CP Blog

I know, I’ve been neglecting this blog. I’ve had over a week on shore now, with actual internet access, and haven’t made a single post. I have some catching up to do.

First, yes, I am back on land, in Texas. I am going to spend the rest of August diving the Flower Gardens. August is usually the best month out there, so I am pretty excited, plus one of the trips is the coral spawn, which is always amazing. Here’s hoping for a whale shark or two. There’s also been a school of about 20 scalloped hammerheads on one of the rigs that have stayed there for about a week.

An update on the surgery patients that I wrote about in previous post… on the last trip we did in Florida, we took some researchers out to Riley’s Hump, the area where we did the tagging. One of the things they did, besides swimming around like banshees trying to locate the spawning Mutton Snapper aggregation, was to see if they could get some preliminary observations on the whereabouts of our little out-patient surgical volunteers. So, we dragged around a receiver for an evening. The early news was good - the Nassau Grouper, all 3 of the Red Grouper, and 4 of the 8 Mutton Snappers were detected. Given the short amount of time we devoted to looking for them, that is good news, although maybe some the tags could have all been riding around in the digestive system of a Bull Shark. Once they download data from all of the receivers, they will know a lot more.

Speaking of Bull Sharks, I had 2 great encounters with said species this summer. One was a medium sized bull who seemed a little perturbed that we were swimming in his area. The other was a very large bull with his own little shark-groupie-solar-system of Jacks, Remoras, and bait fish accompanying him. Very cool. After both of those dives, I had a smile on my face that I could not wipe off for hours.

I’ve still got more things I want to write about my summer in Florida, but this is a start, so I’ll shut up and post this now.

P.S. Dolphin video coming soon.

When certain types of fish are brought to the surface after being hooked or trapped at depth, they can sustain injury (barotrauma) from the change in pressure. I witnessed this myself a long time ago fishing for rockfish off of the California coast - the fish would come to the surface bloated by the air that had expanded as it ascended. Even if the fish would have been released, it would have died.

Our most recent trip to the Dry Tortugas included some researchers who wanted to tag Mutton Snapper with an acoustic tag to be able to track their movement. In previous years, they tried capturing the fish at depth, bringing them to the surface, and doing the surgery to insert the tag on the surface. The problem with this approach is what I mentioned above - the fish are stressed by the change in pressure and are likely to die from the procedure or be eaten by a predator in their weakened state. So, on this trip, the challenge was to do the surgeries underwater, at depths that the Mutton Snapper call home. I was lucky enough to get to participate in some of the surgeries as well as video and photograph them. I did a very impromptu interview with Mike Feeley, the Principal Investigator on the project, and included some snippets of that conversation in the video. Unfortunately, I still have very limited internet access so I have to upload only a low-res copy of the video for now.

Despite some of the challenges associated with the procedure (like capturing only the target species, keeping an eye out for any sharks or goliath groupers who might want an easy Mutton Snapper meal, and performing the whole procedure at depths ranging from 95 to 123 feet) we were able to successfully tag 8 Muttons and 3 Groupers. I’m going to be very interested to see the data from the receivers to see how our little surgical patients are faring.

Wow, I have a lot to blog about. Amazing dolphin encounters both on scuba and snorkel. Historic wrecks. Tech diving. Live depth charges. China fever. Several loggerheads. Lots of large jewfish. A huge wahoo. Some sharks, including a little Silky Shark that hung around like a pet. I named him Sparkie. Poor little guy - he was so small that the other fish picked on him.

We still don’t have wireless internet access at the dock, so I’m pretty limited on how much I can upload. I’ll have some catching up to do when I get some real internet time. I have some dolphin video but don’t have it edited yet, and have some tech diver video that I also plan to work on. In the meantime, here’s a Tortugas ipod video for ya… (only a small one for ipod nano’s etc - can’t upload anything larger at the moment). Download it, drop it in iTunes and load it on your ipod or blackberry etc.

ipod movie

As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m spending much of this summer on the M/V Spree in Florida, as photo pro, video guy, deck hand, boat driver trainee, and Desalinator. The honorary title Desalinator, which is required to be said with an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent, was given to me by smart-ass Captain John. It seems that some of my duties on the boat have to do with decreasing the ratio of salt to fresh water, as in washing the boat with fresh water, or maintaining the water maker system. I wear the title with pride. As for smart-ass Captain John, well, he also has a job that is related to reducing the amount of something, but that something smells considerably worse than sea salt. You can imagine some of the epithets I’ve given him. I hope he washes his hands, a lot.

Anyway, I’m in Florida… (no, wait, I am in Texas. I took a week off and flew back to Austin. I’m trying to catch up on things here before heading back to Key West). One of the things I wanted to accomplish on the previous trip to the Dry Tortugas was to post something to my blog via my sat phone. Sorry to say, I didn’t have much luck with the sat phone internet connection. I’m using my Mac to connect, and though it does make a connection and transfer data, it is ridiculously slow and times out because of dropped packets. Arrghh. Iridium doesn’t support the Mac, of course, so I’m left to try to figure it out myself. On Windoze, there is a special data compression/error correction DLL that is supposed to make Iridium data transfers reasonable. I’m guessing that one thing it does is tell the TCP stack to lengthen the sliding window size to accommodate the extra latency. I need to figure out how to do this on the Mac. I think I will bring a PC laptop with me so I can do some testing with it. So stay tuned… I might yet be able to post via sat phone. Though. It. May. Be. A. Very. Short. Post.

Another thing I want to accomplish is to do a blog post with a podcast of some of the video I have been shooting. I picked up an iPod nano to test it with, and with a little Final Cut Studio Compressor magic, I should be able to do that, though I sure won’t be posting that with the Iridium.

