Tag Archive: Octopus


Crimson Anemone

A Crimson Anemone. Note the translucent tentacles with green tips.

30-Nov-13: I’ve improved upon the colours in some of these photos after messing around with the RAW files, and added some new ones. More info below.*

Armed with brand new batteries in my strobe, we hooked up to Furry Creek for a couple of dives. I haven’t dove Furry Creek in over a year, but it was nice to get back to one of my local favourite spots. Thankfully, we were treated with perfect surface conditions, a high slack tide and amazing visibility (for Vancouver, at least).

Having proper batteries in my strobe helped a lot, and I took a lot of photos, many of which were interesting subjects and some that turned out very nicely. Of particular treat was a juvenile GPO which I spotted popping it’s head out from it’s den. Even tucked away in his den, it made an amazing photo subject that was slowly started inching out towards us. A special thanks goes to my dive buddies, putting up with me obsessing over getting photos of this guy!

Octopus

A little octopus.

Other treats were some really interesting Crimson Anemones, with a light pinkish hue and green-tipped tentacles. I got in close for a couple photos, which turned out amazingly well – A lot of details on these anemones.

In the rocky area in the cove were plenty of large sculpins, including a Buffalo Sculpin guarding an egg mass. I struggle at identifying sculpins, as they all look the same to me, but I took a shot at trying to identify some of the different ones I saw.

Interestingly, there were a couple of piles of starfish goo. I also found a few starfish arms scattered around, but I’m unsure if they were related to the starfish wasting syndrome, or a starfish that fell victim to another animal.

Red Irish Lord and Egg Mass

Red Irish Lord guarding an egg mass.

I think I’ve set a record for myself, with 37 photos I considered bloggable. Although many of the photos aren’t the best in terms of focus, composition, exposure, etc, I thought they all showed interesting subjects that I wanted to remember down the road.

*30-Nov-13: After messing around with RAW files in Darktable for the past little while, I’ve come to thoroughly appreciate the in-camera JPEG processing that my camera does. For the most part, I’ve been having trouble getting the RAW photos looking as nice as the JPEGs, especially with the rich reds that Canon cameras add — Very noticeable with the dull colours and lack of contras. 

I’m sure there’s a way to replicate the in-camera processing in Darktable, but I haven’t cracked that nut yet. For the most part, I’ve decided to switch back to just touching up the JPEGs for most of my photos, unless they need more correction than the JPEG files will allows. Interestingly, JPEGs allow a lot of flexibility for decently exposed shots.  I’ve gone ahead and tweaked the JPEGs from this dive, and replaced some of the more interesting pictures I’d previously posted. 

Without further adoo, the rest of the photos are below.

 

 

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Octopus at Whytecliff

Juvenile Giant Pacific Octopus

Juvenile Giant Pacific Octopus and Friend

30-Nov-13: I’m part way through re-editing some of these photos to improve the colours and contrast. 

Every time I step away from diving for a while, I need the first part of a dive to shake out both my dive skills, as well as my photography skills. So, after having spent a month out of the water due to a busy work scheduled (which seemed much longer than a month!), I was excited to get back into the water and getting back into the groove. As luck would have it, the first warm-up photos I took were of an Octopus, out in the middle of the bay at Whytecliff!

Juvenile Giant Pacific Octopus

Having had enough of my shenanigans, the Octopus is trying to blend in with some seaweed.

This little guy was definitely a treat to see as we were starting our dive. I initially thought (and posted) that it was a Red Octopus, but due to the lack of distinct papillae, it may acrually have been a juvenile Giant Pacific Octopus — I’m not entirely sure. With a bit of excessive finning and fiddling with camera settings (Definitely wasn’t in the zone at the start of the dive at that point), I managed to snap some photos. In retrospect, I have a list of different settings I would have liked to tried, but the photos turned out well regardless.

The cool thing about this little guy was how he was changing his colour and texture to blend in with the background a bit better. As I snapped a batch of photos, it started to wrap itself in seaweed to hide better, and we decided to leave him/her alone and carry on with our dive.

The rest of the dive was fun, but eventually I found myself drawn back to the Octo. We got back up to the depth where we hit the wall face, and just before swimming back out into the bay to see if the Octopus was still there, my arm got cold. And wet. Very fast. Catastrophic suit failure! I thumbed the dive, signaling an ascent up the slope and we proceeded into the bay for a nice slow end to the dive. Luckily only my arm got wet, but it was saturated. I haven’t found the leak yet, it was definitely in from the dry-glove ring, as my hand stayed dry.

