We have some underwater photos today, pictures taken by reader Peter Klaver. His descriptions are indented, and note that there are several of his movies linked to the text.
Last month two friends and I had a week of diving in the Red Sea. The underwater life there is simply stunning.
The highlight of the diving was seeing a pod of bottlenose dolphins, genus Tersiops (but I don’t know which species these were), passing close to our group. Below is a frame from a videoclip (76 MB mp4 movie) of them
Just after they had passed our group, they started getting very close to each other and making moves we didn’t understand very well. Once we were out of the water again, our dive guide told us they had been mating. So without us realizing it, we had dolphins mating right in front of us. Without the slightest bit of shame!
Other fish we saw weren’t as big, but some were more colorful.
A bluespotted ribbontail ray, Taeniura lymma. There is a videoclip (100 MB mp4) of it here.
A pufferfish; I don’t know the Latin name of the species.
Big turtles are always a welcome sight during a dive. They’re usually not shy, so unlike many fish they don’t flee the moment you try taking their picture.
No idea what these fish are.
A parrotfish:
The fish below has a mouth that looks slightly similar to the parrot fish above.
A moray eel. There is a videoclip (67 MB mp4) of another one here.
We saw shoals of fish, too. Here are moon fish:
And a really big shoal of which the picture below only shows a small part. A videoclip (77 MB mp4) shows the size of the entire shoal.
We went into a few old wrecks too. These can be full of shoals of often tiny fish too, as you can see in a videoclip here.
Wonderful set!
Bluespotted ribbontail ray: How annoying – trying to have a peaceful sediment snack while little fishies try to steal it from you AND all that effort to dress in the latest camo – all gone to waste.
Incredible. I really enjoyed those videoclips.
Thanks for the nice pictures and videos!
Great clip. I love swimming with my favorite animal on planet earth. 🐬
Just heavenly. One of the most glorious moments of my life was snorkelling in Tobago, this brings back lovely memories.
Wow, thanks for sharing!
Looks like a great place to dive (or snorkel in my case) but I doubt I’ll ever get there.
Great shots. You can tell the approximate depth of each shot by the amount of color. Shallow is brightly colored deep gets ever more monochrome blue.
Absolutely correct. I took these pictures with a GoPro HERO5 camera I found at the bottom of the Indian ocean while diving off Mozambique last year. It’s a great improvement in terms of pixel resolution over my old 2009 camera, but it didn’t have a light source or red filter attached to it, which my old camera did. Hence the greened out colors in many of these pics, while with the old camera colors were better when using flash (see old diving pics Jerry posted e.g. here https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2019/01/29/readers-wildlife-photos-and-videos-12/ ).
Getting a light source with it is on the list for the next time I go diving.
Yes, lighting makes a big difference, although the shots often look a bit artificial when lit by flash. You can go an extra mile and get two lights which helps eliminate harsh shadows. I’m sure there are attachments available. Lucky find!
Seeing these photos was a treat. The fish below the parrotfish photo is some species of trigger fish…I think the Red-toothed Odonus niger.
Wow, that’s some amazingly “unnatural” looking green.