I’m going to be working on the M/V Spree this summer in the Dry Tortugas…. and I want you to come out and dive with me. I’ll be working as photo pro on the boat, shooting video of the diving, giving out photo pointers, renting cameras, etc.

The Dry Tortugas are an island chain about 70 miles west of Key West Florida. It’s part of the Keys National Marine Sanctuary, and has a lot of interesting dive sites to explore. The boat leaves out of Key West, so definitely book a couple of extra days down there so you can indulge in a little Key West fun.

Goliath Grouper and Surprised Diver

And here’s the freebie… for the first 10 people to sign up for the June 11th trip, I’ll give away a free u/w camera rental for two dives, plus a photo CD of the shots you took, plus, time permitting, we’ll work together doing some photoshop work on one of your images to make it print ready. Of course, if you can’t make it out on the June 11th trip, I’d still definitely like to you have you onboard, and you can probably talk me into the same deal for a different trip date. To sign up, go to the Spree’s website, click on May, June or July and book yourself onto a trip. Then drop me an email saying you signed up.

I could ramble on about how much fun diving in the Tortugas is, but you probably get enough spam in your inbox without me going on about the beautiful gorgonian covered reefs, turtles, sharks, dolphins, great macro life, Key West nightlife, free nitrox, good food, great new friends, etc, etc, so I will stop now.

Did I mention that there are Goliath Grouper down there? Check out this little sequence from last year (I was shooting video - these are video frames):
Goliath Grouper and Pete

Ok, now I am stopping.

It’s hard for me to fathom that people consume ANY shark fin products, let alone the huge quantity that they do. Even in the US. I noticed this menu on a restaurant in Honolulu a couple of weeks ago:

There was a guy out in front of the place who obviously worked there. I said something about the shark fin soup and he replied in stilted english that it was very good and I replied that it was very bad. He was very puzzled. I tried to explain but it was of little use.

And what’s up with the “live sunfish”.

It’s probably a good thing I didn’t go inside.

If you read my earlier post about gear trouble in the Revillagigedos, you might remember that I killed done of my strobes, an Inon Z-220. During that trip, I borrowed a strobe from a passenger, who was very kind to lend it to me. It was a Sea&Sea YS-110. The YS-110 is a apparently a newer strobe; I’ve shot with it’s older brother, the YS-90. The YS-110 I used was a bright strobe, but I wasn’t that fond of it. The output seemed to be inconsistent, sometimes brighter than I was expecting, and sometimes dimmer. In addition, I found the beam to be narrower than the Inon. At the edge of the beam, the output fell off very quickly, making the beam very obvious in some shots. Depending on what you are shooting, you might like this style of beam, but I wasn’t used to it and was pretty frustrated by it sometimes. To be fair, I really didn’t have a chance to learn it, read the manual, etc, so I might being a bit harsh on it.

After a little thought (well, not that much), I decided to purchase 2 new Inon Z-240’s. The Z-240 is the follow on to my Z-220; basically the same strobe with another 1/2 stop or so of power, and a bit faster in recycling. It still has all the advantages of the Z-220… small, compact yet powerful, reasonably fast recycling, and uses rechargeable AA batteries. There are other, more powerful, faster recycling strobes, but they are all much bigger and heavier than the Z-220’s/Z-240’s. With how I use strobes, mostly as a fill-in rather than as the main light source, those larger strobes are overkill. So, I am going with the Z-240’s.

I also bought a couple of Cokin filter holders for the strobes to replace my jury-rigged filter holder (held together by one screw and a couple of ladies hair bungy things that I found laying around). Once I have a chance to try them out and take some photos of the filter holders in action, I’ll blog about them and the whole concept of using complimentary filters on your strobes.

One mistake I made with the new strobes - they have a button that allows them to be used with cameras with pre-flash (li.e. most point and shoots). Forgetting to turn this off is a problem - the strobes fire when the shutter goes off but since they are expecting it to be a pre-flash, they fire on low power no matter what the manual settings are. Not a big deal but just something to check before I start shooting.

But….. the best thing about the Z-240’s… the power output is labeled differently than the Z-220’s - on the Z-240’s it is measured in f-stops, the highest stop being f11. So, when you need more light…..

Turn it up to 11:

It’s like Disneyland. At any time, the operator can just hit the “safety button”.

That’s a quote from my somewhat sarcastic little brother. We we skiing at Beaver Creek, Colorado, and had stopped for a moment about halfway down Grouse Mountain. Across the way, on Larkspur Mountain, we could see a line of snow cats, 9 of them, making their way down a trail. A snow cat is a large machine that grooms the trails - sort of a cross between a snow plow and a tank, and they actually have large steel tracks instead of wheels. Suffice it to say that if one ran over you, or hit you, it would leave a mark - as in the former you would leave a small stain in the snow. The snow cats at Vail and Beaver Creek (and other places) tend to move around the mountain in large groups - they do this for safety reasons, so people really know they are coming and can stay clear of the area. They are equipped with sirens, and the operators use them to warn people of their approach.

As my brother and I watched the cats, we noticed that some people were not giving them a very wide berth and some people were skiing right next to and in front of some of the cats. One slip, and oops, game over. You might be thinking that since these daredevils were skiing so close to the cats that they must be expert skiers, supremely confident in their ability to avoid the danger they were flirting with. It’s a good thought, but wrong - these people were just typical average intermediate types of skiers.

So why, then, were these idiots putting their lives in jeopardy? Why didn’t they just give the cats the 200 feet of distance that common sense, not to mention Colorado law and notices on the trail maps, dictate?

OK, I’m about to start ranting. I’m not typically a ranter, but here goes anyway.

I think the reason is because they expect the ski areas to be just like my brother’s mythical version of Disneyland - a fantasy fortress of safety. Sure, they may think they are taking a little risking of blowing out an ACL and having a great story to tell back home in Marin or Richmond or the Hamptons. But the snow cats couldn’t possibly run them over - because all the operator has to do is push the magic safety button and presto, they are totally safe, magically immune from becoming flattened. People these days believe they can put their own safety in the hands of others.

