What do sharks and turkeys have in common?

This past Thursday was the first time in my life that I didn't spend Thanksgiving with family. In college, I always found my way home. After graduation, I either made the trek down to my parents in North Carolina, or I spent the holiday with my sister at my cousins house. Working in Guam made seeing my family impossible this year. That doesn't mean I didn't make the best of it though.

I started out the day as I have started out every day off from work - with some scuba diving. My first dive of the day was at Gab Gab 2. It gets it's name from the beach on the Naval Base - Gab Gab Beach. Gab Gab 1 is the first reef line, then Gab Gab 2 is the second one in about 40-120 feet of water.

Giant Trevally looking for food

At Gab Gab 2, a tourist company sets up feeding stations where they put tiny bits of squid in upside down buckets. This attracts some BIG fish - Giant Trevally and Orbicular Batfish. The Giant Trevally go crazy for the food and keep smacking the bucket trying to get a meal.

Nurse Shark

The squid attracts one more type of animal - nurse sharks. These are mostly harmless sharks, but they can still get pretty big. We saw maybe about a half dozen of them - although never more than two at a time, so maybe they were all the same ones. I got within 3 feet of one at one point.










The sharks were more scared of us than we were of them. It was hard to get close enough to get a decent picture since they'd swim away.

This guy was a little more bold. He swam right at me and only got scared about 3 feet away.

We found a really cool Rose Bubble Tip Anemone that was hosting a few Clownfish. This thing was absolutely beautiful. I got some halfway decent pictures, but they could've been better - I got some backscatter, unfortunately.








Our second dive of the day was to Gab Gab 1. I hit my deepest dive ever, going down to 87 feet - although that record would only stand for about 24 hours. We found a giant wall of anemones. It was incredible - I've never seen so many in one place before. The water was a bit cloudy, so unfortunately it messed up most of my pictures with backscatter. A couple highlights are below, but you can find all the pictures from Gab Gab 2 and Gab Gab 1 on my Picasa.

Later that day, it got to be the most important part of the day: Turkey time. One of my co-workers, Chris, who relocated to Guam for this project had won a frozen turkey in a Halloween costume contest. That spurred him and his fiancée, Kelli, to put on a full Thanksgiving dinner for us, our other relocated co-worker (Matt), and a couple of their Japanese friends. Everything came out absolutely amazing. Matt and I had a competition for eating the mashed potatoes. I won. Mashed potatoes are my domain and you do not challenge me.

As you can see, we had quite the spread. Kelli is finishing off the gravy while I'm anxiously awaiting digging in to the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes (not pictured), green bean casserole, and biscuits. There was obviously pumpkin pie to finish the meal.

This is my plate of food. What you're witnessing here is the perfect plate. Bold statement, I know, but just look how the foods all just work together. The turkey has the perfect amount of gravy, just drizzled about. The generous helping of mashed potatoes acts as a barrier between the green bean casserole and the stuffing. Everyone knows those can't touch. And the biscuit just adds that splash of golden brown coloration that every Thanksgiving plate must have.

Washed out in blue

Photography above water is hard. Why did I think underwater would be really easy to get great pictures? For the most part, I understand photography, shutter speeds, apertures, focal lengths, depth of field, and how ISO values affect a picture. I get how using an external strobe reduces "backscatter" underwater and how to position the strobe to prevent hotspots and prevent over or under exposure. I also understand general principles of photo composition - especially after reading so much about underwater photography. Putting all these theories into place though... wow. Forget that I'm using a simple point and shoot camera and it's impossible or incredibly difficult to adjust many of these settings to where they need to be.

One of the biggest issues you face underwater is the dilution of colors. First, a quick lesson in colors and light. The visible spectrum of natural light is made up of various shades of Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo (some just consider this the border between Blue and Violet), and Violet. Red is the lowest energy and Violet is the highest energy. The color you perceive an object to be is the color of light that is reflected off the object. A red apple absorbs all colors except red. Red is reflected off the apple and gives it that nice delicious coloration. A black object does not reflect ANY color back to the eye, and a white object reflects ALL colors back to the eye. Now here's how this all relates to photography: Water absorbs light very quickly, and the deeper you go, the faster you lose the lower energy colors. Red is absorbed very quickly, and is no longer a visible color by about 15 feet. At 25 feet, Orange is gone, and by around 45 feet, you lose yellow. This is why so many underwater pictures you see are heavily tinted in a blue green. To make matters worse, those distances are an additive of both depth and distance. If the object is 25 feet deep and you're 15 feet away, the light has to travel 40 feet underwater to get to your eye. That's a lot of color loss very quickly.

