UW Photography
PaparaSea
My model was in tears. She had surfaced full of joy after her first ever dive with manta rays but back on the boat a couple of underwater photographers had growled at her. "You are a manta-chaser! Stay on the bottom next time!" Her joy turned into remorse. It was my fault. I should have made it clear that we were going to hang around on the bottom and let the mantas come to us. I had taught Leigh how to position herself with Potato Cod, turtles, sea jellies and schools of jacks to get close and dramatic interactions, but failed to emphasise that with wild mantas in the Western Pacific it is best to stay still and let the mantas come to you. We were diving Manchurian Pass at Eastern Fields in PNG's Coral Sea from adventurer Craig de Wit's famous dive boat Golden Dawn. Mantas are regularly seen on the outside of the pass where they swim along a narrow ridge at 20 m. A sandy lagoon runs one side of the ridge, and a deep wall along the other. We were diving, parallel to each other, either side of the top of the ridge and I imagined that if we encountered a manta I would be able to shoot the manta passing between us, and get Leigh and the manta in the same shot. Caught up in the action, I did not see Craig signalling divers to stay low. Being an Old Salt I have developed my own unique set of "Rules For Diving" that have helped me survive and prosper underwater. "Never Dive Deeper Than Your IQ (Imperial units)" is a favourite, though I do add 10 ft. depth for every 1000 dives experienced. "Treat Every Dive As A Decompression Dive" is another, and, especially in the early days when... More »
The Ugly Side of Underwater Photography
Notes From the Back of Beyond II We took a busman's holiday last weekend and went diving on Bali's north coast. It's easy diving around Tulamben; porters carry the tanks and you just walk off the beach. Great schools of trevally surround the Liberty Wreck and the black sand slope to the east is a famed critter diving mecca. It should have been a beautiful morning dive, but what we saw underwater shifted our moods a full 180 degrees. We finished the dive almost ashamed to call ourselves underwater photographers. About 50 feet down the slope, hovering close to the substrate, we spent about 15 minutes searching for unusual species of nudibranchs. We weren't the only ones in the water-Tulumben is a popular dive area-and another group of divers was nearby. From the amount of silt that drifted our way we figured they had found an interesting subject so we finned over to take a closer look. There were about ten of them, armed with all manner of image-capturing gear, and they had surrounded a Wonderpus photogenicus, one of the recently described long-armed octopuses that is often confused with the Mimic Octopus. A few divers had still camera housings mounted on video housings, a few had both wide angle and macro rigs cobbled together with a tangled web of multiple strobe cords. One diver caught our attention; she had a small video housing and had settled down gently on the bottom, waiting patiently, and so we decided to hang around to see what happened. For more than 30 minutes we witnessed one of the lousiest displays of buoyancy skills we have ever seen outside of an entry level class. You would have thought that the current was running at four knots, there was that much sand blowing through the water. The lone divemaster vainly tried... More »
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