Tag: california

  • Photo of the Week: The Hitchhiker

    Photo of the Week: The Hitchhiker

    If I’d had the ocular fortitude to spot the microscopic amphipod hitchhiking a ride on this nudibranch’s back, I would have spent all damn day shooting those two little guys. However, I never even saw it until I was home, my gear was rinsed and drying, and I was on the computer, heavily cropping this…

  • Back in Sun Diego: Solar-powered sea critters

    Back in Sun Diego: Solar-powered sea critters

    Yesterday, while enjoying the heat at the pool, I briefly considered the possibility that maybe I was actually solar-powered. I don’t need food anymore, I thought, All I need is warmth. This of course was incorrect, and I shuffled my flip-flops home almost immediately thereafter and ate some soup. But it reminded me of critters…

  • Go get the new issue of Scuba Diving Magazine now!

    Go get the new issue of Scuba Diving Magazine now!

    Hey everybody! My photo inside the HMCS Yukon was just published in the May 2014 issue of Scuba Diving Magazine. It’s on newsstands (and available digitally) now! Please go check it out! :)

  • How to Remove Backscatter: The Fastest Way to Improve Your Underwater Photos

    How to Remove Backscatter: The Fastest Way to Improve Your Underwater Photos

    Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking about technical diving and underwater photography to the Whalers Dive Club in Canoga Park, California. It was a great crowd, and the attendees were every speaker’s dream: they both laughed at my jokes and asked engaged, thoughtful questions! One of the questions that stood out, and that…

  • The Missile Tower Wreck (165′), San Diego

    The Missile Tower Wreck (165′), San Diego

    The Missile Tower in San Diego, formerly used by the U.S. Navy to test-launch Trident submarine missiles, now rests in 165 feet of water near the Mexican Border as an artificial reef.

  • Getting Riggy on Eureka

    Getting Riggy on Eureka

    The silence of my rebreather allows me to hear every hydraulic hiss, every crash as steel collides with steel, the sounds of industry happening above the surface. I catch myself wondering whether the fish are anchovy or sardine, realizing that I have been contemplating the question for several minutes, lazily resolving the taxonomical conundrum with…

  • When the Red Octopus Isn’t: Cephalopod Camouflage in Catalina

    When the Red Octopus Isn’t: Cephalopod Camouflage in Catalina

    More camouflage today–this time from the cephalopods. Red octopus ran rampant at Catalina Island last weekend, scavenging on the discarded squid egg cases littering the seafloor. As they passed over kelp, seagrass, sand, rubble, and the egg cases in various shades of white and brown, their skin color and texture shifted to blend the animal…

  • Obligatory End-of-Year Post (A Summary of 2013)

    Obligatory End-of-Year Post (A Summary of 2013)

    Because (a) It’s pretty much in the rules of blogging to make an end-of-year summary post, and (b) 2013 was full of great diving and photo ops. From technical wrecks to nudibranchs: a photographic summary of my underwater exploits in 2013.

  • Diving the UB-88 Submarine Wreck

    Diving the UB-88 Submarine Wreck

    Part of the allure of technical wreck diving is getting the opportunity to experience bits of history that very few others, not even many other divers, get to experience. This is why when I received an invitation to go dive the UB-88, a German WWI U-boat off San Pedro, California, and the only U-boat wreck…

  • Sunlight streaming through the Catalina kelp forest canopy

    Sunlight streaming through the Catalina kelp forest canopy

    Just a quickie today. Visibility on our little island Santa Catalina is routinely much better than it is over here on the mainland, but I don’t usually see the Catalina kelp forest quite this good. This was taken off Two Harbors at Ship Rock.