In comes the external strobe. This is better than the built in flash of a camera for two reasons. One, it's more powerful. Two, since it is not directly next to the lens and since it can be angled in all sorts of ways, you can eliminate backscatter. Backscatter is those little particles that fly through the water. If you the light from the camera (strobe) isn't angled properly, they'll light up like a Christmas tree (see picture 2 below).

But beyond the composition, camera, and lighting issues, there's the biggest one of all to contend with underwater - and it has nothing to do with the actual picture itself. Buoyancy. When you're diving, you usually wear weights so that you sink. You'll put air into your buoyancy control device (BCD) so that you can stay at one depth in the water. So first you need to master that so you can try to stay still while taking the picture. The other problem is breathing. When you breathe in, you expand your lungs which then expands your body.You now weigh the same as before, but you're displacing more water and you're going to start floating to the surface. When you exhale completely, you'll start sinking again. You have to find that sweet spot in your breath where you're completely neutrally buoyant and you can actually stay still. Oh, and if there's a current underwater (which there is 99% of the time), you're screwed.

Picture 1. Fish Butt

My first ever picture underwater... the dreaded Fish Butt. This is a major composition no no. Who wants to see a picture of a fish's ass?

Picture 2. Backscatter

Here's a prime example of backscatter. On this day, there was a particularly high level of floating particles which made it all that much more difficult to avoid the backscatter. Paired up with it being my first time shooting underwater... my pictures were pretty much screwed.

Picture 3. Alien Invasion!

This dive was at Fish Eye Marine Park. There is an underwater observatory that lets people stay dry and see the reef. There is also reef "tours" that allow Japanese tourists to walk around the reef in these big helmets. I think they look like space people if you ask me.

Picture 4. If you look at it full size, it looks worse!

My macro photography clearly needs some work. The light exposure was good, but the focus sure does leave something to be desired. I have no idea why the macro mode on my camera doesn't seem to work well. It's supposed to be able to focus as close as around an inch or two.

Picture 5b. Strobe on low power

The next two pictures will show you the difference a strobe can make. This one is with the strobe at it's lowest setting. Look at how washed out and blue-green everything looks (yeah, the sea star is supposed to be blue).

Picture 5b. Strobe on high power

Now look at the difference turning up the strobe. Unfortunately, I probably turned it up one or two notches too high, or could have angled it a bit better. I've got a couple overexposed hot spots where the flash made things too bright. Notice how much more color you see in the photograph though, and how the sand doesn't look blue.

That's about enough for a photography lesson from someone who doesn't really know what he's talking about anyway. Now I'll just post up some other interesting pictures from my dives this past weekend. If you want to see all my diving pictures, just go here: https://picasaweb.google.com/114228026881935585471 - For now, I'll post ALL my pictures - Good, bad, and ugly. Out of focus and beautifully composed. That is until I burn through the free storage space Google gives me. That's likely to happen soon too, considering I've used half of it in 3.5 dives worth of pictures.

Picture 6. An attempt at being artistic

Picture 7. A sunken Amtrac (Amphibious Assault Vehicle from WWII)

Picture 8. Me with said Amtrac

Picture 9. Interesting rock formation

Picture 10. If only the focus was more crisp, this would've been an AWESOME picture

Picture 11. Those aren't puddles you see. This is actually underwater. I'm under a rock, and those are air pockets stuck to the rock from the air we were exhaling.

Picture 12. Fish hiding in and around a coral formation

Next we're going to hit probably the coolest section of pictures I took all day. I was able to swim right alongside a sea turtle and I got some pretty great pictures. Check all of them out on my picture website.

Picture 13. Sea Turtle

Picture 14. Sea Turtle

Picture 15. Sea Turtle

Picture 16. Sea Turtle - probably the best picture I got. Almost looks professional. Too bad its right front leg is blocking its face a little bit.

