensal squat lobsters hiding among crinoids perched on those fans; whereas once you’re a seasoned diver, you can’t imagine missing such cute little critters.

In the context of sea lions, what this meant in practicality for me was that I focused (excuse the pun) a lot this trip upon observing behaviour. Not that I didn’t before, but I wasn’t necessarily as bamboozled by the overwhelming cuteness of the sea lions as I was last year, so I could concentrate more on watching what the playful pinnipeds were doing. In others words, I was able to see beyond the pretty faces and look for more substance.

Points to Ponder
Given the summary I wrote about Australian sea lions last year, I’m not going to write too much more about them now. There is, in fact, not that much more that I can write, given the dearth of information about them.

I do however think it’s worth noting a few anecdotal observations here, in case anyone who’s conducting research on these wonderful marine mammals reads this.

First, it was extraordinarily hot for the week that I was in Western Australia. The temperature was at least 35ºC, and shot up to 37ºC on some days. It was apparently the hottest that it had been in that part of Down Under Land for the past 40 years.

The water temperature was somewhat warmer than I recalled too, so much so that I was able to get into the water on sunny days with no wetsuit. Anyone who’s travelled with me knows I hate being cold, so this is saying something. I was still cold, but the strong sun, hot conditions and somewhat warmer water made it (only just) bearable.

The reason I risked hypothermia of course, was that it’s much easier to swim, do flips in the water and generally keep up with the sea lions without the added drag of a wetsuit. With the amount of swimming I was doing each day, this made a significant difference to how tired I was at the end of each day (i.e., being utterly pooped instead of drop-dead exhausted).

Back to the point…with the exceptionally hot conditions, the sea lions seemed to leave the beach and go into the water more often than I recall from last year, when it was chilly on many days. In addition, they seemed to stay in the water longer (judging from our extended encounter times). Just a guess, but given the hot conditions, perhaps the sea lions felt the need to go in for a refreshing dip more often and for longer than if it had been cooler. Makes sense to me.

Next, following a nearly all-day play session the first day we visited the island, each day thereafter, upon setting anchor, sea lions swam up to the boat to check us out, and a few times seemed to “hang around” waiting for us to get in. They did not seem to do so with other boats. It’s worth noting that people in other boats mostly didn’t swim with the sea lions, and those who tried weren’t properly equipped and/ or weren’t such great swimmers, so weren’t able to hold the perky pinnipeds’ interest for long.

I have no idea whether Australian sea lions are intelligent enough to recognise boats, but it sure seemed like they remembered us and had pegged the boat as a source of entertainment.

Third, on one occasion, bottlenose dolphins came in for a closer look. The sea lion I was frolicking with immediately zipped off to play with the dolphins…and the dolphins reciprocated. I swam among them for a bit, but clearly couldn’t keep up with the streamlined, hyperactive marine mammals. They swung around several times, buzzing other swimmers in the water and obviously enjoying themselves.

I’ve seen whales and dolphins playing together, but this is the first time I’ve witnessed sea lions and dolphins cavorting. I don’t know whether this is common or not, but a quick Google search didn’t turn up much. The scientific community cautions us not to ascribe human qualities to animals. In general, I agree, but hey, these animals were clearly playing and having a great time…together, which suggests they recognised one another as “fun” and elected to engage each other.

Oh Behave!
So having progressed beyond the warm, squishy feeling you can’t help but get when faced with such adorable, cuddly animals, I devoted as much attention as possible to watching the sea lions, trying to pick up on behavioural patterns, body language and anything else that might give me more insight into these fascinating animals’ lives.

Last time I visited, with a few pointers from Captain Rick, I learned that the sea lions often greet one another by assuming a head-down position, often with posterior pointing toward the surface, and blowing a few bubbles. I mimicked this greeting to great effect previously, and did so again.

I suppose that knowing how to say “Hi” in any language helps. My greetings were immediately acknowledged, and we progressed rapidly to more advanced forms of communication, like back-scratching in the sea grass and lying on the bottom to contemplate life. Many of the people on the trip with me had also visited last year, and all were excellent swimmers, so it wasn’t long before everyone was “conversing” with the sea lions.

The net effect of “fitting in” so quickly is that the sea lions seemed to settle into doing whatever they would’ve been doing anyway…which is absolutely perfect for observing their behaviour.

Of course, mostly what they were doing was swimming, so the primary challenge was to keep up with them. The water wasn’t deep, but it’s amazing how tiring it can be to swim for three to four hours straight…first left, then right, then left again, then in circles, then right again, then left, then in more circles…all the while diving down to play and coming up gasping for breath, followed immediately by diving down again, and so forth.

In between the constant activity were some extraordinary moments and experiences.

For example, there were a few occasions when I witnessed sea lions tossing around sea urchin skeletons, reminiscent of the manner in which puppies play with balls. They picked them up with their noses/ mouths and tossed them in the water column, sometimes to another sea lion, sometimes to no one in particular.

Having come across and participated in this type of play previously with dolphins using pieces of coral, cloth and other objects, I tried to engage the sea lions by picking up the makeshift toys and tossing them around. Whereas dolphins often react with apparent glee and try to snag the object in question, the sea lions did not.

It’s quite possible that I was doing something incorrectly, or perhaps that the sea lions just weren’t interested in playing catch with me at the time. Hopefully if I’m able to visit again, I’ll have more opportunities to see if the sea lions will humour me, or again demonstrate a cool indifference to my ball-tossing overtures.