I can give you lots of examples of this phenomenon. Go diving in Cozumel sometime. Not to pick on Coz specifically, because I really love the diving there, but I’ve seen this behavior there a lot. Take new or relatively new divers, and put them on a Cozumel dive boat. In Coz, your are required to dive with their divemasters. What happens is that these new divers (and even some more experienced divers) forget their training and immediately begin to rely on the divemasters to keep them safe. They forget to check their air gauges, totally forget about their dive tables or dive computers, forget about their buddies, forget about navigation, and, especially important in a place like Cozumel, they forget to look up and around when they are surfacing.

People die. It happens. It will happen to me, and it will happen to you. Hopefully, for both of us, it will be at a ripe old age after a lifetime of wonderful experiences. But you never know, a meteor could hit you in your living room. A piece of that malfunctioning spy satellite could fall out of the sky and land on your head at any moment. Far more likely, though still relatively unlikely in the grand scheme of things, you could die in an automobile accident.

Which of course brings me to sharks.

The reaction to the death of Mr. Markus Groh, who died after being bitten in the calf by a Bull Shark, has run the gamut between rational and irrational, between fact (some) and fiction (much), and has been highly charged and emotional. There are a few things about the media and internet coverage of the event, and the responses to that coverage, which are especially troubling to me:

- that somehow Jim Abernethy’s operation is reckless, irresponsible or should somehow guarantee safety (totally false)
- how inaccurate the reporting of the event was (very inaccurate)
- how the media makes sharks out to be monsters (they are not)
- that diving with sharks should be banned for safety reasons (it should not)
- that baiting sharks for diving should be banned (it should not)

Ok, so let me address these points one by one:

- that somehow Jim Abernethy’s operation is reckless, irresponsible or should somehow guarantee safety
People who sign up for a trip to dive with Tiger Sharks, Bull Sharks, and Great Hammerheads understand that these creatures are wild animals, and that their behavior may be unpredictable. They understand that they are not signing up for a Disneyland vacation (and by the way, more than one person has died at Disneyland when the rides they were on malfunctioned); that there are risks associated with shark diving, and diving in general; and that ultimately, they are responsible for their own safety. If they don’t feel that being underwater with several large sharks is safe, no one is forcing them to go.

I had coffee with a woman the other day who I had just met. She is not a diver and doesn’t know anything about shark diving, but she had heard the news about the death of Mr. Groh. She was under the impression that the boat operator was being totally irresponsible, and literally threw the divers in the water and poured blood over the top of them. She had no idea of how many shark dives have been done safely over the years and no idea of the safety precautions that are a routine part of the procedures aboard the Shear Water. It isn’t her fault that she had these notions - she of course got them from the media.

I’ve been on several shark dives and shark trips now. I have yet to dive with an operator who I felt was irresponsible or was not concerned about the safety of their passengers. Jim Abernethy’s operation is one of the finest and most safety conscious I have seen. I would go on another trip with Jim in an instant.

Some people in the media have made it sound like shark diving is just another thrill sport like base jumping. For most people, cheap thrills are not the motivation behind diving with sharks (though one article I read lead with the line that said something like “Ask any shark diver - they will all say that they do it for the thrill”). For Jim, for most shark divers, and for me, it is about appreciating the beauty and magnificence of these creatures, and trying to demystify them and engage the public about the importance of saving sharks from mass extinction. The number of sharks in the world drops every day as startling numbers of them are killed for profit. At the rate we are going, we only have a small window of opportunity to see the sharks that remain.

- how inaccurate the reporting of the event was
I was amazed, after reading probably 30 or so stories by major media outlets like AP, Reuters, the Miami Herald, CNN, Yahoo, etc, how many errors and false assumptions were in these news stories, and how the errors propagated from one source to another. For example, it was first reported that the accident happened in Florida waters, then it was changed to off the Florida coast, then to 50 miles off the the Florida coast. The accident actually happened in Bahamian waters. There were also reports of blood being dumped in the water (there was not), and fish parts being dumped in the water (the bait is kept in boxes, not released to the sharks during the dive). There was an article that stated that the bigger more dangerous sharks were only found in deeper water and that since the dive was done in deeper water it was more dangerous. This is totally false - Tiger Beach, where I saw numerous Tiger Sharks and a couple of Bull Sharks, is only about 10 to 15 feet deep. On some the deeper shark dives I have done, for example in about 80 feet of water in Roatan, we saw only Reef Sharks. Another story incorrectly stated that the victim died on the scene, and there were many more inaccuracies.

In addition, the press repeated over and over some quotes by one of Jim’s competitors named Neal Watson, an asshole with an axe to grind; quotes that were inappropriate and out of line, and were apparently directed more towards trying to drive a competitor out of business than adding anything useful to the debate about shark diving. This same competitor also does shark dives, but instead of just baiting, he actually does shark feeding. He claims it is safer, though there is nothing to prevent a Bull Shark from showing up for one of his dives. In the past, Watson also tried to do some Tiger Shark dives like Jim does, even following Jim’s boat out to Tiger Beach, but for whatever reason, was not able to make it work. The press apparently neglected to scrutinize his history or motives.

- how the media makes sharks out to be monsters
Not much to say about this one except that is pisses me off that people today, let alone people in 1975 when Jaws came out, are eager to make money selling media by making sharks out to be monsters. Like many wild animals, sharks can be dangerous, yes, but they are not monsters who seek out humans to prey upon.

