Critters on Richelieu Rock

 Macro, Ocean diving, Reef diving  No Responses »
Jul 222013
 
Critters on Richelieu Rock

About the site After realising last week that I hadn’t talked about diving Richelieu Rock aboard the MV Giamani, I shared a couple of my favourite wide angle shots from the dive with you. And the view across the dive site was pretty spectacular. Beyond the view in great vis I really enjoyed was the two dives I did with my macro lens, because every crevice I looked into, a critter was looking back out at me. Richelieu is covered in critters from lionfish to clownfish, dancing shrimp to decorator crabs, with spotfaced, honeycomb and white-eyed moray eels jostling for position. About the dive The abundance of photogenic critters presented a bit of a dilemma. Instead of being able to focus on getting [read more…]

Richelieu Rock, Thailand

 Ocean diving, Reef diving  1 Response »
Jul 082013
 
Richelieu Rock, Thailand

About the dive site I had a very relaxed two days last weekend, and decided to go for a late afternoon Sunday dive down at Mornington Pier. This turned out to be a terrible idea as I  filled the housing with seawater in my first ever camera flood. After getting assessments done for repairs and replacements, the whole lot is now with my insurance company. I’m very hopeful of being back in the water with camera in hand in another week or two, but it means I didn’t take any underwater shots over the weekend. So I was having a look back through my archive and discovered despite talking about the macro shots and the wreck shots from my Thailand [read more…]

Wreck of the Thai Muang

 Ocean diving, Wrecks  No Responses »
Feb 182013
 
Wreck of the Thai Muang

About the wreck Continuing on from last week’s post about the Thai wrecks we dived from the MV Giamani over Christmas, here’s some shots from the next shipwreck on the schedule, the Muang Thai. Before tourism came along much of Phuket’s economy was based on dredging for seabed tin. As the basis of people’s livelihood’s changed the old tin boats were run and used until they sunk of their own accord. There’s a few old tin dredges on the seabed up and down the Thai coast and if they’re all covered with as much life as the Muang Thai they’d be excellent dives. About the dive I suffered from pre-dive indecision on whether to go with my wide angle or [read more…]

Fish around the wreck of the MV Sea Chart

 Ocean diving, Wrecks  1 Response »
Feb 112013
 
Fish around the wreck of the MV Sea Chart

About the site For all this talking about macro shots and fish, and cave diving and dry caving recently, I’ve been a little light on for wrecks. We did some brilliant wreck dives at the end of our stay on the MV Giamani as we headed back down the coast towards Phuket. All three vessels were in “terrible vis” for Thailand – which is to say it was comparable to average to good Melbourne vis, and there were a hell of a lot more fish. The first wreck dive was the MV Sea Chart. The Sea Chart was running from Myanmar around and down to Vietnam with a load of illegally logged teak when she ran into some bad weather about [read more…]

Tiny fish in Thailand

 Ocean diving, Reef diving  1 Response »
Jan 142013
 
Tiny fish in Thailand

About the dive This shot was taken during a liveaboard trip on the MV Giamani – you can see the slideshow of images from the trip in last week’s update. I was excited to be heading off to the tropics, and very excited to get in the water with my new toy, a Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens. While it did seem ironic to be swimming around in 40m vis surrounded by great scenery, I spent my first ever dives actively hunting for tiny things. About the critter I have no idea what fish this is. Big stuff has previously been my forte and I can identify weedy seadragons and green turtles at 40 paces. I suspect this is something [read more…]

Diving the Similan Islands from the MV Giamani

 Ocean diving, Reef diving  1 Response »
Jan 072013
 

[fsg_gallery id=”1″] Instead of showcasing just two images this week, I thought I’d share my curated selection from last week’s trip to Thailand with you. Over the course of six days I did 22 dives as we sailed north and west from Phuket to the Similan and Surin Islands on board the MV Giamani. The water was warm, the vis was great, the fish were abundant, and the liveaboard routine of dive-eat-sleep-repeat was excellent. Ricardo’s tolerance of photographers and their speed underwater (slooooow) was fantastic and much appreciated. I was able to get some good experimentation in with my new macro lens, so I’ll be able to share some of my discoveries of very small marine life with you. There [read more…]