Striking Similarities
As a brief aside, anyone who has a golden or labrador retriever will immediately pick up on the striking similarities between sea lions and these canine companions of ours. If you don’t have a dog or haven’t spent much time around them, perhaps the resemblance isn’t quite as obvious, but it’s not difficult to grasp.

Describing the similarities in words probably wouldn’t have as much effect as showing a few examples, using some photos of Pasta for illustration purposes:

More Behaviour Stuff
Besides the urchin-tossing game, there was constant play-fighting going on, particularly among the young adults. As a reminder, all the sea lions at Carnac Island are male (this is unique as far as anyone knows).

And just like other young male mammals, both on land and in the water, the juvenile males spent a lot of time wrestling one another, chasing each other, knocking each other about, etc.

The seemingly logical explanation is that the young males were jockeying for relative pecking order, so that when it comes time to go impress young girl sea lions, the boys will know who’s stronger than whom. (Gee, humans are much more civilised. We never do that.)

On occasion, the sea lions engaged in their testosterone-fueled debates right next to me, locking jaws (with impressive canine teeth) and rolling around in circles, followed by breaks, during which they swam nice-and-friendly-like next to one another, played with swimmers in the water, or just chilled out.

Usually, there were only two sea lions rough-housing at any given time and place, but in some instances we saw three, four or even more pumped-up pinnipeds pinning one another down. Quite a sight to behold.

Newton’s First Law
Way back when, in physics class, I studied a set of laws developed by Sir Isaac Newton to describe motion. The first of these laws states:

An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

Though Newton articulated this universal principle to describe the motion of physical objects, little did I realise back then how relevant Newton’s first law would be to Australian sea lions.

If you read my sea lion blog post from last year, one of the sections covers my perceived shortfallings of the Western Australian bureaucracy to protect the endangered Australian sea lions. (The authorities charged with oversight of the sea lions and Carnac Island fall under the Department of Environment and Conservation, though many people still refer to them by the acronym CALM, which stands for the Department of Conservation and Land Management. Without getting too carried away with sorting through the intricacies of the Western Australia bureaucracy, it’s just easier to continue to refer to the authorities as CALM.)

To put it simply…not much has changed.

• Local boaters still ignore the sanctuary signs. (All posted in English, which I presume everyone can read.)

• Local boaters are still de facto permitted to go up on land and do whatever they please, while tourists are forbidden to set foot or flipper on land. In fact, CALM made it a point to ring our boat and remind us that we’re prohibited from going on the beach, even as hordes of people were clambering onto the beach right in front of our eyes. (Seems fair and logical, doesn’t it?)

• The sea lions still mostly hang out at the non-sanctuary end of the beach, and CALM hasn’t seen fit to redesignate the non-sanctuary end as the sanctuary end and vice versa. As I pointed out last year, this has the perverse effect of cramming people and sea lions into the same small portion of the beach, while the designated sanctuary section remains relatively empty. (Proof that fact is often stranger than fiction.)

• On the one occasion when the patrol boat came by, just like I witnessed last year, one of the CALM representatives went ashore, spoke with a few people, then left. Everyone behaved well while he was around, then promptly returned to doing whatever they were doing before he showed up, including shouting at the sea lions, waving boogie boards at them, sending little kids to pose by big bulls with big teeth, and so forth. (This would be comical, if not so tragic.)

• To reinforce their authority, CALM paid a visit to our boat and warned us to pull in our dive flag, which was floating about 2.5 metres behind the boat. Apparently, the fact that inebriated boaters were zipping with wreckless abandon at high speed through the water while ignoring swimmers wasn’t a concern. Getting the dive flag out of the water though, was top priority, so much so that we were warned three times. (Huh? Seriously…huh?)

• And to really hammer home their iron-grip control of the situation, CALM warned us not to splash while swimming, as that would constitute harassment of the sea lions, while people standing on the beach kicking sand at the sea lions was perfectly ok though. (Sigh. Kafka would have a field day with this)

I would, however, be remiss in saying that absolutely nothing has changed since last year. Carnac Island was a nesting area for fairy terns…fidgety, rather shy birds that don’t do well with too much ambient noise and racket. The number of fairy terns visiting the island had already dropped last year, and CALM knew about it.

This year, there were no fairy tern nests. None. They’re all gone. So there’s a change.

I suppose it would make sense to infer a relationship between the disappearance of the fairy terns and the growing number of people walking around on the island, climbing the dunes, blasting loud music, and wreaking general havoc on the landscape…but nah, that would make too much sense. It must have been our dangerous dive flag or the splashing from our fins that scared them away.

While Down Under, I learned that representatives of CALM had read my previous blog post and were unhappy with it. They were, as I gather, intending to write me to address the issues I raised. As much as I would have valued (and still would value) direct feedback from CALM, I never heard a peep.

I suppose this is where Newton’s first law comes into play. To paraphrase:

CALM representatives doing nothing tend to continue to do nothing and CALM representatives doing unproductive things tend to continue doing such things with the same speed and in the same direction until forced to do the right thing by an outside force.

Who would’ve guessed Newton had such foresight?

