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My morning started by getting food ready for the aquarium’s many animals. I cut up a crab, and stuffed squid and bait fish with vitamin pills for the sharks and rays in Black Tip Reef. I worked with Emily Anderson and Katie Diciccio, divers and aquarists who help run the Atlantic Coral Reef and Black Tip Reef. We headed down to feed the large whiptail rays and the nine black tips in the newest exhibit Black Tip Reef. To feed the rays we used a long pole and forced it in front of their face then they would sit up on it and chew the food on the end. You could feel them chewing and almost hear a crunching sound coming up the pole. After the four rays were all feed we moved on to the sharks. The exhibit has two zebra sharks, nine black tips, and a couple wobbegongs. We fed the black tips by hanging a target just above the water as sort of a training measure they would touch or go around the red buoy and be fed. Instead of the target feeding of the rays this was a broadcast feeding of all the black tips at once. It was at times a mass frenzy throwing squid and fish parts near their faces.

After feeding the sharks I went over to the jellies department, where I met Annie Miller, one of the aquarists for the jellies. She explained the ins and outs of how to keep such delicate creatures alive in captivity with certain amounts of current and food. One of the major things that the jellies department tries to avoid is “jelly jams”, this is when the current is to weak or strong and the jellies begin to get stuck in the filtration system and can clog the pipes and kill the whole tank if not taken care of. After being introduced to all the jellies on exhibit I went over to the jelly culture lab where the team cultures the jellies and raises them to be put on exhibit. The lab raises most of the jellies that go to exhibit and any that they have and don’t need can be shipped to other aquariums or be feed to other jellies. Matt Wade is one of the directors of the jellies culture lab and is currently working on raising box jellies. Because they are level one venomous animals they are taken very seriously, though they are only a few centimeters now they could grow very big and be extremely dangerous. Matt showed me some of the jellies under the microscope looking at the different life stages and how complex they are. For being considered so simple and well brain less they are actually very complex.

After lunch I headed around with a couple of the gallery aquarists. I first worked with Roxie Garibay who runs the live corals gallery. She went through the care and maintenance of these tanks and how important it is to keep track of the health of the corals. We fed a few of the fish and she showed me how they grow corals behind the scenes. I next worked with Allen Kattyan who runs a few different galleries from the striped bass, to the shipwreck and kelp forest tanks. What amazed me most is that he dives in some of the tanks filled with pieces of fake shipwrecks and totally cramped. For Holly it’s a hard job to keep him safe in such a small enclosed area and if anything went wrong it wouldn’t be very good.

After working with the aquarists I headed to the dive locker for my third and final dive in the Atlantic Coral Reef. I again went in with the volunteers except today was the Tuesday A team. I photographed a lot of the same subjects refining my shots from the other day. I got some good shots of Simon the sting ray and of the super male hogfish in the tank that is Holly’s favorite fish.

 

 

 

After my short flight to Baltimore I met Holly Bourbon. Holly is the DSO (dive safety officer) of the National Aquarium, and an associate Sea Rover. Holly runs the entire dive program at the National Aquarium, not an easy job managing people who are diving with sometimes potentially dangerous animals, in precarious places, and you have to deal with over 200 volunteer divers. But somehow Holly does it, and she does it really well.

For the week I stayed with Holly, her husband Billy, and of course Wally their dog. Holly, Billy and Wally made me feel right at home and more like family than my own family. Even bringing me to a wedding. My first few days here we went on walks at wildlife sanctuaries and toured Wally’s favorite walking paths. But what I was really here for was the aquarium!

This Monday was one of the few Mondays in my life I will be excited for. Holly and I went around getting my dive locker situated, meeting people, and getting my ID ready. Before i could do any diving in the aquarium I had to do a check out dive with Holly. We went in the Atlantic Coral Reef, a race track tank that holds 335,000 gallons, houses about 800-900 individuals across 90 species, and is 13ft deep. The Monday A team of volunteer divers descended onto the dive platform getting ready to clean coral replicas and feed fish. Holly and I swam down to the end of the tanks where we practiced skills. I removed my mask put it back on and saw all these kids staring at me. I wasn’t prepared to be on display, but over time I grew to like it and waved to all the kids. As I took my weight belt off and put it back on the kids kept staring at me for almost the entire 25 minutes we took to go through skills. One new skill Holly taught me was how to breath off a free flow regulator, just kind of sipping the air from it. I did that for 40 seconds with people watching on, I could only imagine what they were thinking me sitting there with masses of bubbles flying around my head. Once I’d completed the skills we did a short orientation around the tank. After that I was cleared to dive.

