Oups, I'm a bit late posting this one! January has been a busy month full of photo opportunities as we had the pleasure to welcome back onboard our friend and photo-master-extraordinaire Alex Tyrrell, from Dive4photos who came to give daily presentations to our beloved guests on two consecutive photo clinics!
The first one was dedicated to blackwater diving with daily blackwater dives above the deep dark seas! The second one was a more standard "photo clinic" maximising the photo opportunities we could get (check out the next blogpost for more info!)
The first one was dedicated to blackwater diving with daily blackwater dives above the deep dark seas! The second one was a more standard "photo clinic" maximising the photo opportunities we could get (check out the next blogpost for more info!)
| For our Blackwater expedition, we welcomed some extremely well-equipped underwater paparazzi from Thailand, Singapore, India, USA, and France all ready to have some fun.... Our Photo Room has rarely been more crowded by camera, cables, chargers and hundreds of batteries! |  Photographer's corner |
The did the first dive at shark fin reef for a check up dive, then explored west of Eden, elephant head, and finished the day with the first black water dive of the week.
Because this cruise was dedicated to "blackwater diving", we went diving at the edge of the continental plate, a few hours west of the Similan Islands, giving us the opportunity to dive above hundreds of meters of water...
And what did we see on these Blackwater dives? We saw so many cool and weird creatures...
We saw some cool pelagic such as anemone larval stage, some salps, pelagic sea snake, flounder in larval stage and more...
The highlights of the trip where a male paper nautilus, snake blennies and flying gurnard.
But photos seak a thousand words so let me show you what it looks like!
Because this cruise was dedicated to "blackwater diving", we went diving at the edge of the continental plate, a few hours west of the Similan Islands, giving us the opportunity to dive above hundreds of meters of water...
And what did we see on these Blackwater dives? We saw so many cool and weird creatures...
We saw some cool pelagic such as anemone larval stage, some salps, pelagic sea snake, flounder in larval stage and more...
The highlights of the trip where a male paper nautilus, snake blennies and flying gurnard.
But photos seak a thousand words so let me show you what it looks like!
Above, from left to right you'll see one of many type of squids we encounter on Blackwater dives in the Andaman Sea. A pretty golden filefish and a male paper nautilus! Read more information about the wonderful nautiluses and their cousins the argonauts... Males don't have shells, females do to keep their eggs close-by :)
 Pelagic Nudibranchia |  Larval snake blenny |  Crab larval stage |
Have you ever seen pelagic nudibranch? This is what it looks like (top left), in the middle is a pretty larval snake blenny and on the right a baby crab! so cute!
In the 4 photos above, you can see a larval anemone, a larval flouder (before it eyes migrate to the other side of its face! yeah, that's a thing!). You can see a reddish crustacean in front of the cloud of ink a cephalopod left behind and the last photo is the alien looking seasnail crossing oceans with its sail-like tentacules...
Flying gurnards, (top left) are rarely seen on regular dives but quite commonly spotted on our blackwater dives.
Morray eels (middle photo) look like this transparent ghost at their larval stage before they grow big enough to settle back to the reef.
The right pic is a sea elephant (Pterotrachea coronata), a finger-sized heteropod - a transparent marine snailusing its trunk-shaped proboscis to hunt its prays. This gastropod looks nothing like your typical terrestrial snail.
Morray eels (middle photo) look like this transparent ghost at their larval stage before they grow big enough to settle back to the reef.
The right pic is a sea elephant (Pterotrachea coronata), a finger-sized heteropod - a transparent marine snailusing its trunk-shaped proboscis to hunt its prays. This gastropod looks nothing like your typical terrestrial snail.
We did blackwater dives at nights, that's true and for that you do not want to be on a dive site, but that doesn't mean we didn't want to do some of the best dive sites of Thailand during the days! Above are some photos of Donald duck bay in the Similan islands where we went to dip our toes in white sand and look at the incredible view of the Andaman sea.
On our more regular dive sites, our macro lenses encountered saw some colourful nudibranches, shrimps and crabs as well as Harlequin shrimps, Ghost pipe fishes and the likes...
Thank you! Elodie and Emma for the amazing male paper nautilus and pelagic tongue fish you photographed and for everyone else who shared this adventure with us. We loved it and hope you did too!
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