Swimming Anemone

A Swimming Anemone, conveniently NOT swimming.

As a side note, I’ve been playing with Darktable again for editing photos. I’m running it on my Linux laptop, which has a really, really nice display. I’m finding photos don’t look quite as nice on other displays, sometimes the colours are rather dull. I have to dial it in to get my post-processing right, something to work on.

I now have to find my drysuit leak before diving again, hopefully it’ll be an easy find and fix. I’ve got a patch kit and spare seals so I’m fairly confident I’ll be back in the water soon. While I think about it, I need to rebuild one of my second stages as well.. It never ends!

 

 

Starfish Die-Off Update

Starfish

A healthy looking starfish

It was a bit eerie not seeing the usual wall of starfish due to the die-off, however I did see some healthy starfish sporadically through the dive, as evidenced in the photos below. Only one starfish in late-stage disintegration, which was unidentifiable. Hopefully the population will recover from this, one of the theories is that it’s a Malthusian check on the over-population of the starfish in the past few years.

More photos in the full article:

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An Even Longer Dive at Porteau…

octopus2

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!

sculpin3

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.

blue-lingcod

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

carnage2

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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Porteau Cove in the Heat of the August Long Weekend

coolunkfish

This tiny guy posed nicely for a shot. I’m really happy with how it turned out!

I haven’t posted in quite a while, due to a combination of dives where I didn’t take any decent photos, long business trips, and not being able to find my camera. Luckily, I found my camera the other day just in time for a couple of dives at Porteau cove on one of the hottest days of the year! My drysuit flooded severely, but luckily it was warm enough that my insulation kept me warm enough to manage a couple of good one hour dives.

In spite of not having had my camera in the water for a while, I managed to get some decent shots. I’ve posted quite a few today, as I liked how a lot of them turned out, if not for the technical photographic qualities of the photos, but rather more for the subject matter of the photos. There is so much life hidden in the waters here, that’s very easy to overlook if you’re not looking hard.

Hidden Octopus

This guy was too well hidden to light up properly for a good photo, but Octopus photos are fun nonetheless!

Some of the highlights from these dives were a couple of Octopuses, however they were well hidden so I couldn’t get any good photos of them. Another spot in Porteau had hundreds of Opalescent Nudibranch in a small area, which was amazing. I spent some time hovering just above the bottom trying to take some close up photos of the better-posed ones. This proved quite a challenge, as I had to maintain perfect buoyancy and trim so as to not touch the bottom and accidentally crush any of them, since they were literally everywhere.

There were also decorator crabs all around the reef structures, including plenty of very small, potentially juvenile longhorn and graceful decorators. Graceful decorators are very hard to spot, as often they blend in perfectly with the bottom, so you have to be very adept at noticing subtle movements and the blob-like shape they make. Taking photographs of them is also very difficult, due to how well they blend in to the background. Setting up the strobe to get a good shadow on the crab, and striving for a black or contrasting background appears the key to get them to be noticeable in a photo, but is very difficult to accomplish.

Lingcod

A Lingcod who wasn’t photo-shy

As usual, lingcod were sitting everywhere, including some massive ones. I tried snapping some photos of them and have included them below. They’re somewhat skittish, so it’s difficult to adjust a strobe from close to the camera (for macro photos) to far out (to reduce backscatter when photographing larger subjects) without spooking them. There’s not much in the local shallow waters that’s bigger than a lingcod, so a large, awkward, loud, bubbly scuba diver must be somewhat concerning to them.

Another highlight was the large schools of different kinds of fish above some of the shallower reefs. Some of these fish are amazingly colourful. One day hopefully I’ll have powerful enough dual strobes and a wide angle lens to actually manage a decent photo of them! (Dreaming of a DSLR camera)

Anyways, without rambling on too much more, the rest of my photos are below! I’m off to try and find the massive leak in my drysuit….

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Whytecliff, Sept ’11

Scuplin

A Really Cool Sculpin

Andrea, a friend and dive instructor was leaving for New Zealand for a lengthy period of time, and organized a great going away barbeque and dive day at Whytecliff. When we got there, Paul and I rushed to get into the water. The first dive I took my wide angle lens with me, and we dove the islet in the hopes that the seal we’d spotted on the surface would come visit us. He didn’t. That jerk. Unfortunately the Vis wasn’t so great, so I didn’t manage to get a lot of good photos with the wide angle on the first dive. However, we did see a really cool scuplin. On the way back through the bay, I spotted an octopus hiding beneath a concrete block, though he was way too tucked in to manage a good photo. After the dive, on our swim back to shore we saw a mink hop into the water and take a quick swim. Way too cool!

