Feeling the Field Research
Tomorrow night, a dramatic minus tide will reveal parts of the beach that one normally can't see from shore. I'll walk along the coast with a prominent local biologist, inspecting sea life. This is a tremendous opportunity to document oceanic wildlife without even getting wet.
But that's tomorrow.
The gifts of modern technology enable us to get as close as we please to innumerable underwater species by strapping on a tank of compressed air. Today, I continued this habit, preparing for the land-based view by taking the low road. The low road in question: three dives in the Kerama islands, off the coast of Takashiki and Zamami.
The crew? My usual dive buddy, Otis, and my friend Jon, a Watson Fellow who is on the island studying baseball. Jon just became certified in Puerto Rico, and this would be his first series of open-water dives. The introduction was memorable.
Almost immediately after entering the water, we happened upon two hawksbill turtles. One swam off into the clear blue ocean; another remained to feed and seek shelter around fan coral.
Jon was thrilled to see such a magnificent creature so soon. The hawksbill was less thrilled to see him, and proved that he was swifter than the new diver.
Jon reacted thusly to his defeat in the race, available for your perusal in video format.
[Note: all of my diving videos are available down the left sidebar, but are also posted in higher quality at my YouTube page. If you want less pixelated videos, go there.]
We also found Nemo. Lots of Nemo.
Further wildlife harassment:
This was an inflated pufferfish. We passed him around like a very prickly volleyball before he swam off, flustered but unharmed.
Jon and Otis both juggled with three sea cucumbers, but it was this nose-balancing technique that most impressed me.
Maybe both of those statements are true, but I shy away from taste-based field research. That, and research that involves touching venomous sea vipers.
Comments
This is fascinating! For somebody who was born with a water sign (Pisces), I have never been diving / snorkeling, but this sure looks very, very exciting!
What equipment do you use for filming the creatures underneath? The videos and photos are excellent. Is this all a part of your "research" ?
And BTW, did you try to stroke the fugu? He looked pretty harmless.. :-)
I use a Sony DSC-T10 digital camera with a marine case. It's a regular topside camera with an underwater housing. It's a pretty nice fit for what I'm doing, and you can get outfitted for around $500, with an extra $50 for the color filter. You don't need the color filter if all you're doing is snorkeling, but it's nice for diving. The camera also does video. And yup, this is part of the research.
I used to shoot with a Sea & Sea Seamaster Pro film camera, but that camera's pretty old, and digital shooting is vastly preferable underwater. For one thing, you can see what you just shot (a nice feature when the lighting situation is tricky) and you can shoot virtually as much as you want (you can't reload film underwater, but you can shoot forever on a 1GB card).
While I didn't stroke the fugu, we did play volleyball with him. Prickly!
Diving and snorkeling are great -- you should definitely try them.