Beneath the Surface…

Every year we travel to Roatan for a week of SCUBA diving at CoCoView Diving Resort.  Rustic and simple, you couldn’t ask for a better dive setup.  The dive boat captains are on top of your every need, and the resort is mapped out for simplicity.  Accessed only by boat, it is also a quiet place to hang out.  There are no phones, and no television.  All the entertainment is beneath the surface of the ocean that is right at your doorstep.

I became SCUBA certified in 1992 when we lived in New Orleans.  We went to Mexico where I did my certification dive, and I had the opportunity to marvel at the amazing coral and sea life that was Palancar Reef.  Six months later, my husband and I obtained our advanced SCUBA certification where the check out dives were done off the coast of Florida.  This was my first experience with sea sickness, as well as the night dive that not only heralded SCUBA divers, but spear fishing participants.  Following a day of semi unconsciousness from the effects of dramamine, there was a dip in a naturally fed spring where the temperature was 53 degrees and we were required to stay down for 45 minutes.  So far, my perceived value of obtaining an advanced certification was roughly nil.

Shortly after, we moved to Virginia where I promptly gave birth to three adorable little boys in eleven months, and the wonderful memories of Palancar reef and the amazing sea life were relegated to the distant past.  Then in 2001 my husband was introduced to a gentleman that taught SCUBA diving as well as organized SCUBA trips, and suddenly life beneath the surface became forefront for us again.  It was another two years before we took another trip to SCUBA dive, this time to Roatan to dive with the group from Holladay SCUBA.

It wasn’t love at first sight with me.  My biggest complaint then is still my biggest complaint now.  The water around Roatan, and CoCoView Resort are fairly rough, and it’s a struggle for me to enjoy getting on a boat because of this.  I’ve tried every seasick remedy known to man, finally settling on Scope Patches.  They aren’t perfect, but the best resource for me.  This first trip after a hiatus of roughly 10 years was like starting all over, and I didn’t enjoy it.  For some reason, we saw little sea life, I was uncomfortable, and I left not only wondering what I had ever enjoyed about it to begin with, but also thinking it wasn’t something I wanted to do again.

Then a curious thing happened.  Our oldest, when he was 14, expressed an interested in SCUBA diving.  He took lessons, and my husband took him to Roatan.  I secretly thought is would be a disaster, because of my recollection that there just wasn’t a lot to see there.  But when they returned, they had pictures from a simple point and shoot underwater camera that my husband had invested in that showed a variety of sea life I simply couldn’t believe.  Eventually, his twin brothers became certified, and we’ve taken all of them to Bonaire and to Roatan.  The oldest accompanied my husband to Indonesia for ten days on a live aboard (seeing that I don’t do boats very well), which turned out to be the trip of a lifetime.

I enjoyed Bonaire the most, simply because of the water factor.  Smooth and easy, I did every dive and never got sick.  The downside is, it’s fairly expensive, whereas Roatan is more reasonable.  There is one dive site in Roatan that provides a fairly smooth ride and that is French Cay Cut.  Located  between the reef and shore, this is a muck dive; the boat drops divers in a sandy muck bottom–teeming with micro life, but little else.  You can make your way however, through the cut and along the wall of the reef for an excellent exploration of larger sea life–even a turtle or two, but be prepared for fairly large surge on top of the coral.

So I made my return to SCUBA diving in 2010.  Only this time my hobby of photography coalesced with SCUBA diving, and an entirely new horizon opened up before me.  A horizon of maddening moments, sheer frustration, and epic failure that only hardened my resolve to prove to myself that I wasn’t really as stupid as I felt with a camera in my hand below the surface.  In my extremely humble opinion, underwater photography is not only the most difficult photography to practice, but it seems to contradict so many rules of land based photography.  It is it’s own world.

So without going on too much longer, here are the first of three years of underwater photos that I’ve felt halfway decent about.  If you would like to see some of the top photographers in this realm, check out these links:  Todd Winner or Scott Geitler.  You won’t be disappointed.

Piece de Resistance

Forgive my incorrect punctuation, but my knowledge of such matters as accents on a keyboard are slim.  Must correct that at some point.  Today I wanted to share with you my DH photo’s from our trip, as some of them are quite good.  I missed this guy, as he was on one of my no diving days.

I missed this guy as well.

When I saw this guy, I said, “What’s the matter with that sea horse?  Why is he all straight?”  DH rolled his eyes, then laughed.  “It’s a pipe fish.”  No, I’m not usually that slow.

I don’t know what this thing is, but his green color is beautiful.

This guy is called a Nudibranch.  They come in an amazing array of shapes, sizes and colors.

