Your Favorite Water Sport?

Which Water Sport Do you Prefer

My favorite is snorkeling and that finished 5th in a recent poll I saw. If snorkeling is an "A" then snorkeling combined with underwater photography would be my "A+". I love the opportunities I get for great and unusual pictures when cruising along, lazily cruising around a reef or man made structure with my compact camera, snug in a waterproof digital camera case. You never know what's going to pop up next. What you do know is that it is going to be cool and curious and worthy of a few shots.

My compact digital camera is a 4 megapixel Canon and the shutter speed can be a tad slower than some of the larger digital slr cameras, but I only have $389 invested in it and it has paid for itself in hundreds of normal photos and now there isn't much worry about drowning it or humidity and all of the fears that most photographers have about submerging their high end cameras in the water.

Just so you know BTW, #1 was "tubing" followed by "scuba diving", "swimming", (my choice snorkeling), "kayaking" and "surfing" at the bottom of the poll! Surfing is probably the most popular and there's wakeboarding, and body boarding. My gut instincts is that this poll is skewed in some way. Or, perhaps given to a class of Jr. High Schoolers in a Midwest State to come up with those results.

Whatever your favorite water sport, I assure you that there are many more people than you think that are into it as well. So enjoy and stay safe - always go into the water with a partner!

Snow Surfing - Very Interesting...Hmmm?

Riding the Slippery Slopes!

I woke up in the middle of the night and went right away to turn on the TV. They had several 1/2 hour shows of pranks and stunts on a show called "Jackass". This was the most "off the wall" comedy show that I've ever seen!

One of the pranks they did was "snow surfing" with a fully functional surfboard and rudder and they all got some great rides but of course there some spectacular wipeouts - kind of like real surfing in that respect. So today we hauled a friend's old fashioned big board - a really big gun shaped back in the late 60's, out of his garage and drove it over to a local ski slope (we have several around within an hour's drive or less).

We got some hard stares from some of the uppity skiers and we loved it - a few even came over and asked what we planned to do with our gigantic surf board. We're going surfing dude, my son told him which got a slight raise of the guy's eyebrows.

The next tough part was clearing it with the Manager and we informed him of our intentions. We know him but he was hesitant and brought up everything from safety to wrong equipment and liability - you know, Manager talk! He called in Will who was Chief of Safety and Rescue (another "ringer") that we also know.

He chimed in that they had slope #5 closed after making fresh snow and allowing it to cure just a bit before opening it back up to the public. We typed up a hasty liability release note, signed it and had it witnessed. Will said he was going to jet ski over to pick up another employee in case we needed more help than he could provide and was back in 5 minutes. Will towed our board up the slope and we took the ride to the top in the chairs. I remembered to snatch my Billingham Camera Bag which was loaded with my Canon Digital Rebel and Sony Video Camera, loads of memory cards and sticks, extra batteries, chargers and other odds and ends.

We decided against Speedos and jock straps like the Jackasses wore on TV and bundled up - minimal clothing, loose jackets, summer shorts and socks & boots. All snow surf runs were made with shorts and bare feet and no shirts or socks/shoes/boots. We needed true surfing attire to do our own version of "snow surfing."

Our results were much the same - a few nice runs and plenty of spine twisting wipeouts. My youngest son BMR (initials for privacy) did best and had only one bad spill and several clean rides. It was great fun and everyone had as many laughs as I did - behind the lens. I've got some great footage to share with the guys now and some nice stills of us posing with the big gun and the Lodge in the background. If you can surf or ski it would help of course, but it was not that bad or dangerous either. A wipeout on snow seemed easier on the boys than some real grinders I've seen my boys wipeout in, including myself, in my younger days and nothing compared to what you'd see along the North Shore in HI.

No need for waivers folks it was fun and funny at the same time - would anyone care to do a bit of "Snow Surfing"?

Protect Our Coral

A Fragile Part of The Marine Environment

Last week, or perhaps 2 weeks ago, there was a program airing that caught my eye. I sat down to listen what the hosts/researchers were talking about. It was a one hour marine program with a large portion dedicated to the preservation and prevention of, the ongoing assault on "our coral reefs."

I call them "ours" because coral belongs to the ecosystem and our goal as men and women is to attempt the task of preserving this planet's important resources from those among us who - don't care - aren't informed - or profit by the use and subsequent destruction of vital elements of these resources.

Corals are actually little plant-like animals, which along with the skeletons of dead crustaceans and algae build themselves up into larger and more prolific colonies, which grow, using air / water to derive the energy to continue building up each coral critter into a much larger skeleton that eventually forms the structure of a reef.

The reef forms a barrier from storms, feeds thousands of species of fish who hunt small prey that use the reef for protection. There is 1/3 of our coral that has been killed off from global warming, increasing amounts of sediment, toxic chemicals, and a dozen or more reasons I can't recall. Coral only grows about 1 cm per annum which isn't much. One can easily see that the destruction of coral is rapidly outstripping it's ability to sustain itself and the coral continues to be eradicated. Just a diver poking about or standing on this coral can cause widespread damage on the reef and it's eventual death.