As I stated last year, I’m sure that the CALM people are overworked, underpaid, under-appreciated and stressed out. And to be fair, I’m quite certain that most of the people in CALM on an individual basis are probably really pleasant and reasonable. It’s just that as the organisation charged with managing Carnac Island…how can I put this?…CALM really needs to get its act together. I have nothing against them, and I really hope that they can see their way to taking a few sensible steps along the lines of:

• Switching the sanctuary and non-sanctuary designations so that the sea lions have more of an opportunity to be left alone.

• Even better would be stopping everyone from going ashore. As it stands, CALM bans tourists only, while effectively allowing everyone else to do as they please. Given that most visitors to the island are local boaters, there’s no sense whatsoever in current policy, at least insofar as the welfare of the island’s wildlife is concerned. The policy makes complete sense if the first priority is to avoid offending local boaters while not really giving a hoot about the island, the sea lions, the fairy terns or anyone who’s not a resident of Western Australia.

• Using your webcam to enforce the regulations and levy fines for egregious things like climbing the dunes, taunting sea lions with boogie boards, etc. I know the webcam works, since CALM was kind enough to call upon our arrival at the island and tell us not to go on the beach.

• Undertaking an education program to inform the public about why the sea lions, fairy terns and other inhabitants of Carnac Island need breathing room. Members of the local and international press would no doubt be more than happy to help, and most reasonable people, once aware of the issues, would probably be happy to comply with restrictions.

Sensible steps like these shouldn’t be terribly difficult, right? And they would go a long way to keeping Carnac Island in tip-top shape, for people and animals alike.

If CALM was unhappy with what I wrote last year, no doubt the reaction will be the same if they read what I’ve written this year. So CALM: If I’ve mis-stated anything here, please do let me know. I’m more than happy to set the record straight if I’ve made a mistake. Assuming that my observations are correct, please take the constructive criticism in the manner in which it is intended…constructively.

Serendipity
Once in a while, stars line up, ducks get in a row, tea leaves look good, fortune smiles…and you get a lucky break. In the context of observing and photographing marine life, of course, you have to be paying attention to see it coming.

On my final day out on the water (actually, it was an extra, un-planned day), there was one young sea lion in particular who seemed eager to have company as he swam around the shallow bay.

As flakey as this sounds, it was as if the juvenile pinniped signalled to me that he was going to be particularly mischievous, and wanted to show off. He just gave off a certain vibe.

I know, if someone else said that to me, I’d take two steps back and make a beeline for the nearest escape route. But…and this is an important but…I’ve had similar sixth-sense feelings before, and quite often, listening to my gut has paid off (of course, sometimes it results in nothing more than a stupid look on my face).

Long story made short, my sea lion companion led me over to a patch of sea grass, where instead of lying down and scratching his back, he poked around for a bit, peeked knowingly “over his shoulder” a couple of times at me, then suddenly presented me with a pretty little boxfish. The smug look on his face was unmistakable.

The fish, obviously quite displeased with the turn of events, decided to depart in haste, only to be pursued and re-snagged by my agile friend, who once again held up the little fish for inspection, who once again politely but insistently excused itself, only to be snared yet again…

This “I got you”, “No you don’t” entertainment (for the sea lion, not so much for the fish) lasted for perhaps a minute or so, with the action running fast-and-furious, until the sea lion bored of the little boxfish and let it go, whereupon the frazzled fish made its way back to the sea grass in a bewildered daze, unhappy but unhurt.

The sea lion was simply flaunting his agility, and giving me a glimpse of the skill he no doubt brings to bear when chasing down a meal.

Wrapping Up
A lot, lot more happened, but it’s just not possible or realistic to try to convey everything. With two trips to see the sea lions under my belt now, I feel like I’m beginning to understand their behaviour. Or rather, I’m beginning to understand the behaviour of the small group of male sea lions that frequent Carnac Island. Whether the behaviour of this group carries over to other colonies or not…I have no clue. If I’m fortunate enough to have a chance to visit other colonies at some point, perhaps I’ll be able to compare.

I’ll wrap this up with one other highly entertaining behaviour that I observed. As I mentioned earlier, the sea lions seemed to associate our boat with play. On the second day of the trip in particular, a bunch of sea lions spent hours swimming around the boat, often lying on the sand next to the boat, or even directly under it.

One especially fun-loving sea lion swam up next to me, then went under the boat, turned upside down, and “stood” on the hull of the boat…upside down. I laughed so hard I dumped all the air in my lungs and nearly didn’t get a photo, but the sea lion was kind enough to wait for me to cough up the mouthful of seawater I had swallowed, get another breath and compose this portrait.

More photos on Flickr.

By now, I was hoping to have had sufficient time to organise photos from the sea lion trip and post notes…but no dice.

I couldn’t let today go by without a post though, since it’s February 29th. So in honour of leap year, I’m posting a self-portrait I took during the trip with one of my pinniped pals.

We were engaged in a discussion about swimming technique, who was better at doing loops in the water, which patch of seagrass provided the most satisfying back-scratch, and why I found it necessary to go up for breaths so often.

The conversation took a while, so I held my camera out and took this photo.

I’m having some problems with my www.tony-wu.com server. If you’re trying to send me email at that domain and haven’t heard back, it’s probably because I haven’t received the email.

On the one hand, it’s a drag to have a domain down. On the other, receiving much less email than normal is a relief!

Anyway, I’m sure the server issue will get resolved soon, but until then, if you need to reach me, please use my contact form.

