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Today we were back at the aquarium nice and early. In the morning I got to work with Alan, a Senior Aquarist for the Blue Wonders area. The first thing we did was prep food for varying species that were on the schedule to be fed today. I chopped up some fish while Alan’s intern, Savannah, chopped up some big squid. We put most of the chopped food in the freezer, and took some of it to the Blacktip Reef Habitat to first feed Zoe the Zebra Shark. Alan showed me how to do it, and I was able to feed her myself!We then moved over to the other side of the habitat to feed 7 Blacktip Reef Sharks. These sharks are fed differently from the previous one. A sling type of thing is put in the water, and in order to get their food, the sharks have to swim through the sling. They are doing this so that the sharks get more comfortable with the sling being in the water, as it is the tool they use to extract the sharks if needed.

Once they had gone through all 9lbs of food, we packed up. When pulling the sling out of the water, Alan handed me a Blacktip Reef sharks tooth that had come out during feeding and got caught on the sling. So cool! We then got more food and brought it to the Atlantic Coral Reef Habitat so I could feed the tarpon and Savannah could feed Sophie, the singular Blacknose Shark. The tarpon was much more eager to eat than Sophie. After that feeding, I went behind the scenes to watch the feeding of Jeremiah, a Ruff Tailed Ray that has trouble eating enough. He is kept in a seperate tank to both feed him more and to train him to come to the surface to eat.

After lunch, I got into my wetsuit and headed back to the Atlantic Coral Reef habitat with 4 other volunteers. The volunteers had to scrub the exhibit, and I got to take photos. It was super cool to be back in this same habitat. I decided to take the strobes off my camera because I hadn’t dove inside with a camera before, so I wanted to see how the ambient light looked. I also didn’t want to make any of the visitors mad with the flash as the tank is in the shape of a racetrack with the visitors in the middle. I got some good shots of the tank with the ambient light, I may have gotten better ones with strobes, but it was a learning experience.

When we got back to Hollys, I packed up all my things and checked in for my flight as I leave tomorrow night. One more day to go, and I will be exploring the jellyfish lab/area!

Holly and I had a great weekend exploring and getting some much needed rest! Holly has Saturday and Sunday off from the aquarium. Saturday morning we started the day with a nice hike to Loch Raven Reservoir. It was great to get outside and start the day with some exercise. We then did a ton of errands, including going to the grocery store to get extra ingredients for a pasta dish I was making for dinner. We went to a little market where fresh fruits and vegetables were being sold, and they were so good!

 Holly took me to Pure Ocean for lunch where we had a pretzel with crab and cheese on it for lunch. I had never had a meal like this before, but I loved it. We had some down time to read after the errands, and then I made the pasta dish and Holly made a salad to go with it. They were both great and we ate them while watching Mission Impossible. I didn’t fall asleep watching the movie this time!

On Sunday, Holly went to the gym in the morning and I went on a run which kind of turned into a walk. I tried. The previous day, while doing errands, I saw a sign for a massive flea market, so we decided to go. We visited every little vendor and I ended up getting a necklace and Holly got a book. It was so hot, so we then went to her friend’s house and hung out by the pool for the rest of the day. The relaxation was great, and really rejuvenated both of us for the week ahead. 

Today I completed my DAN First Aid for Divers training. Got up at 5:45am again, and headed to the aquarium. Holly had to help organize volunteers and do other work, so I helped Allison and Josh (who were teaching the First Aid class) to set up. The class started at 8:30am and ended around 2:30pm. We had all completed online modules which gave us an understanding of the materials, and then the classroom session reviewed all of that with the opportunity for questions, plus hands on demonstrations of the skills. 

I  practiced CPR and rescue breaths on a mannequin with my CPR mask that they provided me. I also assembled and disassembled an oxygen cylinder, along with tying a tourniquet, using an epipen, and an AED. These skills were very well taught, and I feel much more confident that I could be useful in aiding someone if an emergency situation arose.

Holly and I made a great dinner from leftovers and watched a James Bond movie afterwards. I did fall asleep for most of the movie on accident, but hopefully tomorrow night I’ll be able to stay up!

