A new group of friends is aboard MV Golden Dawn with me now, so it’s time to head to sea once more to visit unspoiled coral reefs and say hello to friendly marine life like this:
Will be back in a couple of weeks.
After nearly two weeks at sea in the Eastern Fields of Papua New Guinea, we’re back in port for a short interval to re-provision, drop off passengers and pick up a new group of adventurers.
So far, the trip has been amazing. Pristine coral reefs + great visibility underwater + lots of marine life + awesome group of travellers = very happy Tony.
The weather has treated us kindly as well, and the seas have been flat calm for the most part, with the ocean surface appearing on some days like the finest of handmade silk.
This photo of my friend Jenny swimming above the reef at a site called Passport Point conveys how idyllic the conditions have been:
More updates and photos to come after I get back from the second part of the trip.
It’s a brand new year, and time for me to head to one of my favourite dive destinations…the Eastern Fields of Papua New Guinea. It’s been slightly over two years since I was there last, so I’m anxious to get back and see how things are.
As of this morning, I have news from Captain Craig of MV Golden Dawn that the conditions are fantastic. Keeping my fingers crossed that it’ll stay that way.
One of the highlights of my previous visit was when we stumbled upon a plump, pink frogfish at a dive site called Shaw Thing.
This discovery caused Craig to clap his hands in the water, skip around, and squeal like a gaggle of giggly girls high on helium.
Not that there’s anything wrong with said hypothetical congregation of snickering schoolgirls of course. It’s just that Craig so wants everyone to take him seriously and accord him the respect otherwise due to the captain of a marine-going vessel.
To this end, he invests considerable effort in trying to look steadfast and stalwart:
…but just can’t quite seem to pull it off (the dopey expression being an obvious contributing factor).
So back on the boat, pursuant to the Frogfish Incident, I felt obliged to advise him, as a caring friend, that tittering about in the water doesn’t help his cause.
We’ll see if he’s learned his lesson.
For everyone joining the upcoming trips…safe travels and see you soon!
Putting together Top 10 lists is a popular thing for websites to do at the end of the year.
I generally avoid trends, but I like this one, because the process of stepping back and getting perspective on what you’ve experienced and achieved over the preceding 12 months is an excellent way to set goals for the upcoming year.
It’s also a nice opportunity to recap and share some highlights of the year…to recall the good times, as well as the challenges.
I’ve just skimmed through my blog posts from 2011, and picked out ten of my favourite photos, listed in chronological order.
The first is this image of Ron Leidich and Terry Ward in the entrance of one of the hidden lakes in Palau’s Rock Islands:
I like this picture because it encapsulates everything about the unique and educational experience I had in February of exploring Palau by kayak. Getting into and out of concealed lakes was often a logistical challenge, to say nothing of the difficulty involved in documenting the experience with photos.
To capture this image, I had to swim several times between our mother boat and the island in order to haul my gear up and over sharp rocks and hydroids into the narrow opening, then get Ron and Terry into position and set up the lighting before ambient light levels fell and the incoming tide trapped us.
We were on a tight schedule and only had one try, with a window of 20, no more than 30, minutes, so I was elated (shocked almost!) when the shot actually worked.
The second photo I picked from the trip is a more traditional underwater image of a coral reef in shallow water.
It’s not technique, lighting, composition, etc. that makes this photo stand out for me. It’s the fact that this reef is living testimony to the tremendous self-healing and recovery capability of Mother Nature. It’s a symbol of hope…a reef system that defied all the doom-and-gloom, end-of-days pronouncements by experts in the wake of the massive El Niño in 1998. It’s cause for optimism.
Next up are two photos of Australian sea lions (Neophoca cinerea), the first of a friendly young sea lion coming in to give my camera a neighborly nuzzle and kiss:
…and the second of two sea lions play-fighting:
I love interacting with pinnipeds, and these two photos taken together show the extremes of their behaviour. If you’re a dog-lover like me, you’ll have no problem imagining what it’s like to swim with these precocious animals. It’s like being surrounded by hyperactive labrador retrievers…except that you’re in the water, and they can swim (a lot!) better than you.
A shadow hung over my time with the sea lions this year, as the earthquake+tsunami+nuclear reactor meltdowns in Japan took place just as I arrived in Western Australia, but the fact that I was with great friends (including three terrific kids who had an absolute blast with the sea lions) helped to balance things out.