My first photography dive in the tank took place after lunch. I went in with the volunteer divers. As they cleaned I photographed the multitude of fish. One challenge photographically was that the inside of the tank was pretty bare and didn’t have much background to it. I was forced to come up with some way to make the photos interesting. I decided to shoot everything with a slow shutter speed. This way I made interesting shots and wouldn’t have to worry as much about the background. I was even greeted by Felix the resident green moray eel, who is usually hiding. One of the harder subjects to photograph was the tarpon. It’s basically like photographing a mirror with bright lights. The tarpon was intrigued by me because of the massive shiny camera and it thought I was going to give him food. I would sit in one spot wait for the tarpon to come by swim around me then I would get a few shots. Most shots weren’t that great but I got a few good ones. Another favorite subject for me was the many blue tangs and doctor fish feeding on the lettuce. I could get as close as I wanted to them and they wouldn’t be afraid of me. By the end of the day I got some pretty nice shots and had an amazing time in the aquarium.

I spent the day with Vin Malkoski working with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. Our goal was to find a spot that would be a good site for an artificial reef. An artificial reef is a bunch of large concrete that is molded into certain shapes that marine life can grow on, live in and hunt around. We were looking in the Cape Cod bay area at sites that had been previously selected, we were visiting them again to dive them and see what we could find for life. Mark Rousseau was one of the project leaders on the boat along with three other divers, Vin, and Yann Herrera Fuchs, the Rolex Our World Underwater Society Scholar, who was also working with Vin. We headed out into the bay, the day was nice and sunny and warm, good day for diving. The water was not very choppy but wasn’t perfectly calm either.

We reached our first site, half of us geared up to get in the water while the other half stayed on the boat to dive after us. A transect line had been laid down for us to follow and find our way around the proposed site. The first thing I noticed about the site was the abundance of sea robins. Quirky, odd, almost prehistoric reptile like fish, they have large pectoral fins that they spread out to swim away from something, when they’re not crawling through the sand with strange finger like appendages. I’ve always wanted to see a sea robin, and I wasn’t disappointed we saw quite a few sea robins about 10 or so total. Some would hide in the sand other would ran away from you and others would just sit in front of you. We also many spider crabs, a few lady crabs, and a patch of squid eggs. Squid eggs look like translucent torpedoes all huddled together on a rock. The site was really nice and might be a good spot for an artificial reef.

 

In between sites I had another bout of sea sickness, even with the fairly calm conditions that we had. Vin suggested I hang off the diver line off the back of the boat so I sat in the water for a few minutes and floated there. My sickness went away a little while after. We then geared up and dropped down to the next site. This site supposedly had a sunken plane so that was extra incentive to go looking around. We never found any plane but we found plenty of lobster. They sat in little burrows they had dug out in the sand. To me it seemed like a pretty bad home compared to the lobsters in Cape Ann that hid beneath rocks. Swimming along they would flare their claws and I could just grab them by the carapace and have a look at them. Vin picked up a huge egger female that was way over the legal limit but they’re still cool to look at. This site was a nice site as well but I believe the first site had more life that would benefit from an artificial reef, though those lobster could use a better home.

It was amazing to see a completely new ecosystem in New England waters so completely different than North in Gloucester and Rockport or South in Jamestown. Work that people like Vin and Mark do for the Division of Fisheries is essential to having a healthy ecosystem and maintaining fish stocks, and it’s pretty fun to dive different sites in New England and help the ecosystems we visit.

Finally the week ended and we got to the competition, the part everyone was waiting for. There are lots of prizes for a multitude of categories including wide angle and macro, both traditional and unrestricted (without and with editing), a fluorescent category, and sharks category, and of course video. I only entered the wide angle and sharks categories because that’s all I really shot.

I came to The Digital Shootout ready to learn and maybe get one good shot, what I didn’t go to do was win any awards. But I did! I won an honorable mention in sharks for one of my motion blur shots, third in the wide angle traditional for a shot of a barracuda under a dock, and finally first place in sharks for another motion blurred shark that I made black and white. I was so ecstatic that I won! I almost swept the sharks category with only one shark dive which was my first shark dive. My trip to Roatan was one of the best weeks of my life. I am eternally grateful to the entire crew from Backscatter, and Berkley, Erin, and Christian for helping me so much and making me realize that I love underwater photography just as much if not more than terrestrial photography.

My last dive in Roatan was with Cristian Dimitrius, a filmmaker for National Geographic and BBC who filmed Wild Brazil, he has presented at the Sea Rovers clinic in the past. He came part way through the week from shooting on assignment. I went to his classroom presentation about visual storytelling where he showed us work that he has done in the Amazon and how he creates a story. I showed Cristian some of my shots that I had gotten and he asked what boat I was on so he could come on the same boat. Well I reluctantly told him I didn’t do the boat dives because I kept getting sea sick and that the shore dives were just as good if not better. The next morning at breakfast Cristian asked if I wanted to go on a dive, and of course I said yes! We geared up heading into the water, I asked where he wanted to go and he said I could lead the dive, so I said we should go to Coco View Wall of course. I was hoping to find my moray friend so that Cristian could get some good video. To my suprise Cristian shot me on the most of the dive. With his massive video camera and Keldan lights he directed me to swim certain places and shot certain things. As we got to the corner in the wall I found the moray and pointed it out to Christian who began to shoot it and me shooting it. We continued on photographing and filming then headed back after a while. Cristian made a short film of the dive called “Jake’s Reef”. I was amazed at how fast he put together the footage and how he made me look like an actual diver! My last dive in Roatan was probably the best, it was a honor to dive with Cristian.

