We saw some pretty cool stuff on saturday's dives, even if I didn't get the best photos of all of them. I was pleased with these shots of two different but equally cooperative hawksbill turtles.
Generally out here hawksbills are a little less relaxed than green turtles. I suspect in part this relates to which individual turtles have been either a) harassed inappropriately by selfish divers, b) caught by our conservation department's turtle tagging team (they are caught by hand so it obviously leaves them with a poor impression of humans - about 1000 turtles have been tagged this way - most of the turtles I see are untagged nonetheless) or c) have been attacked by something else diver sized (I've seen a couple with mangled flippers which most probably relates to trauma as a juvenile but you have to wonder). Notwithstanding the above, I still think there is a species bias with greens being more chilled.
It was a real pleasure therefore to see two relaxed hawskbills up close and get some shots. I love the ragged back end to their shells. Hawksbill shells were often used for ornament in the old days - although they tend to be much dirtier than green turtle shells in life, in death they unfortunately clean up very well.
5 comments:
Wow! Really nice shots Tai.
I'm sure you've probably posted this before, but what underwater camera are you using?
FC for these shots, and most of the other recent ones, I'm using a Canon a570IS. Some of the older shots on the site were taken with Fujis (the f810 or E900) but I have given up on them as they seemed to repeatedly give up to lens/zoom motor failures. The veyr first underwater shots on the site were taken with an oly stylus 300 (which is obsolete but which had some awesome qualities notably weatherproofing of the camera (helpful for minor floods)). My fiancee uses an oly stylus 1030sw for the same reasons which I have found to be excellent. IF I had to recommend one I'm not sure which it would be but the olympus and the canon both have their advantages and take decent photos.
PS if anyone is wondering "why so many cameras" - my policy for underwater stuff is to take something you can afford to batter and replace as its better to have an okay camera you're willing to take places than an awesome camera you're not willing to risk leaving the house with. The consequence of this has unfortunately been the replacement of 4 cameras over the last 6 years (1 went obsolete, 2 had zoom errors and 1 succumbed to an incident with a waterproof bag and a bottle of gatorade - none have died as a result of flooding though).
Beautiful shots! Glad the turtles cooperated.
And thanks for the camera info. I'm with you on having a "beat up and knock around" camera that isn't going to break the bank when it gives up the ghost.
I love the turtles! Very neat! And very intresting post...it never really occured to me why our own would be skiddish...Probably for the same reasons. Thanks for sharing :D
Post a Comment