Day 13 - Challenge on Nature Photography

DAY 13 in the #challengeonnaturephotography on Facebook.

For my penultimate Nature Challenge post, I figured it would be nice to head home: Alicante! And where do I feel most at home? Under the water!!! So here are a couple of photos taken while snorkeling or scuba diving: medusa Cothylorhiza tuberculata, photo from September 2009 while snorkeling at the base of the Peñón d'Ifach in Calpe; and mussles growing on an rope (they'll grow on any hard surface!), photo taken during a deco stop in Cabo de Palos, Murcia. (click them bigger)

So my sister​ challenged me to participate in the #challengeonnaturephotography on Facebook. The idea is to occupy FB with nature photographs. Each nominated person will post a different nature photo for 7 days. With each photo they will nominate another person and give the name of the person who nominated them... 

It seemed to be that this would be a very nice way to start off 2016, and I wanted to share it with you as well! :o)

Unfortunately I'm terrible at following instructions, and after going through my photos I can't choose any more! So I'm going for DOUBLE! Two photos a day for 14 days... :p

I don't know about challenging anyone on the Blog... But if you feel like joining in please do! Don't worry, you can stick to the original challenge of 1 photo a day for 7 days! ;) (just leave me a comment with the link so I can be sure to go see yours)

Dive 100 at Benidorm Island

HAPPY WORLD OCEANS DAY!!!

I wish I could have gone "all out" for World Oceans Day this year, written several posts and launched the 6th Oceanic Blog-A-Thon... but sometimes life just gets in the way of blogging. In this case an interesting but intense new job, final English classes before my students' finals, and the beginning of the end of an MBA. Busy doesn't begin to cover my life at the moment! But I did manage to squeeze in a bit of time to put this together...

 

For World Oceans Day this year I'm going to share my 100th dive with I did about 6 weeks ago on the north face of Benidorm Island (one of my frequent dive spots). I've seen the seabeds around this island (and around other parts of the coast) change in the past 15 years since I've been diving, and not always for the better. The impact of human activities can be seen almost everywhere, resulting sometimes in a change of dominant species in an ecosystem. 

A Nocturnal Underwater Escapade (with Octopi!)

Is that a collective sigh of relief I hear? "She's finally showing us the night dive!" Well, yes in fact, I am! Sorry it took me so long... busy, busy, busy! And yes, part of the excuse is more diving! Plus there's the fact that although editing video clips with iMovie is fairly straightforward, it takes an awful lot of time! :p

Enough bla-bla-bla! You guys are here to see the Mediterranean come to life AT NIGHT!!! Today's dive program: a visit to "Las Piedras", a dive spot just outside the marine reserve of Tabarca (island in front of Alicante). It's a sweet spot because it's basically just like inside the reserve, but you don't need to ask for permits to dive there! Plus it's not deep (max 15m so ~49ft) so you can enjoy a nice long dive without having to worry about running out of air or entering deco. The name pretty much says it all: "Las Piedras" = "The Rocks". There are several huge rocks just sitting in the middle of a lush Posidonia oceanica prairie, and they serve as a home to a denizen of aquatic critters and plant-life. Some you'll spot easy enough during the day... but others only come out to play at night! ;o)

Ok, first off a reminder of what Posidonia oceanica looks like:

You guys do remember that P.oceanica is a seagrass and not algae, right? If not click here for a marine biology refresher. ASAP! We'll wait for you...

Mardinian: Come dive a wreck with me!

Once upon a time, a 3222 ton steamer named SS Mardinian - built in 1913 in Middlesbrough by Harkess & Son Ltd - departed from Calcutta with a cargo of hemp, bound for her home port of Liverpool. She was 313 feet long (95.4m), with a 42 foot beam (12.8m wide) and 21 feet deep (6.4m). She had a triple expansion steam engine which could propel her to a speed of up to 10.5 knots. Little did Captain G. Port know that on the 19th of May 1917 a German U-34 submarine would intercept them off the coast of Santa Pola in the Province of Alicante, Spain, and order the crew to abandon ship before sending the Mardinian to the bottom of the Mediterranean, 4 miles SW of the island of Tabarca, by means of a well-aimed torpedo. And there she remains to this day, to the delight of scuba divers who come from near and far to admire this steel skeleton, now home to a myriad of marine critters.

