Clownfish of the day: OK, one more clownfish to share. This time we have tomato clownfish in the beautiful reefs of Apo Island. Wide angle photography is not my specialty, but I really like this reef scene with the clownfish moving through the huge anemone arcing across the surface, giant clam in the foreground, and soft corals in the background.
Picture of the day: You all seemed to enjoy the Ocellaris clownfish, so I figured I would share another anemonefish! This beauty is a Clark's Anemonefish, differentiated by the neon blue highlights.
Picture of the day: An ocellaris clownfish dancing among the tentacles of its anemone host. These fish were everywhere in Dumaguete, Philippines but they are in constant motion, so they are not easy to capture.
My dry suit recently sprung a small leak in the wrist seal. I decided to do my own wrist seal replacement, so I wrote up a blog post about it. This isn't a full tutorial of how to do it - I'll leave that to the pros. This is more meant as a tips and tricks/overview of the process to help others decide if they want to do it themselves.
I've put 2 cold water dives on the new seal and it works great!
Picture of the day: Following up on yesterday's picture of the Jellyfish Nebula, I have a picture of a Lion's Mane Jellyfish. This species can get very large, but this one was small.
Just published a blog post about how to replace your fiber optic cables on your underwater photography rig on the cheap! Underwater photography is expensive, so let's save a few bucks where we can. I have been shooting with these cables for awhile and they are very reliable.
I haven't quite landed on what platform I want to use for my blog, but here's a new post giving a rundown of my underwater photography gear! Happy to chat about it and answer any questions - drop a comment if you've got one: https://blog.briangweber.com/2024-05-01-underwater-photo-rig/
We finally got another break in the weather and jumped on it. Surface conditions were great with small waves and comfortable air temperatures, but once we got down, viz was just OK and there was significant surge. Maybe the weather is going to turn soon? Maybe? Please?
I presented some photos at our local Photo Society meeting last week! The theme was The Philippines, so we had several presenters show images from different places around the country.
The link starts off at the beginning of my presentation, but the other presenters also showed some awesome photos and techniques so definitely check out the rest of the video too. Enjoy!
I found this medium-sized octopus on a night dive. It was perched on a piece of coral and I wasn't able to immediately recognize what I was looking at. After a moment in the spotlight, the octopus dropped down to the reef and began to move around. After a few minutes, it seemed to adjust to us and go back to hunting. Yay octos!
It's always disappointing to see invasive lionfish on Caribbean dive sites, as they devour the local populations and have few predators. That said, they are visually interesting, with so many different colors and textures warning predators about the venomous spines.
I had never seen this type of anemone before our dive guide pointed it out on a dive in Saba. It is simply called a Branching Anemone and it was spread out over a large area on the surface of some coral. It's always fun seeing a new species, especially when they are so pretty.
I've seen Queen Angelfish on every trip to the Caribbean, but this is my best picture to date. They are quite large and have an amazing collection of colors and patterns. Sometimes they follow feeding turtles around and munch on whatever the turtle stirs up that doesn't make it into its mouth.
I was taking a picture of a turtle scratching on a rock when our dive guide came over to me and made some very emphatic hand signals at me and motioned for me to follow. When we arrived, I figured out what his hand signals meant - this pair of colorful lettuce were mating! The photo was tricky to capture because they were in a cut between the rocks with quite a bit of surge.
Yellowhead jawfish are one of my favorite creatures to photograph, but they take a lot of patience. They are often quite cautious and will retreat into their burrows, but if you give them some space and remain calm they will sometimes come out and take a look.
Soapfish are nocturnal and during the daytime can often be seen motionless under rocks. The first time I saw one, I thought it was dead! At night, they are totally different moving quickly through the reef looking for snacks.
Flamingo Tongues (the name of this snail) are fun to photograph and look at, but they are a menace to soft corals, secreting chemicals to dissolve the coral so they can digest it. They often leave a trail of destruction behind them as in this image. The snail is moving upward to devour more polyps.
Peacock flounders are a colorful variety of flounder found all over the Caribbean, particularly in sandy areas. They are left-eyed flounders, meaning their right eye moved over to the left side of their body. When flounders hatch, their eyes are on opposite sides like any other fish, but as they mature, they shift. Nature is wild!