Missing

I am home again, after a visit to Berlin last week. There is glorious early summer weather here in Vancouver, and in my absence the garden exploded into riotous colour – everything blooming in one huge exhale after a long, stiflingly wet winter.

And I’ve come home to a missing kitty. Our beloved Mr Simon is awol. He is a tough little character, having grown up homeless on the banks of the Fraser River, up near Lytton (a very rural and rugged area). He found our middle daughter, and attached himself to her. She kept him for a while at the resort where she works, but he was too friendly – visiting the kitchen, guest accommodations etc. So she called me up and asked me if we could give him a home. I went up to meet him, experienced love at first sight, and brought him back to Vancouver with me.

He has been living the life of riley with us for almost three years – and he has won our hearts. Even people who don’t like cats like Simon – really, he behaves more like a dog than a cat. Fearless, friendly, curious, good company, and BFF of our dog Harry.

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Sport Diver Magazine Feature

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Today’s blog bit is just a heads up – a new photo essay I did on diving in the Phi Phi islands of Thailand is now on Sport Diver’s online magazine. They’ve given me a new by-line for my monthly features – Postcards From The Edge. I like it :^)

You will find it here —> Postcards From The Edge – Phi Phi Islands.

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War & Remembrance

Reichstag

The iconic Reichstag. Probably the most recognizeable of all buildings in Berlin, thanks to film archives of Hitler’s rants, er, rallies on the steps. And this picture doesn’t really do it justice – it is H.U.G.E.

So here I am, once again leaving Berlin, after Mr G conducts some business here. I have been fortunate to be able to visit this beautiful city, albeit with a very dark history, several times over the past eight years or so. I always intend to blog when I am here, but somehow in the fugue of jet lag and late nights out drinking Pils (good German beer) in one of the many bars, I never quite get around to it. So let this be the beginning of a series of bits I will write over the next while about Berlin, and other travels in Germany.

Germans are funny people – literally – they have a keen, although at times, peculiar (at least to this Canadian) sense of humour. Ultimately, all kidding aside, they are a very orderly society (except when factions break out in riots on May Day every year – more on that in a future post). This orderliness is symbolically reflected through the architecture of Berlin – imposing if not overly beautiful buildings (with a few exceptions), straight streets, grand boulevards, stately statuary and linear parks.

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Pic of the Day – Free Swimming Flatworm

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Pseudobiceros Flatworm

Yesterday, we were looking more to the big picture, with imagery from Stingray City in Grand Cayman. Today’s pic is back to something quite small, and I think a bit unusual – a free swimming flatworm, that I captured in Ambon Harbour in Indonesia – home of some pretty bodacious muck diving.

Flatworms, which are cousins of nudibranchs, are cool little critters, and there seems to be a lot of them. This one is (I think) some sort of Pseudobiceros. A bit hard to tell, as these things are usually creeping across the reef when we see them, not curled up like this in swimming contortions. I can’t find a positive match in my id book.

This one had launched itself and was swimming up off the reef, in the water column. It was spotted during a shore night dive, and I will admit to quite a bit of luck in actually getting it in focus – a devilish proposition with a macro lens in manual focus mode in black water.

If I recall correctly, it was about 2 inches long.

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Pic of the Day – Stingray City

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Southern Stingray – Dasyatis americana

Here is an image from an iconic dive site in Grand Cayman. This is yet another of many trips where I never got around to writing up a trip report. My bad.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to GC to dive with my friend Cindy (aka Gunard) a few years ago. She is a wonderful, generous dive buddy and great photographer (she’s unbelievably good at spotting teensy things). Being semi-local (she spends several months a year in GC – lucky ducky), she really knows the sites. Even though she has done the “Stingray City” dive numerous times, she was kind enough to make sure we went there together.

Stingrays got a bad rap after the unfortunate demise of Steve Irwin aka the Crocodile Hunter. He was unlucky enough to take a tail strike to the chest, and it killed him.

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Pic of the Day – Things that make you say Ahhhh…

Fiji Bommie

Fiji is the home of outrageously colourful and lively reefs. This is a wide angle view of the top of a coral bommie – a vertical, slim pinnacle that rises up from the sea floor. In parts of Fiji, these bommies are encrusted with both healthy hard corals and gorgeous soft coral gardens. Add to that beautiful scene swarms of orange and pink anthias, and you find yourself dropping your jaw a bit (hopefully not so much that your regulator falls out ;^) and just hanging there, sucking in the view.