- that diving with sharks should be banned for safety reasons
When people hear about a shark attack, they seem to have an an immediate, emotional, and somewhat irrational response to the news. Sharks seem to stimulate an evolutionarily very old part of the brain that give us the fight-flight response. But stepping back from that, and looking at it more rationally, it is quite amazing to learn just how safe it is to dive with sharks. People have been scuba diving with sharks now for over 50 years, and participating in shark baiting/feeding dives for 25 years now. This is the first recorded fatality associated with a shark attack during an organized shark dive. You are much more likely to die driving to the airport to get on your plane to go shark diving than your are from the sharks.

Not to be too repetitious, but people die all the time. People die trying to cross streets. People die driving to work. People get drunk and fall off of cruise ships. Personally, I see a sort of beautiful symmetric poetry in people being so drunk that they die falling off of those gargantuan floating waste generators, but that’s just me.

People die fishing. There have been several cases where a fisherman hooked a large fish (or shark) and was dragged to his death. You don’t hear about people proposing to ban fishing based on accidents like that. A few years ago, a woman was Marlin fishing with her husband on a boat off of the coast of Panama. She had a large Marlin on the line and had brought it near the boat when it leaped from the water, and drove it’s sword-like bill through her chest. She nearly died, but was saved by, of all things, the lining of her breast implant, which plugged the large hole in her chest long enough to get her to a doctor. Again, you don’t hear about any efforts to ban fishing for safety reasons, nor do you hear any calls for mandatory breast implants for all people who fish for bill-fish.

Get over it. No one can guarantee your safety. If you don’t want to dive with sharks, fine, that is your choice.

- that baiting sharks for diving should be banned
Some people have called for a ban on baiting sharks for the purpose of diving with them. In fact, in Florida, this unfortunately became law a few years ago. There are two main arguments for a ban of this sort. The first has to do with the notion that baiting sharks somehow changes their behavior and that the sharks start to associate people with food, thus making it more dangerous for people to be in the water, at, say, a beach 20 or 50 or 200 miles away. Sorry, but this is a bunch of nonsense, for several reasons. First, sharks are keenly aware what is food for them, and what is not. It doesn’t take long watching a handful of Tiger Sharks swim calmly amongst a group of divers to see that. Generally, sharks are not interested in eating people. 400 million years of evolution has made them very specialized in what they eat, and a handful of shark baiting operations around the world is not going to change that. Secondly, shark baiting happens in local areas, so if this behavior changing is happening, then one would think that after a while, people would not be able to re-enter the water in those areas for fear of repercussions of the behavior change. That doesn’t happen. Thirdly, and most importantly, the amount of bait that is put in the water by shark feed/bait operations is absolutely miniscule in comparison to the amount of chum and by-catch dumped in the water by the massive number of fishing boats in the world. If anything is changing shark behavior, it is fishing, whether we talk about chumming, by-catch, ghost nets, etc, or just the absolutely huge numbers of sharks killed each day by the fishing industry. Every day, hundreds of thousands of sharks are caught, their fins cut off, and their helpless carcasses thrown back into the water. Shark baiting is a tiny drop in the bucket, and the fact is that the fishing lobby simply has way more political clout than people who stand up for sharks. That is why there is a ban in Florida. It had absolutely nothing to do with safety.

The other argument against baiting sharks has slightly more validity. From a pure environmental perspective, it is best to leave nature alone. In general, the less humans interfere, the better. In a perfect world, that would be true. But… sharks are being killed off at an alarming rate. Some people still actually believe that this is a good thing. But anyone who understands anything about the environment knows that killing off any species is harmful, and that killing off an apex predator is especially harmful. The oceans need sharks to maintain a healthy balance. Humans need healthy oceans for the same reason.

By diving with sharks, and taking photographs of them, and shooting video of them, we help bring them out of the realm of monster and help show the world what beautiful, graceful, and important creatures sharks are.

If you’ve read this far, thanks for your attention. If you want to be able to do something to help, here’s a place you can start: SharkSavers.org.

Ok, I’ll stop ranting now. I’m usually a pretty easy-going guy who doesn’t get too worked up about things. A little venting helps.

Thanks.

Cp

Maybe ol’ Captain Ahab wasn’t so looney after all*.

White Orca

*Yeah, I know he is a fictional character.

A man was bitten by a shark during a scuba dive yesterday and subsequently died. You may have already heard by now of the man getting bitten yesterday by a shark in the Bahamas, though the media has reported it (erroneously) as having happened in Florida. I just got off the phone with a friend who had some details. 

The boat is Jim Abernethy’s “Shear Water”, the same boat I went shark diving with a couple of years ago. I was told some of the details of the bite but won’t go into it too much since I heard it second hand. The shark was reported to be a Bull Shark. After the bite, the coast guard choppered him off to a hospital where he later died. He was a 49 year old Austrian, and his name was Markus Groh.

I didn’t know Mr. Groh. I feel terrible for him, and for his family and friends.

My shark friends are devastated by the news, as am I. I can’t imagine what Jim is going through.

I found Jim’s operation to be very professional and safety conscious. Diving with sharks from Jim’s boat, we were always aware that these sharks are indeed wild animals, and that their behavior is not necessarily predictable. Diving with sharks of course has a certain amount of risk inherent in it. Those of us that enjoy it are fully aware of that, but I fully believe that Jim’s operation did it as safely as possible.

The reaction is already getting pretty ugly and will probably get worse. The news media is picking up on the story, though pretty much every report I have seen thus far is filled with errors. I’m not going to get into or try to counter any of the more hysterical responses I’ve already seen on the internet about this. Many people seem to have a knee-jerk reaction to hearing about a shark attack, and their responses are less than rational. As time passes, the next sensationalistic news report will emerge and this will be mostly forgotten. But, there will be consequences, I am afraid.

I have no idea whether Jim will try to continue with his sharks trips. It’s possible that his insurance company, or some foolish legislator in Florida or the Bahamas will try to shut him down. I hope, perhaps selfishly, that he is able to continue. I would love to do another trip with Jim.

