Archive for September, 2013


An Even Longer Dive at Porteau…

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Octopus in it’s Den

With weather warnings for heavy rains and heavy winds for the afternoon, I found my way to Porteau cove in the morning for some diving before the weather set in. It was raining, but I managed to get changed into my drysuit without getting too soaked with the exception of my left foot as I hadn’t properly drained my drysuit after giving it a rinse after the previous week’s dives.

Luckily there as little wind, so we popped in for a long, shallow dive hitting most of the major highlights at Porteau. The visibility was still far from great, however I was surprised to find that the particulate in the water was much smaller. Instead of large suspended particles which are a back-scatter nightmare, it seemed to be more of a haze in the water. Good news for taking photos!

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A Rather Brave Sculpin, Looking Up.

One of the highlights of the dive was coming out of the front of the Granthal, and coming face to face with a seal. Unfortunately the little guy bolted pretty quick, and didn’t come back for the rest of the dive. A shame given the improving vis for non-macro photos. I have a running theory that as long as I dive with a camera, I’m more or less guaranteed not have a seal spend any significant amount of time with me. Just as well that it was afraid of people, however.

Another highlight was finding a giant octopus (reminder: harvesting any marine wildlife at Porteau Cove is illegal, and Conservation Officers do watch). It was tucked into it’s den making it hard to line up the camera, but a couple of photos turned out.

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A Vividly Coloured Lingcod

Seeing both a seal close up and finding an octopus on the same dive truly made it amazing, but I suppose when you spend 106 minutes underwater, it increases the odds of seeing things! Luckily the water was still “warm”, so I didn’t get too cold at the end of the dive. In the end the severe weather warnings didn’t seem to really materialize, and we had a fantastic dive.  I’m happy with the photos I got on this dive, and it’s hard to select a few to highlight in the post.

 

 

Starfish Die-Off Update

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Giant Pink Starfish in Early Stages of Dissintegration

Interesting to note, last week I saw what looked to be a disintegrating Giant Pink Starfish. For the past month and a half we’ve been seeing Sunflower Starfish and Morning Sun Stars dying off en-mase, however this was the first I’d seen of another species. Today I saw plenty more of the 5-armed stars in various states of decay, confirming that another species appears to be dying off at Porteau Cove now. The Vancouver Aquarium’s AquaBlog has some thoughts on the earlier die-off, however it’s curious to see another species now dying away. Again, this could be a perfectly natural and regular occurrence, I simply don’t know. I’ve put up some photos in the gallery at the bottom of this post.

(If there’s no gallery, click the “View Full Article” link below)

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A Day’s Long Dive at Porteau

Blue Lingcod

I can’t say I’ve ever seen a greenish-blue Lingcod before…

Josh and I set out on this dive with a bit of a mission. I really enjoy wide-angle photography of wrecks, but given the bad visibility and the limitations of my camera (It’s not a DSLR, so I can’t slap a fisheye lens on it) I haven’t taken too much. Enter Hugin Panorama Photo Stitcher. Using that utility, I can snap a series of photos and stitch them together into a wide-angle-like photo!

The catch is that the photos need to be taken from the same spot. On the surface there’s a bit of leeway, but given the poor visibility underwater, photos need to be taken very close together so that each shot doesn’t have differing visibility. Likewise, the difference between dark on the bottom and the sun coming from the surface means a high-dynamic-range exposure shot.

Moon Jelly

A Moon Jelly. I did a blur of the water around it to get rid of the backscatter, and got a cool glowing effect.

To tackle the challenge getting a solid reference point for photos in a mild current, we experimented with deploying and anchoring an SMB a few meters above the bottom. The reference concept went well, the execution of anchoring it was a leaning experience. The photos themselves didn’t turn out good enough to stitch together (we chose a bland part of the Nakaya, more to try making a reference than get actual photos). Regardless, we came away with some really good data-points and I’m confident that I’ll be able use this method to make some interesting photos in the future.

After half an hour on the Nakaya, we headed in shallower and explored the other usual suspects at Porteau. I noticed a dead starfish, of a different species than we’d observed at Whytecliff in the previous weeks. This one I believe was a Giant Pink Starfish. Interestingly, I saw another one maybe 10-20 meters away that appeared to be normal. I’m unsure if it’s related to the mass die-off of other species or not, as one a statistic does not make. (See the next post for a greater discussion of what we observed on a dive a week later)

There were also several dead salmon scattered around the dive site as well, as it’s spawning season right now. Luckily it wasn’t littered with them!

Dead Starfish

A “dissolving” starfish. (Giant Pink Starfish)

Not too much else to say about the dive, other than the fact that we ended up staying under for 92 minutes! I’m not sure if I’ll be able to manage such long exposures in the winter when the water cools down a bit.

All in all, it was a great, well-executed dive where we tried something new and learned a lot in the process. Can’t ask for much more than that.

Some random photos in the gallery below.

 

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Inside a DS4

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DS4 components, prior to rebuild.

In case you were wondering what the guts of an Apeks DS4 look like…

Stepping into Doubles at Whytecliff

Hermit Crab

A brave Hermit Crab who didn’t hide when I came in close for a great photo

Cold water diving necessitates thick insulation, which in turn requires a lot of weight to sink. With a steel tank, 5kg steel backplate and another 6kg of lead, I decided I needed more weight on my back, so I switched to doubles. Luckily the rigging for doubles is heavy enough to allow losing some of the lead ballast, but the entire rig is still rather heavy on the surface.

