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A few days ago I had the chance to Join Rick Simon once again on one of his commercial diving operations. He had been hired to help the United States Naval Research Lab with their operations (don’t worry this is all declassified information). The Navy is interested in being able to identify unexploded ordinances on the seafloor. These could be remnants of mines, unexploded shells that sank to the bottom, or other military debris that could be dangerous. To practice finding these ordinances, Rick helped them place down a number of  objects on the ocean bottom connected by a long line. These ranged from deactivated howitzer and mortar shells, to scuba tanks and buckets. With the help of a UAV that explores the sea bottom for these objects, the Navy hopes to be able to find these and tell what’s dangerous and what isn’t.

The day I went out, our job was to pick these object up. They had been put out many months ago, and the Navy had already practiced finding them. To collect them, Rick went down and found the 500 pound block of concrete that was at one end of the line. He then followed the line down, marking how far into the mud all of the ordinances were, and noting their orientation, helping the Navy collect useful data to compare with what their UAV saw. Once he got to the end, he brought the line up to the surface. We then hauled all the objects up with the boat’s crane. It was extremely interesting to see how the commercial diving operation worked, and to see all the gear Rick and his dive buddy were using. Both of them had underwater scooters and pony bottles to allow them to work quickly and safely.

 

Our final day in Catalina we did two more dives. For the first dive, I again focused on my wide angle photography, trying my best to capture the depth of the towering kelp forest. At the end of my dive, I also got the chance to play around with over-unders, using the big dome port in front of my lens to capture  the kelp forest below, and the island above. As you can see in the image, our dive site was right next to this gorgeous historic building.

 

For my second dive, I switched my lens and housing, changing to a 100mm macro lens for the first time. Luckily, we found some incredible macro subjects, principally an octopus that was hunting along the sea bottom. As it moved slowly through the kelp looking for prey I managed to take some pictures that I loved, capturing the octopus in its natural habitat.

My second day in Catalina was even more eventful than the first. We ended up doing 3 dives, with one of our main goals being to find the Giant Sea Bass that we knew were hanging around the area. Giant Sea Bass can grow to 500 pounds, and so provide a spectacular subject for wide angle photography among the kelp forest. On all 3 dives we managed to find them and capture stunning images along the way.

While on a family trip to Catalina Island, I got the great chance to do some diving using the amazing gear I was gifted by the Sea Rovers Donors. Catalina Island is known for its spectacular kelp forests and rich marine life close to shore, so I was excited to take my first crack at underwater photography in such a spectacular location. For my internship, Sea Rovers internship Sponsor Backscatter loaned me a SONY S1 mirrorless camera in a Nauticam housing.

On our first day we only did one dive, but I chose to take my wide angle lens into order to capture the rich beauty of the kelp forest. Even though it was my first dive ever with an underwater camera, I quickly got used to controlling the camera underwater and managed to get some great shots of the gorgeous kelp forest.

Special thanks to my other sponsor DUI for the amazing BC, and Henderson for the Greenprene wetsuit.

 

 

 

Recently I had the great opportunity to go out with Joe and Lauren Romeiro for a second time. We headed out on their boat the Warfish with the goal of filming blue and mako sharks. This time we didn’t go so far, only a couple hours out to sea off the coast of Rhode Island. We started chumming for sharks in the late afternoon, and instantly had more luck than we did with the porbeagles. Starting in the late afternoon and continuing into the night, we had a continual presence of decent sized sharks. My job on the boat was to do the behind the scenes filming, shooting with a Sony A7S and RED Helium to capture what it’s like to film sharks in the middle of the ocean. 

 

Once the sun set, a large 8 foot mako shark showed up alongside the boat, and we started to really get into the filming. Lauren took her turn first, laying with her underwater camera hanging off the side of the boat in the water and filming the shark as it swam by. After about half an hour of filming and a few close calls with the shark, Lauren was finished and I got to take my turn. Luckily, the big mako had already left and an 8 foot blue shark had taken its place. Blue sharks aren’t quite as fast as makos and are a lot less powerful, so I was happy to get my first chance at shark photography with the more manageable species. To photograph the shark, I copied Lauren, lying with my arms hanging down into the water, and holding an underwater camera fully submerged beneath the sea surface. The blue shark was sleek and beautiful, illuminated by flood lights pointing into the water off the side of the boat. As it came near, boat captain and shark wrangler Mitch threw a large piece of fish on a long line into the water. The shark spotted it and quickly chased it as Mitch drew it in, right towards my waiting camera. When the bait was a few feet in front of me, Mitch pulled the bait out of the water and the shark turned right in front of the camera as I panned to make sure the shark couldn’t get between the housing and the boat. I got soaked by the waves for the next 45 minutes and struggled to hold my heavy camera as the sharks darted towards me. After I was finished, my heart was racing for the next couple hours, the adrenaline rush of filming the massive sharks not wearing off until 3am. 

 

The next morning, we tested Lauren’s new underwater camera technology that she had specially developed for her phd project. These underwater cameras, called BRUVS, can be dropped deep into the ocean. Equipped with a bait box, light, and a continually running GOPRO camera, they monitor what comes to check out the bait far underwater, that we may not see on the surface. 

