Friends Found - Sharks of Tiger Beach Bahamas

Check this out! Beautiful film of amazing animals: [youtube]MRe6gG47710[/youtube]

Trout feeding at Capernwray

While diving today with Ian Smith, Anthony Gattrell and Alf Yates, Guido was stood throwing some bread into the water. The trout are so hungry at present that a feeding frenzy rapidly ensued. It may not be a Sardine baitball on the Wild coast or chumming for Tiger sharks(!) but the action was pretty fast and furious!  

BBC's Natures Great Events-Sardine Run

The episode of the excellent BBC Natures Great Events series covering the Sardine Run off South Africa's East coast goes to air in the UK on Wednesday night (4th March). If the trailer (and the preceeding episodes) is anything to go by, we are in for some fantastic footage. I am planning a trip to SA in 2010 to dive the Sardine Run-so this is a great program to get your enthusiasm going!

Pictures from out on the Mussel beds

We get big flocks of Oyster catchers, Curlews, Gulls and Dunlin at this time of year. Whilst investigating the mussel beds (see previous post) I took some pictures!

The demise of Morecambe Bay's mussel beds

I spent some time walking out on the mussel beds around my house in Heysham, and was shocked to see how denuded they are. For the past two summers, there has been mussel gathering on an industrial/commercial scale. Large gangs of labourers, accompanied by dozens of quad bikes with trailers have quite literally stripped the mussel beds. I walked out on the beds early last year, and was encouraged by the amount of re-growth that had occurred since the harvesting of the previous year, but the mussels were very small. I assumed that the size would render the beds uneconomic for the 2008 season. However the gangs were back in force-apparently, they were taking these tiny mussel as "seed". They were stripped out of the beds, and taken elsewhere (to Ireland I believe) to be grown on to a commercial size.  This illustrates the ammount of profit that is to be made-and equally that the profits didn't return into the local economy. This strikes me as a ludicrous system, and one that the sea fisheries protection should prevent. The wholesale destruction of any marine species in an area is not acceptable. There was no attempt to do so in either an way that is sustainable or that would encourage re-growth. In farming this would be called slash and burn-and yet it is going on adjacent to a mid sized town in one the most highly developed nations in the world!  I will be watching this year!

Forgotten Pictures

Sometimes you need to browse your picture library! I was doing so today and came across this image from the Red Sea last November   I really like it-and I hope you do too!

Earth-touch.com

Another amazing source for wildlife/nature video is earth touch http://www.earth-touch.com/ Also primarly South African based-enter Sardine Run into their search engine!

More Sardine Run footage

More amazing footage of the Sardine Run off South Africa's east coast. [youtube]ulzv7tG8-PQ[/youtube] Shot by Stuart Ireland This won the award for short video at the Antibes film festival in 2006. By all accounts, the run in 2008 was even more spectacular!

Diving Yesterday

I was diving yesterday, completeing two PADI adventure dives with a student. I've spent a while either out of the water, or not being able to carry a camera on a  specific dive, so it was great to be able to take few pictures! It is hard to juggle the responsibility of a student with the needs of photography! Many thanks to Dave(s) Morgan and Elliot and Antony Gattrell for backing me up!

Caving Pictures

I've been diving with Dave Elliot today, and doing so made me think about going caving again. I also though I'd stick a few caving pictures on here. I love the exploration involved in being underground-the fact that you can look at a hillside and be completely unaware of the miles and miles of passageways underneath it

BBC Nature's great events-SA sardine run footage

Check out this promo video clip for the forthcoming BBC program Natures Great Events- [youtube]AGKa8wlXvhk[/youtube] Absolutely amazing! Can't wait for the program and for next June when we will be there!

Happy Valentines day

 Wishing you all a very happy Valentines Day. This is Caron my gorgeous valentine and dive buddy, life partner, soul mate,  best friend and lover. I am so glad we met and thank you for putting up with me!  