This bommie was captured on a live aboard trip on the N’aia, one of the nicest boats we’ve had the pleasure to dive from. This picturesque site is in the northeast part of the Vatu-i-Ra waters – the strait between the large southern island of Viti Levu, and the large northern island of Vanua Levu.

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Pic of the Day – Red-Lipped Batfish

Galapagos Red Lipped Batfish – Ogcocephalus darwini

Friday flew by, and I didn’t find an opportunity to share a funny fish face. So here it is, a day late.

And what a very strange fish this is. This species of batfish is specific to the Galapagos Islands. I found this one in fairly deep water (about 90 feet), in Chimney Bay at Wolf Island. Like the Flying Gunard that I shared last week, this Red-Lipped Batfish is more a “walking” fish than a swimming fish. It is a very inept swimmer, and instead bumbles along the bottom, using those two modified pectoral fins to do the “walking” for it.

After I found and photographed the fish above (whose bright red lips really don’t “pop” until lit by strobe or flashlight), I found another batfish and photographed it. This one apparently went out without putting on its makeup ;^) Seriously, I have no idea if this is a juvenile or a variation on the species.

These fish were about 12 inches long.

EPV0189

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Pic of the Day – Soft Coral Crab

Soft Coral Crab – Hoplophrys oatesti

Back to the Crabfest, again. There are a lot of strange crustaceans out there, and this is yet another.

This little beauty is a Soft Coral Crab (Hoplophrys oatesti). Like its name suggests, it is commonly found on soft corals, specifically reddy/pinkish soft corals. The challenge, as is often the case with little critters like this, is actually finding them. This particular little guy is both well camouflaged, and about half an inch in size. So I am going to confess, that although I have several images of these wee crabs that I have taken around Indonesia, I have never actually found one on my own. A skilled and patient dive guide has always been a key factor in getting the pix.

The shot above is a little unusual as the crab is perching on the stem of the soft coral, so not buried deep in the ‘blossoms’ (polyps), where they are usually found. That was a happy thing, and allowed me to get a clear shot of the entire critter.

Here is another soft coral crab, this one also from Indonesia. This is a more common perspective of these camera shy little b*stards…

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Pic of the Day – Redline Flabellina Nudibranch

 

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Yesterday, I opened wide and showed some images of a healthy coral reef grown over a recent lava flow.

Today, I am zooming back into something quite teeny – about an inch long. This redline Flabellina Nudibranch (Flabellina rubrolineata) is not terribly uncommon – I have seen quite a few of these nudibranchs (which can have quite a few variations in their coloration), in several locations in Asia.

The key, to me, is to try to capture an image that illustrates both the beautiful coloration and the fluidity of this little slug. Getting one with rhinosphores (“horns”) to the camera can be challenging – this little guy/gal (they are hermaphrodites) was chowing on the white hydroids, also in the picture.

This image was taken on a night (muck) dive, in Banda Harbour, not far from where the images from the lava flow from yesterday were also bagged.

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Pic of the Day – Lava Flow

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Coral Condos

Out of destruction, there is sometimes beauty.

This image was captured at Banda Api, in the Banda Sea area of Indonesia. This dive site is aptly named “Lava Flow”.

In May 1988, Bandi Api volcano (elevation 640 metres/2100 feet) explosively erupted, and the subsequent lava flow made it all the way to the ocean nearby, where it decimated the fringing coral reef.

What is particularly heartwarming, in the aftermath of such destruction, is the reemergence of a beautiful, lively coral garden, growing abundantly in just 25 years.

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Pic of the Day – Flying Gunard

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Flying Gunard – Dactyloptena orientalis

So I’ll take a break today from the crabby parade, and instead offer up a Friday funny fish face.

This creature is a Flying Gunard (Dactyloptena orientalis). It is one of several strange “creeping” fish that can be found in the tropical Pacific.

Not so much a swimmer, it “walks” along the bottom on two pelvic fin/legs. It will lift off and swim if startled, with those huge wingy pectoral fins fully deployed. A very strange fish indeed.