Coral reefs are often referred to as the oceans medicine chest or it's "rain forest". We must stop damaging and killing off our coral, as it may contain wonderful components that could lead to cures for various diseases - just as we have lost the ability to study plant life found solely in the rain forests - because we're cutting them down at breakneck speed for chopsticks and paper packaging for Asia and the rest of the world.

Next time you're diving a reef, keep in mind that you're a guest in a large underwater city. Don't go mucking things up by prying up bits of coral for a lame souvenir - help save the coral by behaving like a privileged guest. You may be saving the cures to disease that will assist generations to come, and at the very least you'll be saving these beautiful colonies for future divers to enjoy as well. Do some research of your own, this is just a quick post but there's volumes of detailed indepth information available, on what you can do to help save our coral!

Hey Dad Let's Feed The Barracuda

Lighting Fast Predators - Not To Be Taken Lightly

I was able to watch some great footage yesterday on the Barracuda. Featuring the Big Boys of 4 to 5 ft long, mouth bristling with teeth and moving at attack speeds of 0 - 35 mph in the first sweep of their tails. Very impressive if I do say so myself.

There was a bit of background such as I shared above, but the highlights of the short airing, was an attack by a Barracuda of 5 feet in length on a lady who scrapes boat bottoms for a living. It turns out that it happened on a highly sunlit day where any movement by a knife or scraper blade shimmered like a prey fish. The lady in question was carrying a scraper with handle in hand and the blade giving off brilliant flashes of silver was it dangled beneath the diver.

It seems that she paused for a moment to scrape something when she felt a solid hit in the right shoulder and biceps area. Yup, it was our old friend the Barracuda, estimated at about 5 feet (she carried his stuffed body everywhere - beats scraping boats!). It happened so fast that she never knew what happened until after it was over. The giant fish, sensing immediately that she was not a prey item disengaged, but not until her adversary had slammed those formidable teeth into her arm at about 35 mph!

Now 35 mph didn't sound like it was that fast until some grizzled dive boat veteran got in the water and fed the schools of Barracuda that cruised in at their normal arrival time. This guy would shake small fish in the water and huge specimens - just suspended at a standstill would wheel, turn and take the fish from his fingers at such speed that they had passed him already before it sank in - just how fast these fish are - and proved that they are nothing to be taken lightly. Again and again it was repeated until I could make out the turn - the tail thrust and finally flashed past the man's fingers. I had to see this several times to believe it. I think it's that they reach top speed in one push of the tail that makes them so damn fast. The boat Captain who had laughed as he spun Barracuda yarns, mentioned that you have to be careful or they'll get a piece of you, got out after the dive and demonstration - only to display a torn up hand with several gaping wounds in it. Had to be the camera jitters ay? He proceed to rub his finger over what was left of his feeding hand, stopping every 1/2 inch or so to give an account of how he got nailed and moved along to the next scar. And here I was thinking he was just working the crowd up but he wasn't, he was just preparing us for the show we were about to see.

Best methods to avoid attack is to avoid shiny objects when they're around and about, avoid murky water where they are reported to hang out and not to dive in the dawn and dusk periods - also a no-no for avoiding shark attacks. For those who think that Barracuda are just some ferocious window dressing - guess again and unless you're very experienced around Barracuda - then get out of the water!

The Great White Shark

This One Feels Like a Keeper!

The Great White shark is a streamlined swimming and ferocious predator with 3,000 teeth give or take, at any one time. The greatly feared shark has an enormous body, is built for blazing speed. It sports a pointed snout, a crescent-shaped tail, five gill slits, no fin spines, an anal fin, and three main fins: the dorsal fin and two pectoral fins. When the shark is near the surface, the dorsal fin and part of the tail are just visible above the water.Great White sharks average 12-16 feet long. The biggest great white shark on record was 23 feet long, weighing about 7,000 pounds. Females are larger than males and shark pups can be over 5 feet long at birth! Young Great Whites eat fish, rays, seals, birds and other sharks. Adults eat larger prey, like larger seals, sea lions, small whales. otters and sea turtles. They're carrion eaters and will make a meal of dead fish or animals, found floating in their paths. Great whites don't chew their food, they rip the prey into mouth-sized morsels, which are then swallowed whole.

Hot Spots for Great Whites include, but aren't limited to, the SO. African coastline, several Australian hot spots, Western Coastline of the USA and the Mediterranean as far North as the waters off Croatia. Recently a "tagged" Great White Shark took a swim from the Western coastline of the USA to HI - roughly 2000 miles. I wouldn't have wanted to be swimming in his route since he must have been one very hungry shark upon his arrival in HI.

Here's a link to a nice size shark swimming off of Molokini Island in about 20' of water. This shark photo was "cropped" for size but NO post processing was done to the original RAW image. I do get tempted at times to fire up Adobe PhotoShop and give it a "once over" - I'm sure there's a gem of a shot remaining after the green is neutralized. This was shot in an older model 3 MP Canon SureShot ,set on automatic through an ewa-marine waterproof digital camera case!