Magic filters DVD

I recently ordered a copy of Alex Mustard and Peter Rowlands Shooting Magic DVD. I ahve been using magic filters (http://www.magic-filters.com/)in blue and green water for some time. This is an example of a green water shot:    What is amazing is that the combination of filter and high ISO/slow shutter has meant that it actually shows more  detail than I could  actually see through the viewfinder! I've had a similar experience using a green water filter on my video camera. The blue water filter brings out the fantastic coulours on the reef. This was shot using a blue water magic in the Red Sea:   Anyway, the DVD arrived and it is amazing how much more it gives! The practical advice on all sorts of things-even just getting the Anthias to point in the right direction(!) is great. You can order it from magic filters at http://www.magic-filters.com/

Getting in tight with Lightroom

I was playing with the perch pictures that I put up. I had posted them onto wetpixel (www.wetpixel.com) and thought that I would like to maybe improve the crop on them. This was the result!     The level of detail post crop is amazing! All I did was tweak the white balance a tiny bit.

Pictures from the past couple of mornings

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Amazing scenery

The combination of clear mornings, snow and higher tides has made me late for work on two consecutive mornings! I should explain. Yesterday I took the dogs out for their normal walk along the beach at Heysham. The early morning light and the snow on the Lake District mountains made for an amazing view. As the tides are high in the morning, the Oystercatchers, Dunlin and Curlews are gathered in large groups close inshore. SO.... rather than go to work on time, I got caught up trying to take pictures of the scene. It does get worse though-while driving along the Morecambe promenade on my way to work, the light and the snow and the boats on the tide "forced" me to stop and take some more! Sorry bosses! Anyway, I was on my way out the door thismorning, and Caron was taking the dogs out, and guess what-take two! The views are just so beautiful! Both mornings, I was playing with my Sigma 170-500. I think the moral is that I need to tripod mount it to get the results I want. I will post up some pictures later though

XIT404

Another kudos to type post, but also a heads up for those interested XIT404 are a specialist company making some truly esoteric bits for enhancing your underwater housing! I bought an oversize focus wheel knob from them-it is fantastic for using with my big gloves Check out www.xit404.com

Caving in the Dales

I went up to Lost Johns Pot near Cowan Bridge in Yorkshire yesterday, and together with Dave Elliot, had a fantastic trip down Lost Johns Pot. We dropped down about 6 pitches, in smooth walled, very dry clean cave, and then came back out again! I'd forgotten how physically hard SRT is, although it was good to feel that I was getting back into my rhythm by the end. I ache a lot and have some strange bruises today though Caves are amazing environments, it is always weird to look out over a landscape, and imagine that underneath it are a rabbit warren of tunnels and passageways. They also give you a real sense of the scale of geological time-many of the passages are now dry, they were carved out when water levels were much higher.  I used to take a camera on my caving trips-together with slave flashes, but didn't yesterday. As always, I wished I had! Caving is such an alien activity, that I think it is quite eye-catching and photogenic. Note to self-take a camera!

Inon Knob tests

My last post was about the cold water knobs for my Inon strobes that I got from Jonas Odell. I managed to get them wet in Capernwray on Friday with David Kneale and David Elliot. The strurgeon were most obliging-and Dave Elliot gets Strugeon Wrangler supremo points for actually de-tangling the sturgeons barbels! The viz was superb, although it was a gloomy day. I was using my Nikkor 105mm VR that I mentioned in my earlier post, together with a Fisheye focus light. The water clarity is so good that you can use the 105 as a short telephoto:                         The backscatter is from the strobe position-I think they were a tad too close. Anyway, water temp was 4 degrees, and my right dry glove seems to be seeping, so my hands were pretty cold. In the past, I have really struggled to adjust my strobe's power output when cold due to the size of the knobs on the Inon strobes (see my previous posts), but with the extenders that I got from Jonas, even at the end of a 45 minute dive, was able to easily adjust them-result! Here are some more pictures from the dive:                             Thanks to David and Dave-looking forward to the next one!

Kudos to...