Last month I was looking for a somewhat "different" from my usual dives to celebrate my birthday, so I contacted one of the dive clubs I sometimes go out with and Carlos, the owner, advanced his scheduled wreck by one day so I could join in! I was a bit worried about going down so deep, the deck is at 44m depth (144ft) which is deeper than recreational divers "usually" go. Plus that was the minimum depth as the ship's hull was resting at 57m (187ft) on a bed of sand. My dive log tells me my max was 47.7m (the deepest I've ever been). Because of this depth, those of us going down with regular tanks (as opposed to the two technical divers going down with "trimix"), would have to do a series of decompression stops (to eliminate residual nitrogen in the body). Between that and the fact that at greater depth you use up more air, we had to each take along an extra tank for safety!

Yeah, I know. Looks awkward, doesn't it? Even more so rolling back over the side of the boat and holding it steady so it wouldn't hit me in the face! :p

Once in the water it was simply a mater of following the buoy line down, down, down. With the unpleasant surprise of discovering a piece of fishing line with a hook had twisted itself around the rope and was still actively fishing! :o(

DON'T abandon your fishing gear people!!! >:(

A fishy taste of things to come...

I don't know how long it will take me to prepare the post (takes a while to edit the photos and video footage)... but I wanted to give you guys an aperçu of something special I'm putting together for you! ;o)

Thing is... I have another dive post I wanted to do first (and should have already done! the photos are finally all edited), so I don't know whether to have this skip ahead or do things in order! One of them is about a WWI wreck off the coast of Alicante... I'll let you guys decide! 

Wreck first?

 or night-time first? ;o)

In the Inky Darkness

I wish I had the words, a talent for poetry, then perhaps I could find a way to convey the exquisite delight of this evening's outing...

It involved me being out on a moonless night.
Under about 15m (50ft) of nice warm water (27ºC ~ 80ºF).
The only light, that which shone from our torches.
8 beams of light illuminating a swath of seagrasses, then darkness.
Shining under a rock, looking for life, and finding it!
An octopus halfway out of its den, can't quite decide whether to venture forward to hunt, or retreat from the intrusive lights.
The filament arms of a Bonellia inch across a rockface, searching for food.
The vast armies of sea cucumbers slowly make their way across the seabed, or a rockface, filtering their supper.
A brittlestar lets itself fall to the ground from a rock, then starts climbing up another.
A few fish can be spotted here and there under the overhanging rocks, trying to sleep.
Others do so by resting on top of the rocks.
Squeal of delight upon seeing a squishy, blotchy purple Aplysia, a sea hare! Rhinophores aimed forward, moving around as if searching. And next to it two others! More cross the paths of our lights over the next 40 minutes, about a dozen in total. 2-3 the size of my hand, the others up to 30cm (1ft)! Two caught in a compromising position (they're lucky I don't have the equipment for nighttime photography!). One elegantly swimming in the water column. A couple more moving slowly along over the rocks, grazing on the seaweed.
And then finally another little octopus, but this one out wandering on the top of a huge boulder. Tentacles spreading forward, then contracting to bring the body closer in. Shying away from the light, but there's no place to hide.
And then it's time to head back up to the surface, slowly yet surely.
A safety stop at 5m, holding on the anchor line, with the itty-bitty zooplankton flicking by in the water column, so dense it's as if your hand were in a mini-shrimpy soup!
We clear the water's calm surface, and the stars fill the heavens above.
Divine!

And now it's time for bed.

Underwater Clean Up in Santa Pola

Well that was interesting! And EXHAUSTING!!! A couple of hours in the sun, on the boat or in the water, are always tiring. Add the trash collecting and no wonder I'm so dead!

