Underwater photography part 1

  Perhentian Kecil, Malaysia
Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Here are some photos resulting from initial test drives (both snorkelling and diving) of my new Fuji camera and underwater housing in the Perhentians. They give a good idea of the underwater landscape in this part of the world and the sea life that abounds here.

When viewing, remember that:

- you have to get close to the subject to get a good shot (making fish harder to catch than coral)
- light is better near the surface so many of these shots are taken snorkelling as opposed to diving
- red, yellow and green colours are lost underwater before blues which is why most shots have a blue tinge
- the flash can make shots better or worse which is a bit of a gamble
- I've added some captions on the page for these so you get an idea of what they are. Fish names might not be entirely accurate.



Cute array of tropical fish (rainbow parrotfish at centre) and in the second shot, a huge set of plate corals.



Nemo clown fish protecting their soft anenome and a school of needlefish zotting by.



A nice green hard coral formation and some large fish with a clam in its mouth (assume it will bash/chomp it open for a feed).



Some healthy clams of different shapes and sizes. A huge trigger fish peering out of a hiding hole.



A quite common but beautiful blue ringed anglefish munching off the bottom and a moray eel watching intently from his hiding place.



A puffer fish not being very puffy but gliding by and a bamboo shark hiding out in the rocks.



Red corals hanging about, looking up an underwater seascape and following a school of metre long bumphead parrotfish (same guys as in the video - check out a swim with a school of 8 of them in the gallery).



Cool little turtle cruising by.

Finally, check out the video of a school of very large (1m+ in length) bumphead parrotfish swimming about in close proximity. Pretty cool so sorry about the filesize (7.5mb).

I'll have to refine my technique further in the rest of Malaysia and Thailand but as you can see from my first attempts, gear available today makes this is a relatively easy hobby to get into. Keep a lookout for more underwater galleries in later entries.