Been back for a few days, immediately swamped with work, so I haven’t had time to sort through photos yet. One problem I’m going to face is that the sea lions are so irresistibly cute that I’ll have a difficult time selecting just a few to post.

Anyway, it was a great trip, with mostly sunny (but blistering hot) weather, and the sea lions were as engaging and adorable as ever. I got some amazing photos, which I’ll post as soon as I have time.

It’s the Lunar New Year, and I’m off to Western Australia to photograph Australian sea lions. I’m looking forward to playing with the adorable pinnipeds again, and also to pigging out on the excellent Chinese food at Billy Lee’s.

Given that it’s snowed quite a bit recently, I’m particularly grateful to be heading toward warmer weather (it’s summer Down Under). On that note, I leave with a couple of photos of Pasta enjoying one of our extra long play sessions in the snow a few days ago.

Counterintuitive as this might seem at first blush, one of the things you absolutely must do to get better photographs of marine life (or anything in nature, actually), is to invest as much effort as possible into looking, as opposed to pressing the shutter.

The more time you spend watching a fish, crab or whatever, the more you insight you’ll get into it habits, territorial preferences if any, and “personality” as such. As time passes (without your attempting to shove a lens in your subject’s face or hammering it with a thousand strobe flashes), the subject of your attention may actually grow accustomed to your presence and demonstrate interesting, perhaps even unique, behaviour.

Recently at Loloata, I spent nearly an hour with a very small goby. It was most likely a Tomiyamichthys oni, though the photos I’ve seen of this fish in guidebooks and online don’t show a blue spot together with the dark splotch on the dorsal fin, which the little fish I was watching did have.

In all other respects, it resembled at T. oni…tiny (about 2cm), shy, with a tendency to move rapidly in random directions. It’s difficult to know for sure, as very little information in general is available about the Tomiyamichthys genus (as is unfortunately the case for many other marine animals).

What was truly special about this particular fish wasn’t the unusual blue marking however. It was the unusual and entertaining behaviour it demonstrated.

Normally, when gobies like this feel threatened or annoyed, they disappear in a blink into their burrows, or they might swim away so quickly that you can’t figure out where they went.

This one didn’t seem terribly bothered with my presence, though it did disappear into its hole a couple times. I waited patiently, and it reappeared each time, satisfied that I wasn’t a threat.

Once we established a certain level of trust, the fish ventured relatively far from its hole, perhaps two metres or so…a bit at a time, stopping along the way to grab a mouthful of dirt, or just to look around.

At one point, the goby seemed to realise that it was quite far from home. Stopping dead in its tracks, the fish stared straight at me, then amazingly, ducked down to lay flat on the sand, as if to hide. It worked.

Without the aid of artificial light, it was nearly impossible to discern the extremely well camouflaged goby against the sand when the fish was in this prostrated position.

With the help of a macro lens, I kept tabs on the goby as it alternated between lying flat on the sand and raising its head a bit to take a peek around. After five minutes or so, the fish finally tired of this game and bolted back to its burrow, leaving a puff of sand in its wake.

I’ve never noticed anything like this before, but I’ll wager there’s a decent possibility that this is a common strategy employed by gobies like this, given their mottled-sand colouration and pattern, which makes it easy for them to blend into the substrate.

Has anyone else witnessed similar behaviour before?

Among the emails I received while I was in PNG was one asking about Pasta. In part, it read:

(We have) have fallen in love with Pasta. I know it may sound weird, but do you have any puppy pictures of Pasta you can share? She is so cute and we enjoy reading about her. Your breakdown of her “language” abilities was particularly amusing and her love of pizza. My fiancé and I are looking into in getting a golden.

This isn’t the first email I’ve gotten asking about Pasta. Actually, I get a quite a few, perhaps more than the number of emails asking about diving or underwater photography. Pasta has no idea how popular she is.

Since the sender of this email is thinking about getting a golden retriever, I decided to trawl through my archives to find a few photographs to convey a bit of what it’s like to raise a golden pup.

The first photo is from when Pasta was just a couple of months old. She was basically a tiny fluff ball with four legs, a tail and a nose. For some reason, when she was a baby, Pasta was a homebody.

Try as I might to take her for walks, she wouldn’t leave my side, and didn’t want to go more than a few metres from the front door. Inside the house, she was a frantic furball, running around in circles chasing her tail, bouncing off of walls, chewing on everything I owned, poking her nose into whatever I was working on, jumping all over me…but outside, she was quiet, shy and reserved.

Of course, with time, that changed. Pasta gradually gained more confidence, and nothing could keep her inside. She particularly loved going for drives to the beach, where she made it her mission to get as wet and dirty as possible in as brief a time as possible. She was exceptionally talented in this regard.

At the beach, we often played a unique variation of the game fetch. I bought a float-toy for her, which I threw into the water. The idea was for Pasta to swim out, grab the float, and bring it back. She is a retriever, after all.

As it turned out, more often than not, I’d throw the float out into the water and Pasta would wait patiently on the beach, looking first at the float, then at me, then back to the float…until finally, I swam out and brought the float back to her. On a number of occasions, a substantial audience gathered to watch Pasta teach me to fetch. Once, we even earned a round of applause, which made Pasta very proud of me.

