Showing posts with label Sergeant Major. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sergeant Major. Show all posts

Friday, January 21, 2011

Snorkeling in Westbay (Sept. 19th, 2010)

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.

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Sunday, February 14, 2010

Snorkeling at Cemetery Beach (Feb 14, 2010)

Cemetery Beach is a pretty cool spot. It's a fairly popular beach on the way to Westbay, Grand Cayman.The graves here are shallow because that is the Caribbean style. Cemetery beach is a designated snorkeling spot so, there are some buoys marking points of underwater interest (reefs).Took this picture at the base of one the buoys. Thought it turned out pretty cool in an artistic kind of way.One cool thing about the Cemetery beach snorkel spot is that there are a bunch of sergeant major fish. The cool thing about sergeant majors is their pugnaciousness. They aren't scared of you and will swim right up to you for a closer look.

These two were real curious!A beautiful girl fish! There were lots of little fish swimming around. I suspect the little ones to be juvenile ring wrasses. Not sure what this fat gray one is called. I couldn't find it in my field guide...I think it might be a dusky sweetlips or a grey snapper?
This fish was really cool. It's fins moved in a unique way. I couldn't get that good of a picture of it because it was really shy and it wouldn't come close. This is a ocean trigger fish.

Pretty good day.