Tag Archive: Rockfish

Octopus at Whytecliff

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October 27, 2013

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!

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.

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

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.

Pea Soup at Porteau Cove, 2013 Edition.

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August 3, 2013

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 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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Tags: Anemone, Crab, Lingcod, Porteau Cove, Rockfish, Shrimp

Summer Diving in Tuwanek

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July 27, 2013

After a long few weeks of moving and business travel keeping me out of the water, Josh and I hopped on the early ferry this morning for a couple of rewarding dives up in Tuwanek. The weather was fantastic, and the viz down below 15 meters was epic. It must have opened up more than 20 meters in visibility. As always, lots of life to see in Tuwanek, which is why it truly is one of the local gems.

Unfortunately, however, I had to do this dive without a strobe on my camera. While doing some equipment checks last night, I discovered my strobe wasn’t working. This is the second time I’ve had strobe issues at Tuwanek. Of course, I have the internal camera flash completely masked off in my case, so it was of no use this time around. (The internal flash triggers my external strobe, however to avoid back scatter the internal flash needs to be fully masked off). Not to be deterred, I decided to bring the camera along anyways and try taking some ambient light photos anyways. I figured I could even use my newly upgraded LED can light to illuminate some things too.

Was it ever worth it!

A Red Gilled Nudibranch

Although I didn’t manage a lot of great shots, I did get some okay shots. I also managed to get the above shot of an Red Gilled Nudibranch*. For this shot, I used my LED canlight to side-illuminate the nudibranch. It produced a rather nice effect focusing light and attention on the Nudi, almost like a snoot. This has to be one of my favorite nudibranch photos I’ve taken so far.

Grunt Sculpin

Shortly later, I saw a Grunt Scuplin, which have to me my favorite type of scuplin. Something about their colouring, shape, and the way they sort of hop around makes them interesting to watch and look at. I only had one chance to take a photo, as right after it decided it no longer wanted to be party to photo taking and turned around to face a rock. Regardless, I got a fun picture, again using my can light to illuminate the fish from the side. It could have turned out better, but I like it regardless.

Early into our second dive, Josh got my attention and pointed out a swimming giant nudibranch! I tried taking a video, but it had stopped swimming by the time I got the camera set up. Some photos are in the gallery at the bottom of this post.

A Typical Seascape at Tuwanek

The amazing thing about Tuwanek is just how much life is packed into the area. It truly is like diving in a fishtank. The small tides, sheltered conditions, amazing visibility and warm water temperatures all combine to make it one of my favorite BC dive sites. The Sunshine Coast in general is fantastic as well. At least the ferry ride is relatively quick to get out there for day-trips!

I don’t have a RAW editor installed at the moment, so I’ve only tried touching up a few of the ambient light photos. My camera doesn’t have the best low light performance, but I got some interesting shots anyways. Perhaps later I may fiddle with processing some more of the RAW images to see if any are worth recovering and posting.

The rest of the photos I have processed are below;

*Note: I initially miss-ID’d this as an Opalescent Nudibranch (Hence the jpg filename). Upon checking my handy reference book, it is in fact a Red Gilled Nudibranch.

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Tags: Grunt Sculpin, Jellyfish, LED, Nudibranch, Rockfish, Sculpins, Tuwanek

Porteau Cove in the Heat of the August Long Weekend

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August 5, 2012

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.

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.

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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Tags: Crab, Lingcod, Nudibranch, Octopus, Porteau Cove, Rockfish, Sculpins

Whytecliff in April

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April 7, 2012

A Copper Rockfish posing

I hoped on for a couple of dives at Whytecliff, the first dive to the usual Plumose Gardens, the second dive we hopped in on the far side of Whyte Islet and swam around back into the bay. Since there was a rather large interchange going in from low to high, part of the dive was a great drift dive with some great current pushing is around and back towards the bay (usually).