Once Pasta grew up, we reached a mutual understanding and stopped trying to get one another to fetch things. Instead, we settled on running…a lot, whether at the beach, at a park, just in the neighborhood, wherever. Pasta ran.

She ran after cats (she’s actually quite scared of cats, but that’s another story altogether), after squirrels (she tried unsuccessfully a couple of times to climb trees after the squirrels), geckos (she could never quite figure out how those tricky little critters manage to walk upside-down), frisbees (she never learned how to catch one though, she just chased them), swans (which are bigger than she is and actually ended up chasing her around in circles), and most of all, anyone with food.

These days, Pasta still likes to play and she still chases things, but she’s mature now, and she’s learned to take things in stride and enjoy the simple pleasures in life, like classical music on her red-edition iPod nano.

Clearly, there’s a lot more to bringing up a golden retriever than what I’ve described here, but I hope this helps to get across the general idea.

There’s a small town in New South Wales named Narromine. I’ve never been there, probably will never have a chance to visit. From what I understand, it’s not a particularly special town. As of a 2001 census, Narromine had a population of 3,548 people. It’s known for growing citrus fruits and is popular among gliding enthusiasts.

As unremarkable a place as this little town might seem, I learned something about Narromine on my recent trip to Papua New Guinea that means I’m highly unlikely ever to forget the place, and I’d probably jump at the opportunity to go there if the occasion ever arises.

Here’s the story: Apparently, if you stir the air with your finger in a clockwise (to account for the Coriolis effect) direction while you’re in Narrowmine, it’s possible to start a small willy willy (that’s Aussie-speak for little tornado). I imagine that this works best if you pick an area with black pavement or other such similar surface to ensure maximum amounts of rising hot air, but in any case, when I heard this from Tim, one of my fellow passengers on the MV Golden Dawn, I immediately pictured myself spending hours and hours in the arid climate, snickering like the proverbial mad scientist while stirring the air to conjure up a bunch of little willy willies.

I could see myself doing this for days without getting bored, wondering all the while whether my creation of little wind dervishes would lead to unforeseen and catastrophic effects in far-flung corners of the world…a disastrous derivative of the Butterfly Effect.

Though it might not seem obvious, this bit of trivia has a lot to do with diving, or rather, the absence thereof. To cut to the chase, the weather was less-than-cooperative during my month in PNG.

Mainly it was the wind, with 25-30 knot winds the norm, and gusts up to 50 knots on some days. In practical terms, this meant that it was tough to reach some dive sites while I was based at Loloata, and we were port-bound for a few days of the scheduled trip to Eastern Fields on Golden Dawn.

With ample time on hand to chat with fellow travellers, I found myself eagerly accumulating bits of trivia (a fancy word for “almost entirely useless information”) and pondering things that I’d probably never otherwise contemplate (since I’d normally have more productive things to do).

Holiday Sacrifice
I flew to PNG on 22 December, meaning that I missed both Christmas and New Year. The holidays per se don’t mean much to me, but I really like the time of year in Japan, since everything shuts down and the entire country becomes quiet, still, peaceful.

The hustle and bustle of normal life in and around Tokyo grinds to a nearly complete halt, and in many ways, it’s one of the most sane times of year in the hectic metropolis. People spend time with their families and friends, and you can almost feel the collective sigh of relief as everyone takes a well-deserved and much-needed break. I particularly enjoy the new year traditions (see my posts from the previous year: one, two, three)

Anyway, it takes a lot to pull me away during this season, and PNG is one of the flew places I’d sacrifice the holidays for. The reason is simple…the underwater sights are awesome. More on that in a bit.

As it turned out, Christmas Eve and the actual day passed by without much fanfare, as we were all too busy and tuckered out from diving, and I spent a quiet and pleasant New Year’s Eve on the balcony of a friend’s apartment sipping a glass of Chardonnay while enjoying the sunset over Port Moresby harbour.

Diving Port Moresby
Many cities are located on the water, but most of the time, you wouldn’t want to dive in those waters. This might change with time, but for the present, the waters around Port Moresby are an exception…the area is teeming with life.

The signature dive site around Port Moresby is Suzie’s Bommie. You’ve probably seen it featured in articles in various dive magazines, so I won’t dwell on a description of the site or on trying to think of an appropriate string of superlatives.

Suffice it to say that this relatively small bommie holds its own against most dive sites around the world, and you’ll definitely want to pay it a visit if you find yourself in the area, weather permitting of course. The site is a 25-minute boat ride away from the inside of Bootless Bay (where Loloata Island Resort is, and where other day boats generally depart from), so when the winds are ripping and/ or the swells are acting up, it may not be safe to go there.

The dive guides told me stories of divers insisting on visiting Suzie’s when conditions were unsafe, in some cases to disastrous consequence. Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to pay heed to local knowledge and experience. When the guides thought going to Suzie’s wasn’t a good idea, we didn’t go. Pretty simple concept, but it’s odd how some people seem to think they know better.

One thing that makes these waters highly unusual is the abundance of lacy scorpionfish (Rhinopias aphanes), a fish that seems to be rare in most other locations (or perhaps just highly difficult to spot). For many divers, especially photographers, the reasonably high probability (note: not guarantee) of seeing one or more of these fish is reason enough to dive around Port Moresby. During my stay, we located approximately 10 individuals, covering a range of sizes and colours.