A few days ago I had the great opportunity to go diving with Sea Rovers Ted Maney and Vin Malkoski. We headed out of the Cat Cove Marine Lab, with the goal of helping Ted with his benthic surveys at Halfway Rock. Halfway Rock is a small rocky outcropping a short boat trip out from Salem harbor, and home to an abundance of benthic invertebrates that have been monitored for over 40 years. Our short trip consisted of 3 dives, the first down to almost 100 feet, where we looked for temperature probes installed a few years prior. While on the bottom we were greeted by a friendly grey seal who had a pup on the surface, and was curious who was intruding on her watery domain.

Our next two dives we counted and measured urchins, using a quadrat to get accurate counts of the number of urchins per square meter. These data will hopefully provide key insights into the health of benthic environment allowing researchers like Ted better understand how the underwater world is constantly changing.

Recently I had the amazing opportunity to join Joe and Lauren Romeiro on their boat the Warfish. They are both shark biologists and filmmakers, heavily involved in the filming and production of shark week in association with Discovery. 

We set out in the early morning from Rhode Island, travelling far out to sea in the hopes of finding the elusive porbeagle shark. These sharks are quite rare and virtually unknown to the general public. Because of their shy nature it can also be extremely hard to find them alive. Few have actually seen them swimming at the surface.

After a long boat trip filled with seabirds, we finally arrived at the location where Joe thought we would have some luck finding porbeagles. Luckily, he was right. Within the first half an hour of chumming, a small porbeagle swam by, checked out the bait and moved on. Filled with hope, we kept chumming for hours but had little luck, moving locations every few hours in the hopes of finding a larger, more active shark. Finally, at 3AM a 6 foot porbeagle appeared on the surface. Smelling the bait from far below, the shark repeatedly made its way to the surface, chasing whatever bait we had out, and giving us some amazing views. Unfortunately, the shark had a box strap wrapped around its torso, showcasing the harsh impact humans are having on these sharks. After about an hour, we eventually had to turn back due to inclement weather, but it was amazing to see such a rare animal in the wild.

 

For the last couple of days I had the great chance to collect quahogs with Vin Malkoski! Vin needed to collect 12 quahogs from 10 different locations around New Bedford Harbor in order to sample them for PCB contamination. While PCBs are no longer present in the water column, they can linger in sediments, so yearly quahog sampling helps the Massachusetts Department of Marine Fisheries understand how much of the banned chemical still remains. 

Both mornings we headed out on a DMF boat and did 5 dives, exploring the sea bottom with small rakes and a collecting bag, searching for quahogs. At some locations it was quite easy and we were in and out of the dive site in only minutes, but a couple took quite a while as we sifted through the muddy bottom for over half an hour to find the elusive molluscs. Most of these dives were quite shallow and fairly close to shore, one so much so that we didn’t even dive, opting to stay on top of the water and use long rakes with built-in collecting baskets to help us dig up quahogs hidden deep in the mud. All in all, it was a great time, and I loved exploring the sea bottom with Vin.

On Monday, Sea Rover Rick Simon took me out on his commercial diving boat Miss Wendy. Prior to this I had almost no knowledge of what commercial diving entailed so it was great to be exposed to this entirely different side of the diving world. While out on the boat, I helped on deck while Rick checked and cleared several moorings. I then jumped in the water myself to help look for a lost mooring. Unfortunately the client didn’t actually know “exactly where it was” so we weren’t able to find it among the tumbled rocks and eelgrass. 

The highlight of the day was definitely when Rick got a spontaneous call from a fishing boat which had dropped a $1000 bag of shucked scallops into the harbor while unloading their catch. We quickly motored over and Rick jumped in to retrieve the lost bag. Best of all, he was handsomely repaid in a massive bag of scallops for his heroic efforts.

 

On Sunday, Sea Rover Vin Malkoski took me down to Fort Wetherill State Park, RI to help me get acquainted with my great DUI drysuit. The water was a nippy 49 degrees so it was definitely needed. 

On our first dive we refreshed some basic skills made slightly harder with a drysuit such as taking a tank on and off, and eventually got some depth, making our way down to 83 feet. On our way down we got some great glimpses of horseshoe crabs and beautiful fields of anemones sticking out of the sand. Luckily I brought my gopro and managed to capture a few images (below).

Our second dive was much shallower, and we practiced some more drysuit skills such as how to recover from an overinflated suit carrying you quickly to the surface. This becomes most problematic when the air rushes to your feet. When being pulled towards the surface upside down it can be hard to effectively dump air to regain neutral buoyancy. To simulate this scenario I first flipped upside down on my own and practiced flipping back around to get my legs below my torso. Next, Vin held me upside down and held down my drysuit inflator button so that my legs ballooned with air. Right after he let me go, I had to flip over as quickly as possible to stop myself from quickly ascending from our shallow depth to the surface. It was great to get this essential training, and I’m excited to get more experience in my drysuit going forward.