I’m planning a return visit in March 2013, so let me know if you’re interested.
Pretty soon after playing with the sea lions, I took an exploratory trip to Sri Lanka, where I had some amazing luck. Among the highlights was an encounter with a manta ray that head-butted me twice:
I like this angle, because it’s different from most manta images. It took a lot of swimming and a number of attempts to get the manta’s tail lined up just right, when the tips of both of the animal’s wings were out of the water.
The back story of this head-butting manta is interesting, and worth a read if you like enigmas. Naturally, there was some debate about whether the manta really made a sound or not before colliding with me.
I’m 100% certain of what I heard, and there was another person in the water with me who heard/ saw the exact same things. Capt. Craig of Golden Dawn also reported a similar sound from a manta in PNG; I’ve appended a note to my original blog post with Craig’s comments. Have a read, and please let me know if you come across mantas (or other rays) making odd sounds.
Also during that trip, I managed to swim through the biggest cloud of sperm whale poo I’ve come across so far. You gotta admit, it’s impressive!
You might think it odd that I’d pick such a photo for my ten favourites of the year, but c’mon, no one can resist gawking at that enormous effluent emission.
As if batoid head-butts and odontocete defecation weren’t amazing enough, I had the mind-blowing experience of having two blue whales swim toward me, slow down to make eye contact, wish me a good day, then merrily carry on with their official whale business:
In case there was any doubt, I can confirm that blue whales are…big!
Then it was off to Papua New Guinea, where I spent a month aboard MV Golden Dawn, harassing Captain Craig and Bob Halstead.
I didn’t do much macro photography this year, but on this trip, I nailed a super-macro shot of Dinah’s goby (Lubricogobius dinah), a fish I’ve been wanting to photograph for a decade or so:
Photographing Dinah’s goby involved using a rebreather, lugging an elaborate camera set-up, and putting in some deco time, but it was worth the effort. Bob and Dinah Halstead documented this fish and had it described, so it was an honour to have Bob find the fish for me, and to be able to help Bob get a print made for Dinah!
My final two picks for the year are from Tonga. It was such an amazing season, with a record 48 humpback whale mother/ calf pair IDs, that it’s extremely difficult to select just two photos.
This picture is special because the adult female is one that I first photographed and ID-ed in 2009. I recognised her immediately on sight. She had the same even-keeled temperament that she did two seasons ago, and her calf was playful, confident and friendly, just like her calf in 2009.
And last but not least, I am quite fond of this photo of a male humpback whale singing:
I’ve spent time with and photographed a lot of singers, but this had to be the most cooperative one ever. From the moment we made eye contact, I could tell that the whale didn’t mind my presence. The white along the sides of its body, and the curly, twisty scar on the right side of its fluke really give the whale character, making for a beautiful portrait of a beautiful animal.
Well…there are certainly many more photos that I liked, but a Top 47 list doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as Top 10 does.
All of these images are more than just pictures to me. They are reminders of incredible experiences, of memories and lessons learned that no amount of money can buy, of another year well spent exploring the world, making friends, and…hopefully…becoming a better photographer and person.
A couple of places have opened up for one of the trips I’m leading to the Eastern Fields in PNG in association with Wetpixel. [Update 5 Jan: Spots filled]
The trip is for 10 to 20 January 2012, aboard MV Golden Dawn. We’ll be heading out to a submerged coral reef atoll system in the middle of the Coral Sea, where the corals are unspoiled and fish teeming, like this:
The photo above is from the most intense, fish-filled, absolutely insane reef dive I’ve ever done, at a site in the Eastern Fields called Carl’s Ultimate, named for my friend and mentor Carl Roessler. There’s so much action that you’ll want to go right back in (or, if you’re on rebreather like me, you’ll just stay in for three hours or so at a time, come up to scarf down cookies and chocolate cake, then drop in for another three hours).
To give you a better sense of the diving in the Eastern Fields, below is a video from my previous visit. I’ve posted this before, but in case you haven’t seen it, please take a quick look:
If you have time next January, this is an amazing trip that’s sure to knock your dive socks off.
Please get in touch with Dan Baldocchi for more information, or send me a message via my contact form.
It’s been a hectic few weeks for both Jon and me. Jon was away in Alaska until just a few days ago, while I was in Papua New Guinea for the entire month of June.
And…as it turns out, both of us are headed out on trips in the next few days that will see us on the road pretty much until October.