The weather itself cooperated very nicely, with the sun popping out to warm us up during our surface interval. This proved far nicer than the cold, rainy, windy surface intervals of the winter. Looks like summer is on it’s way at long last.

This shot turned out well. Usually the small fish don't pose nicely.

I managed a couple of decent photos on this trip, including a couple of snaps of a Rhinoceros crab. It’s funny how you can go so many dives without seeing a specific type of animal, but once you see it and know what to look for, you see them everywhere. There was even a hairy spined crab, but it scurried away into a crevice before I could set up a good shot…

The second dive around the Islet proved to be interesting, with the currents of a very low tide starting to come back in. First it was pushing us around the Islet towards the bay, then it seemed like we were fighting it to get back in towards the bay (although not quite as strong that time). It was a fun dive, though. It probably would have been more of a struggle if we didn’t time it roughly with the tides given the day’s interchange.

Onto the photos:

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Tags: Crab, Island, Nudibranch, Rhinocerous Crab, Rockfish, Shrimp, Whytecliff

Back in the Water! (Tuwanek)

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July 30, 2011

From the left, Dave, Will and Paul

After a much, much too long hiatus from diving, I jumped on the opportunity to get back in the water, with a trip to Tuwanek with one of the local dive shops. There was a large group of divers, and all in all we had two good dives.

In spite of being a bit rusty after a large diving break, and even more rusty with the camera, I managed to get some good photos. (At least I thought they were good, until I opened up “Marine Life of the Pacific Northwest” to ID a few creatures, and compared my photos to the ones in there….)

The visibility was atrocious in the first 40-50 feet or so, however once below 60 feet or so, it cleared up to amazing (if dark) visibility. The first dive we dove on the left island, in search of Octopuses. I tried my wide angle lens, but mistakenly left the ISO cranked up to at 800, which on the Powershot G10 leads to some very grainy photographs. I managed to get some good shots of my dive buddies (Team Better-Than-Awesome), as well as some sea-life.

Wolf Eel!

On the second dive, we dove the Right island. I left the wide angle on shore, and was glad I did as there was plenty of opportunities for a lot of non wide-angle shots. Paul led us to a wolf eel (The first one I’ve seen in the wild!), and later on to an Octopus, however by the time I found the Octo, it was tucked in deep into it’s crevice, so I didn’t try to take any photos of it. By the end of the dive, we had made our way around the second island, which led to a long surface swim back.

A great couple of dives, with a great group of people — An excellent way to spend a Saturday.

Click below for more photos. A great way to browse through them is the “View with Piclens” option. Although it didn’t work on my blog before, an update of the NextGen Gallery plugin I use to manage photos on here has fixed it.

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Tags: Crab, Jellyfish, Nudibranch, Rockfish, Tuwanek, Wolf Eel

Porteau Cove (October ’10)

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October 27, 2010

Bow of the Granthul

We did a weekday dive to Porteau Cove in late October. The vis had cleared up quite a bit from what it was in the summer, apart from large chunks of algae (?) still in the water.

It was my first dive with the strobe in a while which was nice (it took a while to get a replacement o-ring). Part way through the dive, the sun came out, and illuminated everything very nicely. I managed to take some photos at 30 – 40 feet without the strobe, and they turned out great. Near the end of the dive, I came across a capped bottle of Perrier water, which actually was still mostly full! I don’t think I’ll try drinking it, though.

Lots of giant Lingcod this time, so they may figure prominently in my photos.

As always, click below for the full gallery!

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Tags: Jellyfish, Lingcod, Porteau Cove, Rockfish

New Drysuit Undergarment!. And Diving Whytecliff

Filed Under: West Coast, Whytecliff by Roko — Comments Off

September 4, 2010

Yellow and White Tipped Nudibranch

I’d been thinking about getting a proper dry suit undergarment for a while now, as my layered random fleece hadn’t been keeping me as warm as I’d remembered lately. Unsure if the fleece was cheap and had been over-washed, or if it was never that great to begin with, an upgrade was in order.

