Category: Underwater Photography
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Go get the new issue of Scuba Diving Magazine now!
Hey everybody! My photo inside the HMCS Yukon was just published in the May 2014 issue of Scuba Diving Magazine. It’s on newsstands (and available digitally) now! Please go check it out! :)
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This Shrimp is the Tiniest Sea Creature You’ve Never Seen
It’s easy for divers to get stoked on seeing the big-ticket critters. Manta rays? Majestic. Sharks? Spellbinding. So far, we’re all on the same page here. There’s this cognitive leap, though, that occurs for divers when they learn to find and appreciate the nudibranch. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg scenario, but this…
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How to Remove Backscatter: The Fastest Way to Improve Your Underwater Photos
Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking about technical diving and underwater photography to the Whalers Dive Club in Canoga Park, California. It was a great crowd, and the attendees were every speaker’s dream: they both laughed at my jokes and asked engaged, thoughtful questions! One of the questions that stood out, and that…
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The Missile Tower Wreck (165′), San Diego
The Missile Tower in San Diego, formerly used by the U.S. Navy to test-launch Trident submarine missiles, now rests in 165 feet of water near the Mexican Border as an artificial reef.
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The Reproductive Habits of the Ghost Pipefish (A Limerick)
When asked of his ties to the seahorse, the ghost pipefish replied in due course: “Though I lack a pouch, “our girls are no slouch, “and they tend to their eggs without remorse.”
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Why the Mantis Shrimp Rocks
Although named for its resemblance to both praying mantis and shrimp, the mantis shrimp is neither; it’s a stomatopod, in fact only a distant relative of crabs, shrimps, and lobsters. Stomatopods can be loosely divided into two groups based on how they kill prey with their raptorial appendages (I just want to say that over…
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A Limerick about the Ornate Ghost Pipefish
There once was a pipefish so ornate, the crinoid it lived in seemed cut-rate. “This feather star’s plain,” said the fish, “I’d not deign “to inhabit so homely an estate.”
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Getting Riggy on Eureka
The silence of my rebreather allows me to hear every hydraulic hiss, every crash as steel collides with steel, the sounds of industry happening above the surface. I catch myself wondering whether the fish are anchovy or sardine, realizing that I have been contemplating the question for several minutes, lazily resolving the taxonomical conundrum with…
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When the Red Octopus Isn’t: Cephalopod Camouflage in Catalina
More camouflage today–this time from the cephalopods. Red octopus ran rampant at Catalina Island last weekend, scavenging on the discarded squid egg cases littering the seafloor. As they passed over kelp, seagrass, sand, rubble, and the egg cases in various shades of white and brown, their skin color and texture shifted to blend the animal…
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Obligatory End-of-Year Post (A Summary of 2013)
Because (a) It’s pretty much in the rules of blogging to make an end-of-year summary post, and (b) 2013 was full of great diving and photo ops. From technical wrecks to nudibranchs: a photographic summary of my underwater exploits in 2013.