The sea lion mimicks the dive guide’s position in the water.
Descending and Ascending
I was just thinking about the deep blue color of the ocean water. So, here are some photos from a recent trip showing other divers descending into, and ascending from, the blue ocean.
Sometimes we come across another group from our boat at the end of a dive
Large Rays
A mobula and two spotted eagle rays on one dive. Beautiful.
Sea Lions Frolicking
We had hoped to be able to see some Sea Lions on the trip to the Loreto National Marine Park in the Sea of Cortez, because we knew they liked to hang out there at least part of the year.
Our dive guide, Rafael from the Dolphin Dive Center gave us the opportunity to watch the sea lions underwater on our very first dive. The video below was taken with my small Sea & Sea 860DXG underwater camera.
Logs of Inspirations
The question came up recently: When was the last time I dove in Baja? I took out my old dive logs and took a look. I dove twice at the Cabo Pulmo Marine Park and remember all the huge boulders underwater and the fish that were on the same scale. The trip was before I started creating jewelry inspired by my dives, yet all the images built up in my head over the years certainly have helped.
While looking through the logs looking for Baja entries, I stopped to read the log of my favorite dive site: Alcyone in the Cocos Island Marine Park area of Costa Rica. As the second diver down, I was priveleged to experience a huge school of hammerheads before all the diver bubbles drove the sharks farther out from the sea mount. The best way to describe it is as follows: if I was in a snow globe all the snowflakes would be hammerheads.
The dive on Alcyone was also when I realized that sunscreen on the face was keeping my mask from sealing properly. Now I skip the sunscreen until after I dive, for visibility and because the ingredients in most suncreens are harmful to the marine life.
Humpback Whales: Breaching and Singing
The picture of a humpback whale breaching was taken on a recent trip to a dive site. The underwater video from on one of our dives allows you hear the whale singing.
We were underwater when this underwater earthquake hit. The quake was very loud underwater and reverberated unlike anything we’d heard and felt before. Which makes sense, since it’s the first time we’ve been underwater near an underwater earthquake! We were confused, because we’d been listening to the whale the whole time and it suddenly sounded very different. 🙂 The sound made sense the next day when our dive master told us there had been an earthquake. One of her dive master friends had also been underwater to hear it and figured it out when the quake was mentioned on the evening news and the times matched.
What does all this underwater stuff have to do with my artwork? The article I wrote for a zine explains.
Whale Shark!
Until last week, the longest I’d ever seen a whale shark is twelve seconds over eight years ago. I know this because that’s exactly how long the video of my first whale shark encounter is.
After the last dive of the trip last week, the boat captain starting yelling down to us as we were heading back to the beach. We looked over the side and saw a whale shark right below the boat. The 20 foot long creature hung out for a while about 15 feet below the surface as we snorkeled above it. Awesome!
You can now access the whale shark video from 2000, and other trip video and slide shows, over on the right hand side of this blog.
Clear Water, Clear Mind
SCUBA diving in clear warm water clears my mind, and a result I have new ideas for some earrings to create for this next weekend’s
The Virgin Artists’ 6th Annual Show and Sale in Cupertino.
Look at the lush coral landscape in this minimally impacted area of the Carribean.
And, views like this when I’m above the water sure help!
