12/8/2023 0 Comments Macro photography water![]() ![]() Some of the most alien creatures you’ll every see, in all shapes sizes and colors. The lines are also helpful for referencing your depth, as there’s often no other way to know just how deep you are.Īs soon as you begin to adjust to this new discombobulating environment, you realize you are in a soup of animals. Some just let you drift along with a torch, while others drop down ropes for you to hold on. You feel very vulnerable and tiny, almost like being in space.Įvery operation has its own method of keeping track of divers. You’re in an absolutely immense blackness. I often feel like I’m ringing a dinner bell as I plunge off the boat into complete darkness with only the feeble beam of my light to poke through the pitch environment. The first splash into the ocean is always a bit disconcerting. Because there’s no bottom, it can be very disorienting, and you have to remain hyper-aware of your depth and position relative to the boat. Night diving on a reef is one thing, but being 10 miles offshore and drift-diving in 10,000 feet of water is a whole other thing. The nature of this dive is so different compared other dives and requires advanced diving and photography skills. Popular destinations for black water macro diving include Kona, Hawaii, and Palau. However, in a lot of places, these depths do not exist close enough to shore-if at all. Theoretically, black water macro photography can be done in any deep water (more than 8,000 feet deep). Some of them come up to feed on the nutrient-rich layer of water near the surface, and some of them are coming up to respirate-to absorb oxygen to use through the day. ![]() It’s actually the largest migration of any group of animals on the planet. Many of these animals live in the total darkness of the depths during the day, and make the long vertical migration to the surface at night. ![]() Working with scientists from various institutes and universities, we try to identify as many as we can, but often come up with lots of question marks. So many of the animals you can photograph on this dive are unknown or little-known species. So why would you choose to take a boat 10 miles off shore and drift-dive over 10,000 feet of pitch black water? That’s also an easy answer-for the chance to see and photograph critters most people have never even heard of. It’s a completely different experience than any other dive you’ll do, requiring advanced diving and photography skills, as outlined in this article. Simply put: The dive involves drifting in the open ocean at night. What Is Black Water Pelagic Macro Photography? Soon we were heading out into the dark on a bi-weekly basis, and have been doing so ever since. At first, I had no idea how to photograph this dive yet and didn't come home with a single usable image-but I was hooked. Soon, the black water called to me and I set out with a borrowed boat and three of my friends. I had some friends that were doing it occasionally, but I’d just started diving and didn’t feel ready with only 100 dives under my belt. I was intrigued when I first heard about “black water” diving. This opens up the ability to do black water pelagic macro dives. Because we are located on such a remote island there is no continental shelf, and thus deep and vast canyons are in abundance just offshore. It’s a rugged island with beautiful vistas above water and incredible life beneath the waves. I live and dive on the Kona Coast on the Big Island of Hawaii. ![]()
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