People die every day. I’m not trying to diminish the importance of this accident, but some perspective is in order. I’m in Colorado at the moment, doing some skiing. Just a few days ago a boy hit a tree here and died. He was thirteen years old. Several people die here this way every winter. Should skiing be banned? Should trees be banned?

One hundred and fifteen people, on average, die every day in automobile accidents in the US. I could list a lot more statistics about dog bites, bee stings, and lightning strikes, and how shark attacks pale in comparison. I could, but it won’t make this accident go away, it won’t take away the emotional response that people have when hearing about an accident like this, and it won’t stop people from writing irrational and irresponsible things about the accident.

On the same day I found out about this, I heard news that a friend of mine from high school has brain cancer. Talk about a serious dose of perspective. She seems way too young for that. It re-emphasized something I already knew - that life is short, and uncertain.

In my short and uncertain life, I want to dive with sharks.

I had a great trip out to the Flower Gardens (Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary- about 110 miles off the Texas-Louisiana coasts) this weekend. I was working as a DM on the Spree. We saw mantas, hammerheads, tiger sharks, spotted eagle rays, and a large school of king mackerel, along with the usual assortment of reef fish and creatures. Some of the passengers spotted a large Goliath Grouper, which is a very welcome newcomer to the reef cap at the East Bank. I didn’t get to see the GG as I was diving elsewhere doing a working dive (a pretty cool dive on a weather buoy outside the normal dive area that might merit a separate blog entry). The weather was remarkably cooperative for February in the Gulf of Mexico - we had flat seas going in and coming back, with just a bit of wind and seas on Friday afternoon and evening.

I made a fun dive on Stetson Bank, and was bummed to find a net laying on the bottom. Though not nearly as large as the one in Revillagigedos, it was another ugly reminder of how our species is treating the ocean. Fortunately, it was not spread out and so wasn’t trapping any creatures, and was only partly caught on the reef, so I hauled it up. Some pictures:

Net on Stetson Bank

Net on it’s way out

Dean Lea and Emilia White were very kind to send me some pictures they took of the net.

Also, just a clarification to something someone asked me about… no, I didn’t actually run out of air at depth while cutting the net. I had enough for a safe ascent and 3 minute safety stop. Beyond that… not so much.

Photo by Dean Lea

Photos by Emilia White

Also… in case you missed it, here is a link to more photos. I had kind of buried it in one of the posts so it wasn’t too obvious.
More Photos

Oh, and while I’m on the subject of photos by other fellow passengers, the 2nd to last photo from the above link (the one of a manta and me) was taken by Susan Lea, aka Dobby. It’s a great shot, thank you Susan.

I’m typing this on the flight home from Los Cabos, though I started writing it while I was still in my hotel in Cabo San Lucas. It was an interesting little hotel, right in El Centro, if there is an El Centro in Cabo. It’s just a few steps from the entrances to both Sodom and Gomorrah. Still, the hotel isn’t much like the rest of CSL, a plain little place, inexpensive, and unassuming. There seems to be a regular community of US expatriates, though I have no idea how long they stay there.

The dive trip was awesome, for the most part. Though the diving started a little slowly for me, the Revillagigedos definitely lived up to my expectations, and more. I say “for the most part” because in the midst of the great diving, I had some gear related mishaps and some moments of reflection on the way humans treat our oceans. More on both of those topics later as both are very much related to the theme of this blog.

Manta and friend

The boat (Nautilus Explorer) was wonderful. It’s a large (116 feet), steel liveaboard, and with it’s large keel, stabilizing fins, flume tank roll stabilizer and just sheer mass, it rides very well. Fortunately, we didn’t put the ride to the test too much as we had nice flat seas for the bulk of the trip. The crew was great, professional and safety conscious. The vessel is Canadian flagged and operates under the aegis of Canadian Transport with the same basic requirements for procedure and safety as a cruise ship. As I mentioned in a previous post, I was onboard as an extra crew member so was able to see some of the behind the scenes safety meetings and processes.

The guests were a nice mix of people from different countries and backgrounds. I had a great time getting to know them, and I think my English accent is getting better. However, my Irish accent “is crap” as guest Derek was kind enough to point out a couple of times. I played an international game of scrabble with a Brit, an Italian and a Netherlander. I did win, but felt pretty stupid in that I barely beat two people for whom English is not only a second language, but one of several second languages.

Las Islas Revillagigedos are a loosely affiliated group of 4 islands about 260 miles southwest of Cabo San Lucas… OK, well, 3 islands and a rock - a wonderful rock. In fact, I think it is now my favorite rock in the entire world. They are claimed by Mexico, which protects them as part of marine reserve system. They are uninhabited, with the exception of a small naval and research facility on Socorro Island. Socorro is the largest of the 4. Depending on what side of the island you view it from, it looks like a volcanic desert or the green coast of Scotland. Clarion Island is much further away and we chose not to visit it on this trip. Some of the endemic species get their name from this island, such as the beautiful Clarion Angelfish and the Clarion Damselfish.

San Benedicto Island is almost completely covered with ash (from a 1952 eruption) with lava flows extending out into the sea. There is so much ash that visibility can suffer when there is a large surge, though fortunately that was not a problem on our trip. Even so, we did have to flush the ash out of the water purification system.

Lava Flow at San Benedicto

Finally, Roca Partida is a rock sticking up out of the ocean about 60 miles to the west of Socorro. It is the remnants of the plug of an ancient volcano that rests on the shoulders of the rest of the volcano, the top of which sit at about 230 feet and which then plunge down to about 10000 feet.