Holly dropped me off at the Animal Care and Rehabilitation Center (ACRC) at around 7am today! She had interviews to do to fill a job on her team, so I worked at ACRC all morning. This part of the ACRC is run by all women, and they were very nice to let me shadow and help with their work for the morning. Right as I got there, the team was working on loading up different types of fish for a habitat at the main aquarium. I helped by tallying how many of each fish were being transported, and totaled over 200 killifish! They then pumped oxygen into the water and air surrounding the fish, and sealed them up for the quick transport to the aquarium. I got to ride in the truck to transport those, and then headed back to the ACRC. Meredith, a senior aquarist, showed me around the facility and we went to all of the tanks and wrote down their temperature and made sure everything was functioning properly. In some of the smaller tanks, there were just two fish as they were trying to breed them. We went through and made sure that there were in fact two fish in each tank, and everything checked out. We then did copper testing on some water samples. From my understanding, the water has to be between 0.18 and 0.23 for 21 days. Not going to lie, I did not catch why it was only these two tanks or what the units were for the measurements, but it was interesting to see Mer ideth test the water and use chemicals I had only used in my chemistry lab in college in real practice. I then went and followed Ashley, as she was taking turtles from their tanks and bringing them to another room to be checked out by the vet. They drew blood from each of the turtles by extending their tail and holding the turtle down but on an elevated object so it couldn’t use its legs to escape. It would take a few tries to get enough blood as the angle to draw it was very specific. After the first two turtles were cleared, we brought them back and got Bertha, the bigger turtle, and brought her to the vet. She needed her blood drawn, and an ultrasound done. The tests were a bit harder on her as she was very active and bigger, but they got them done. Ashley and I then went back to the area where the turtles were, which is the non-quarantine area, and looked at this one named Kai. He had been struck by a boat, and had a gnarly scar down his shell to show it. During that boat strike, something happened internally where he now gets a lot of gas stuck in his body. This makes it really hard for him to swim anywhere but the surface. This makes him unreleasable because if he only could swim at the surface he would be subject to much more predators. In order to help increase his quality of life, they are trying to engineer a weighted prosthetic that could help make him more mobile. 

And to end my time at the ACRC, Katie and I fed the two stingray! The stingrays are normally in the Atlantic Coral Reef Habitat at the main aquarium. However, they could only be fed by hand by divers, and during covid there were little to no divers, so they had to be transferred and haven’t been returned. Katie was explaining to me that they are trying to train the sting rays to come to the surface for their food so that they don’t rely on the divers. They are doing this in stages. First they are putting the food in little balls with holes in them that are tied to a rope and belayed to the bottom of the tank. Then, they are starting to introduce the hand feeding tool into the water so they aren’t afraid of it. Then they are slowly raising the balls of food so the stingrays get used to coming up to eat. Then, removing food from the balls but still using them as a cue that food is coming and feeding them with the hand held grabber thing. We were on the stage where the hand held grabber was in the water but food was still in the balls. We actually got the smaller ray, Garfunkel, to eat a piece of fish from the grabber tool, which was the first time she had ever done that! I had a great time at the ACRC!

The rest of the day was spent studying for my DAN First Aid course that I am taking tomorrow. I am very grateful to get the opportunity to get first aid training here at the National Aquarium, and tomorrow will be a great day full of learning. Holly and I had some yummy soup and cornbread for dinner, and rested up for Friday.

Today is my first day as a volunteer for the National Aquarium! Holly Bourbon, director of dive programs at the National Aquarium, is hosting me at her house for the next week. We woke up bright and early at 5:15am to leave for the aquarium by 5:45am. Upon arrival, I got my badge that gives me access to staff entrances and stored by dive gear in the dive locker. Holly had a contractor coming to assess a window in one of the habitats, and they did a dive around 7:45am. When I was waiting with the contractor, we established that I go to school in Santa Barbara and he grew up there, small world! We headed to the dolphin enclosure where they were doing their dive and I explored a bit. I then met Jackie, the senior assistant dive safety officer, and she took me through all the safety training for being a volunteer. I even learned how to use the compressor that they have and filled tanks. Then, Holly and I got suited up and headed to the Atlantic Coral Reef Habitat to do a checkout dive. I went over all the skills I learned in my open water course, and we did a couple laps in the habitat. It was so cool to be in the tank while the aquarium was open. I got to wave at little kids and Jackie took our picture. After we completed skills, we did one more lap and went into some of the tunnels and areas where the reef hung over. It was unlike any experience I’ve ever had! We got showered and then headed to Hollys office for lunch. Since Holly had to do work, I sat down with Jackie and we had a great talk about diving and safety, and I really appreciated her answering all my questions. She toured me around the habitats I hadn’t seen yet, and then I walked around alone and stopped at some exhibits for a while. 

The jellyfish exhibit was just beautiful, and I will spend more time there before I leave Baltimore. We ended up logging in just about a ten hour day! We got home and I fell asleep while reading a book on the couch, the long day definitely got me tired. We had the best steak and homemade mac and cheese for dinner.  I had the best first day with Holly and her husband Bill, and excited to see what the rest of the week holds!  

