Pic of the Day – Balloon Fish

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Judy G Diver
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Balloon Fish – Diodon holocanthus

Here’s a cutie for a funny Friday fish face. The image of this Balloon Fish (Diodon holocanthus) was captured in Ambon Harbour, Indonesia. A member of the porcupine fish family, these guys and gals can inflate themselves up into a really round ball as a defense when threatened. This fish was about a foot long.

I have never made a puffer fish puff up, but have seen a few in my travels, and they are for sure a pretty hilarious vision – a round spiky bumbling ball of a thing, with flimsy little fins trying (ineffectively) to steer a course for such a momentarily big fish.

I was hoping to have another chapter of the Komodo Chronicles ready to share for the weekend, but alas, life has got in the way. Hopefully soon…

PS Thanks to everyone who has been taking the time to “like” or comment on my blog posts. Your ‘likes’ help share my stuff with your Facebook friends. I really appreciate the gesture, and the kind feedback.

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Pic of the Day – Peacock Mantis Shrimp

Posted on March 21, 2013 by Judy G Diver
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Peacock Mantis Shrimp – Odontodactylus scyllarus

The Peacock Mantis Shrimp (Odontodactylus scyllarus) packs a heck of a punch. Equipped with a smashing claw – used for breaking shells to eat their inhabitants – these shrimp are more than capable of shattering the macro port of an underwater camera if they are so inclined. I think that with that lightening fast claw they could probably break bones in a human hand quite easily too.

So photographing these big shrimp (max about 7 inches in length) is not without its peril.

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Pic of the Day – Mr G Goes to School

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Judy G Diver
Mr G Goes to School in Cozumel

Mr G Goes to School in Cozumel

Today’s image was captured at Paseo del Cedral (Cedar Pass) in beautiful Cozumel. There are many lovely sites on Cozumel, but Cedral continues to be one of my favourites, even though I have done many, many dives on it. To me, it never gets old – lovely swim throughs, schooling fish (like this gaggle of grunts), little macro critters, almost always a shark and a turtle or two – I could dive it for days and never get weary of it.

On our return from the trip on which this image was taken (May 2012), I finally put pen to paper (or, more accurately, fingers to keyboard ;^) and wrote up a big, juicy trip report for this location. I figured that after at least ten visits, it was about time. And because I had several friends who had never been there query me about Cozumel – ie where to stay, who to dive with, where to eat, etc, etc, I really went to town on those kind of details. Plus there are lots of pix, like the one above.

Anyhoo, in case you missed it on the first time around, here it is again – Awoosh Cozumel 2012 Bigass Trip Report

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Pic of the Day – Hairy Frogfish

Posted on March 19, 2013 by Judy G Diver
Hairy Frogfish - Antennarius striatus

Hairy Frogfish – Antennarius striatus

Now here is a fish you don’t see every day. This weird little frogfish (this one was about 4 inches long) was found on a night dive by eagle-eyed Wendy, one of our regular buddies. It was an awesome find, and what was even more special is that Wendy made a grand attempt to make sure that everyone who was diving that night had a chance to see it. Sweetness.

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Pic of the Day – Ambon Arch

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Judy G Diver
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Ambon Arch

I captured this image at a site called “The Arch”, on the west side of Ambon Island, in Indonesia. The image was shot with a Tokina 10-17mm lens, fully dialled out at 10mm. It was still fairly early in the morning, and the light had not yet migrated into the area where this arch is located, so there was no opportunity to try to capture a sun ball or rays in the composition. Still, I like the moody blues, and to be honest, these big wide angles are usually easier to expose without trying to deal with very strong light from the sun.

Also fortunate was that the large school of fusiliers was around (it was long gone by the time we dropped down to do a second dive on this site). There was quite a bit of current whooshing through the site on this dive, which perhaps encourages these fish to school like this. The current also makes it a worky kind of shot, and this site is not shallow (I believe I was at about 80 feet when I shot this image), so I was outta gas pretty prematurely on this dive ;^)

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Pic of the Day – Hammerhead Shark

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Judy G Diver
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Happy Hammerhead

Today, I offer up a hammerhead shark as Pic of the Day, in honour of the recent CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) conference decision, at which several species of sharks, including hammerheads, as well as much beloved manta rays, were deemed threatened, and placed on a protection list.

