What The Hell Is That?

There aren't many things I love as much as finding something underwater that I've never seen before.  Conversely, few things then drive me crazier than not being able to find out what it was I was looking at. 

Case in point, the green globule on the right.  I first found a bunch of these about ten years ago, scattered over a muck bottom.  Most were about the size of a marble.  A few were larger.  

By themselves, they were only marginally interesting.  But almost all were covered in tangles of some type of weird polychaete worm.  The worms were also on the bottom right beside the globs.  But I found none any distance from them.  It was as if the worms were rising up from the muck right there and then swarming over them.

In the years since, I've seen and photographed these globules on a regular basis – again, almost always covered with worms.   I once collected two to see what would happen over time but they collapsed on themselves within a day.  I've asked more people than I can count for an explanation – including all of my usual go-to experts – but have never received anything close to an answer. 

My best guess is that the globules are some kind of egg mass that the worms are feeding on – the same guess I had the first time I saw them.  But then again, maybe the globs are the worms’ own egg masses and they’re contributing to them.  Or maybe they’re algae that has somehow become worked into balls and the worms are – well, in that case I don’t know what the worms are doing.

Like I said, driving me a little crazy. 

Whites Fusion Sport Drysuit

I've had a meandering history with this suit.  I first gave it a shot about a year ago and was warned beforehand that getting into it was a bit difficult.  A bit difficult?  Running 7.6 miles straight uphill in the Mount Washington Road Race was a bit difficult.  Getting into this suit was beyond that.  The first time I tried, it was so tight and form fitting that by the time I finally zipped in, my face was beet-red, I was covered with sweat, and could feel my heartbeat pounding in my temples.

I figured it would get easier with practice, though, and so took it out on about a half a dozen dives. And, indeed, putting it on did get easier.  Marginally.  Underwater, I loved it.  It was more flexible than any suit, wet or dry, I had ever worn.  But putting it on was just more hassle than it was worth and so I said a somewhat reluctant 'goodbye' to the Whites.  Not long after that, a buddy of mine who had bought the suit a short time after came to the same conclusion.

And that was pretty much the last I thought about the Whites drysuit until this summer, when I made a dive up in Eastport with a Canadian friend.  We had gotten to the site well ahead of slack tide and so had taken our time, shooting the sh*t and gearing up.  All in all, a pretty relaxed afternoon.  It was only later, when I looked at the photos I had taken, that I realized he was wearing a Whites, even though at no point had I seen him struggling, let alone appearing in need of CPR, while gearing up.

And that got me thinking.  Maybe Whites, in their zeal to emphasize the form-fitting nature of their suit, had pushed the envelope a bit too much and were actually sizing them too small.  Now, I have no inside information here so this is just speculation on my part.  But when I decided to give the Whites drysuit another shot, instead of struggling to get into the suit that their sizing chart said was right for me, I bumped it up a size, choosing a suit they said would fit a man who weighed up to 210 pounds, even though I weigh only 155.

And what a difference a size makes.  The first time I put it on, not only did I slip into it easily, but it fit like a glove.  Underwater, I don't feel as sleek and hydrodynamic as I did with the smaller suit, but I still move around very easily in it -- more so than I have in any other brand or model of drysuit.

A couple of quick points about it.  Whites describes the material of the suit as "heavy duty, abrasion resistant," and, for all I know, that's exactly what it is.  I have my doubts, though.  It just doesn't feel substantial enough to be called heavy duty.  I'm sure it will be fine for typical diving but it probably wouldn't be my choice if I were doing a lot of wreck diving.  Again, I might be wrong there.  And much like Aqua Lung's (Whites parent company) Solafx wetsuit (the best wetsuit I've ever worn), the neck and torso pulls straight over your head, allowing you to put both arms in at the same time (making the process very easy) and it then zippers in an arc across your chest.  All very nice.

I would definitely recommend the Whites Fusion Sport drysuit for diving in the northeast, with the proviso that you pay a lot of attention to sizing when trying it on. If the chart says it fits but your head says it doesn't, try a size up.  Obviously, this is a suit that should be bought at a shop, not on-line. Actually, everything should be bought at your local shop rather than on-line but that's another story. And at a base price of $1400, it's also a pretty good value compared to other suits on the market.

The Good Old Days

A few weeks ago, I got together with a bunch of friends to make a memorial dive in honor of our old buddy, Jerry Comeau.  A few weeks before the dive, though, Christine Levoshko sent me a bunch of scans she had just made from a few of Jerry’s old photos.  Most were black and white shots from the 50’s and 60’s of Jerry and friends gearing up at Folly, Back Beach, Pebble, and a couple of other sites I couldn't see enough of to id.  But it was enough to get my imagination running.