I got up at very early o'clock this morning, and zipped along the coast to the other end of the Alicante Bay to Santa Pola, to join in the 1st annual clean up organised by ANTHIAS, the dive club I've been going out with this summer, for "Clean Up Your World Day". 10 conscientious divers answered the call. We got our equipment ready as quickly as possible, piled it in the boat, and got the general instructions for the day's work.

 Our target:

the breakwater protecting Santa Pola's harbour, favourite haunt of local amateur fishermen.

The A-Team gets geared up to start on the first section:

They're off!

Those of us on the boat (B-Team) watch them bobbing up and down between the seabed and the surface, while the fishermen look on wondering what these crazy people are up to.

While filling up several trash bags with cans, juice boxes, plastic bags (by far the big winner), fishing lines, our friends occasionally bring us back some of the most random objects, way to big to fit in a bag!

abandoned fishing gear never really stops fishing! :s

du-dun, du-dun... (cue Jaws theme)

it was a plastic barnacle-covered table top!

would anyone like half a chair?

Halfway down the line we switch places. A comes up for some sun, B jumps in the water!

Main problem with this clean up? Crappy visibility!!!

Can't see much, can you? The bottom is all silt, so it finds itself easily in suspension in the water column (one good kick with the flippers and you're blind!). You have to get really close to things to be able to see them at all...

Quite disturbing!!!

Even looking up it's hard to make out the boat!

While we were doing our watery part, a few others worked along the rocks, braving the wrath of the fishermen who didn't like being interrupted, but who couldn't be bothered to clean up after themselves! grrrr....

I don't know what the final tally is, but we brought up a lot of shit! Hopefully next year more people will join in.

And now I'm turning in early... have to get up at bloody early o'clock again to go hiking! I must be crazy... :p

Time to Clean Up The World

Did you know that the 3rd weekend in September is "Clean Up The World" weekend? In other words... last weekend and we just missed it! Or did we? Did any of you know about it?

Anthias, the dive club I've been going out with this summer sure did! They're combining that with Project Aware's Dive Against Debris programme, and they've organised a Mediterranean clean-up day for tomorrow! 

Project Aware's objectives:

"Dive Against Debris combines underwater cleanups with critical data collection that helps address marine debris problems at their source. The data we collect will present a compelling 360-degree view of debris issues and will help initiate policy change to prevent debris in the future."

"If we’re going to help change waste management policies, we need underwater data that paints a true picture of debris issues beneath the surface. We hope you - the dive leaders, volunteers and citizen scientists - will join a growing movement of scuba divers in 180 countries collecting and reporting the underwater trash you find to help protect the ocean against the onslaught of marine debris."

Marine debris is basically our everyday trash that ends up floating around or sinking in the oceans. Don't think it's just the responsibility of coastal dwellers! Trash travels over land (think of how far the wind can blow stuff!), down rivers and storm drains... you've heard of the water cycle, right? It all ends up back in the ocean! And once there it can drift anywhere around the world because it's really all just one big ocean thanks to the massive oceanic currents. This ends up being a problem for many animals (particularly sea birds, turtles...) who confuse the rubbish for food, for certain delicate environments (like coral reefs) and even humans who find their favourite once pristine beaches just covered in the trash the tide washed in! 

Who better than divers to appreciate this problem? We spend as many hours as we can lost in the beauty and wonders of the underwater world, and although we may on occasion make a joke out of it ('cause we usually have a great sense of humor!),

Don't Drink and Dive kids!

it saddens us to see things like this in the sea:

plastic bag floating beneath the sea's surface

This isn't  a problem that's going to be solved (or even cleaned up) with just one day's actions. It's going to take regular work and a daily effort from all of us to keep our oceans and planet clean! I'm going to be pitching in tomorrow, why don't you see if you can do something about it this weekend too? It's never too late to start, right? ;o)

And for the divers out there, here's a great Self-Study guide for collecting (and reporting) trash on your own while you're out diving. ;o)

Let's test this underwater housing

I went on another dive last Friday night and among the many underwater wonders (including another cuttlefish and what I'd swear is the same octopus as 2 weeks ago, lol!) I saw one of these:

Sea hare over a Posidonia oceanica bed. Image taken from IUCN website.

