Some decent underwater photos

Yesterday was dissapointing camera-wise as my trusty old Nikon finally died. It had been giving me some errors over the last few months but I'd always been able to patch it up enough.

Even taking the camera to bits didn't help- the zoom lens mechanism was completely locked. Its well past the guarantee period by several years and repair is now about as much as a new camera. So ,it looks like a new camera is on the cards as an early birthday present but due to having plenty of other outgoings it will have to be a very reasonable [ie cheap] price .

I've seen one that looks pretty good and has good macro capabilities so hopefully that will be a good buy, I would love to have an all singing all dancing camera that works under water as well , but i will have to make do with this basic one for the time being.

I seem to be getting the hang of things anyway - staying steady in the water is still difficult , especially if there is any sort of wind as its very easy to get thrown against rocks . [I have the scratches and bruises to prove it.]

The Fuji 400 iso film is much better than the previous generic film and that helps a lot with the low light conditions under the water.

I've been having the film developed just on CD which means a day or so lag from finishing the spool - so thats not too bad or too expensicve.

The next couple of pictures are of Sarpa salpa [sand smelt] They seem to live in shoals of similar size/age fish and move together to feed. However each age grouping moves independently, I haven't seen any mixed size shoals.
Apparently these fish move from shore to deeper sea according to the time of day and are to be found near the sea shore until dusk.



The camera flash isn't good enough to pick up the yellow and blue stripey colouration, which is visible to the naked eye. They seem to like to distrub the sea weeds and find things to eat whilst creating a mini sandstorm.
The fish in the photo below were quite big- thpugh not as large as some i've seen in the last few weeks.


A view from above - they are quite well camouflaged.
The next two photos show different age groupings of the fish - there is a hint of disturbed sand in the first one.
This photo looks out towards the deeper water - you can just see the sun rays . The seaweeds range from a dark brown to a lilacy pink. Brown and khaki are probably the predominant colours.
If you look closely below you will see two Diplodus vulgaris [two banded sea bream]. They have black spots near their tails and a dark spot near the tips of their heads. There is an unidentified oval shaped fish and a Mullus barbatus [surmullet] called the rouget-barbet in french, which has the white cat-fish type whiskers in the foreground. Its a reddish brown speckled colour so it blends in well with the surroundings, although the white whiskers are very noticeable.



There are some more Diplodus vulgaris [two banded sea bream] swimming in deeper water past a rocky overhang.


The red patch of colour is red coral which seems to grow here and there. Its a very shocking reddish orange colour - it almost looks like spray paint until you look closer. More of the two banded sea bream are swimming in front of the rocks.




Here are some sand smelt leaving the rocks and heading out towards the deeper water [which is mainly sandy] - I hadn't realised they changed location according to time of day until i looked them up before writing this - and they were seemed to be leaving for deeper water around 6.30 pm.
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