And the ever present Lion fish that has become such a problem.  It has no known natural predators, and therefore they have overpopulated the Caribbean.  The divers in Roatan have begun spear fishing them and feeding them to the eels to try to teach them they can eat them.  It has had good results, as now the eels are fat and happy (with the exception that when they see divers they now expect to be fed), and the lion fish population has become manageable.  This also means that everything they were eating are beginning to come back as well.

An excellent example of an fat and sassy Eel, being cleaned by a Banded Coral Shrimp.

This guy is called a Hogfish.

“Honey,” DH says, “THIS is a Seahorse…”

These guys are extremely difficult to photograph.  They are usually moving with a darting motion rather than a lazy swim, and they are skittish.

This little guy is called a Yellow Headed Jaw Fish.  They are able to raise their bodies out of those holes and drop straight back down , effectively swimming backwards in a downward motion.  It is very interesting to watch them.  The males will hold the eggs in their mouths to incubate them until they hatch.

This is a Patterson Cleaner Shrimp.  The yellow in the body are eggs.

We couldn’t figure out what this guy was, but he lit up like a neon sign.

This little guy was pecking away at the jelly fish to the left of him.

And the last photo, the fierce Barracuda.  All the ones we saw were around 4 feet long.

Moving Photography

The last difficulty with photography is movement.  The water is moving, you are moving, the fish are moving.  How on earth can you get a photograph that is worth anything if EVERYTHING is moving?  Persistence.

I’m sure the longer you do it the easier it gets.  The simplest things such as breathing can cause you to move up and down a foot or two.  Inhale, rise.  Exhale, drop.  And you really shouldn’t hold your breath underwater, lest you get a lung injury, which can happen with as little as two feet of ascent while holding your breath, depending on your depth.  Having had a pulmonary embolism once in my life, I wasn’t keen on another lung injury.  But the overwhelming urge to hang still found me trying to hold my breath just to get that illusive photo.  It’s more difficult closer to the surface where neutral buoyancy is a little more difficult and the surge is greater.  Not to mention that the fish don’t really like to pose, although admittedly there are some who don’t shy away as easily as others.

The male Stoplight Parrot Fish is one that just does not stop swimming.  He is really hard to get a photo of, and I followed him for 15 minutes or so, and snapped about as many photos.

The angel fish is equally illusive.  He never stops swimming, and rarely swam in my direction.

These little guys tended to be curious, and head-on shots were a little easier with them.

Then there are the Sand Divers who lay on the bottom and blend in, hoping not to be seen.  Photo courtesy of DH, as mine did not come out well.

These little guys are about an inch long, and cover the bright orange coral.  I found them difficult to photograph because of their size and movement of the surge while using macro required tweaking of shutter speed and f stop.

This last guy is less than an inch in length, so I think the fact that I got him was probably nothing more than dumb luck.

Sea Life

Unfortunately, the sinus thing didn’t really get much better, and even now two weeks later I’m still treating it.  That didn’t stop me from doing as much as I could, however.  I did shore dives when my balance was off and couldn’t take the rough pitching of the boat, and did the boat dives when it was a little smoother.

The class on buoyancy was fantastic, and brought to light the issues regarding different BC’s or buoyancy compensators.  I was using a BC with a rear bladder.  When these inflate, they have a tendency to hoard air in pockets unevenly, and if you don’t know how to handle it, it will cause you to roll.  DH uses this model and loves it.  Me, not so much.  I spent more time being rolled over on to my side or back, and fighting it.  It was not very enjoyable, so by the third day I decided to rent one that did not have that type of inflation.  It made the difference between have a really good time underwater looking at creatures and spending all my energy trying to stay in the right position.

So that problem solved, it was time to start photographing some sea life.

I loved the coral, I think because I tend to like landscapes.  But getting the white balance to work underwater proved pretty tricky.  You really have to keep an eye on your depth, because you lose wavelengths of light as your depth changes (or gain back if you are coming up).  As a result, you really have to WB every couple three feet.  If you are not paying attention, then your photo’s color will be off.  Also, once you get below 30 feet, WB really isn’t effective at all, and you need to go to flash.  The thing about flash is, unless you’ve invested a ton of money on strong flash equipment, your effective distance with a flash has to be pretty darn close.  Which is easy with coral, but fish have different ideas.  My first day with a camera was rather a disappointment.  I found I really needed bifocals in my mask, because I thought they were good pictures underwater, but many turned out to be blurry.  We spent a lot of time in the shallows just shooting with white balance.

I did find out what happens when you are trying to use WB and also turn on the flash…

Yikes!  If there is a way to fix this with photo editing, I have no idea what it is.  And believe me, I tried.  I read an article that said it is always better to get the picture correct when taking it than to rely on correction after the fact.  And I tend to be a purist anyway, I don’t like spending time correcting photos or tweaking them on photo software.  I’d rather just have a beautiful photo.

Here, I think I’m finally getting the hang of it.