After the Digital Shootout, I will be heading to the National Aquarium in Baltimore! There I will be completing my DAN First Aid for Divers training. As a part of this, I have to complete online modules to be prepared for the in classroom portion of the class. With 32 chapters ahead of me, I had to take a decent amount of time on my last two days here to complete that. On Friday night, we had the much awaited competition. I felt proud of my submissions, but understood I was the least experienced photographer and still had much to learn in order to get on the podium of a photography competition one day. Russel, on the other hand, did so well in the competition! He got first in both macro categories, a second in a wide angle category, and the best in show image. It felt great to be surrounded by someone who is thriving in this industry, and I am happy that I was able to dive and learn from him this week. 

The video that Jim and Karin made where I was the subject for some shots, got second in the video category! That was super cool to be a part of. A lot of people won trips, cameras, and gift cards in the raffle at the end of the competition. My friend Bishoy won a $250 dollar gift card to ultralight in that raffle. He came up to me and told me he didn’t need anything else from their company as he already had a lot of arms and strobes and the pieces in between, and that I would get better use out of the giftcard. So, now I have money to go towards my own gear!! Thank you Bishoy! Below is the video that Jim made that I was a part of. 

V_Jim_Laurel

My time in Bonaire at the Digital Shootout was unmatched. The knowledge I gained here is priceless and I am so glad it was the first part of my internship. Now I can take these skills and apply them to all the other opportunities that arise. I am immensely grateful to everyone at Backscatter for providing me this opportunity. To Berkeley White for inviting me to the shootout and being a wonderful mentor to look up to. To Becca Boring for getting in contact with me prior to the shootout and always making sure I was set up with gear. And to James, Robin, and Thomas in the demo room for helping me switch out my lens everyday as I wanted to try something new. You are all tremendous people!

Today is the last day of shooting photos, as we have to submit all photos to the competition by early tomorrow morning. Not only is the Backscatter Shootout a great place to learn and grow with photography and diving, it is also a competition. Any photo taken by a shootout participant during the two weeks is eligible to be submitted to any of the five categories. There is macro traditional, macro unrestricted, wide angle traditional, wide angle unrestricted, and point and shoot. The traditional categories are where you have not cropped a photo, and only made general adjustments to brightness, contrast, etc. The unrestricted categories are where you are free to crop, clone, completely photoshop out divers, and edit till your heart’s content. I had quite a few macro unrestricted photos to submit (we are allowed to submit 3 per category) but I didn’t have many photos for the macro traditional category. So today I went out on the house reef for two dives in the morning and one in the afternoon with the goal of shooting at least one photo that I could submit for the macro traditional category. That meant I had to be really careful when I was shooting that the crop was exactly what I wanted, and that there was minimal backscatter in the image. With the help of other divers, I was able to locate an octopus! I was the only one down there with him so I had plenty of time to try to get a shot. However, he was pretty tucked into a rock so the composition wasn’t right. So, I headed back to the dock and stayed underneath it for a bit. Someone had mentioned that the fish underneath the dock weren’t as scared off by divers, as they were used to the commotion of boats coming in and out and divers entering and exiting the water. I came across an angelfish, and he was very cooperative and would do circles around me and the pilings. I was able to figure out my snoot angle and turn my camera so I had a vertical shot, as I couldn’t make it a vertical shot after. I was able to snag this shot and I was pretty excited about it! The background is completely black which is what I wanted, with no little speckles of backscatter. The fish is in focus, including his eye, and the crop is exactly what I wanted. 

In the afternoon, I dove with Ryan as he needed someone to hold a light in one of his shots that he was going to take near the anchor on the house reef. After dinner, we got ready for the ostracod dive! Two days after the full moon, the ostracods begin mating and can be observed by their blue luminescence that they give off when they spiral upward and mate. I decided not to bring my camera on this dive and just observe as this is a very special dive opportunity and I am not confident enough in my camera abilities to capture that yet. We got in the water about 15 minutes after the sun went down. We used dive lights to find a sandy spot on the bottom in about 20 feet of water, and then turned off the lights. Not minutes later, ostracods began popping up, but just a couple at a time. I was next to Natasha, and we were both very excited. Very suddenly, hundreds of the ostracods emerged, it was like you were looking out of a plane at night and saw all the houses twinkling below. It was a jaw dropping experience. Ebby, the dive guide, would shine his flashlight periodically to double check all divers were safe. This also made the ostracods light up even more. I am so grateful to have had this experience!

Heading to the wreck today! Wow. I am so excited. Most of the people on my boat had been there but this was a big deal for me. I have dove one wreck before, but it was wicked small compared to this. This is the wreck of the Hilma Hooker, it is around 240ft long and sitting in about 70-90ft of water. The Hilma Hooker was carrying forbidden cargo and was seized in 1984. She sank a few months later between two reefs on a sandy channel, a little suspicious. Descending down to the wreck, I realized just how big the ship really is. I was in awe. We made our way around the stern and explored the hull a bit. I then made my way to the top of the wreck, and it was cool to see everyones bubbles from inside the wreck sneaking out of little holes. I really hope to dive more wrecks this summer and learn how to photograph them better. 

