Tag Archive: Anemone


Last Dive of the Year, at The Cut.

Filed Under: Whytecliff by Roko — Comments Off on Last Dive of the Year, at The Cut.
December 29, 2013
Puget Sound King Crab

A Small Puget Sound King Crab

After a thwarted dive at Britannia Beach in the morning, I made my way down to Whytecliff Park where Paul and Steve were waiting for me to join them on a dive.

We hopped into the cut for a nice dive. Although it was a bit chilly on the surface, it warmed up a bit once we got below the thermocline. The visibility was amazing by Vancouver standards, and I managed to spot a really good diverse number of critters. Unfortunately I didn’t get any shots I love this time out, but I got some good shots of the different critters I saw.

I’m begining to think my perceived decrease in good photos is being caused by getting too close to the subject. I used to zoom in somewhat, and take photos from futher back, casting smoother lighting with my single strong. I think by getting too close it’s making the lighting too sharp. A second strobe to even things out sure would be nice..

Grunt Sculpin

A Grunt Sculpin…

One of the critters was another Grunt Sculpin, which I managed to get some half-decent shots of. One of my favorite local species, and I always struggle to get decent photos. One of the reasons is that I usually see then on a bottom covered in shells, which is really hard to properly expose with the highly-reflective whites. They also don’t like to properly pose, always hopping about on the bottom when you get close…

Plenty of different crabs as well, as evidenced in the top photo, and all the photos in the gallery below.

Not too much else to say about this dive, it was a good way to end off the diving year. Now for a work-induced dry spell, and then back at it again!

The rest of the photos are below:

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A Furry Creek Dive to Kick Off December

Filed Under: Furry Creek by Roko — Comments Off on A Furry Creek Dive to Kick Off December
December 1, 2013
Sponge Residents

Many creatures find home in the deep sponges

Armed with a good tip for where to find a Pacific Spiny Lumpsucker, Josh and I drove out to Kelvin Grove for a dive. Unfortunately, the 4 “Visitor” spots were already taken. (The 10 stalls reserved for Lions Bay residents were all free, naturally. I maintain that all the locals I’ve met while diving there have been very friendly, and we respond by being courteous to the local residents. Unfortunately their town council wants to restrict non-resident access)

Hairy Spined Crab

A Hairy Spined Crab at 30m

Both armed with doubles, we first swam out towards the wall, checking out the larger anemones and sponges that live along that feature, maxing out at a nice 30 meters — I fell the narc while trying to manoeuvre into position for a shot of a Hairy Spined Crab — Back-kicking with a loose bootie, watching my depth gauge, keeping my buoyancy, and trying to line up for a upwards shot (since he was hiding somewhat) proved to be an interesting level of task-loading today. After snapping a few shots, we ascended to a shallower depth. A cool thing about the Sponges is just how much life lives in and around the sponge themselves, usually various crustaceans.

Sculpin

A really cool Sculpin who posed nicely for me

After the wall, we swam back into the rock field, the spot I prefer at Furry Creek. At about 10-15 meters average depth are plenty of boulders, providing ample shelter for many different species of fish and other creatures. Again, there were plenty of Irish Lords guarding egg masses, as well as a really interestingly coloured and patterned Sculpin. Also in the area is the bottle-field, which has lots of interesting old bottles — No cool finds this time around.

One cool find was what I initially thought was  some sort of Tunicate, but I couldn’t match it up in my book. However, it looks pretty spot on for Stubby Squid eggs! Looking up some more references, I’m fairly confident that’s what they are. I can’t wait to get back in after they hatch to try and find some baby squid, in less than 4-9 months… (Quite the long gestation)

English Sole

A rather large English Sole

We spent a large portion of the dive in the super-shallows — Where lots of overlooked little creatures tend to hide out. Although it was ridiculously cold, we ended up with a 110 minute dive time, a new personal record for both of us. The drive home treated us with some sun and nice skies, Howe Sound truly is an amazing place, we’re lucky to live here.

The full gallery is below. Again, a lot of photos here this time around. I struggled to narrow down to 4 highlight photos…

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Return to Furry Creek

Filed Under: Furry Creek by Roko — 1 Comment
November 17, 2013
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

Filed Under: Whytecliff by Roko — Comments Off on Octopus at Whytecliff
October 27, 2013
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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Forgotten Photos from Britannia, May 2012

Filed Under: Britannia Beach by Roko — Comments Off on Forgotten Photos from Britannia, May 2012
August 16, 2013
A Crab

A little crab hiding in a pipe

Getting my camera ready for some diving tomorrow, and flipping through photos to delete to clear up some space on my SD card, I was shocked to find some photos I didn’t remember processing. Double-checking my log book and this blog, I realized they were photos from Britannia Beach from quite a while ago, May 20th 2012 to be exact.

I’m not sure why I never got around to editing and uploading these photos. Not too many great ones, but the photos on the left is pretty memorable. I remember (from reviewing all the shots that didn’t turn out!) how awkward it was to try to light him up properly for a good shot.

Jelly

Comb Jelly

The photo of the funny looking Jellyfish on the right turned out quite well, however doesn’t truly reflect how amazing these little creatures are. They white lines are on their body are actually rows of scilia that give off an interesting iridescent effect if you pay close attention. It also reminds me of something out of Star Trek…. The ocean is full of interesting creatures.

 

As usual, more photos below.

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Pea Soup at Porteau Cove, 2013 Edition.

Filed Under: Porteau Cove by Roko — Comments Off on Pea Soup at Porteau Cove, 2013 Edition.
August 3, 2013
Big George

Big George

This August long weekend I found myself at Porteau cove again, much like last year. (Here’s hoping that this year it doesn’t start off a far too long dry-spell again). The tide was very low and the visibility wasn’t the best with plenty of turbidity and sediment in the water, but I it was a fun dive nonetheless.

I didn’t get any especially great photos this time around as I wasn’t quite in the photo-zone. But, such is the life of an amateur under-water camera type person. (I refuse to call myself a photographer, hah!). Sometimes you get some fantastic photos, sometimes you don’t. All the more reason to do some more diving and try for some great shots next time.

Shrimp

Shrimp in his Little Shrimp Cave.

Interestingly, while doing an S-drill I managed to clip off my camera leash around can-light cord, causing some issues with deploying my long hose. There is no standard GUE/DIR way to clip off a camera, and I’ve evolved my current setup over several iterations. I have two bolt snaps on my camera. One tied right to the tray so that I can clip the camera off close to me when not in use, and another attached to a short bungee leash so the camera is always secured to me, allowing me to easily drop it in an emergency). One of the many great reasons why doing regular S-drills is a good idea, as it helps you catch kinks. In this case, it’s a great reminder to pay attention when I’m clipping off my camera to ensure I don’t trap my can light cord.

The dive itself was fun as always. The low clouds against the mountains are always amazing to see while swimming out over calm water. Shore diving on the West Coast truly is amazing.

Full gallery is below.

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