A SEA HARE!!! Aplysia for scientifically minded folk. A.k.a. a sea slug. My first ever (I'd only seen it in photos for animal physiology class, popular for neuroscience research). And man was it BIG! Easily 20 cm, just flapping around over the rocks before it decided it had enough of being in the spotlight (several flashlights shining on it) and went and hid beneath the rocks.

I was both in awe, enjoying the magical moment, and wishing I had my camera with me!!! I know, I know... no point taking it on a night dive if I don't have super-duper external spots (like the guy I dove with 2 weeks ago), but I could have gotten a semi-decent shot with all those lights shining on him. Oh well. Next time! ;o)

Underwater photography involves a bit more care and preparation than photography on dry land. For one thing you need to encase your camera in some sort of housing to keep it nice and dry when everything around you is liquid.  Something like this:

Come Dive With Me... and tickle a cuttlefish!

I think anybody's who's been following this crazy blog will have noticed by now that I have a few obsessions... certain subjects which manage to find their way into new posts on a somewhat regular basis (well, inasmuch as can be considered regular given my sporadic posting this past year). And I think you'd agree the seas and oceans (and their inhabitants) are one of them! ;o)

There are very few times when I feel as good as I do when under 20m of seawater. I'm in a weightless bubble. The outside world (and all its problems, stress etc.) forgotten. It's just me and the sea. And the fish. And the sponges. And the algae. And... and... and...well and sometimes the other divers. :p I'm so thankful I finally took the plunge and started scuba diving my last year in college. It's brought me one fabulous experience after another!

I'm really happy 'cause this year I've managed to get quite a few dives in, and it feels GOOD! Particularly special have been the two night dives I've done, the second of which was last Wednesday night.

Diving at night is a totally different experience from during the day. You feel like you're in an even more alien environment, which you only discover in the patches of light that your torch shines on. Everything else is pitch black. It can be quite intimidating! (beginner divers aren't allowed to do these dives). Why add the extra challenge to an already risky sport? Why ensure you won't get to bed until 1-2 am on a weeknight? (dive clubs rarely do these on weekends because it would be too hard for them to work the next day, Sat and Sun are their busiest dive days) Because you get to see many different critters who don't come out during the day! So many marine animals are nocturnal, all we usually see them do is snooze in a hole. If we see them at all. At night you can come across an octopus wandering around the sea bed looking for a meal (we saw a huge one but still in the hole, plus lots of empty holes!). Ditto the moray eels looking to munch on someone else's leftovers. If you turn your flashlight off for a moment and swish the water in front of your face you'll see stars! Thousands of tiny bioluminescent plankton activate and you realise you're surrounded by a microscopic world.

getting ready to head out for a dive!

Last Wednesday a friend and I joined a club we've discovered recently in Santa Pola (on the other side of the Bay, about a 1/2h drive) for a night dive in the waters just outside the marine island reserve of Tabarca (you need special permits to dive in Tabarca). The sea bottom was a lucious Posidonia oceanica prairie (I wrote about the importance of this habitat for World Oceans Day a year ago). The whole place was like an invitation to lie down in it for a comfy nap!

Posidonia meadow in a nearby location during the day

We swam through the grass, peaking through fronds looking for critters who might be wandering about. We examined the surfaces of huge rocks in the middle of these prairies. We spent an hour down there. An hour that seemed to fly by so fast. I wished we could have stayed longer! But my dive buddy was on her reserve air so safety dictates heading up to the boat. Waiting for the others at the surface has its own rewards: the wetsuits make floating the easiest thing in the world, and floating at night gazing up at the stars and the Milky Way? Priceless!

checking my depth gage for the security stop (at 5m) on the way up

Yet by far my favourite moment of the night was when we discovered a cuttlefish just hovering above the Posidonia. Slowly moving to and for, its mantle fluttering and its tentacles twirling about. It poked two of those tentacles above its head pointed at us, as if warning us away. And yet it wasn't scared. It let us get so close I was able to tickle it! Pretty large fellah, about 30 cm. I tried not to think about eating sepia a la plancha! yummm :p

