This is a head shot of a gaudy Nembrotha nudibranch taken in the Philippines. This species is fairly common in certain areas where there is abundant growth of the bryozoans and hydroids that they feed on. I’ve seen them in Bali, Komodo and N. Sulawesi as well as severl places in the Philippines. It’s always exciting to see this colorful species as you explore the reef, a reward for taking the time to move slowly, searching for interesting critters on the reef face.

Taken with a Nikon D200, Nikon 105mm plus T3, in an Ikelite housing with a flat port and DS-125 strobes.
Processed with Photoshop CS5.

The last time we visited Los Islotes in Baja California’s Sea of Cortez we had a great day photographing sea lions and moving through the clouds of sardines that were hugging the island. The school of fish extended about 400m around the inside of the island and were very shallow, mostly in the 10 – 25 fsw range. The sealions were not feeding that day mostly playing around and protecting their turf. It’s exhilarating to see the big bulls swimming by, barking and calling out. If they think you are too close to the harem they let you know with a few warning swim-bys, followed by barking and finally a charge (that’s the time to leave, they will bite you).

I like watching the sardine clouds slowly move away as predators and divers approach them. Below is an image were I was trying to show the ballooning of the school as a snapper moved slowly into the school. There’s a certain distance that they allow things to approach. Hope you get the idea from the photo.

The second, lower image is fairly shallow showing sardines flowing under the surface with the island in the background.

We were on the Solmar V out of Cabo San Lucas and enjoyed the experience. I have some other images from the same trip here showing some of the creatures we got to interact with. All our dives here were quite shallow so we were able to stay underwater for a long time, we logged almost 6hrs for the one day through 4 dives.

Taken with a Nikon D200, Tokina 10-17mm in an Ikelite housing with 8″ dome and DS-125 strobes.
Processed with Photoshop CS5.

I always enjoying spending time with turtles and I marvel at their ability to survive in the modern world where so much is set up to drive them to extinction. I photographed this green turtle (Chelonia mydas) in the Philippines, he’s an example of their ability to adapt. We could find him feeding on a patch of sea grass most afternoons. Sitting in the middle of small harbor this was one of the only places in the area he could feed and he had learnt to avoid the boats, lines and other debris that had be tossed into the water. My wife and I spent about 75 minutes following him around the area while he created his own sand-storm as he moved across the seagrass. In this image we are in about 12ft of water. Green turtles are listed by CITES as endangered and are protected in most countries but even so they are under huge pressure as their nesting beaches are destroyed, their eggs are harvested and the oceans become more polluted. I hope that future generations are able to see and enjoy the company of these ocean travelers.

© Jon Bertsch

Taken with a Nikon D200, Tokina 10-17mm in an Ikelite housing with 8″ dome and DS-125 strobes.
Processed with Photoshop CS5.

Just back from a one week trip to the Sea of Cortez on the Solmar V. We had some decent days of diving but low to bad viz for most of the trip. A tropical depression south of Baja caused the whole area to get stirred up, killing viz and creating a bouncing ocean for the first day of travel. This was our first trip on the Solmar V and we would definitely go back to do some of their other trips given the chance. Great food and the dive staff were very knowledgable. The boat is pretty sturdy and seemed to handle the seas – though a number of passengers were extremely ill.

The only downer was that apparently, due to the seasickness of some, the captain decided to sit at one site for two whole days. So I ended up doing nine dives on the same site! Not exactly what my buddy and I were expecting, but sometimes that’s what happens. To be fair this site did have a fair amount to see – decent numbers of schooling fish, a mass mating of sea stars, some mobula rays, various types of critters and scorpionfish – but we were there for the sealions, sharks and mantas (the site was “boring as sin” according to my Buddy).

A quick note on the mantas. We had been down here before in 2002 and had great dives with mantas at La Reina, the home to many mantas. However, on this trip the boat made no effort to go there which my wife and I thought strange. On returning from the trip I found some internet articles which suggested that the mantas are now a thing of the past – “mysteriously” gone – though you never know how much to trust one or two articles on the internet. I suspect they were fished out soon after we saw them if they are gone. A sad day. See this search for more.

Once we were done with La Baillena (the whale) we moved on to the sea lion colony at Los Islotes. Home to several hundred sea lions this is the place to play with them. You can spend hours here playing with the youngsters, getting charged by the bulls and enjoying the acrobatics A huge school of sardines was present when we visited, spread across the entire dive site, there must have been millions of them. You could watch the entire food chain, fishing eating, fish eating fish, right up to the sealions eating the snappers and other larger species. Beyond the sealions, there are lots of scorpionfish here, schools of tang, angelfish and smaller tuna. The tuna were fun to watch, bombing along the reef in formation, darting into the seething mass of sardine to grab a slow mover. Just fantastic. On the boat we were all comparing it to a National Geographic film.