These images were captured on a night dive in a mucky bay, in an island group in the Banda Sea. This fish was about 12 inches long, and was the first and only one of these things that I have seen in several trips to Indonesia.

Edited to add: The cousin of this weird Indo fish, Dactyloptenan orientalis, is Dactyloptenan volitans, which can occasionally be spotted in the Caribbean, Bahamas etc. I have seen only one in that part of the world, despite many dives there – in Turks & Caicos (I think). Couldn’t get close enough to get a picture. A skittish fish for sure…

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Pic of the Day – Orangutan Crab

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Orangutan Crab – Oncinopus sp 1

So by now you might be thinking – whassup with the roll call of crustaceans? Is this chick crabby or what?

There is something you might not know about me – I get on a thing (Words With Friends, the completely, totally, awesome Houzz app, cranking through the editing of a trip’s images, reading a certain author, creating a slideshow, planting a garden, yada, yada), and I can become a wee bit obsessed for a time. It might be a mild form of OCD, or just the machinations of a highly focussed mind ;^)

So, right now, I am a bit hooked on crabs.

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Pic of the Day – Coral Hermit Crab

Striped Coral Hermit Crab – Paguritta vittata

Okay, so I am feeling crabby again, even though the biblical rain storm that we woke up to this morning has blown through (literally – huge, gusty winds right now), and the sun has made an appearance. I am crabby because I finally had a large cist removed from my lower back today. It was one of those things that I kept procrastinating about, not wanting to have the (minor) surgery I had this morning, for fear the stitches would keep me out of the water, and off the yoga mat, for a week or so. It ended up being quite the excavation (done in a surgical suite in a clinic under local anesthetic). The poor doc kept digging, and digging, and digging some more, trying to get the “bottom” of the thing (so it won’t grow back), that was very deeply rooted. So deep in fact that the local they gave me did not reach that area, and I just about hit the ceiling when she went in with the scalpel. She and her nurse assistant said it was the biggest, nastiest cist they had ever dealt with. So I’ve got that going for me I guess ;^)

Anyhoo, in keeping with today’s crabbiness, I offer up a Striped Coral Hermit Crab (Paguritta vittata). These things are t.i.n.y. – about half an inch max, and the body is always burrowed into their tubes in the coral, so what can be seen is maybe a 1/4 inch. They use those frond thingies, like the Spotted Porcelain Crab, to catch flyby food. I never would have seen one of these with my crapped out vision if my buddy Jamie hadn’t shown me one on a dive in Raja Ampat. Since then, I’ve kept a close eye out for them and have found them in Fiji, and other parts of Indo. Seriously challenging to photograph, at least for this blind old bat ;^)

The one featured above was found in the Banda Sea area of Indonesia.

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Toot, Toot :^)

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I have been approached by Sport Diver Magazine to do a series of photocentric features for them. The first piece was on Raja Ampat, in Indonesia, and appeared last month.

This most recently published piece is on diving in Thailand – the Similans, Surins, Koh Bon, Koh Tachai and Richelieu Rock. I will be doing a future bit on diving around Phi Phi, Anemone Rock and Shark Point – too many wonderful sites to cover in one article.

I hope you enjoy.

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 9 – Current City, Man

Shotgun!

It’s been a while since I added a chapter to the Komodo Chronicles. Sorry about that. My last entry was about the final few dives we did in the Gili islands, in Northern Komodo. At this point in our trip (about half way through) the crew pointed the boat south, and we headed for the cooler waters of South Komodo and Horseshoe bay (on the south end of Rinca Island).

But before we left the Gili’s, there was one more dive to bag.

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Pic of the Day – Stonycoral Ghostgoby

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Stonycoral Ghostgoby – Pleurosicya micheli

So I seem to be on bit of a macro run ;^) I captured this little goby on a trip to the Banda Sea, in Indonesia. When trying to identify it, I had to wade through pages and pages (and yet more pages) of goby images in my ID book (Reef Fish Identification – Tropical Pacific – Allen, Humann, Deloach & Steene) to try to make a match. So many gobies, so little time (and patience ;^)

Although this guy is resting on a bubble coral, I think it is a Stonycoral Ghostgoby. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

These gobies are pretty tiny – max about an inch long, and they tend to dart around, though they never leave the area.