Jon’s headed to the Bahamas soon, where he’ll be trying out a new Aquatech housing for his 5D Mark II with the wild Atlantic spotted dolphins there, and I’m going south on my annual trip to Tonga to photograph humpback whales.
So it was good that we were able to find a little time to catch up over Skype yesterday, just before I was fortunate enough to have a chance to have a brief conversation with Flip Nicklin (see next post).
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Among other topics we discussed, Jon told me about how he (accidentally) dumped(!) his dad into the water in Alaska. Talk about a unique father/ son bonding experience.
We also shared our experiences with weather during our respective trips. Even though we were in totally different parts of the world, the weather patterns were off…basically we both had a lot rain.
Despite difficult conditions, Jon came back with stunning images like this:
Not to be outdone by Jon, I whined a bit about how bad the weather was in PNG during June and about the dearth of critter life. Again, not to be outdone by Jon, I came back with photos of large aggregations of fish like this:
Oh…if you’re looking for an adventure in the fall, Jon still has some spaces available for his trips to photograph polar bears with Steve Kazlowski later this year.
It’s been nearly three weeks since I got back from my recent trip to Milne Bay aboard MV Golden Dawn, and I still haven’t been able to sort through and process all my photos. Sigh.
I’ll be heading out to Tonga soon though, so I need to focus my attention on preparing for the humpback whales…which means I probably won’t make any more headway on my PNG images for a while.
To wrap up my PNG posts for now, here’s a final photo, one that I took when we stopped at a village called Boga Boga at Cape Vogel. It’s a picturesque place, with lots of friendly, energetic kids.
Trips like this are about more than just diving. Experiences such as visiting beautiful Boga Boga and meeting the wonderful people who live there are enriching and memorable.
In addition, sharing adventures and laughs with old friends and new helps to keep life’s priorities in perspective. When you’re on a boat for a month, isolated from the daily madness of political turmoil, economic crises and other miscellaneous social woes…it’s much easier to focus on what’s important and forget about the things that aren’t.
Of course, there’s always the danger of going a bit funny in the head, as Bob demonstrates in the following video clip (though one could reasonably make the case that he was already somewhat off):
I’d like to say thanks to everyone who was silly enough to join joined me during the trip and put up with my antics…and of course to Craig (and his crew!) and Bob. All kidding aside, their experience, knowledge and patience made the trip, and I’m looking forward to my next opportunity to share another adventure with them.
And finally, I’d like to give a shout out to Scubacam, Light and Motion, Zillion, Aquaforum, Xit 404, and Air Niugini.
It may not be obvious, but trips like this require a lot of preparation and logistical coordination (a situation exacerbated by the fact that I tend to schlep around so much junk and add new junk on a regular basis), and I need assistance and cooperation from a lot of people to pull everything together. So…thank you very much!
Oh…if you’re planning a visit to PNG, please note that Air Niugini has a specific baggage allowance for scuba divers, which some travel/ booking agents may not necessarily know. From Air Niugini’s website:
Air Niugini offers the following baggage allowance for scuba divers; International flights – 20kgs (44lbs) plus an additional 15kgs (33lbs) per person. Domestic flights – 16kgs (35lbs) plus an additional 15kgs (33lbs) per person. Air Niugini honours the International allowance for International passengers in direct transit on same day to a domestic port in PNG
Here’s a short video clip I just put together showing what it was like to dive under the jetty at Samarai Island.
I took the video footage when it was cloudy overhead, so the light was diffuse and whitish, plus there was quite a bit of contrast between the dark, nearly black, areas under the jetty and the harshly lit patches of water. Did the best I could picking angles to minimise the conflict between light and dark.
I shot with a Canon 7D camera and Tokina 10-17mm wide zoom lens, using a Zillion housing and Pro One dome port. For lighting, I used two Light and Motion Sola 1200 lights, mainly just to add highlights to fish that swam close to me.
I also used the recently released Technicolor CineStyle picture profile. I think it may have helped with capturing greater detail in the wide range of light values, though I didn’t shoot any footage with other profiles for comparison.
Hope you enjoy the video. There certainly were a lot(!) of fish.
The jetty at Samarai Island in Milne Bay was red-hot during my recent visit to Papua New Guinea.
