Category Archives: In The Water

Chained salp

Yesterday, when I was out snorkeling, I was spotted this entity hanging in the water. When I first saw it, I thought it might be a pyrosoma. I was lucky enough to see one of those last year, which I posted about here. Pyrosoma are colonies of many individual tunicates and this new sighting looked somewhat similar. But where that pyrosoma looked like a gelatinous tube with little purple dots in it, this tube was longer, thinner, and had much larger, and clearly visible, brown spots in it.

After some research, I’m pretty sure this is a chained salp. Like pyrosoma, chained salps are colonies of individuals. The individuals have a heart, gills and a spinal cord, which makes them quite advanced in evolutionary terms. They move around by pumping water through their bodies. When they form chains, the individuals in the chains communicate with electrical signals so the the chain moves in harmony.

Typically, salps are creatures of the open ocean, and not often seen in Hawaii, so I feel quite fortunate to have seen this one.

Spotted eagle ray before and after

This week’s Friendly Friday challenge theme is ‘Two Ways,’ the idea being to show a photo processed in different ways or to show two photos of the same thing taken at different times in different conditions. (See more responses here.)

I’ve gone with a photo taken yesterday morning showing it before and after processing. In the water, I use a basic point-and-shoot camera in a waterproof case. I don’t use lights or a flash so I shoot mainly on auto, because if my big fingers started pushing little buttons, my subject would be halfway to Japan before I got a photo. This approach can lead to some erratic results, including the image appearing somewhat murky, but usually this can be cleaned up during processing. On this day, the visibility in the water was cloudy, but not as bad as it looks in the before photo.

For photo processing, I use an older version of Photoshop Express (PE), which is a stripped-down version of Photoshop. Using the full version would be like me driving a Ferrari to the local store – way more power and features than I need. My version of PE has a ‘haze reduction’ feature, which is a sort of automatic one-stop processing step, but I prefer to do my own adjustments.

While the two versions look quite a bit different, the change is mainly down to simple adjustments in ‘shadows and highlights’ and tweaking the tones and colors in ‘levels.’ Besides that, I removed a few of the little red flares that often occur in these underwater images, and bumped up the sharpness a hair. That’s it.

Since I follow the same routine when processing all my photos, it goes very quickly. This one was all done in 5 minutes, and the result was worth it.

Kinda grizzly

If you like graphic violence, you’re at the right place today. This is a triton’s trumpet sea snail devouring a cushion star, which has been turned on its back. These snails are the largest in the island and feed on echinoderms, which include stars, cucumbers, and urchins.

Posted in response to Becky’s October Squares challenge theme of ‘Kind.’ See more responses here.

Two Step revisited

This week’s Sunday Stills challenge theme is ‘Your Happy Place.’ See more responses here.

There were a few options for this theme, but I went with this collection because I love going snorkeling and because, just a few days ago, my wife and I revisited Two Step for the final time before Hawaii loosened its restrictions on visitors. We got up early, drove down, and were in the water around 7:45 am. There were two other people swimming at that time, no one else waiting to get in.

The top photo was taken after our swim, around 9:30 am. In a ‘normal’ year, at this time of day, this whole area would be dotted with groups of people, and chairs and mounds of towels left by people already in the water. The bay would also be similarly populated with people, cruising around, looking at fish. There would be several snorkeling tour boats out in the bay, dumping people into the water. Two Step is one of the best spots for snorkeling on the island but, truth is, much of the time it’s kind of a zoo.

  • Goatfishes and raccoon butterflyfishes hang, almost motionless.
  • Raccoon butterflyfishes are more curious here …
  • … although there’s such a thing as too close. This one butted the camera housing.
  • Pearly soldierfishes hover.
  • An ember parrotfish catches the light.
  • We saw more reef lizardfishes than we’d seen before, including this handsome fellow.

However, one of the nice things about Two Step, that I’ve mentioned before, is that it’s a marine reserve. No fishing is allowed and the fish have figured that out. I can’t emphasize enough how differently the fish there react to people than they do in areas where fishing and spear fishing is allowed. They’re so much more mellow and less inclined to dart away.

Also posted in response to Becky’s October Squares challenge theme of ‘Kind.’ See more responses here.

I took this photo of two reef lizardfishes, waiting in their usual manner. It was only after I got home and looked at the photos that I noticed the third lizardfish lower down, near the right edge of the photo. On this day, they were everywhere.