What precisely makes these cryptic fish congregate on the reefs around Moresby is a mystery, though that’s not surprising given how little is known about them in general. One thing I did learn is that the Rhinopias in this area are most likely all the aphanes species, not the frondosa or other species.

There is considerable confusion, misinformation, and mixing of terms on the internet and in dive publications regarding the aphanes and frondosa species. I’m hard-pressed to provide an easy way to tell the difference (actually, I’m not sure anyone can do so accurately just by sight), but one thing that Dik Knight, who owns and manages Loloata explained to me is that both fish occupy the same ecological niche, so they are highly unlikely to co-habit the same area.

Makes sense to me, but I will undoubtedly continue to remain confused each time I see one of these exquisite critters, irrespective of the species.

One final point about this area…if you find yourself there at a time of low visibility (which happens from time to time because of the high nutrient flow from nearby major river systems), go with the flow and don’t stress too much about seeing the big stuff.

The concentration of macro life subjects in incredible, and no matter what the conditions, there’s always something to see and learn. Nearby Lion Island is generally the place to go diving when conditions are less than optimal. Viz isn’t terrific, and there generally aren’t large animals swimming by, but if you look closely, there are all sorts of interesting finds. I never have a problem keeping myself amused for hours around Lion Island.

Among some of my finds this time: curious blennies peeking around corners to observe me, a juvenile Amblyeleotris guttata goby (normally difficult to approach), a possible Tomiyamichthys oni goby (but with slightly different markings and exhibiting unusual behaviour), four Phyllodesmium longicirrum solar-powered nudibranchs, and a whole host of other stuff.

Um Or Ium?
Besides the wonderful tidbit about Narromine, I also picked up a few other choice factoids that I can now throw out at parties to make everyone wonder what I do with my time. Among the more memorable items:

• Borscht is not Russian. It’s Ukranian.
• Chewbacca’s voice/ sound is based on the sounds George Lucas’ pet malamute made.
• The breed standard weight for malamutes is about 45 kgs.
• Banksia plants (and apparently quite a few others) require brush fires for their seeds to germinate.
• English/ UK law was originally written in an archaic form of French, on the theory that an archaic language does not change, while living languages do.
• The etymology for the word “posh” comes from when ships sailed from the UK to then-colony India. It is an acronym for Port Out, Starboard Home, which describes the cabins that wealthier people preferred because of relatively greater comfort given prevailing wind conditions.
• The world’s helium supply is mined and therefore limited. Most of it used to be mined in the USA, but now comes primarily from Russia.
• If you have a helium-filled balloon in a car and you accelerate, it will go forward. If you brake it will go backward. (You gotta think about this one for a moment to get it.)
• Aluminium melts without turning orange first, making it quite difficult to weld properly.

Credit for most of these odds and ends goes to fellow Golden Dawn passengers Tim and Barbara, a seemingly inexhaustible source of superfluous information and otherwise highly engaging people.

Speaking of Tim, the point about aluminium engendered a debate between Tim and someone else (can’t recall precisely whom) about whether “aluminium” or “aluminum” is correct. Tim originally hails from the UK, which explains his preference for the “-ium” ending. His reasoning was that no other element in the periodic table ends in “ium”, thus demonstrating the US corruption of the English language.

Though I could care less either way, I pointed out that molybdenum ends in “-um” (I have no idea why or how I knew that. Must have been from another period of accumulating useless information), which sort of put a hole in the hull of that argument. Subsequently, I thought of “platinum” and then found another on the net, “lanthanum”…so Tim, that’s three!

[Note: Received an email letting me know that aluminium is difficult to weld because it oxidizes too rapidly to achieve a good joint, so you need to use an electric arc weld in a bubble of insert gas like argon, fed in from a tank. Cool.]

A Bit About The Eastern Fields
Anyone who knows me has probably heard me rant and rave about the Eastern Fields. It’s just awesome. What makes it so amazing is its remote location. Situated halfway to Australia, the Eastern Fields is a system of submerged atolls that are part of PNG territory, extending about 15 x 25 km in size, 100 metres or so in depth inside the atoll and dropping to 2000+ metres outside.

The area is not well marked on charts, and weather is difficult for most of the year, so the Golden Dawn is the only boat that regularly visits. The lack of pressure from people means that the reefs are truly pristine, and fish number in the gazillions. Visibility is almost always excellent, and you’ll not likely to run into anyone else out there. In all of human history, only a few hundred people have ever dived the Eastern Fields.

So it kind of sucked when gale-force winds kept us from heading out there for a few days.

To make a long story short, we spent much of the first four days of the 10-day trip downloading weather forecasts (notoriously unreliable for such a remote area) and making several aborted attempts to make the 12-hour ocean crossing. Each time, we ended up back in or near Moresby, diving in low-visibility waters or just sitting on the boat.

The saving grace was the passengers. It’s no exaggeration to say that my co-travellers were among the best group of people I’ve ever spent time with on a boat, particularly given the climatological circumstances.

If you’ve ever been on an extended liveaboard trip, you know that the people make or break the trip, and one bad apple truly spoils the lot. Reality TV has nothing on the politics and drama on a liveaboard with unpleasant people aboard.