We also dove at some other sites in the area, Swaine Rock (lots of eels, some sealions, small hard coral reef); the Fang Ming, a boat sank to make an artifical reef; La Salvatierra, a ship that sank here in 1976, which had huge numbers of fish and other sea life; Cabo Pulmo, a protected park and home to some of the largest grouper around, viz was pretty bad here so we didn’t see the beatiful reefs that it is said to contain. We were very happy to see huge grouper and lots of them at Cabo Pulmo, the twenty five fishing boats sitting at the park boundary also gives one the idea that here at least some big fish survive.

We also took one morning to look for whale sharks. They had an ultralight from La Paz join the search and we spotted one a mile or so from the boat. Everyone jumped into the pangas and off we went to join the hunt. We found a juvenile, maybe 22ft long cruising around the shallow sands of the bay and had a fun time snorkeling with him for an hour or so. The pangas would jump ahead of the shark and dump us into the water then we would try to swim alongside him for a while. It was amazing to see this huge creature in 10 ft of water, cruising along with no worries. Since the viz here was pretty bad, the shallow water was great since we had decent sunlight to view his progress. A very cool morning and wonderful to see that such majestic creatures are still able to survive.

Photography Notes

Most of the images I show here were taken with a Tokina 10-17mm lens on a D200 in an Ikelite housing. This was my first trip using this lens so there was a bit of a learning curve. I did have backscatter issues, since the lens is so wide and the water was so murky. Around Los Islotes, the sardine school basically created a wall of murk from their feeding and fish poop. On much of the open water diving the viz was 15ft.

The Solmar V has a large camera area for folks to use, though on this trip only a few people had cameras. If everyone was a photoger on a full trip, things would be crowded. I recommend bringing some bungie cords to tie down your camera when the boat is moving through big seas. Camera rigs can easily get bounced off the table. Otherwise be prepared to sleep with your baby if the water gets rough. The boat runs 120V with North American 3-prong plugs, so US visitors can charge things just as they would at home.

All in all this was a fun trip even though we were stuck at one place for a while. At least there was diving to be had. We’d definitely go back on the boat and try some of their other trips such as the Socorro islands. It’s easy to get to Cabo San Lucas from our local international airport – SFO to Cabo is a direct 21/2 hr flight.

Jon Bertsch

Finally able to get my dive buddy out for the first dive of the year! That’s what happens when you have major surgery but it’s incredible that we haven’t been able to hit the ocean this whole year. We rolled up to Pt. Lobos exactly one year since our last dive there and looked forward to testing our skills and getting some underwater time.

We did three dives over the weekend, each was a pretty standard Lobos dive – stumble carefully down the boat ramp, kick out along through the kelp channel a ways until we are near the 40ft depth mark (the end of the second sea stack) and descend down. Visibilty was around 25 – 30ft and a little murky. Closer inside of Whaler’s cove vis was closer to 10ft (or less). One thing we noticed was the lack of blacksmiths and how few rookfish were out and about. Although there were clouds of small fry here and there we both thought the number of fish was quite low – but it could have been the tide or weather, who knows. We saw a few ling cod (small ones) on the rocks and one good sized Sheephead.

By the end of each dive our fingers were getting cold from the 47F water, but our drysuits did their job and rest of us did just fine. Of course my buddy’s 12mm hood might have had something to do with it!

I was carrying my D200 and Ikelite housing and managed to get a few images. Since it was the first time for a year I didn’t expect much but I was happy to play. The two wide angle images were taken with a Nikon D200, Tokina 12-24mm lens and Ikelite housing with 8″ dome (standard port extension).

Here’s an interesting nudibranch egg ribbon that I noticed as we were cruising around.

I recently returned from a short trip to do some muck diving in Lembeh. My wife and I stayed at The Lembeh Resort and had a wonderful time. The resort did a wonderful job, providing some excellent guides, and keeping the diver groups to a managable size. Although there were about 30 divers at the resort we were kept to groups of no more than 6 with 2, sometimes 3, guides – a pretty good ratio. The food was also very good, although slightly heavy on the American/European side for me, with nice variety and plenty of options.

 

The visibilty was poor to bad, except for a dive out at California Dreaming, we were lucky to get 20ft and a murky 20ft at that with sea-snot flying by. On the other hand, how often do you see free swimming sea horses, hunting eels and giant mantis shrimp?

Here’s a link to some images from the trip:

Images from Lembeh, 2006