Roca Partida (no, that isn’t snow…)

Giant Pacific Mantas are the star of Revillagigedos diving. There was one point at which I saw at least one manta on 11 dives in a row. On the 12th dive, (an early evening dive) there were 3 mantas feeding at the surface, so I could have seen one on that dive as well, though I chose to head away from them to try to get a glimpse of the juvenile galapagos sharks I had seen on a previous dive during that time slot. I’ve seen mantas before, but I had not seen them a) so large and b) so friendly. There were times when they would literally swim right up to me (or any of the other divers), and hover above me, just asking to be petted. While I am not usually into touching the animals, these mantas do seem to enjoy it so I indulged myself and rubbed some manta belly. Amazing.

Manta

Mantas weren’t the only thing to be seen though. We saw numerous hammerheads, galapagos sharks, silky sharks, white tip sharks, silver tip sharks, and tiger sharks. The silver tips sharks are a new favorite shark. They aren’t quite as shy as some of the other species, are pretty stocky, and swim around like they mean business. I only saw one tiger, but it was a good sized shark, probably in the 12 foot range, big enough to have lost much of it’s stripes. I was kind of disappointed in my shark photography, though I need to keep some perspective and remember that these sharks are not being baited and so do not consistently do close approaches like they did in Guadalupe. Still, I could have done better… yet another reason to go back.

If Mantas were the main course, and sharks the cake, then the frosting had to be the dolphins. While we saw dolphins at the surface several times and a couple of people saw dolphins on scuba earlier in the week, I didn’t see them until the morning of the last dive day - though it was worth the wait. The first dolphin I saw started chasing a single black jack out of a school of about 50. It chased a particular jack, staying focused on that individual, and chased it until it tired out. The other jacks seemed do be indifferent to the action. Sometimes the dolphin would coast for a bit, but it stayed after that same jack. Finally, after a good 5 minutes, there was a break in the action as bits of former jack made a little mess in the water. The dolphin left for a bit, then it (or another that looked just like it) came back and repeated the show. To top it off, after that dolphin got it’s jack, a mama dolphin with a two foot long baby came and munched on a jack in the same manner, with the baby chasing along with every twist and turn.

Dolphins chasing jacks

At the risk of metaphoric overload, there was also a cherry on top of the frosting. I had spent many of the dives with a family from England (3 boys and their mother) The boys called their Mum “Dobby” after the house-elf in Harry Potter (she had a great sense of humor, or rather humour, about it). We usually took the last skiff together after all of the more gotta-be-first divers left on the first two skiffs. I was pretty happy with this arrangement as it meant that we often had the dive site to ourselves for 20 minutes or so at the end of the dive. The boys were very comfortable, relaxed divers, and seemed like natural magnets for big animal encounters. We spent many dives together hanging out in one spot for most of the dive.

As a great dive at Roca Partida was winding down - after YAECME (Yet Another Excellent Close Manta Encounter) - I was chilling out at 30 feet or so, staring idly at the rock. I slowly spun around and was surprised to see a whale shark swimming towards me. I got a couple of quick shots before watching it swim off into the blue. It was an unexpected visitor - small (18-20 feet) for a whale shark. We weren’t expecting whale sharks at all, since under normal conditions, the whale sharks leave the area as the water cools, and the Nautilus stopped seeing them this year in November. Apparently, this particular shark didn’t get the memo. The most fun part of the whole encounter was how excited Dobby was about it - it was her first whale shark sighting. She shrieked with joy, danced around the boat and pretty much let everyone know she had seen it and they hadn’t. Fortunately, the whale shark made another pass on the subsequent dive, or we may have returned to Cabo short one house-elf.

Surprise Whale Shark

And to top all of that off, much of the time this whole procession of sharks, mantas and dolphins was choreographed to the songs of humpbacks whales, who were nearby with their pups. Watching humpbacks is a great way to spend a surface interval… we were treated to fin slaps and waves and a couple of spectacular breaches. Awesome.

More Photos

On the long trip out to the islands, Tricia told me about an abandoned fishing net that they had discovered on a previous trip. The net was approximately 500 meters long, laying over the rock and reef at a dive site named Giant’s Causeway, located on San Benedicto Island. During the last trip, they were able to remove about a third to half of the net. We planned to remove as much of the rest as possible during my trip. The net was already known to have killed several mantas and sharks, plus at least one turtle and numerous smaller creatures. Though we wanted to do this with as little disruption to the guest’s diving as possible, the plan was explained to them and they were very supportive of our effort.

Being an “extra”, I wasn’t sure what role they wanted me to fill. I was guessing that they’d probably have me heaving on the line from the surface (an exhausting, stinky job) - I really didn’t care as long as I got to pitch in in some way, and if not, I’d get to take some photos of it. When we arrived on site, I was informed I was going to be one of the 3 divers extracting the net from the reef, so I found my knife and EMT shears and got ready to go.

The net was draped on the rocks and coral at 90 - 110 feet. Divemaster Sten dropped in first and floated one end of the net with a lift bag. The basic strategy was for the two guys in the skiff to pull upward on the net as Divemaster Tricia, Divemaster Buzz and I freed the net from the bottom. To do that, we pulled the net when we could, and cut parts of it as we needed to. It’s not easy work, and we blew through our air at about double the normal rate.

Down we went, and I started pulling and cutting. I was very focused on the job and Tricia even later made a comment about my intensity. I saw some of the little creatures swimming out from the net. No, they weren’t trapped like their larger cousins, but it is still an ugly sight. On behalf of my species, I apologize. I wish I could do more to clean up the mess we’ve left here for you, and more importantly I wish I could promise it won’t happen again.

I came up upon a spot where the net drapes from one rock to another, spanning about 10 meters. We freed this section, and I looked down to see a pile of large bones and pieces of cartilage. Several large creatures met their end here - an awful waste. I picked up a spinal column bone - it was large, almost as big as my fist. I’m guessing it was from a manta, though it may be too solid. As I gathered myself and rested a moment for the next section, I noticed that my mask was leaking. For some odd reason, the moisture on my face wasn’t quite as saline as the sea water and didn’t actually appear to be coming into my mask from the outside. Strange.