I've often wondered what it would have been like to have been with Jacques Cousteau, Philippe Talliez and Frederic Dumas when they made that very first SCUBA dive in 1943 in the French Riviera -- to have seen what they saw. It's hard to imagine, though, because I've never been to the French Riviera.  I have no idea what it looks, smells, or sounds like, how the air feels in the morning or how crowded the streets get in the afternoon.  And I haven't a clue as to how dense or varied the marine life is. For me to really picture that first dive, there are just too many blanks to fill in.

But looking at Jerry's old pictures, of places I know and love, it was much easier to make the mental journey back.  And doing it raised more questions than it answered. Underwater, how similar was it then to today?  What were they seeing compared to what we're seeing?  Was that big northern red already tucked into the crevice on the west wall of Folly (I know it was already there in the early 70's)? Did Back Beach already suck as a dive except at night when the squid were in?  And that overhanging boulder off Salt Island where I always find the nudibranch Eubranchus pallidus in the springtime -- were they gathering there then, too?  Wouldn't you love to have seen these sites back then -- and be able to compare them to what they are now?  

I know I would.  The similarities, as well as the differences, would be amazing.

Gull Cove -- Portsmouth, RI

I had originally planned to dive Doliber's Cove in Marblehead this morning, but then Andy Martinez called and said he had just dived there and kicked up so much silt that viz was a mere 2-3 feet.  Oi.

Okay, he didn't actually pinpoint himself as the cause for all the silt floating through the water column but I've spent enough time in his slipstream to put two and two together once he said he had been in the water and that viz was bad!

Plan B was to head south to Gull Cove (aka Blue Bell Cove) in Rhode Island.  I love this little site, mainly because of the snake blennies, most of which are still a half-inch or less and very quick.  But every now and then you come across a curious one that evolution has yet to cull from the herd, and I did my best to shoot them.

It was also nice to spend some time in 75-degree water, although it's probably not a good idea to get too used to that with a Quebec trip just a few weeks away.

Eat Or Be Eaten

Every time we go underwater, life and death struggles happen all around us, whether we see them or not. Usually when we think of predators, we think only of sharks.  But that’s just the tip of the food chain iceberg. Everything down there is feeding on something else.  And the vast majority of these life and death struggles happen on a scale so small that it’s easy to swim right by them without even noticing.  Here are a few shots of animals a little further down on the food chain caught in the act of making a meal of one another.

Surface Intervals

One of the best things about diving is how much time you get to spend on, in, or near the water, in between the times you’re under it.  Let’s face it, everything’s better by the water, including photography.  Here are a bunch of shots taken before, after, or in between dives.

This was shot after an early AM dive in Virginia.  There was almost nothing happening underwater so I was pretty happy to come out and find such a beautiful scene on the beach.

I took this after an evening dive at Nahant.  This little park looking back toward Boston is about a mile from Canoe Beach.

I photographed these surf casters on the same morning as shot # 1 above.  

For me, one of the big differences between surface and underwater photography is the requisite shape of the photo.  I’m not sure why but when I take a shot underwater, even if I crop it, I want it to maintain its original shape and proportions.  Not so with surface shots.  For reasons that I again don’t understand, when I take a shot on the surface, I have no compunction whatsoever about cropping it any way I want – which usually means taking something off the top and bottom and ending up with a longer, narrower photo.  I’d love to feel the freedom to do the same with underwater shots.  Maybe someday.  This one was taken at sunrise before heading out to dive in the St. Lawrence up in Quebec. 

Since it’s the dive that dictates when you get to the water, you can’t always set things up to shoot on either side of sunrise and sunset.  Again, though, everything’s better by the water, regardless of time of day, even shots like this late morning one taken at Good Harbor Beach in Gloucester.   

Ditto for this afternoon shot taken in fairly harsh sunlight after a dive on the Cape.

Of course, I had to include at least one night shot.  I came out of the water after an early evening dive at Back Beach in Rockport and found the sidewalk crowded with people waiting to see the moon rise up over Bearskin Neck.  It turned out it was the super full moon – the night when the moon is at its closest point to the Earth for that calendar year.  I went back to dive again the next night and made sure to bring a tripod.  I grabbed this shot almost as soon as I came out of the water. 

Black & White

You don't see a lot of black and white shots taken underwater.  And for good reason -- they don't really work.  At least not for me.  I'm not sure why since the early attempts at black and white photography underwater, say, everything from William Beebe's pre-Great Depression shots, all the way up through Cousteau's and Hans Hass's stuff in the 50s and early 60s, is just fantastic.  But a lot of that is probably due to their historical significance.   Black and white shots taken underwater nowadays, though, tend to strike me as gimmicky.  Again, just my opinion.

That being said, when I felt like trying something different earlier this week, processing a few recent shots as black and white seemed like the thing to do.  And what better subject than nudibranchs -- animals known for their beautiful colors.  I guess what I wanted to see was whether stripping them of those colors would make it easier to focus on something else, something like form, function, maybe texture.

