Best of Mike #21

A whole crowd to Hermit Crabs, hanging out inside and at the bottom of a vase sponge.

I had never seen this before our trip to Belize.... although I have seen it a number of times since then.

I have read that they are attracted to the algae that grows on the inside of the sponge and are there to feed.

The feeding has always been a done deal by the time I have arrived on the scene.

So they end up looking mostly like a punch of pebbles laying down there in the bottom.

Or a bunch of happier Hermit Crabs, sleeping off a good lunch.

Would love to see these little guys scaling the outside and then climbing or dropping down inside. Has to be the Hermit Crab equivalent of mountain climbing.

This is the last pix from Belize ..... next stop Cozumel.

Best of Mike #20

I have to tell you that we were a little nervous during our visit to Belize City.

We had heard that it was a bit of a rough place... and that many if not most of the tourists who visit Belize, go out to one of many resorts on the Cayes or Atolls.

We had decided to stay right in Belize City because we wanted to dive with our friend Capt. Hugh and that was where his dive operation was based.

Our hotel was right on the edge of the city and right by the water. To go diving, we went through the courtyard, out  the gate and crossed the road to walk down this pier to the get on the boat.

One afternoon we screwed up our courage and decided to walk to town and see what we could see.

In deference to some of the stories we had heard, we chose middle of the day. Figuring that if we were well behaved and watched the time we could be back in the safety of our hotel, before dark. And surely, the really bad things didn't happen before dark.

It was a nice walk. We saw a number of older homes (maybe even Victorian era) that had been turned into inns or restaurants. Met some local people along the way and even crossed a pretty canal with an interesting collection of boats.

But mostly, we noticed that on almost every street corner there was a soldier with a very large rifle.

None of our group said much, but each time we passed a soldier, we walked a little faster and looked at the local people with a little more suspicion. By the time we got downtown we were moving at the pace of a pretty good "race walker".

No one seemed to be interested in shopping. So, one loop, around the downtown area and we hightailed it back to the safety of our hotel.

I think it was one of the hotel staff who overheard us speculating on the need for that kind of security. With an amused grin on their face, they explained to us that it was not, in fact, a normal part of life there.

As it turns out, the President of neighboring Honduras was making a state visit.... and those "armed individuals" were actually policemen who had been station along the route as an honor guard.

The President was staying in the same hotel as us. So the route that he took from the airport was pretty much the same route that we took to walk to town and back.

I didn't meet the man. But our god-daughter, Danielle actually rode the elevator with him and two of his body guards after dinner that night.

However, that's a story for another time.

Best of Mike #19

As exciting as scuba diving can be, there are still moments of boredom. I have actually seen someone fall asleep under water.

For me the boredom comes when I am not seeing photo worthy subjects. But, you can't push a camera through the water for 45-60 minutes and not use it ..... at least, that's what the little voice in my head keeps telling me.

So, my favorite "anti-boredom" technique is to get close, real close to something that I would otherwise call too ordinary for a pixture.

Today's, pixture is an Elephant Ear Sponge. 

Like all sponges they are an animal, that feeds by filtering nutrients and oxygen out of the water.... that it pulls in through their pores.

These sponges are one of the very few animals that have absolutely no protective mechanisms or response to organisms that threaten them.

They come in a variety of colors and shapes.... so out of the ocean you see them used for adding color to an aquarium.


When dried out, they are both very absorbent and fine textured.... so are a favorite for creating a smooth finish when making pottery.

I have no idea what that pile of white stuff, in the foreground of the pixture is. That's often the bonus of these extreme close-ups ..... finding something, in the pixture, that you had no idea was present when you took it.

Sometimes, it's even more exciting than "a pile of white stuff".

Best of Mike #18

We had gone to Belize, specifically to dive with our friend Hugh Parkey.

The deal was that he would take us out personally, on his big new boat, the first day.

After that, we would have to fit into the flow of the business. Diving with one of his regular dive leaders and going out on the boat that made most sense based on the size of the various different groups.

Despite having been in the Navy, I am not really a boat guy.  So, I can't tell you a whole lot about that new boat. Except, that it was really big for a dive boat (48ft if I remember right), very shiny, mostly white, sparklingly clean and generally very pretty.

It was a boat plenty big enough to accommodate 25ish divers very comfortably.

I am so not a boat guy that the only pixture I have of this great boat is the anchor. But look how pretty it is. It has to be the anchor of a great boat.

We go out for our first day of diving (Jay, Sue, Linda, me and Danielle, who was 6 at the time) with Hugh as the captain and Tony working as the mate.

Hugh was a very big man, maybe as big as  400lbs. Tony is a local guy with a hairdo very reminiscent of Darnell from "My Name is Earl".

We had a great day of diving and are treated wonderfully,  while we were on the boat.

Although, Tony did take a little getting used to. His idea of a long conversation was to slug you on the arm (no really, slug not tap) point and growl something like "doll feen" to indicate the passing pod of dolphins.

Danielle like all 6 year olds liked to commemorate the best events of her life by drawing a picture. So, the next morning, on our way down to the dock, she shows me a lovingly drawn picture that is dominated by two figures, a huuuuuge round man (bigger than the boat in the picture) and a very black man with even blacker wild, wild hair.

She is quite proud of what she had drawn and I am a little scared of the reaction it might get.

We met up with Captain Hugh on the dock, as this was to be the day that he assigned us to one of the smaller boats.

With much fanfare she presents her work to Captain Hugh who studied and then called Tony over to have a look.

After just a few tense moments they both broke into huge smiles, marched into the dive shop with Danielle in tow, took down a very nice photograph of the world famous Blue Hole and hung Danielle's drawing in it's place.