Buzz ran low on air and headed for the surface. Tricia and I kept pulling and cutting for a few minutes more. Tricia then asked me how much air I have left - answer: not much. She moved us ahead about 15 meters, and we cut the net crossways, needing to cut through the much thicker nylon supporting rope. We went back and kept freeing, hoping we’d make it to the cut. I ran out of air first, and Tricia a minute or two later. We got aboard the skiff where Engineer Tim and Divemaster Sandy were laboring to bring the last bit of the net up. I’m guessing we freed about 150 meters. There is still one section down here, but it is no longer draping across open areas so it is less of a threat. The rest will come up quickly on the next trip.

All black Manta

The net, which by this time was starting to ripen a bit, was hoisted up on to the top deck where it will dry in the sun next to the piece that was previously removed. Once the last section is brought up, the crew will arrange for it to be transferred to a conservation organization in Mexico where it will be destroyed. They do not want it going to a landfill where it would probably get repaired and put back into service.

It was a bittersweet day. I felt good about doing something positive, but it was a stark reminder of how humans continue to rape the oceans.

The next day, we saw a boat anchored about 300 meters from us. Keep in mind that we had not seen another boat at the Revillagigedos, other than the single Mexican Navy boat at the Naval Station and their skiff, and that the islands are 260 miles from the mainland. It was a small, uncovered panga style boat, perhaps 20 to 25 feet long, with no name on it. Four persons were onboard. They had about 15 large gasoline containers. In order to have a place to sleep, they pulled the containers out and floated them in a line, the empties riding high and the full ones just poking above water level. After a terse conversation with them, they claimed to have come down from La Paz (about 350 miles), but did not state what their purpose here was. Fishing is illegal in the Revillagigedos and they did not have enough room on the tiny boat to bring back much fish anyway. They had to have spent a thousand or more dollars on fuel. They weren’t here for a pleasure cruise - most likely they were either running cocaine or shark finning. My guess is that they were wannabe sharkfinners, hoping to make a quick buck.

I don’t have any photos of the net but I may get some from some of the guests who were able to shoot it. If I do, I will post them here so you can see what it looked like.

As I mentioned earlier, I had some gear issues on this trip. In the past I’ve had pretty good luck with my photo gear. Not so on this trip as I had 3 gear mishaps.

Drysuit neck seal: I ripped the neck seal. I do have DUI zip seals, so could’ve brought a spare. I will in the future.

Flooded strobe: Before we left for Revillagigedos, I went out for a couple of local dives in the Cabo San Lucas area. My strobe was working fine then, but apparently flooded either towards the end of the 2nd dive, or, more likely, during the rinse. I had not noticed it until I started setting up on the way out to the islands. I rinsed it out with alcohol and let it dry, but it still didn’t function properly. I enlisted the help of Engineer Tim, who did an amazing job trying to resurrect it. He opened it up and dried it out in the dry heat of the engine room. He got it working again with exception of the focus light, which I don’t use anyway. We tried it in the camera rinse barrel, and it immediately flooded again. I was pretty sure that when he replaced the big internal o-ring, he didn’t clean it (Tim’s hands are never actually clean) nor put any silicon grease on it. So, we repeated the process (did I mention how tiny the screws are in an Inon strobe?), this time taking proper care of that o-ring. Another day of drying, and it started working again. Another rinse tank test, no flood this time. It was looking good, so I hooked it up to the housing and took it diving. First flash, perfect, second flash, fine, but that was it, it started flooding again. Game over. Thanks for playing. The autopsy did not reveal the cause of death. I had replaced the main o-ring (which did not look like the problem) after the first flood, so that wasn’t it. I suspect that it was one of the dial o-rings. The strobes are 4 years old and have seen a lot of service. Still… it sucked. Tim did a great job trying to get it to work…. but we had no chance at getting to the dial o-rings.

Smashed dome port: While the other 2 mishaps may or may not have been my fault, this one definitely was. I was working on my housing, replacing batteries in the strobe. I left it too close to the edge of that camera table, we took a roll and crash, the housing hit the deck, so to speak - the steel deck. The crashing, crunching noise was a sickening sound. The housing looked ok, but my dome port, which I needed for all the big stuff on this trip, lay in about 25 pieces on the deck. Damn, I can’t tell you how crappy that felt.

The Subal dome port is made of 4 main pieces, the glass dome, the mount, the dome shade, and the o-ring. My dome shade constituted most of the pieces… no chance of repairing it. The mount and the o-rings were fine, other than being separated. The glass itself was not broken, but had some nicks in it. Engineer Tim to the rescue again… he was actually out on the back deck when it happened, and immediately went to work trying to fix it. I wasn’t so sure it could be fixed. It was not obvious how to put it back together and even more non obvious how to make it stay together under 4 atmosphere of pressure. We did figure it out, though, and after about 30 minutes, we had it back together. First test was in the rinse tank, without the camera, of course. Amazingly, it held. Next test, strap some weight to it, and, with some rope, drop it down to 20 feet. Then down to 70 feet. Still holding. So now, it’s big decision time. Do I dare to put my camera in it and go for a dive? Keep in mind, this camera alone is 3 BTU’s, plus the lens is another BTU (see my earlier post Conspicuous Consumption for the definition of a BTU). But, damn, I really want this thing to work… I mean, ya gotta have a wide angle lens for mantas, sharks, dolphins… so, I gave it a shot, keeping a close eye on the leak detector light. Amazingly, it held for the rest of the trip, and other than the missing dome shade, worked fine. Thanks Tim.

Between the strobe and the dome port, it is going to be a pretty hefty Amex bill this month.

Back in a couple of weeks.

Crap, I’d better start packing.