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Pic of the Day – Anemone Fish Trio

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Judy G Diver

Anemone fish – Amphiprion ocellaris

While I beaver away on the next instalment of the Komodo series, I thought I’d resume my ‘Pic of the Day’ posts. These are images that I have stashed away in my archives. I am going to dust off a few and share them, with some description of where I took them and what the heck they are.

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Raja Ampat, Revisted

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Judy G Diver

Boo Rock

Recently, I was very flattered to be asked to contribute to Sport Diver Magazine for their on-going series on “Top 10 Dives” of various popular destinations.

Here is a link to the gallery and short write up I did for the magazine: Sport Diver Magazine – Raja Ampat Gallery

And, for a longer article on our group trip to this destination, featuring many more pictures, please follow this link.

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Pic of the Day – Monkey Business

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Judy G Diver

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I have been sifting through my Komodo images in order to find stuff to share in my ongoing (and I promise, soon to be ending ;^) Komodo photo blog series. I happened upon an entire day of unedited images – and in that batch, found this funny one of a monkey I shot (with the camera ;^) on our tour of the Komodo Dragon sanctuary on Rinca island.

Not sure what caught his attention, but I love the expression…

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 8 – Back in the Blue

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Judy G Diver

After a side trip to Fiji, here I am back to revisiting Komodo, about half way through our ten day adventure.

The last few blog posts covered the great macro dives we did in Bima Harbour, off the island off Sumbawa. After pulling anchor, we headed back to the Gili’s in North Komodo, for one more day of big blue diving before starting our way south, to the famed Rinca Island, and beyond.

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Fiji 2013 – Love, Actually

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Judy G Diver

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So when I sat down to write this blog post about Fiji, what emerged was a love story. I mean, I seriously love this country, and like all true love, my adoration only deepens with time. I was planning on waxing poetic on how amazingly loving and welcoming the native Fijian people are, and about how gorgeous the country is, and about how deep and beautiful traditions live on in Fijian village life, and about how much Fijians take pride in their country. But really, I don’t have the words; you have to experience Fiji to understand it. It is still, after over a quarter of a century of travels, my favourite country in the world to visit.

Oh, and did I mention the awesome diving? ;^)

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Bula!

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Judy G Diver

More radio silence from me as I snuck away for a week of diving with two of our daughters in Fiji. It was a last minute quickie, and fortunately I was able to bag decent airfares from Air Pacific (which flies non-stop out of LAX to Nadi, Fiji several days a week) and Wananavu Resort came back to me with a very attractive package deal for our accommodations, transfers, meals and diving.

We had a fantastic time exploring (anew) the drop dead gorgeous reefs of the Bligh/Vatu-i-Ra waters, which is the area between the large south island of Viti Levu and the large north island of Vanua Levu. Conditions were for the most part benign for this trip – calm surface conditions on 5 of our 6 dive days, and gentle currents on all dives. Added bonus – the mellow conditions allowed me to finally do some shore diving in front of the resort. I really grooved on it, and will be writing about that in a future blog instalment.

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 7 – Rinse & Repeat

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Judy G Diver

So here we are, still anchored in Bima Harbour – at the site of the morning’s rude awakening bomb dive and two more sweet muck dives. There is one more dunk offered this day, a night dive on Fuzzy Bottom – the very same site we explored extensively all day long.

The earlier dives had been very productive in terms of coolio macro subjects, and Michael, our cruise director, opined that the night dive should be pretty epic as well, so I decided to forego the strong temptation of sunset drinky-poos with some of the gang (including Mr G), and instead suited up in a cold and clammy wetsuit to jump in to the black water with the rest of our group’s night diving keeners. The tasty Bintang beer(s) would wait…

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 6 – The Muck, And Nothing But The Muck

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Judy G Diver

When I last made an entry, we were muck diving in Bima Harbour, on the island of Sumbawa. The morning had a shaky start, what with the fish bombing that rocked our world, at least for several minutes.

As I wrote before, fortunately the detonations eventually ceased, and the rest of our dive day was much more peaceful.

Rather than describing the next two dives with words, I thought I would instead share a sampling of some of the really crazy stuff that lives in the muck of Indonesia, and I’ll add some expanded descriptions to give a sense of the size of these critters.

