(07/13/04)
I went back to Sipadan Island last weekend. It was great. I discovered a few things: underwater photography/videography is more difficult than it looks, and neglecting to use a red filter on the camera results in some very blue and otherwise colorless photographs/videos. No big deal, live and learn.
Most of my photos turned out blurry because I didn't manually set the ISO speed, and I was fighting a strong current during most of the trip. By the time I realized that my pictures were blurry, I had only one dive left. On that dive I ran out of battery. And it just so happened that I saw the most interesting marine life: plenty of soft coral, black anenomefish in a 2'x2' anenome, and a small moray eel. Also, I saw a 5' sea turtle and some very impressive coral "landscapes." I hate being unprepared.
This is a preliminary update, as I don't really have time to post all my pictures or even give a description of too many of them, but one of the recurring motifs in these pictures/videos is that I hate fobs. Any time you see obnoxious behavior, it's me seething in anger while fobs ruin the reef or harass the animals. Which reminds me: the boatman told me of this one time a bunch of divers surfaced and some European just punched a Korean guy in the face for breaking off a piece of coral as a souvenir while at the bottom. Apparently he had been waiting nearly 30 minutes for the opportunity. I love it. Stupid, stupid fobs.
The guy at the end actually tries
to squeeze through this gap. Like an idiot.
Reef footage.
A dive.
Shark and cleaner fish thing. Clearly
I don't know the names of any fish.
Anenome folded up into a donut
shape.
Another clownfish/anenome combo,
with some obnoxious fob behavior.
Same clownfish/anenome without
fobs.
The little sister and a turtle.
I wanted to kick his ass.
Some more clownfish.
This species sticks its head out
of the ground and feeds.
More reef footage.
And even more reef footage.
Skin Diving.
Another turtle.
My attempt at being witty.