[Sorry Jeff, I’ll do editing tools next. Besides, you are pretty much set with Lightroom as far as I can tell.]

Diver and photographer etiquette seems like one of those topics that’s a) talked about a lot b) pretty damn obvious and c) despite a&b, often ignored.

We’ve all had it happen to us, more times than we’d like…. A wayward fin smacking you in the face, someone kicking up silt just as your sailfin blenny starts to display, someone hogging the hogfish cleaning station - these are all examples. I also include people bumping, bashing, sitting on, dragging gear across, kicking, and otherwise torturing the reef.

I think the issue really comes down to self-awareness. Most people are not all that self-aware to begin with - then strap on 50 lbs of gear and 2 foot long foot extensions (which unfortunately do not contain nerve endings), and, well, it can get pretty ugly. I have to admit to a few etiquette lapses at times, though, so this applies to me as well (and I hope this whole thing doesn’t come across as preachy). Fortunately, most people are pretty good about about it if you can (nicely) point out example of their etiquette breaches. Those that are not, well, just lump them in the asshole category and go on.

As Lisa pointed out in one of her comments, a common thing you’ll see is the guy with a huge rig who doesn’t yield for a person with a small point and shoot. Obviously, the P&S person has just as much right to shoot a subject that the divemaster pointed out as Mr. Big-Ass Rig does. There isn’t a whole lot you can do underwater (though this is a time that knowing some good underwater signs is useful… the one that involves pulling one part of the body out of a another part of the body springs to mind here). Once on the surface, you can very gently and politely remind the person that you are a person too, despite the diminutive size of your camera, and next time you’d like a chance to photograph the little seahorse before it goes blind.

As I said, though, it really is a matter of self-awareness and despite your pleas, Mr. Big-Ass is probably not going to change. In fact, any time you dive with a large group of divers, you are pretty much guaranteed to run into people who are going to be problems.

So… how to deal with it……

First, increase your own level of self-awareness. Little things make a difference… like not leaving your crap (excuse me, your very nice, expensive gear) laying around the boat in people’s way, or like not leaving your rig in the rinse tank for more than a few minutes so there’s no room for others. If there’s a subject you want to spend a lot of time with, let every single other person in the group go ahead of you. Learn how to signal - “no, please, after you”, and let them shoot away. They’ll know that you are waiting, so (generally) won’t take a long time. A little politeness grease can go a long way.

Second, swim the other direction. If I am stuck diving with a large group, this is my favorite way of dealing with it. Sure, I’ll miss the 27th juvenile drumfish that the divemaster has pointed out, and the DM is likely to be pissed at me for getting “lost”… “again”, but I think I am ok with that. Frankly, I don’t care much for the following a divemaster around thing anyway. Even if I took the shot, I’d just have the same shot that the other 12 people in the group have anyway. Whenever I can, I try to avoid diving with big groups in the first place - dives with a small group or by myself (gasp) are just more relaxing, for me.

Third, give people the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes this is tough for me, but I’ve found that when I do, it usually helps. For example, rather than assuming that Rick (not his real name)(yes, it is) got in the way of the shot I had been setting up and waiting patiently for the turtle to swim across the field of view with the lovely pink and soft corals swaying in the current and the bumphead parrotfish school in the just the right spot, rather than assuming the worst, that he purposely got in my way, I chalked it up to a lack of self awareness on his part, and realized that I really couldn’t change him. In other words, he isn’t an asshole (ok, yes he is), he just doesn’t think about other people (ok, so this was a bad example).

Fourth, tell them what they did, especially if they jacked with the reef. If they screw up, tell them, otherwise they will not know (that self-awareness thing again). Keeping in mind that they might not have meant to do whatever they did, explain what happened in as nice of a manner as you can. Sometimes they will react well, and if they do, you get 1 extra bonus karma point. It might not help you, but it might help someone else in the future. If they react badly, well, they get 2 extra a-hole points.

One more week…… heading down to Cabo San Lucas and then out to the Revillagigedos Archipelago (also known as Socorro, though Socorro is actually the name of one particular island in the chain).

Thanks to my friend Tricia, I am going out on the Nautilus Explorer as a “supernumery”. Now, I have to admit that I didn’t know what a supernumery was until I looked into it. Basically, I will be an extra crew member. Here’s how the boat owner/captain described it:

Our pleasure to have Chris join us as a supernumery along the
lines that we discussed ie. he is sort of crew but not really, trust that
he will help out somewhat but also take time to chill and go diving
(although he won’t be able to do every dive depending on what’s going on)
and most importantly, that he will comport himself as a crewmember
from our guests’ perspective.

I’ll gladly comport myself as whatever they want me to for a chance to go diving with giant mantas, silvertip sharks, hammerheads, galapagos sharks, dolphins, humpback whales…..

MIAMI (AFP) - An unexpected cold snap this week sent thermometers plummeting in Florida and heat-hungry iguanas dropping from tree branches like autumn leaves, scientists and witnesses said.

Passersby in Bill Baggs and Crandon parks in Key Biscayne, south of Miami, were seen picking up the seemingly lifeless lizards from the ground beneath trees and setting them in the sun, where after a brief warm-up, most revived and scampered off into the bushes.

The cold-blooded lizard-with-a-mohawk’s comfort level begins at 23 degrees Celsius (73 Fahrenheit) and it positively thrives at 35 C (95 F). But on Wednesday and Thursday, the mercury in south Florida dropped to 4-5 C (39-41 F).

“When the temperature falls below about 60 F (15 C) they become less able to move around. At temperatures below about 40 F (5 C) they become completely immobile and begin to suffer serious stress,” said University of Florida wildlife expert Perran Ross.

Since all three iguana species shelter in tree branches and crevices, he added, when the temperature falls low enough, they are unable to hold on and drop to the ground… Story on Yahoo