Lighthouse point is a pretty nice place. It's in Westbay. It's nice place to do a shore dive. Look at all the tanks. To enter the water, you have to jump of the end of the dock because there's no stairs. But, the main attraction to going to Lighthouse point is the battery powered underwater scooters the you can rent. Just like James Bond 007 or something! I recorded our dive using my GoPro video camera. Please Enjoy!
The song from this video was taken from the soundtrack of the movie "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou." Funny!
This blog post is going to be kind of a different one...Fish Art Gallery: This is what happens when pictures of fish meet digital editing software. These are some kind of mackerel fish. Here are more of those mackerel-like fish except they've been crystallized. Here's a french grunt in front a squirrel fish. This is a green moray eel. This is a sting ray. I'm not sure if it was laying eggs or something because as I got close, it seemed to get angry. It arched it's back kind of like a hissing cat. I didn't want to take my chances with this one so, I promptly left her be. Here's a lobster. No digital trickery here. The unsteady camera ended up giving this shot a cool effect just 'by accident!' Here we have an artistic contribution by an anonymous guest artist. The piece is called 'puffer'.
I gots me a new camera! I bought one of those GoPro cameras that are so popular nowadays. Saying "I went snorkeling in Westbay" is pretty vague since there are so many different snorkel locations. To be more specific, I went snorkeling in Westbay behind the gas-station near the four-way stop. The reef there is pretty sweet however, it's a good 200 meter swim to get out there.
There's no doubt the camera works well under water for taking videos. You gotta love that wide eye lens. Not quite a fish eye, which is too bad since this blog is all about fish and stuff but, it's close enough.
I surfaced and snapped this here picture: I like this picture because you can really see the effect the wide angle has by looking at the horizon. Also, that cloud in the middle is pretty crazy. Probably a strombocatacumulo cloud. Just kidding. It almost looks like a mushroom cloud! The point is, when using the GoPro, realize that the still pictures above the water's surface are much more clear versus the still pictures you'll take below. Here's a gray fish. I've blogged about this fish in the past and I still haven't found out the proper name for it. I was just saying that these pictures aren't that great underwater but zoomed out like this one is, it still looks pretty cool. One challenge with using the wide angle lens is that the subject of your shot has to be closer to the camera then you'd 'normally' expect. It's tough to tell from this zoom level but, here's some sergeant major fish. Finally, a nice coral specimen. One additional comment about the GoPro camera....There's no preview LCD display. I think this is good because it conserves battery life. However, it is slightly inconvenient because you don't know if you've captured a 'good' shot or not. Conversely, it makes for a nice surprise when you return home to see if you've got any good footage.
Awesome! SHARK! SHARK! SHARK! Saw a shark!This is a Nurse shark. It was hiding under some coral. I swam in real close to snap this picture but then it got scared and swam away. This is the nurse shark swimming away. I was surprised at how fast it took off. Shark wasn't the only thing seen on this snorkeling adventure. Here's a lovely school of blue tangs. Here's a baby spotted trunk-fish.
Spotted a little rock off the tip of Barker's and decided to swim to it. It took about an hour each way. The water was pretty shallow and below head-level for the majority of the way. Unfortunately, there wasn't much see life to observe.
This little stingray showed up but that was about all there was to see while swimming. I brought my fishing rod with me because I thought I'd do a few casts from the rock. There were some fish swimming around the rock but they didn't want to bite my lure. Also, the rock was really sharp and that made it tough walk on. During this adventure, there was lots of stuff to step on. It would have been good to have shoes.
There were jelly-fish and I got stung. It wasn't a big deal though.
It was really hot out this day and the ocean felt like bathwater. Almost too warm. There were some fish around.These are yellow grunts. They are really common. I was surprised to see that they were being sold at the downtown fish market because they're pretty small.Here's a sea anemone. I'm surprised that there are so few of these here in the Cayman Islands.This big barracuda showed up and wouldn't leave me alone...so this cut my snorkeling short.
To enter the water, you have to jump of the end of the dock because there's no stairs. But, the main attraction to going to Lighthouse point is the battery powered underwater scooters the you can rent. Just like James Bond 007 or something!
I recorded our dive using my GoPro video camera. Please Enjoy!
These are some kind of mackerel fish.
Here are more of those mackerel-like fish except they've been crystallized.
Here's a french grunt in front a squirrel fish.
This is a green moray eel.
This is a sting ray. I'm not sure if it was laying eggs or something because as I got close, it seemed to get angry. It arched it's back kind of like a hissing cat. I didn't want to take my chances with this one so, I promptly left her be.
Here's a lobster. No digital trickery here. The unsteady camera ended up giving this shot a cool effect just 'by accident!'
Here we have an artistic contribution by an anonymous guest artist. The piece is called 'puffer'.
Saying "I went snorkeling in Westbay" is pretty vague since there are so many different snorkel locations. To be more specific, I went snorkeling in Westbay behind the gas-station near the four-way stop. The reef there is pretty sweet however, it's a good 200 meter swim to get out there.
I like this picture because you can really see the effect the wide angle has by looking at the horizon. Also, that cloud in the middle is pretty crazy. Probably a strombocatacumulo cloud. Just kidding. It almost looks like a mushroom cloud! The point is, when using the GoPro, realize that the still pictures above the water's surface are much more clear versus the still pictures you'll take below.
Here's a gray fish. I've blogged about this fish in the past and I still haven't found out the proper name for it. I was just saying that these pictures aren't that great underwater but zoomed out like this one is, it still looks pretty cool. One challenge with using the wide angle lens is that the subject of your shot has to be closer to the camera then you'd 'normally' expect.
It's tough to tell from this zoom level but, here's some sergeant major fish.
Finally, a nice coral specimen. One additional comment about the GoPro camera....There's no preview LCD display. I think this is good because it conserves battery life. However, it is slightly inconvenient because you don't know if you've captured a 'good' shot or not. Conversely, it makes for a nice surprise when you return home to see if you've got any good footage.
This is a Nurse shark. It was hiding under some coral. I swam in real close to snap this picture but then it got scared and swam away.
This is the nurse shark swimming away. I was surprised at how fast it took off.
Shark wasn't the only thing seen on this snorkeling adventure. Here's a lovely school of blue tangs.
Here's a baby spotted trunk-fish.
Unfortunately, there wasn't much see life to observe.
There were some fish swimming around the rock but they didn't want to bite my lure. Also, the rock was really sharp and that made it tough walk on. During this adventure, there was lots of stuff to step on. It would have been good to have shoes.
These are yellow grunts. They are really common. I was surprised to see that they were being sold at the downtown fish market because they're pretty small.
Here's a sea anemone. I'm surprised that there are so few of these here in the Cayman Islands.
This big barracuda showed up and wouldn't leave me alone...so this cut my snorkeling short.