So it’s always with some wariness that I size-up fellow travellers on long cruises. The roster this time included Tim and Barbara (from Australia, but Tim originally from the UK), Ai Lin (friend from Singapore), Marcus (from Singapore but originally Malaysia), Stephane (from France), Obata-san (from Japan) and Antonio and Gunita (Antonio is half German, half Sicilian, making for quite an entertaining personality, and Gunita is the first person from Latvia I’ve ever met).

In less-than-ideal circumstances, everyone was totally cool, and we had a great time, even while we remained confined to port. Jokes, games, serious chats, trading of useless facts…I’d happily travel with any of them again. Truly amazing was Obata-san, who though unable to speak much English, had not one iota of difficulty communicating with everyone, and even had the crew and some passengers spouting off Japanese by the end of the trip.

When the winds settled a bit and we did finally make it out to Eastern Fields, the diving didn’t disappoint. With no land nearby, the visibility was great, waters blue, and marine life abundant. We still had to contend with strong winds, and as a result weren’t able to get to many of my favourite sites, but any dive in the Eastern Fields is special.

The best dives, for me at least, came on our last day out there, when we visited a small reef called Carl’s Ultimate, named for my friend Carl Roessler. The term “ultimate” hardly does the reef justice.

Elongated and easily swimmable, the reef is one of the most action-packed dives you’ll ever encounter. Of course, you’ve got to hit it when the current is running, as the elongated shape of the reef means there are effectively two tips, both of which serve as centres of activity when the current is whipping past. When the current is slack, it’s much easier to swim around, but the action isn’t anywhere near as adrenalin-charged.

Large sea fans, super-gazillions of fish, large predators like barracuda, dogtooth tuna and trevallies, and large resident potato cods (who unfortunately were away during most of our day there)…if I had to pick just one site to dive in the Eastern Fields, this would be it. During our final day, we had excellent weather and I spent 6.5 hours on the reef, happily observing the goings on and taking the occasional photograph (slight understatement).

Not All Sugar and Honey
Life isn’t a fairy tale of course, so there was an unhappy side to this visit…the number of sharks was far too low. Craig, Golden Dawn’s captain, had warned me in advance that fishing fleets, most likely from Asia, had swooped in and pillaged the atolls a few times, but I still really wasn’t quite prepared for the shock.

This is the place where I’ve been surrounded by silvertips, swam next to hammerheads, been nearly engulfed in swarms of friendly reef whitetips, and been mesmerised by legions of patrolling grey reefs. No longer.

I hesitate to pronounce judgement after just this trip, but dammit…can’t humans just stop being so f*cking stupid? Seriously, the Eastern Fields is not an easy place to reach, and it’s far from safe for fishing vessels. This kept the fleets away for many years, but it must be a sign of how dry the well is running elsewhere and how voracious the collective Asian appetite for shark fin is that fishing vessels were prepared to take the considerable risk of hitting one of the many unmarked bommies for the sake of reaping quick profits from shark fins.

I wanted to get angry, but a deep, dark vacuum in my gut prevailed, sucking the life out of me after we came up empty handed from our first shark dive…leaving me utterly despondent.

Everyone on board wanted to see sharks, and we managed to stir up a couple of silvertips and some teeny whitetip reef sharks plus a few really, really small grey reefs, but sigh…

Demolishing shark populations for their fins is but a symptom of a much greater problem. Overfishing is rapidly depleting the world’s oceans of fish. Governments around the world are using tax funds to subsidise ever-larger fleets to kill ever-more fish in ever-more efficient (read unsustainable) ways. It’s not just Asian fishing boats. European boats are among the world’s worst offenders in this regard. It’s a global problem, but remains largely hidden from public view and awareness.

To be witnessing this directly is one of the saddest things I’m sure I’ll ever experience.

Look Ma, No Bubbles
Going back to less disheartening stuff…one of the best things about being on Golden Dawn was having the chance to dive on a rebreather again. Craig certified me on a KISS rebreather several years ago. It had been a while since I’d dived the unit, so it took a bit of getting reacquainted, but two dives or so and I was back in good form.

Diving on a fully closed-circuit rebreather has its pros and cons. I’m by means no expert on the ins and outs of rebreathers, but for me, the biggest advantage is gaining extra time safely at normal scuba depths. By maintaining a relatively conservative PPO2 of 1.00, at normal scuba depths you’re getting relatively high levels of O2 without taking undue risk of O2 toxicity, meaning quicker flushing of nitrogen out of your system.

For someone like me who likes to sit with a fish at 12 metres for an hour or more, this is an incredible boon. I’m generally much less tired than from breathing air, and with the gases I’m breathing being recycled, the chances of running low on gas are…low.

Other benefits include staying warm (because you’re not exhaling air and expelling body heat), as well as the fact that you don’t blow a lot of bubbles. It’s a mistake to think you’re completely bubble-less, but you’re not scaring fish halfway to oblivion each time you exhale.

Cons include the need to be much more vigilant and aware of your equipment and gas levels, having to spend time maintaining the rebreather (as if camera gear weren’t hassle enough), and having to grow accustomed to the constrictive feeling of breathing into a bag (which is effectively what a closed-circuit rebreather is…you blowing into and breathing out of a bag).

Overall, the KISS system is really simple to use (KISS stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid), but as with any life-support system, there are risks involved, so it’s not for everyone.

Fellow passenger Marcus brought along his own Megalodon fully-closed rebreather system, brand-spanking new, so I had someone else going bubble-less with me, which was a comforting feeling. When you’re down for two to three hours and you’re in stealth mode not blowing bubbles, it can get a bit lonely, and just the knowledge that someone else is down with you is a great psychological boost.