Sepia officinalis, cuttlefish similar -just a bit smaller- to the one I saw

All these night-time photos I've included were taken by another of the divers who shared them on the dive club's Facebook page and was kind enough to let me share them with you here. He had this awesome set-up, I was totally jealous! But then you're not as carefree when you're loaded with camera gear and spots. You're more focused on the small zone you're searching for something to photograph, instead of taking in the bigger picture. And yet I totally get the allure... I'm too much in love with photography to not be! Here are a few more things he captured:

hermit crab peaking out from his shell

a small rockfish of some kind, must have seen a dozen of these that night!

a polychaete or plume worm, eats suspended organic matter it filters from the water

I just got a new compact camera and underwater housing for my birthday (courtesy of my parents, my sister, my aunt and myself), so I plan on sharing many more underwater adventures with you as they happen! I'll have to re-activate my underwater photography instincts (not that they were that great to begin with), spend time learning how to operate all the manual settings on the camera (the "underwater" mode is really only good at compensating the light and colour differences in the first ten metres), learn how to deal with RAW and then clear up space on my computer to process the photos and videos! ouf! Lots of work ahead. An example is that Posidonia meadow in the first photo (taken 2 weeks ago).

Is anyone interested in more dive stories?

Benidorm Island - Under!

Welcome back to Benidorm Island!


So, the outing you joined me on yesterday (birding) was pretty intensive... what with the sun beating down, heat and stink in the caves, scrambling up and down the island on hands and knees... whew! I'm tired and sweaty just thinking about it! :p

Time for something a bit more refreshing, don't you think? ;o)


Let's see what's UNDER the island! Two weeks ago my sister and I hopped on a boat in Villajoyosa (yes, with a dive club, AliSub if you're ever in the neighbourhood, great club!) and jumped into the water at the southern point of Benidorm Island known as Punta Garbí (N.B.: all these underwater pics were taken by my sister Gabby -except for a couple I took but I don't remember exactly which ones- she also did all the editing in photoshop. If some look a bit fuzzy around the edges that's because some humidity in the casing caused the lens to fog up a bit due to the temperature difference. There was also a flash problem as she lost her flash diffuser a while back and apparently hasn't found anyplace to sell her just that little piece of plastic!)

Let's start by looking down in here:


a moray eel! O.k., I know, it's just a tail, but trust me on this one! I wouldn't put such a oops! shot in here, except that was the only moray we saw and since they're (usually) such a frequent visitor in Benidorm dives I couldn't illustrate this without one! :p

Ahhh, this fellah isn't too afraid to show himself! And not much later we saw 2 more of his cousins...


Methinks this is red coral... (but not sure) or a cousin.


Used to be abundant in the Mediterranean, but as it's been exploited since the Romans well.... not much is left!

This will give you an idea of the route we followed on this (50') dive:

We dove straight down to the seabed from the boat (~20m) and spent about 20' exploring down there among the algae and boulders, looking for octopi, morays etc.


Then we got closer to the wall (that goes on up to the platform around the island where people go snorkling)


and spent quite a bit of time examing little sections here and there, admiring starfish,


anemonies,


sponges, little fish nibbling on algae... you name it! No scorpionfish (Scorpaena scrofus) unfortunately this time (a Mediterranean delicacy, key ingredient to boullabaisse).

My! I love looking up at the surface:


Sometimes you can see the silhouette of a barracuda among the schooling fish, not this time, This was just a big school of one of the most abundant fish in the region:


the damselfish Chromis chromis (in Spanish = Castañuela, in French Castagnole). Want to know a little secret about this fellah? He changes colours!!! Well, at least from chocolate brown to chestnut brown, when scared or caught in a fishing net (not recommended, not good for food!). It's a defense mechanism. Say you're part of a damselfish school, and the guy next to you switches colour... you do quickly the same to pass along the danger message to the rest of of the school (think domino effect) and then everyone drops to the seabed to hide among the algae .