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 5 – Getting Bombed in Bima

Posted on January 11, 2013 by Judy G Diver

This is going to be a very, er, explosive blog bit – because when I referenced “getting bombed in Bima”, I am not talking about inhaling too many Bintang beers ;^)

Our up close and personal bombing experience was provided courtesy of local Indonesian fisherman – likely residents of the large island of Sumbawa, which lies between the islands that comprise Komodo National Park (to the east) and Lombok (and then Bali), to the west. They were brazenly dropping their fish bombs in plain view of the live aboard we were diving from – the Komodo Dancer, and the blasting was occurring within Bima Bay – a large, populated inlet on Sumbawa Island.  The culprit was not more than a half mile or so away.

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 4 – Things That Go Bump In The Night

Posted on January 4, 2013 by Judy G Diver

Christmas and New Year’s have come and gone in a flurry (well, actually here in Vancouver, not so much a flurry as a soggy deluge – it was the wettest December I can remember). It was a busy time, with nary a pause for blogging.

When I last made an entry, we were at Sangeyang Island, north of Komodo National Park. It was some beautiful, calm diving, highlighted by champagne bubbles percolating out of the sand, and scores of nudibranchs.

The last dive we did in the area was a dusk dive, at a site named Bonto. After the relatively mellow dives earlier in the day, those of us who made the plunge got a rude surprise when we found ourselves in a pretty hefty current. As I have written before, current at night is always a bit unsettling – it is very easy to become separated from other divers, especially in low visibility, and this dive was no exception. This was a muck dive (silty bottom), so there was a veritable sh*tstorm to contend with as those of us with cameras tried to line up for some shots of some of the crazy critters that live there. Holding place in current, in deep silt, is not easy, and we all managed to kick up a lot of dust.

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 3 – Champagne Diving & Nudibranch Dreams

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Judy G Diver

Sangeyang Island – an active volcano

So you might be wondering, what is it like to dive near an active volcano? The answer, in the case of Sangeyang, is: effervescent, warm, and slightly freaky (one has to consider that if the thing is simmering, it could blow at some point…)

Sangeyang Island is located north of Komodo National Park. The image above was taken from Gili Lawa Island, the evening view before the crew pulled the pin and motored across the (thankfully calm) water to reach it by early morning.

Right up front, we could tell that this place was going to be special – Michael, our Cruise Director, really lit up when briefing us on it, bestowing it with such adjectives as ‘heavenly’ and ‘surreal’. And so it was.

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Here We Are, Yet Again…

Posted on December 16, 2012 by Judy G Diver

I have been warming up to the idea of working on the next chapter of the Komodo adventure (amidst the Christmas chaos), but the recent events in Connecticut have been playing heavily in my mind, and make my photo blogging seem inconsequential and irreverent by comparison.

I can only imagine the profound grief of losing a child.  The inexplicable nature of this kind of murderous rampage only makes the loss even more incomprehensible.

One of the most poignant pieces I’ve read over the past few days (in the flotsam of pro-gun/anti-gun internet wars of words popping up on social media, and in forums on news sites, etc etc) is this essay by an American journalist about her own troubled teenaged son —> I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother.

Less guns would be good. More treatment for mentally ill people would be good. But in my heart, I know that these kinds of horrible events are just going to keep on keeping on.

I think the mother who wrote the article linked above knows this too.

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 2 – Rock ‘n Roll

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Judy G Diver

Sunrise in Komodo National Park

After an overnight navigation (never my favourite part of live aboard dive trips, more about that mild, but fairly founded phobia, in a future instalment ;^), we woke up to the beautiful sunrise featured above, and found ourselves at Gili Lawa Laut (island), in the northern part of Komodo National Park. The plan was for two dives in the area, before moving the boat during the lunch break.

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The Komodo Chronicles – Part 1- Here We Be

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Judy G Diver

So when I last blogged, we had just finished up a few days of diving in Bali, in the Tulamben area. The afternoon of the day before our flight out to Komodo, we were shuttled down to Sanur, a resort town that is about a 20 minute drive from Denpasar Airport. It is not advisable to plan for long transfers (like the 3+ hour drive from Tulamben to Denpasar) on the day of a flight, unless the flight is late afternoon or evening. The traffic snarls on Bali are legendary, and as we experienced on arrival, road closures for festivals (and horrific traffic accidents) seem to happen frequently.

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