I immediately forgot about the long, rough boat ride as soon as I spotted my first whale shark. A wide angle lens masks just how massive these guys really are. Despite their size, they weren’t very interested in me, and swam on by looking for more tiny bits of food to filter out of the Caribbean Sea.
This shot reminded me of a garden, although it is like nothing you would see above sea level. I captured this in Cozumel. The combination of soft corals with the light reflecting off the surface made this trip very memorable.
This was the first thing I saw after emerging from a cave dive in Mexico. The cave was called Kukulkan. True, it was the way we came in, but from this vantage point I was still in the water after swimming through caves, and it looked quite different. I can’t say I was in a hurry to get out of this place, but the effect of the light at the end of the tunnel got my attention.
I was surrounded by these little fish diving in Cozumel. OK, I might have scared a few off by swimming by and bursting a few flashes from my camera!
A diver in front of me on a cave dive in Mexico. This isn’t a technically great shot, it is a little blurry and funky, but I really like the effect that it has. It represents what scuba diving through this part of the the cave was like. It was dark and cold, and it felt like you just had to keep focusing on the one light in front of you and keep going.
I wish that this was one of my scuba diving photos but it is not. Instead it was taken in a fish tank, but I like it anyway. This little fish was puckering up for someone!
This was taken while scuba diving in a cenote in Mexico. A cenote is an underground cave with fresh water flowing through it. They can continue on for miles and miles underground with occasional rocky cave like openings. There isn’t much in the way of wildlife down here, but cenote diving makes up for that with the interesting rock formations and effects from the light that you get from diving in a dark cave. This was my first time diving in a cenote and I was very impressed! What you see in the top of the frame is the surface of the water sending light ripples down into the water below.
I live in Northern California where there are plenty of scuba diving opportunities available, only they all involve very cold water. When I go somewhere warm I try to dive whenever I can. With that in mind I made sure I took the short ferry ride from Playa del Carmen to Cozumel to get a day of diving in. I was rewarded with these beautiful soft corals.
The sea turtle is a very majestic creature. It can also be quite intimidating when you see one close up, and watch it use its powerful jaws to chew a huge clump of grass right in front of you. This was taken in Akumal in Mexico in a spot where people came to snorkel just to see the turtles. They were everywhere. The younger ones were a little skittish when you got close, but the older ones could really care less if you were nearby or not. This particular one let me dive down and hang out with him long enough to get plenty of good photos.
This jellyfish in Monterey Bay was not alone. While diving here I was surrounded by tons of jellyfish. I have to admit it was a little intimidating at first. After I remembered I was in a thick wet suit due to the cold water, and figured out that I was able to swim around most of them, I became a little more comfortable and was able to get a few shots of these huge animals. They were literally everywhere I turned. Thankfully I didn’t directly encounter any of their stinging tentacles!
