Under The Night Sky

Over the past few months, I've barely made a single dive that wasn't at night. So when the night dive Andy Martinez and I were going to make got switched to a day dive, I thought the sun was going to burn my eyes out. To quote Kramer, my rods and cones were all screwed up!

I love being underwater at night. What I love even more, though, is kicking back afterward at the waters's edge with whoever I dove with and a couple of cold ones. There just isn't a more beautiful place to be.

Re-Framing

Not long ago, a childhood friend and I were talking about the old days and she remembered her brother blasting The Doors on his stereo. When she’d complain, he’d tell her that he was “feeling the freedom.”

No doubt about it, feeling the freedom's a great thing, no matter what you’re doing. But as a photographer, and in particular, an underwater photographer, I’m not sure you can feel the freedom unless you’re comfortable taking shots that don’t necessarily look like what you're seeing. One of the easiest ways to do this is to shoot only part of an animal. And I don’t mean shooting just its head or its face. I mean framing or cropping the shot in such a way that people looking at it won’t see enough of the animal to necessarily know what it looks like -- or even what it is. But they’ll see enough to focus on whatever it is you want them to focus on.

Take the squid shot below. It's a pretty standard shot. It shows all of the squid and I like it.

The two shots below, though, are definitely different: they cut off the ends of the squids’ tentacles. By most of the rules of composition, this is a no-no. Someone who doesn’t know what a squid looks like will only be able to fill in some of the blanks. And that’s okay. My purpose here isn't to show you what a squid looks like but to focus your attention on their eyes and their chromatophores (the groups of pigment cells beneath their skin). This isn't what I saw when I looked at the squid but it's what I want you to see when you look at the shot.

The same can be said of the two nudibranch photos below. The first shows you the entire nudibranch and could be used to ID the species (Flabellina verrilli, in case you're wondering). The second won’t help you much in that regard. There are two nudibranchs in it and some people might not even be able to figure out where one ends and the other begins. Also, I’ve cut off the ends of the cerata (the finger-like structures) of the bottom nudibranch. 

Again, by most rules of composition, the second shot shouldn’t work. But it does – at least for me. When I look at it, I can feel the movement of the two nudibranchs across each other. I can focus in on the crimson tracts inside the cerata. And I hope you can, too. Obviously, I could have backed up and included both nudibranchs fully in the shot -- and, to be honest, I did. But those shots lost the impact of being so close.

A more extreme example is the shot below of a common sea star. And it would have been possible to move in even closer than this. 

Now, when you take shots like this, cutting off animals in unusual ways, you have to do it in a way that everyone knows you did it on purpose – that you didn’t just take a bad shot. You have to know what it is you want people to focus on, and then frame the shot so that they will.   

So the next time you're underwater photographing a fish or some invert, feeling the need to frame it just so to get that perfect head portrait, or to fit all of it in the shot, try something different: pick out the most interesting part, move in close and shoot just that bit. And feel the freedom.  

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.