 

Towards the end of the week I decided to try out a Pegasus Thruster, a small scooter that attaches to the back of the tank and you control with the push of button. I was a little anxious to try it out because it was hard to control at first and I would end up heading downward towards the sand. But once I got the hang of it I would scooter around just by moving my shoulders. I even tried a few short barrel rolls by tipping my shoulder. The scooter allowed me to go further along Coco View Wall than I ever had. I saw further down the wall than I thought I would be able to.

Later that night I tried a night dive where I was attempting to light paint the Prince Albert. I didn’t expect to get any good shots I just wanted to try it out. I went with Dylan from backscatter out to the wreck. Berkley had set me up with tripod and makeshift shutter holder so I could keep the camera’s shutter open for as long as I wanted. The viz wasn’t amazing but I tried it anyways, the main problem I ran it to was lots of divers shooting with Light and Motion, Nightsea Fluorescence strobes. This meant that every other shot a diver would swim into the frame with a massive blue light shining it into my camera and ruining my shot. This was a pain but at the same time I was able to nail down the route I would take around the wreck shining video light on it and trying to judge the exposure. I ended up getting a pretty bad shot, but I was still happy that I got to try a new technique, and I saw my first octopus on the wreck lurking about. A small translucent bluish octopus about an inch or maybe two across. So overall it was a great dive.

After getting sick so much on the boat dives I decided to do shore diving through the rest of the week. The shore diving was just as amazing as the reefs we went to on the boat, and I had more time to spend with the marine life without worrying about getting back to the boat. I first checked out the wreck of the Prince Albert, a 140 ft wreck sitting in 65 fsw. Vis wasn’t always great on the wreck but it was amazing to be able to swim around such a massive structure that is accessed so easily. Further over the wreck lies Newman’s Wall a beautiful wall filled with masses of fish from soldierfish to nassau grouper and trumpet fish. I loved shooting wide on the shark dive and coming off the high from my success with that dive, so I made the decision to shoot wide the rest of the week. I would find an interesting subject get as close a possible, gain its trust get a few shots, back off, change settings and strobe positioning and head back in to get a better composition. This worked for most of the good shots I got and every day I came back to the same spot and began to learn the reef and follow its pattern. But by far my favorite part of the shore diving was Coco View Wall, an amazingly stunning wall with corals and sponges everywhere. Every day I would venture a little further down the wall and find something new.

By far my favorite dive on the wall was a 72 minute dive I did one day, where I found a 6ft long green moray. He sat curled around some rocks in a corner of the wall in 45 fsw. Every day I saw the eel there and would visit it. But on my 72 minute dive I decided to get a photo that would capture it’s personality. I sat with the eeel for 40 minutes face to face with. It’s deep blue eye would stare into me as I sat less than a foot away from it. Even with it curved back teeth, opening and closing it mouth slowly, moving its head back and forth, just as curious of me as I of it, I wasn’t afraid of it. Even though it could easily have bitten me it didn’t, we kind of had a trust. I respected it and it let me photograph. I ended up getting a shot that is personally one of my favorite shots from the whole trip. But more importantly I got to experience a green moray eel in the wild, spending time with it that most people will never get.

After my day of fumbling around with macro I set myself up for wide. I was also signed up to go on the shark dive, so macro wouldn’t help me very much. Because this whole week is a competition I had this dream of taking a photo of the sharks using a slow shutter speed with second curtain strobe. A fancy way of saying a motion blur shot with the shark in focus. Unfortunately for me the Canon system I was shooting couldn’t do second curtain with the strobes I had so I went to the demo gear crew the night before and asked to set me up for the shot I wanted. They asked how many dives I’d done with sharks and said it was my first. The demo crew told me it was ballzy to shoot my first shark dive with a slow shutter speed. But I wanted to get an image that no one else was going to take, that I could call my own.

We arrived at Cara a Cara, or face to face, the prime spot to get up close and personal with Caribbean reef sharks. We climbed down the mooring line to a small sandy patch in 70 fsw next to a short reef wall about 12 feet tall I got a spot in the middle and got my camera ready for some slow shutter speed shots. I waited patiently as the sharks swam by to start shooting. I began to notice a pattern that the sharks would swim out then almost directly into me and turn right in front of me. So I waited for certain sharks with hooks in their mouth, distinctive patterns or interesting behavior to swim by me and I would fire off three or four shots and adjust my settings accordingly. After an hour underwater we started to head back up the line. About half way up the line I again threw up without any warning. Bobbing up and down on the safety stop didn’t help much either and I kept getting sick. Once on the boat I continued to get sick all the way back to the docks. But it was all worth it because I got some amazing shots that no one else took that I will always be proud of.