We went to another reef site after, and basically everyone saw a sea turtle, but I missed it. Whoops! A bit sad about that, but all good. I returned the wide lens I had been using to the Backscatter demo room, and signed up to use the 60mm macro lens tomorrow. Since I was in the water so late last night, I took a nap to gain energy back for class  and to review and edit photos later. Erin QUigley gave a class about repositioning strobes in Lightroom, and Todd Winner explained camera optics. After dinner I helped get some finishing shots for Jim and Karins video. At the critique, Jim showed some clips we had shot the night before and I think everyone liked it a lot! Finished up the night early and went through some more photos and checked some things off my to do list. Looking forward to the next two days of diving!

Boats are heading to the infamous salt pier today! One of Bonaire’s biggest exports is salt, and there is a big conveyor belt connected to the pier that brings the salt to large ships. Ever since we have been here there has been a large ship docked so nobody was allowed to dive underneath the pier. But… today is the day that the ship finally left! Before we went there though, we headed to Angel City in search of squid and spotted eagle rays. We found squid, but no rays today. We then headed to the salt pier and got a very important briefing. Instead of the boat grabbing a mooring and staying stationary when we entered the water, we were entering the water while the boat was still moving so that we could start our dive as close to the pier as possible. It was a really fast paced entrance and super fun. Once underwater, we had to travel through the pier pilings at a fairly fast rate as the boat was also picking us up at a different location. The pilings were so tall and ominous, it was quite beautiful. When we made it to the end of the pier, we had a long swim to the boat which tired me out!

In the afternoon I went to the split photography workshop with Berkley White. There were a bit more difficult with the lens I had because it was smaller and also was a wet mount so the water would drain quickly and mess with the photo. I practiced for a bit and also got my photo taken too. Heres one below that isn’t a split shot necessarily but shows me with my camera so I liked it!

We had our nightly critique and there were a ton of great images that inspired me to get back to shooting macro.

After the critique, I helped Jim and Karin Laurel on their video idea. They made a fake moon out of four strobes and had me dive down into the ‘moonlight’. It was so fun and cool because the tarpon was attracted to the light. I felt like a movie star. To the left is a few screenshots from the video that Jim shot. We got out of the water around 11pm, which was super late since we get up at 6am every day, but it was so worth it!

Today’s boat headed first to a dive site called Alice in Wonderland, and then back to Angel City which we had explored a few days prior. I was back to using a wide angle lens, and the first dive at Alice in Wonderland was fairly uneventful. I practiced lighting sun balls, and slowing my shutter speed to see what type of movement I could get in the photo. After a surface interval, Russel and I buddied up and explored Angel City. About 35 minutes in, we were pretty shallow and came upon around 40 squid! It was just us in that area so we had plenty of subjects and I wasn’t worried about getting in anyone’s way. While I was shifting some settings, I saw a spotted eagle ray out of the corner of my eye. It was beautiful! I tried to get Russels attention but he was focused on his camera, so I was able to shoot the ray alone. At first my settings were way too bright, but luckily the ray stayed for a few minutes and I was able to change them and get a better shot. I was happy that I was shooting wide angle when I saw the ray instead of macro like the day before!

After lunch, Russel and I headed to the house reef and made a plan to drop down to 70 feet on an old row boat. It was a small boat but it gave me a chance to test out strobe brightness so that I know what to do when we go to the big wreck, the Hilma Hooker, tomorrow. There was a lot of backscatter in the test shot, so I have to be weary of that tomorrow on the big wreck.

As we made our way up the reef I noticed that around a dozen fish were all fighting over something. From what I could see, it looked like a fish spine that a fisherman would’ve thrown overboard, or a really large centipede looking thing. As I was getting closer to photograph the battle, a large fish swoops in and takes the entire thing and eats it all. It was great to get some shots of the fish with the food in its mouth as it made the image more compelling than if it were just swimming.

I quickly showered and headed to Erin Quigleys class on backscatter removal. I had learned a bit of this in a high school class, but it was a great refresher! I had to work on a module for another upcoming opportunity with the internship so I had to miss the second class. 

After dinner, I went to Berkeley Whites presentation on creative photography. My favorite part was when he explained how to paint with light. He would turn on his shutter, go ‘paint’ a wreck with light, and then turn off his light and swim back so he wasn’t in the shot. It created some really beautiful results, but takes a lot of practice. He also mentioned that when a photo has a pattern, it tends to look nice in black and white. So, I made my spotted eagle ray shot in black and white, and I do think I like it better.

Realization of the day is that we should all try to live in the moment more. I just had one of the best days ever, and they will only get better from here as I learn and grow. It’s all mindset.