Here he is again in a little hollow among the rocks:


and he found some friends! Those red fish with the big eyes are Apogon imberbis, you'll only ever see them hiding in "grottos" like that. More coral on the bottom there. And if you look at the right hand side, in the middle you'll see a red tunicate. It's a barrel-shaped invertebrate with two tube-like siphons on its end to filter water.

Further along the wall we were lucky enough to catch a shot of this polychaete, a tube worm:

If you have good eyes you can spot quite a few of them while diving (but smaller). Only thing is they're very shy so if they sense a difference in the current (like you swimming next to them) they'll "swoosh" back into they're tube and the diver behind you will only see and empty tube sticking out.


I believe this guy is a Sargo, or white seabream (Diplodus sargus). One of the medium-to-large fish you see quite frequently around here.


And here's another anemone! I can't remember if it was truly black or if the colour is just the result of our flash problems.


Did you notice the empty polychaete tube in the upper left-hand corner? ;o)

Hmmm... our air supply seems to be nearing the reserve point! Time to go up a bit more, closer to the sunlight and play around on the platform a bit...

So up along this wall we go...


...stopping to admire the sea urchins


When we reach one part of the platform (about 7-10m) we're greeted by schools of salpas (Sarpa salpa), a fish we're more used to seeing around the seagrass beds since they're basically little underwater cows who spend their time munching on those plants! :p


Hmmm... my sister thinks this is a good spot to stop for a drink...


Oh my! That beer must have been "heavy" and gone to her head!

(no, I didn't turn the photo up-side down!)

Look at us, we're goofy (regular crazyness, not narcosis! lol!)!


Ok, time to head up further into the light.


Aha! A male wrasse (Spanish = doncella, French = girelle, Coris julis):


How can I tell it's a male (you usually can't with fish unless you dissect them)? Well in this photo below there are 2 females (ignore the green guy for now), can you see the difference?


Want another fishy story? Wrasses live in harems, and are hermaphrodites! If that male dies, one of "his" females will go hide in the sand for a few days, and when she comes out, SHE will be a HE! :p Who says sex-changes aren't Natural? (although to be honest these guys were born with both sets of equipment, the dominance of one over the other is all hormonal, they almost all start out at sexual maturity as females, and not all of them will get the chance to become males.)

Ok, remember that green guy above I told you to ignore? Well you can stop ignoring him now! He's a rainbow wrasse (fredi or doncella in Spanish, girelle paon in French; Thalassoma pavo). And he's a sign of global warming! Here's a female:


Global warming I said? Well these colourful guys are much more typical of the warmer waters along the north African Mediterreanean coast... and they've been slowly making their way north and starting to breed along Spanish and Italian coasts. Now fish are rather picky when it comes to temperature... so if they feel comfortable enough to breed around here it's because it's gotten warm enough.


Problem is... they've kind of been kicking out the regular wrasses (they share the same habitat) so we've been seeing some ecological shifts... Oh well, nothing much we can do to stop underwater "invaders" but at least they're pretty, right? :p

Hmmm... you know one thing I like about being in shallower waters? There's less absorption in the light spectrum and you can see my flaming red hair! lol!


So, you had enough with those pictures? Or would you like to add in some movement and sound? Ok, ok... here you go!

This first one starts with a school of damselfish and a lone white seabream, then finished peering at an anemone in the rocks, surrounded by baby damselfish (little bright blue fishies).



And I'll say goodbye with this one, in which I wanted my sister to catch a shot of that elusive male rainbow wrasse (the green guy)!



Hope you enjoyed the visit and are feeling refreshed! I must say though, this isn't the nicest place on the island to dive. Los Arcos or La Llosa are MUCH better! But dive sites are often chosen based on the weather conditions... and it was a bit choppy out there (in fact they cancelled their afternoon dives) and it was deemed safer as close to the island as possible.

For those interested in dive specs, we went down to 21m max, spent a total of 50' in the water (yay!) just hitting the reserve of our 12l air tanks; were wearing 5mm wetsuits, seawater temperature was 27ºC at the surface, dropped to 24ºC around 17m. Visibility was ok, but you could tell the waters were a bit churned up as there was quite a bit of particulate matter floating around (visibility is much better here in winter).