Hermit

Hermit Crab! (And a tiny Nudibranch)

On our second dive, we swam around to the plumose gardens. It was amazing how much life there was in the area. Not only were there tonnes of plumose anenomes as the name implied, but there appeared to be a large population of hermit crabs which I managed to snap a few  great photos of. Part way through the dive, we hear a VERY loud boat overhead, I assumed it was the ferry. Carrying on, plenty of other fish were to be seen. It was an amazing dive, and I pulled some great photos from the camera.

I pulled close to my NDLs on this dive as I was on Air. I thought I’d save $10 and not get my usual EAN32 fill, as I had intended to do some shallower diving with these tanks on a dive day that ended up being cancelled. As a result I had a less than optimal gas for the dive, and had to ascend earlier than I would have liked to avoid going into deco. With plenty of gas left in the tank, but a nitrogen loading preventing me from staying at an interesting depth, I spent 10 or so minutes practicing holding mid-water stops at 20, 15 and 10 feet, using only my computer and the silt in the water as a visual reference.

Octopus (Cake)

An Epic Octopus Cake!


Once we surfaced we noticed that a hovercraft had come into the bay and parked on shore for a good will visit (and for some free BBQ food!). As it ends up that loud ship we’d heard wasn’t a ferry, but the hovercraft coming in. I’ve posted photos in another post.

For Andrea’s barbeque, someone had made an incredible octopus cake, clutching a detailed scuba diver. The attention detail in the cake was so amazing, the eye even looked like an octopus eye! It was a shame to eat it in the end.

A great day with great people. And Andrea, if you’re reading this from NZ, I hope you’re enjoying your trip!

More photos are below. I’ve added notes regarding some specific images below if you view them full-sized.

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Porteau Cove (August ’11)

octo1

Octopus!

I went for a couple of dives at Porteau Cove on a nice hot sunny day. Although getting dressed into a black drysuit in the hot sun, with plenty of thick insulation underneath, was uncomfortable (to say the least), I soon waded into the water with my dive buddies and got to cool off.

Unfortunately my first dive was bad for photography: I’d been messing with my camera’s settings for underwater photos. To make maters worse, my right glove was leaking fast (Special thanks to my ferret Randy, who thought that all he had to do to steal my dry gloves a couple weeks prior was to bite down on them really hard), and I generally felt uncomfortable in the water.

On the second dive, however, everything clicked into place. I was very comfortable in the water, my hands had heated up the water in my now soaked “dry”-glove, and I managed to get some great photos! I was very surprised with the results — Who knew that reading up about f-stops the night before, and experimenting with them until you got the correct one would dramatically improve my underwater photography.

awesome

A bunch of sea-life. How many creatures can you count?

To make things even better, we even found a giant octopus on the second dive, who was gracious enough to let me photograph him/her. (Unlike the cantankerous longfin gunnels I’d been trying to photograph, but would always dart away as I lined up for a good angle on their faces’)

Although I didn’t get a lot of photos good, I’m rather pleased with how the good ones turned out.

Click below to see the rest of the photos!

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Another Whytecliff Night Dive (November ’10)

octo1

Octopus!

To end off our weekend, we decided to go for a night dive at Whytecliff. As winter gets closer, days are getting shorter and shorter. Splashing in just after 5pm is a night dive now.

The first thing I noticed was shrimp everywhere! Whichever direction I pointed my 10 watt HID dive light, beady shrimp eyes glowed back out of the darkness. Large shrimp, too. Some would run away, but some where interested in investigating my hand when I put it near them.

We found the Octopus which we’d spotted on an earlier dive (My first Octo in the wild), and I managed to get a photo of it this time… Sort of. Since he was well hidden, I only got a photo of part of a tentacle.

Note: Whytecliff Park is a Marine Protected area. Fishing is illegal there, and with the high traffic of divers in the area, you will get caught. (On this blog, you won’t hear me mentioning locations of Octo outside of protected areas)

For more photos, click below. I know I took a lot of shrimp, but I didn’t really get any other good shots!

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