Marcus also had an iPhone with him, a Mac laptop, a Seacam housing and other toys, making him officially a member of the global gadget geek brigade. It also made him really easy to pick out at the airport, as his baggage trolley was practically pleading for help under the weight of his luggage.

Soft Spot
Continuing my ongoing efforts toward creativity, I devoted some time while diving around Port Moresby to shooting at the f2.8 to f4 range instead of selecting the smaller f-stops more generally used by marine photographers.

I had two reasons for this. The first was practical. With relatively low visibility, once of the side effects of using a small f-stop for clarity is that you see everything clearly, including all the stuff you don’t want to see clearly…gunk in the water.

By opening up, you can take advantage of the blurry/ dreamy effect that results to minimise distraction caused by particles in the water. The attendant difficulty, of course, is that your depth of field is severely restricted, and it’s a heckuva lot more difficult to get pinpoint sharpness where you want.

The second was just a matter of creativity. Some subjects just seem to work better as “soft and cuddly”, irrespective of whether the actual subjects are like that in real life or not. I generally don’t photograph for the purpose of getting ID photos, so I’m not terribly concerned with accurately representing the real life situation.

I prefer to watch an animal, consider how it might be portrayed in a flattering or unusual manner, and work accordingly.

The effect that results from using f2.8 isn’t ideal for everything. In fact, the circumstances in which you can pull off a 2.8 to 4 shot are probably quite limited. But the next time you find yourself in bad viz, consider giving it a try.

Remember to reduce your strobe power, crank the ISO down to 100 or less if you can, and make sure you avoid camera shake (unless you’re intentionally introducing some blurring). One other trick is to try just using one strobe and fly in the face of the oft-quoted “you should always use two strobes” belief. If you’ve been shooting underwater for a while, these little tricks might add a nice new tool to your arsenal.

Never Land in a Circular Field
It’s difficult, no actually it’s impossible, to relate the events and experiences of a month in PNG in a short post like this. I can think of dozens of other things I’d like to write about, but I’d probably end up boring you to death, assuming that you’ve even read this far.

I’ll probably pick a few of the more interesting things to write about later, but for now, I’m going to wrap this post up with a final bit of trivia I picked up from ever-interesting Tim: Never land in a circular field.

Apparently, this is a rule that glider pilots need to follow, because circular fields (in Australia at least) are watered by long poles that are fixed to the centre of the circle and revolve. So if you land in a circular field, you’ll get bonked by the watering mechanism, which I take isn’t generally recommended for gliders (we’re talking glider planes, not hang gliders).

I’ll probably never become a glider pilot, and surely this bit of information must rank among the least-likely-ever-to-be-useful-to-me things I’ve ever learned, but every time I think of it, I’ll remember this trip and all the great people I met.

So maybe it’s not so trivial after all.

I’m back. Physically at least. Since getting off the plane late Saturday night, I’ve been buried under a mountain of emails, phone calls, to-do list items, dog walks, etc. It’s always like this, but sometimes I wonder whether it’s worth re-entering the real world. And it doesn’t really help when I get emails from PNG saying “The waters are frickin’ amazing now. You should’ve stayed longer!” Sigh.

Anyway, I’m nearly through the first wave of stuff and will hopefully get time soon to pull my notes together to put together a summary of the trip. In short, it was terrific. PNG was hit by some less-than-desirable weather, but the passengers on the MV Golden Dawn liveaboard trip were truly fantastic, among the best bunch of people I’ve ever had the pleasure of being stuck on a boat with, and my stay at Loloata was filled with interesting experiences, as always.

My apologies to everyone who sent me emails, greeting cards, e-greetings, etc., over the holidays. I tried to reply to all the e-greetings, but most likely missed a few inadvertently, and one person I responded to found my response in his spam folder, so please check your spam folder. I replied. Honestly!

While I was away, I had quite a few articles published. First are a Perspective column (108 kB) entitled Pondering Plastics and a destination feature about Tonga (1.7 MB) for FiNS Magazine. These two articles are available via my iTunes podcast too.

For Japanese readers, I also had two articles published in Web-lue, one about Papua New Guinea (3.2 MB), and the other about Tonga (2.1 MB).

And finally, my face-on, full-frame photo of a sperm whale with its mouth wide open is featured in the Big Shot column of the most recent issue of DIVE magazine in the UK, though I don’t have a physical or e-copy yet.

…back to work

I’m off to Papua New Guinea. It’s been a couple of years since I was last there, so I’m really looking forward to the trip. I’ll be staying at Loloata Island Resort, and I’ll also be aboard the MV Golden Dawn.

Having been dry for several weeks now, checking and packing gear was even more of a hassle than normal, but I’m finally approaching the end of the ordeal, mere hours before I depart. I get this nagging feeling I’ve forgotten something, but there’s not much I can do about it now.

I won’t have reliable net access while I’m there, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to post anything for a while. Please don’t send any emails with attachments while I’m away.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

A couple of articles published in ultraMARINE magazine, a bi-monthly publication in the UK for aquarists.

The first is an editorial article titled Ignorance, and the second a short article about humpback whales in Tonga. I’ve combined the two into a single file (428 kB) that can be downloaded here or from my iTunes podcast.