There were multiple swarms of thousands of fish, including aggregations of hardyhead silversides (Atherinomorus lacunosus) like the one pictured below so enormous that referring to them as “schools” seems inadequate. “Universities” would be more like it.
The currents weren’t too bad; the water was shallow; and the fish never strayed far from the relative safety of the areas under and around the jetties…so it was the perfect opportunity to concentrate on photographing broad, sweeping movements of multitudes of fish.
Which is precisely what we did, since encountering tens of thousands of fish in ideal photographic conditions isn’t an everyday occurrence.
If you find yourself at Samarai when the fish are around, or in a similar situation elsewhere, keep this in mind: The key to taking memorable photographs of such massive aggregations of fish is to snap the shutter at the precise instant that the seemingly haphazard motions of thousands of individual fish transcend chaos and coalesce into a recognisable pattern…a shape that evokes the magnificence of their collective existence.
There’s a heap of waiting and frustration involved, but it’s worth the effort if you capture the right moment:
Incidentally…Julian Cohen, who was on Golden Dawn with me for the entire month of the trip, took some really nice photos of the friendly fish at Samarai and other subjects as well. He just contributed an article about our Milne Bay adventure to the latest issue of Underwater Photography Magazine, which is published by Peter Rowlands.
With Peter’s permission, I’ve clipped Julian’s four-page article from the issue to repost here: Julian’s PNG Article from UwP61 Jul/Aug 2011 (right-click to download). It’s worth a read, as Julian’s discussion and photographs provide an excellent overview of many of our trip highlights.
Please visit the Underwater Photography Magazine site to download the rest of issue 61 and peruse back issues.
Bob made a print of one of my Lubricogobius dinah goby photos to give to his wife, and just forwarded me this terrific snapshot of Dinah with her namesake fish:
The print hangs on the hook that’s just visible on the wall behind Dinah, next to a drawing by Valerie Taylor.
This picture represents the culmination of ten years of obsession for me.
I must have come across a reference to Lubricogobius dinah when Randall and Senou published a description of the species in 2000-2001, and ever since then, I’ve been hoping for an opportunity to see and photograph these adorable fish.
I met Dinah in early 2006, when she, Bob and I were on MV Chertan together for a TV project. And finally, in 2011, I succeeded in taking pretty photographs of these fish to help bring a lovely smile to Dinah’s face.
Nice.
One thing I forgot to describe the other day when I posted about the Black Jack B-17 wreck was the lighting tools I took down with me.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I set my camera to a high ISO in anticipation of dark conditions at a depth of 40 metres. This allowed me take photographs without using strobes.
It’s not all that apparent from the sepia-toned images I posted before, but there was a considerable amount of stuff in the water, so controlling backscatter would have been a challenge. I’m sure it would’ve been possible to take reasonably clean images with strobe light, but it would’ve taken time, which is something I didn’t have at that depth.
Instead of using strobes, I took a couple of Sola 1200 lights down, mounted on Ultralight arms in place of my strobes.
Why did I do this? To add a hint of light and colour for considerably less effort and lower risk of creating backscatter than using strobes:
As you can see from the photo above, the Sola 1200 lights allowed me to light Julian a bit, as well as the nose of the plane. I got some added light from Julian, who had one of my Sola 600 lights mounted on his camera, pointing at the plane.
There’s nowhere near the amount of light and colour that strobes could generate, but in this circumstance, it was a heckuva lot quicker and simpler than fiddling with strobes. There’s a lot to be said for quick-and-easy.
Here’s another photo, where I was able to isolate one of the props and get really close, concentrating both lights on a single area to bring out more colour:
As an unanticipated side benefit, this lighting set-up also came in handy for shooing Craig away when he cut in front of me, pointing at his camera while babbling incoherently (normal behaviour for him):
I aimed the Sola lights directly for his face, mostly with the hope of getting him out of my way, but in doing so, I managed to add a nice, selective highlight to bring out his dopey expression, something that would have been more difficult to achieve with strobes.
None of this means that you should ditch your strobes! But if you find yourself in a similar situation or want to try something a bit different, this might be worth a go.
(Disclosure: Sola 1200 and Sola 600 lights provided by Scubacam and Light and Motion.)
Following on yesterday’s post, here’s another photograph of the frenzy of orange basslets (Pseudanthias squamipinnis) at Lynda’s Reef near Nuakata Island in Milne Bay, this one with a bit of motion blur to convey the frenetic pace of activity:
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