When they came back out, Captain Hugh announced that there would be no changing of boats. The four of us, and of course Danielle, would dive on the big boat for the rest of the week.

Turns out, the very scary Tony had 6 kids of his own. So, while Hugh took the four of us underwater Tony and Danielle would go snorkeling or lay on the deck in the wheel house and color.

We had agreed prior to the trip that each of us would take a turn at not diving to watch Danielle. But now that Tony had become her guardian, we all dove our brains out.

This also solved another big problem for us. Even at 6, Danielle swam so well that none of her "regular adults" could keep up with her.

Tony, being a local guy, raised in the water swam like a fish.... and took very good care of her, as they explored the reef.

Best of Mike #17

Today's pixture is one of the many varieties of Sponge.

You may have a dried and colorless version of one of these sponges.... that you use in the bathroom or kitchen.

In the ocean, they come in a variety of shapes and colors.

Most sponges are small but some have the ability to grow to more than 6ft in diameter.

While very plant-like in appearance.... they are actually one of the oldest and simplest of marine animals.

Sponges have no organs or tissues as we know them. They are made up of a grouping of individual cells with pores at the surface of their skins and a series of channels running underneath.

They feed by drawing water in thru the pores and then filtering the nutrients from that water as it passes thru the channels, before being expelled.

Best of Mike #16

One of the consequences of going back to the beginnings of my journey thru underwater photography is that you are going to see the learning curve.

You are going to get to see my evolution of as photographer and the evolution of my equipment.

I had never wanted to be that guy underwater with the "moose antlers". The photographer with the huge camera and the long, long arms on their strobes.

Those guys and their equipment, just seemed to be in everyone's way.

So I started out with the most compact system I could.... and only added stuff when I had to, to get the pixtures I wanted.

Today's pix is a pretty good example of why I came to own strobes.

The deeper you go, the less natural light their is. The smaller the critter, the more likely it is to be tucked away in some small crack or crevice.

So, it didn't take very long at all before I was wanting and needing to add some artificial light to the pix.

When we were in Belize, I was still using the 2nd camera that I ever owned, a Nikon Coolpix 990. It was a great little camera, nice and small and particularly good at letting me get close to things (I think the minimum focus distance was 0.9")

Today's subject is an Arrowcrab, who is doing his work behind a coral head, in among some sponges.

I had added a single strobe (underwater talk for a flash) so I could get some light onto the subject in shots like this.This pixtures shows the two problems that I was having with that new piece of equipment.

In the foreground of the shot there is a coral head that is pretty white and getting too much light from the strobe, so it is showing up as hot-spot.

The strobe I had then was a small one but still too powerful in closeup situations like this. The camera just didn't have a small enough aperture for me to get the exposure right.

Very often, I was wanting to direct light under an overhang or into an opening. Even way back then, it was the little stuff that I like best and that's where they hang out.

So, I had mounted my strobe directly over the lens. The downside to that, I learned, is that any particulate in the water reflected light back to the camera and showed up as a spot. There are a lot of spots in this pixture.

So why, you ask, do I keep a pixture with all these problems?

I like the composition and the warm colors.

And ..... sometimes (probably not in this case) advancements in photo editing technology let me, years later, fix problems in a pixture that I couldn't fix when I took the shot.

Best of Mike #15

In our dive life, we have been to Belize twice.

The first trip was "bc" (before camera).

On that first trip we stayed on one of the cayes - Ambergris. Perhaps the most romantic place I have ever been.

For a week we lived in a thatched roof hut, with a sand floor, mosquito netting around the bed and one light bulb so far up in the ceiling it was more of a "night light", than any kind of effective lighting at night.

We ate all our meals in a communal dining hall, getting to know many of our fellow travelers, as well as the staff, all of whom lived on-site.

Two of our fellow travelers were on their honeymoon, two of them got married on the dock at sunrise and "poor Raymond" came alone. Because his girlfriend decided, once she was all packed, to move out instead of going diving.

But that was the first trip to Belize. The 2nd trip we made 10yrs ago this month.

On this one, we stayed right in Belize City and dove with our friend Hugh Parkey. I will tell you more about Belize City (an interesting place) in a later post.

Today's pixture is a Golden Crinoid.

I have seen it many times over the years but have never gotten a better pixture of it than this one.

I took this with only the 2nd camera I ever took underwater - a Nikon point and shoot.

Crinoids are one of those things that look, for all the world, like a plant but are really a creature.

They are an ancient spiny-skinned animal, dating back to the time of the dinosaurs. Arriving, in the underwater world, before Sand Dollars, Sea Urchins, Sea Cucumbers or Brittle Stars.

They come in a variety of different colors even though "golden" is in their name.

They will take on a feathery appearance once they have extended polyps to feed and at that point are often mistaken for plants.

Best of Mike #14

This was our last day in the Bahamas (at least for this trip) so I am going to tell you a story of what we did when we weren't diving.

We stayed at the Lucyan Hotel which was kind of a big deal then.... and I think is a really big deal now.

The property was amazing.... including a pool that was so big I don't even know how to tell you how big it was (is).

Just beyond the pool area was the beach. A massive beach with white powdery sand that stretched literally for miles.

On our last evening on the island we went for a walk on that beach. I want to say, without exaggerating, we walked for more than 2 hours and didn't run out of beach.

As we passed the shops to get to the beach there is was this small decorative boat that I stopped to take a pixture of.

In fact, if you look close you can see the shadow of the gomb who took the pixture near the bow.

But it was the floats in the bottom of the boat that really caught my attention and became one of the pixtures I liked the best from this trip.

Next stop - Belize.