Picture 17. Sea Turtle

Picture 18. Tiger Tail Sea Cucumber. This thing looks scary. I wish I got better strobe coverage on it though.

Remember, you can see all my other diving pictures here: https://picasaweb.google.com/114228026881935585471

A new can of worms

Well the posts have not be nearly as frequent as I was expecting them to be when I made this blog. Thanks 16 hour work days! I have a bit of downtime today, so I'll post up again. This time, it'll be about my Scuba Diving experience.

On my last time to Guam, I got scuba certified. I was told the diving out here was great, and I had to try it. My initial reaction was "No way!" Why spend all the time underwater looking at fish when I could easily spend it on a boat CATCHING fish? Besides - why would I want to go somewhere that I can't breath without a special apparatus? That just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

The more I was out here, the more I heard how great the diving is on Guam and how much fun it is. "Yeah, fun alright. Fun for you. I'm staying dry." A little bit of perceived claustrophobia, a little bit of a fear of the unknown, and that whole I-don't-have-gills-and-can't-breathe-water thing was keeping me away, and there was no changing my mind. That is until I kept hearing how cool it is. And until a pretty girl came along (yeah, that's you, Susanna) and told me I should do it so we can go diving together. Next thing I know, I'm signed up for PADI's Open Water certification.

The classroom courses were... interesting. I'm not sure if they increased or decreased my level of fear. So much to remember! Don't ever hold your breath? But that's a natural instinct when I'm underwater! What if my regulator stops working? What if I run out of air? What if I ascend too quickly? What if a school of man-eating sharks decide I look like a tasty morsel? So many things to go wrong. Well, I've gotten this far. I'm not backing out now.

So now it's time for my first confined water dive as part of the class. I was expecting this to be the pool, but no - they're throwing us out in the deep end (literally) and we're going into the harbor. I get all suited up and snorkel our way out to the drop zone. OK, I'm starting to get into this. I always have loved snorkeling. But then it comes time to actually make our descent. The shore doesn't seem to far away, so maybe I can book it back to dry land before anyone notices... Or maybe that's not realistic and I just need to suck it up. I put the regulator in my mouth and take a few dry air practice breaths to make sure my tank actually has air in it. You just never know with these tricky Guamanians. I let all the air out of my buoyancy control device and start sinking. The water hits my chin and then I get to the scariest part of the dive - the moment my mouth goes underwater and I have to breath. I kept my eyes above water still so I knew there would be a quick exit if things went disastrously and I inhaled air. Little did I know this first breath would be the intro to my new most favorite hobby in the world.

The sheer anxiety I experienced in that very first breath underwater was unreal. Adrenaline shot through my body and my heart rate would've made a drum roll sound slow. I must have taken 10 breaths per second - it's amazing I had any air left for the skills we had to practice. By now, my entire body is underwater, and lo and behold, I can actually breathe! My body can actually function under water! A massive calming overcame me as I took in this new world that I have never really seen before now. All my fears were gone and replaced with awe and excitement. This is going to be a fun stay in Guam.

The skills practice went on and we mixed it up with actually going around and exploring the reef and looking at things. This was so cool! I was swimming right with all the fish! Some of the fish I used to keep (or attempt to keep) in my aquarium were even hanging out right here, in the wild rather than caged in by glass. The further we got into the course, the more I was loving it. We saw everything from coral to small reef fish to sea turtles. After one weekend, I became a fully certified PADI Open Water diver. On the final piece of the my course fee - a bonus boat dive - I got to see the most exciting thing yet. A shark! I will admit, the whole time I thought about diving, I was still a little fearful of running into a shark. Once again, the fears completely subsided as soon as the Black Tip Reef Shark swam into view. I wanted to see more sharks! No more were around though. I'd have to be satisfied with seeing the Moral Eels and Barracudas.

Since being certified, I haven't missed a single day of diving that I've had off from work while I've been on the island. The exploration of underwater would have to continue in less structured environments. Luckily, the local dive shop, Micronesia Dive Association, runs free shore dives twice a day on the weekends. My wallet thanks them thoroughly.

I arrived back on island just before midnight last night (Friday night on Guam), and of course I was back in the water on Saturday for my next dive. This time, I was armed with a new toy - an underwater camera. I'll post more about that next time though. I don't want to overwhelm you with everything all at once.