We decided to do a relaxed late afternoon/early evening dive at Whytecliff this weekend. This meant that we could make a quick stop at the dive shop on the way out of town, and I picked up the Whites MK III undergarment that I’d been eyeing up ever since I tried it at demo days last year.

In the water, I instantly knew I’d made the right decision to splurge on proper insulation — I was toasty warm the entire dive, without having to add more air than necessary to alleviate the drysuit squeeze. The water was a balmy 10-11 C at depths (My dive computer doesn’t seem to record minimum temperatures very well), but I’m sure this suit will do me well this winter….

The dive at Whytecliff was good, and we explored a bit more of the day marker than we had before. The visibility was poor, it was dark at depth, and I was still without strobe (Waiting on a replacement o-ring), but I managed to get some interesting photos nonetheless.

Anemone in the Current

Of note were some cool Nudibranchs, and plenty of rockfish. Steffy even found a dive computer someone had lost. (She’s currently working on re-uniting it with it’s owner).

I spent some time taking photos of the Anemone to the right, trying to get some good shots to play around with in UFRaw and Gimp. Though I’m still learning how to touch up RAW images, I think I got some interesting results.

We each had some gas left at the end of the dive, so we spent another 15 minutes playing in the shallows of the bay. We spent most of that time surrounded by a school of Perch (I think), and found some other interesting shallow-water dwellers hiding in the seaweed and rocks.

More photos below!

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Tags: Equipment, Nudibranch, Rockfish, Whytecliff

Point Henderson, August ’10

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August 12, 2010

Sailfin Sculpin and Hermit

A Very Decorated Crab

Cool Yellow Crab - Can Anyone ID it?

My Parents were in town and wanted to head out to the Island. We haven’t had the chance to go diving on the Island yet, so we figured this would be a great chance to go diving while my Parents relaxed and took a swim in the water in a nice location. I’m not sure why exactly we chose Point Henderson given all the other choices, but it ended up being a nice dive spot. Luckily we went on a Thursday, so there was some parking available in the small loop — I can’t imagine it on a weekend. Special thanks to my Parents for putting up with our diving habit!

We started out the dive by swimming more or less straight out from shore until we hit the 60′ reef, then hooked a left and went exploring. Immediately we were amazed by how much there was to see: shrimp, crabs, starfish, jellyfish, brave rock fish that wouldn’t swim away… The only thing that would have made it better would have been an octopus, wolf-eel or six gill shark! (Itemsstill on my list of local marine life I want to see).

Once again, I started the dive off with the wide-angle lens and ended up taking it off pretty quickly. The Fantasea Bigeye isn’t easy to put back on again when you’re using drygloves, so once it comes off it tends to stay off…

After hitting our turn pressure, and coming back up we found we still had a lot of air left (A lot of time was spent looking into nooks and crannies before we turned) so we kept going until we found the shallow reef and used up the rest of our air there. It was interesting to see the difference in life between the two. The sun was so bright in the water that I didn’t need to use my strobe in the shallow water. (And struggled with over-exposing some of the photos with my manual settings). We saw a lot of interesting yellow crabs which we haven’t been able to identify. If anyone knows what they are, please leave a comment!

I’m sure I missed a lot of small/camouflaged/hidden creatures at this dive site, so I’d definitely like to get back someday.

Click below to see more photos!

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Tags: Crab, Island, Point Henderson, Rockfish, Shrimp

dive.roko.ca

Tag Archive: Rockfish

Octopus at Whytecliff

Starfish Die-Off Update

Pea Soup at Porteau Cove, 2013 Edition.

Summer Diving in Tuwanek

Porteau Cove in the Heat of the August Long Weekend

Whytecliff in April

Back in the Water! (Tuwanek)

Porteau Cove (October ’10)

New Drysuit Undergarment!. And Diving Whytecliff

Point Henderson, August ’10

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