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Pic of the Day – Feeling Crabby

Spotted Porcelain Crab – Neopetrolisthes maculatus

I will admit that I am feeling a bit crabby today. The rains have returned after a blissful stretch of warm and sunny weather here in Vancouver. In the span of a few lovely days, during which our garden literally sprung into Spring, things like narcissus and hyacinths started flowering madly. Shoots of perennials, coaxed by the sun, and big pregnant buds on the magnolias and lilacs swelled, ready to burst out into riots of colour. And the heavy rain just makes it all a soggy, sad mess out there in the back forty on days like these.

Yesterday I shared a Hairy Squat Lobster – and why this thing is a lobster, and not a crab, I leave to the critter pros out there to define. A quick search I did brought up some nasty info on crabs vs lobsters making their homes on humans’ naughty bits and how to rid oneself of them. Yuckers. After that unsavoury info, I did not have the desire to delve any deeper ;^)

Today’s crustacean, the Spotted Porcelain Crab (about 1 inch across on its carapace), specifically inhabits carpet anemones (which have short tendrils, and beautiful spotted undersides). There is very often a pair of these crabs in residence, but again, like many crustaceans, they are camera shy, and getting one still, on an often undulating anemone, can be another exercise in frustration. You are probably getting that I can be frustrated quite easily while taking pictures underwater, and this is true. Never the world’s most patient person, I can be sorely tested by trying to photograph critters that aren’t easily captured (with a camera). Still, there is much satisfaction in actually sticking it out, and getting a decent shot…

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The Spotted Porcelain Crab deploys those frondy thingies to sweep the water for tasty tidbits, in an action quite similar to a barnacle. It then swipes the frond through its mouth to scrape off the stuff to ingest.

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Pic of the Day – Hairy Squat Lobster

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Yesterday, I featured an image of a large barrel sponge. Today I share an image of a Hairy Squat Lobster (Lauriea siagiani).

These things are quite tiny – about 3/4 inch across its carapace. They are pink in colour, and inhabit giant barrel sponges, which are also pink, so spotting them can be tough. Their colours only ‘pop’ when lit by a strobe or flashlight.

Like many crabs, they don’t appear to enjoy being photographed, and want to burrow in the sponge to evade camera-wielding paparazzi, so getting shots like these can be an exercise in frustration.

And why is it hairy, you might ask? Well, apparently these little lobsters use those filaments to snag fly-by tidbits to eat. Then they scrape them off with their claws, put them in their mouth, and consume them. Um, yum?

Hairy Squat Lobster - Lauriea siagiani

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Pic of the Day – Spongeworthy?

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Today’s pic is a bigass barrel sponge, taken in the Banda Sea of Indonesia.

Sponges are cool things – they grow big (this one was at least four feet tall), and fast, and are host to several little reef critters, including hairy squat lobsters (I’ll share one of those tomorrow). It is not unusual to look down the barrel and see a fish lurking – common squatters are coral trout and lionfish.

The diver in the shot is Ali – an Indonesian dive guide famous for his great giggle, and his eagle-eyed prowess at finding really cool stuff. We first met Ali when he was a dive guide on the (now defunct) Archipelago Adventurer II. He has moved over to the Arenui, and continues to be a great spotter.

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Pic of the Day – Canoodling Cuttlefish

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Broadclub Cuttlefish – Sepia latimanus

It’s no secret, I love cuttlefish. I could watch them all day. Inquisitive, seemingly intelligent, quick to colour and pattern change – these are fascinating animals to encounter on a dive.

Cuttlefish belong to the same family as octopus and squid. All of these critters can change their colours (instantly!) to camouflage themselves in their environment and/or to send signals to others of their species.

This pair of Broadclub Cuttlefish were caught in flagrante delicto at Richelieu Rock, in Thailand. The mating sequence involves a head to head encounter. The male then transfers a sperm sac, via a specialized tentacle with which he is equipped. The female will carry the sperm sac, near her mouth, while the male protects her from other male suitors, fertilize it, and then tuck away the fertilized egg for safekeeping somewhere on the reef.

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