In the water, the doubles were a dream — They trimmed out well, and I didn’t have to fight them. After a sloppy valve drill (need to work on that) I felt comfortable enough to carry on with the dive and start taking photos.

The next step is to polish my skills and upgrade to a Fundies Tech pass…

Painted Greenling

A Painted Greenling posing nicely. Ironically, they’re not green.

Just one long dive today, starting in the bay then heading out to the plumose gardens. There was a touch of current out in the gardens due to the large interchange, but it was a good dive regardless. Plenty of rockfish, squat lobsters, hermit crabs, nudibranchs of various types and the other usual suspects. I managed to snap some photos I’m happy with today.

We found a cool glass sponge at about 22 meters as well. One thing I love about glass sponges is that it provides hiding places for so many small critters, and it’s a lot of fun to peek into all the nooks and crannies to  see what you’ll find.

The Starfish die-off was still very evident today, and I’ve documented that in a separate post.

Residents of the Glass Sponge

A Hermit Crab and a Shrimp sharing a crevice in the Glass Sponge

After we had thumbed the dive, on the ascent I found a Grunt Sculpin peaking out from a giant barnacle, the perfect photo opportunity. Unfortunately a thumbed dive is a thumbed dive, and with my camera stowed I couldn’t get a photo. It looked like there was a lot of interesting things in that area (near the rocks by the day marker) so I’ll have to go back sometime and look for photo opportunities.

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A dead Starfish

In an earlier blog post, I’d mentioned that we had observed a large amount of dead starfish out at the Cut at Whytecliff, which was corroborated by a news story about a mass starfish die-off. Diving at Whytecliff again today, again we noticed pieces of starfish at around 10 meter depth on the right wall (although not quite as concentrated as they were at the cut last week). It appears to have hit only a couple species of starfish (Morning Sun Stars?), although I didn’t notice too many of the other usual suspects in the area apart from a healthy-looking slime star at depth.

The decomposition (disintegration?) appears to have greatly progressed into a grey-slime kind of state, although to be honest the grey-slime may be completely unrelated. I’m not entirely sure. Interestingly there appeared to have been some dead crabs in the area as well. I didn’t check to see if it was simply the case that the a couple of crabs had moulted in the decomposition pile, or if they were actually dead crabs.

A quick video clip (with horrible white-balancing) of an area saturated with the grey slime, and some photos of the carnage are below for documentation purposes. If any marine biologists happen to be reading this, I would appreciate an expert weigh-in in the comments below.

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Decorator on Sponge

A Decorator Crab on a Glass Sponge — Illuminated by my Can Light.

Another dive site I’ve somehow neglected since moving out here has been “The Cut” at Whytecliff. So, in good measure Josh and I decided to go dive it. The Cut itself is a fun dive site, with an interesting descent that ultimately leads incredibly deep. We stopped at 30 meters and went to see the glass sponges that are one of the signatures of the Cut. Unfortunately the fiber optic to sync my stobe was loose and my strobe wouldn’t fire on the first dive. I managed a couple of photos using my can light to illuminate, but nothing special.

The Glass Sponges are really interesting. Very intricately shaped, with lots of good hiding spots for critters. There was one with a false lobster hanging out which would have made a fantastic photo. Definitely a spot worth checking out.

Glass Sponge

Ambient Light photo of a large Glass Sponge.

Our second dive we decided to swim from the cut into the bay. A bit of current worked against us so I didn’t take too many photos in the anenome garden. Again, not too many great photos out of this dive, but the dive itself was great, especially exploring the bay which seemed to be full of Frosted Nudibranchs. I even saw a yellow and white-tipped Nudi, but unfortunately the photo didn’t turn out well. The dive was capped off with some drills and a very smooth free-water ascent.

Interestingly, the shallows around the cut seemed to be full of dead, half disintegrated starfish. This was rather unusual. Later in the week after the dive some news articles started popping up about the mysterious die-off: “Massive Starfish Die-Off Baffles Scientists“. I’m curious if this is a natural phenomenon (Population surge, disease, etc.) or something related to humans (pollution, etc). I didn’t get any photos of the dead starfish at the time, because to be honest it wasn’t the most photogenic subject. I’ll try and get some shots to document it next time I’m out. In the meantime, the link I posted above has some shots of the phenomenon. Also some tin-foil-hat worthy comments in the comments section….

Some photos from the dive below the jump..

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First Visit to the Nakaya

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An interesting item on the wreck of the Nakaya

Somehow, having been in Vancouver for three and a half years, I’ve managed to never dive the Nakaya at Porteau Cove. I think the lengthy surface swim has something to do with it.

Disregarding my intense dislike for long, if any, surface swims, we made our way out to the Nakaya to start off a dive. After a quick search, she rose out of the darkness and there we were.

My first impression of the Nakaya was that it looks like a real wreck — It has definitely been down for a while. Very cool, though, and I’m anxious to visit it again. I think it will be a great place to take wreck photos in the winter when the viz clears up. In the meantime I have some miscellaneous photos of the unidentifiable mess.

Unidentified

An unidentified fish. Very well camouflaged.

The usual suspects were at Porteau, so and I snapped some photos of them too. One thing that never ceases to amaze me is the camouflage displayed by the various critters out on the west coast. While warm water reefs are known for flashy coloured fish (Although they have their own well-hidden residents), a lot of the animals here rely on camouflage to stay hidden from predators. The photo on the right is a fantastic example. I think I’ll have to work on lighting techniques with the strobe to try and cast more of a shadow on these guys to bring them out a lot better.

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