So I spent a few hours dodging and burning, applying overlays and whatnot, things I never usually do.  I can't say that the monochromatic results have brought out anything in them for me that's otherwise obscured by color.  But I'll give them some time and space, take another look in a month or so -- see if anything jumps out.

Eastport Photos

Just got back from a couple of weeks of diving in Eastport, Maine.  The diving itself was great; photographically, though, not so much.  Here are a few of the shots.

Nudibranch attacking a hydroid.  What I like are the colors and how uncluttered it feels.

I spent a while with this hermit while he was checking out a potential new shell.  He examined it from pretty much every angle, and even when he walked away from it, he stayed close by, eyeballing it from a distance.

This is the kind of shot I usually hate. And to be honest, I'm not sure I like this one either. There's no focal point, nothing happening. My prediction: within a week, this shot will be buried deep in an invertebrate folder, never to be seen again.

Just a nudibranch moving over a timber but I backed off a bit so you can see more of the surrounding area.

I really like this shot even though it's not immediately obvious what's happening in it.  A huge moon jelly was caught up in some urchins and the northern red anemone on the right had moved in to start feeding on it.  The jelly didn't have a chance. 

Wolffish are just so beautifully ugly.

Here's a nudibranch  laying out an egg string.  You can see the eggs just starting to pile up on the stalk of the hydroid.  There's nothing in the shot to give a sense scale but the nudibranch was huge.

Dawson Street – Eastport, Maine

Met up with Connie Bishop and John Prendergast for a high tide dive this afternoon.  A short time later, John and Val showed up as well.  Been a few years since I’ve dived here. 

These walls are just packed with life.  My favorite parts are the vertical crevices.  Lots of nudibranchs, starfish, and sculpin, and countless other colorful invertebrates.  

The hard part for me, as always, is swimming over the rock fields.  My tendency is to pass over them quickly but, like most places that aren’t obviously interesting, I have to keep telling myself that I don’t necessarily know what's there.  It's not so much a lesson that I keep forgetting, but one that just never really sinks in.  And sure enough, found a beautiful brittle star out and about on the rocks

.  You really do have to slow down and keep your eyes open.  Excellent dive.

Custom House Beach – Deer Island, New Brunswick

Great couple of dives today.  The whole area here’s been through some changes, though, thanks to tropical storm Arthur.  By the way, what’s a tropical storm doing in Canada.  It must have taken a wrong turn somewhere around Cape Cod and then refused to stop to ask for directions.           

But it wreaked some real havoc.  Some people are still without electricity or water.  Deer Island seems virtually deserted.  And here at the dive site, the path to the water from the lot is blocked by downed trees.  Sounds like a job for CoJo Diving!                          

Despite the storm, though, dive conditions have ranged from good to fantastic.  And today was on the fantastic end, with viz in the 25- to 30-foot range.  As always, tons of life – northern reds, scuplin, nudis, wolfish, moon jellies.  Didn’t want to come out of the water.   If this isn’t one of the premier dive sites on the east coast, then I don’t know what is.             

The only real downer for me has been the universal lack of reaction up here in the great white north to my Bruins hat.  There’s been no hassling, no gnashing of teeth, no annoyed comments.  They didn't even insist on a search going through customs.  After the Bruins’ chicken sh*t loss to Montreal in the playoffs, they’ve returned to near irrelevance up here.  Well, what are you going to do.  Time to go carve some urchin spines out of my knee.

Later (part deux)

Just a few weeks after clearing out my "Later" folder (http://shinesdiveblog.blogspot.com/2014/05/later.html), it's filling back up again.  Already there are more than 500 new shots in there.  Arghhh!  It might be time to just get rid of that folder and actually deal with images as they come in.  At least it's recent enough that I still have some recollection of taking these shots.

Back Beach Night Dive

First night dive of the year.  I've been waiting about 9 months for this.  And what a beautiful night, with a sky full of stars and air temps just right.

Went in about 10:30 hoping to find squid.  And squid I found.  Not a lot -- certainly not as many as we'll be seeing later in the summer -- but I did come across five or six.  All were medium-sized and curious enough to come in close and stick around.  Of course, there were also a lot of lobster about, as well as sleeping cunner and a couple of big ravens.

As always on night dives, at the end I came up so that I was looking straight up at the sky and could see the stars while still underwater.  I love that.  And when I came out, I turned around on the beach and took a shot back toward Rockport across the water.

The funny thing is, for years when I've dived here at night, I've noticed faint beams of light that seem to cut their way horizontally through the water.  I've always wondered what they were, and at times thought they were just my imagination.  But looking at the photo (below), it suddenly became obvious: they're the lights of Rockport reflecting across -- and through -- the water.

Great dive. Can't wait to do it again.