I've been searching for some time for a way to increase the size of the knobs on my Inon Strobes. As I am forced to shoot in manual mode on my D2Xs (no TTL) and I am currently diving in 4 degree water, I needed a way to get hold of the knobe while wearing bulky dry gloves. I posted onto wetpixel (http://wetpixel.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=28156) and got lots of responses. Jonas Odell from Sweden posted showing that he has made some excellent extenders designed exactly to solve problems like mine Anyway, I ordered two last Friday (20 euros including carriage)and they turned up today.  Perfect fit! I'll dive them this week, but I'm sure that they have answered my prayers! Such an excellent item, and such a quick turn around is amazing! contact Jonas on jonas.odell@bredband.net

Sharkwater

I think this film is madatory watching for anyone who spends anytime on or in the water. I shows the level of ignorance and commercial greed that exists in our relationship with sharks, although it act as a euphemism for our relationship with the seas in general.  Farmers practise husbandry, reaering animals and growing  crops for our eventual comsumption. Whether it is moral to eat other animals or not, at least these animals are in affect bred for that purpose. The seas are a virtual free for all without regulation, and as Sharkwater shows clearly, even when this regulation exists, it is flouted or ignored by the people at the sharp end. I don't think there can even be a concept of "responsible" comercial fishing in the light of the plight of the vast majority of marine species.

Too late it's done!

Ok it was easier than I thought! I've still got a few small things to sort out-like getting it aligned correctly, but in essence the blog is now on the smugmug site. Wow!

Sorting out my Smugmug site

If you have found this blog, chances are you have found my site already! I've spent a lot of time recenly getting my site working and looking as I want it, and am getting there. I am fortunate to have found smugmug (www.smugmug.com) - their service and product are so good, and so flexible for individual customisation that it has really meant that I can do the things I wanted to do. I can shoot pictures, load the card into Lighroom, do any tweaks, and then upload straight onto my site. It means that I can get pictures onto the web, literally within minutes of taking them. The site is not finished, I want to embed this blog into a smugmug page so that it keeps the theme and navigation the same as on the site-in fact  Imay do this shortly, and by the time you read this it may be done!

[smugmug url="http://www.smugmug.com/hack/feed.mg?Type=gallery&Data=6455470_VVvhH#409315907_wdD99&format=rss200" title="Maldives%20Underwater" imagecount="100" start="1" num="100" thumbsize="Ti" link="smugmug-lightbox" captions="false" sort="true" window="false" smugmug="false" size="S"]

My BIG new lens

My Sigma 170-500mm lens arrived this week, together with a new Lacie Rugged hard drive. The lens is awesome! For some time, I've wanted to get some pictures of the big flocks of Oyster catchers and Dunlin on beach and rocks in front of our house-and now have the tool for the job! I just need some sunny days off, or lighter evenings and mornings! Many thanks to Duncan and his team at Calumet, Liverpool for all their help with my cameras and lenses

Pictures using the 105mm

 

My 105mmVR is the beast!

I've been trying to get my new Nikkor 105mm macro working in my Subal housing. Subal type 3 housings and ports have an 85mm internal diameter, which is just too tight to get the fat  bodied 105mm into. When I tried to get the lens into the housing, it caught on the MF/AF and VR buttons, and tended to offset the lens to one side. This in turn caused sealing problems with the port. So-I put a post out onto Wetpixel (www.wetpixel.com) and had some great responses. Ryan Cannon from Reef Photo and Video (www.reefphoto.com) very kindly got in touch and suggested that I bore the extension out to 88mm. So I took it down to Alan Dick engineering in Heysham (http://www.alandickengineering.co.uk/) who did a fantasic job while I waited. It now fits just and so-although you still have to be very careful not to catch the MF gear in the housing when putting the lens in. I have copied Alex Mustard with this, and use a £1 coin to lift the gear away from the lens body while I am getting it in.

Pictures from marine mammal medic course

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British Divers Marine Life Rescue

Hi all, I'm very new to this blog, so please forgive me if I'm not very good at it! My aim is to get better and get all sorts of fun things on here, but please bear with me while I do so. Tomorrow, I am doing the British Divers Marine Life Rescue Marine Mammal Medic Course. I did a radio interview for it today, and they asked me if I would do mouth to mouth on a whale-I replied that I'm pretty goby, but not that bad! I'm looking forward to it anyway.