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Archive for the 'General' Category
Commensal Periclimenaeus storchi shrimp inside tunicate, originally uploaded by echeng.
This bright green Periclimenaeus storchi shrimp lives inside a large Didemnum molle tunicate. I can’t find it any of the critter ID books I own, so maybe someone out there can help me get an ID. We did a night dive in Alor, and many of the Didemnum molle tunicates contained critters living inside of them (I saw 2 different shrimps and an amphipod). All of the critters fled from lights, and getting this picture took over half an hour of careful planning and execution. Photo by Eric Cheng, taken with Canon 7D, 100mm macro lens, Nauticam underwater housing, Light & Motion Sola 600 focus light, 2 x Ikelite DS-125 strobes.
Update: this shrimp has been identified as a Periclimenaeus storchi. It isn’t a true snapping shrimp.
More info on this shrimp:
- http://www.itis.gov/servlet/SingleRpt/SingleRpt?search_topic=TSN&search_value=612360
- http://www.chucksaddiction.com/car013.html
Tiny frogfish tries to eat an amphipod, Indonesia, originally uploaded by echeng.
A juvenile frogfish attempts to eat an amphipod and some unknown eggs. The amphipod survives the encounter after being rejected by the frogfish. See grains of sand, for scale. These animals are tiny! Photo taken with Canon 7D, Canon 100mm USM macro lens, INON macro diopter, Nauticam underwater housing, 2 x Ikelite DS-125 strobes. (Night dive at Sizzler; Wai Verang, Indonesia)
Wai Verang
November 4, 2011; 10:22pm
The known dive sites at Wai Verang ("wai" = water, and "verang" = crab"; known as "Wai Wowang" to Western dive folks) consist of a strip of muck along a fish processing plant with a fresh water outflow. The dive sites we’ve been doing are called Rhinorama and Sizzler; Rhinorama’s bottom is fully covered by new coral growth, and although it is most certainly full of Rhinopias (we found 3), it is difficult to spot anything in the chaotic backdrop. Sizzler is a slopey, sandy area with quite a few Rhinopias, but the real show was an army of juvenile frogfish (painted, clown, and Randall’s). During our two full days of diving at Wai Verang, we probably saw in excess of 20 juvenile frogfishes. Each frogfish claims a single rock or clump of Halimeda macro algae. The frogfishes here seem to be hunting and eating shrimp constantly; our group recorded single frogfishes consuming multiple shrimp during only a few minutes of observation. Jhoey and Agung, the dive guides aboard the Damai II, had never in their guiding careers seen anything like this.
Like the sandy slope at Beangabang, Wai Verang’s substrate is completely covered in crustacea at night. In addition, nearly every clump of rock and coral is home to a bunch of Caprella sp. skeleton shrimp. These skeleton shrimp are enormous, and completely fill the vertical frame of a Canon 100mm macro lens at close focus on a crop-sensor SLR.
Sent from mobile. Apologies for brevity/typos.
Rhinopias medley, Indonesia, originally uploaded by echeng.
It is difficult to upload pictures from our current anchorage just off of Wai Verang in Indonesia. Hopefully, this compilation of some of the Rhinopias scorpionfish I’ve photographed over the past few days will make it online. These pictures were taken between October 29 and November 3, 2011. We have seen about 14 different individual Rhinopias in the last 6 days. I have pictures of 10 individuals, and 9 are shown here. Pictures were taken with a Canon 7D in a Nauticam housing, and with a Lytro light field pre-release camera.
Sent from mobile. Apologies for brevity/typos.
Beangabang, Take 2, originally uploaded by echeng.
November 1, 2011: For critter diversity, there is a certain magic to the combination of a dark sand bottom and a fresh water outlet (in this case, a hot spring). I dove Beangabang for the first time in April of 2009, and after 2.5 years of planning, we’re back, diving its mucky waters again. The water is much colder this time around, and the village here looks completely different. Last time, the entire island was green; this time, the shore is devoid of green (we’re here exactly 6 months off from when we originally visited).
The night dive this evening was incredible. There were octopi *everywhere*. Each diver probably found a dozen octopi on their own; most were of the long-arm variety, but there were quite a few coconut octopi (Amphioctopus marginatus) and poison ocellate octopi (Amphioctopus siamensis) as well. Two coconut octopi were mating (shown in this post).
The octopi were the main subjects for the dive, but the sandy bottom was literally crawling with life. At all times, thousands of crustacean eyes reflected the light from our dive lights—a thousand pinpoints of light blanketing the dark slope. In addition to the sea of crustaceans blanketing the sand, tiny little dragonets and scorpionfish flitted about. The entire substrate was in motion!
Sent from mobile. Apologies for brevity/typos.
Insane fish fry upwelling, Alor, Indonesia, originally uploaded by echeng.
October 31, 2011; 5:04pm – I’ve just surfaced from one of the most incredible dives of my life. We’ve been diving in the sound between Alor and Pura for the past few days, and the water has been rich with the critter life for which this area in Indonesia is well known. It has, however, been unusually cold—the coldest any of us have ever experienced while diving in Indonesia—and during one dive yesterday, our computers reported water temperatures of 15ºC (59ºF)! This is totally unheard of in this part of Indonesia.
Today’s diving started out rather typically, with two productive critter dives. During one dive, we saw and photographed five different Rhinopias sp. scorpionfish. Three of them were new individuals, which means that the dive site, named "Mucky Mosque" for the mosque it is located in front of, is home to at least seven individual rhinopias (rather extraordinary for a single site). We decided to go back to a site called "Slugfest" for the third dive of the day. At the site are two pregnant xeno crabs (Xenocarcinus tuberculatus) and dozens of species of nudibranchs and other pretty sea slugs. About 45 minutes into the dive, photographer Julian Cohen and I were at around 85′ engrossed in photographing one of the xeno crabs. Cold water had seeped up from the depths earlier in the dive, and there was a noticeable thermocline. Suddenly, we noticed a huge, milky, white cloud ascending from the deep. In no time at all, the white cloud enveloped us, and we saw that the gigantic formation was comprised of million—if not billions—of tiny fish fry. The fish cloud completely covered the reef, and vertically-blessed corals (like long wire corals) jutted outed of the milky mass like tall trees emerging from fog. As the giant school of fry hit the shallow reef, it changed formation, branching out into hundreds of rivulets, each snaking organically around any coral formations in the way. Tentacle movements were not unlike the water creature from the movie, "Abyss." With so much food in the water, reef denizens went berserk. Fish by the hundreds shot out into the water column, gulping down the little fry in a frenzy of feeding. But there were nowhere near enough predators to affect the overall population.
Photographer Julie Edwards was confused. "Nothing was eating them! I was expecting a whale shark to show up."
Indeed, the bulk of the huge mass of fry simply blanketed the reef in a virtual atmosphere of baby fish bodies. Unfortunately, all of us photographers had entered the water expecting to photograph tiny (individual) marine critters, and had configured our cameras as macro rigs. Since we couldn’t take any pictures, we just sort of floated around, gawking in disbelief at the strange marine spectacle. A guide was carrying my 3D GoPro setup. I tracked him down in order to retrieve the camera, and captured some basic footage of the scene. The footage I captured pales in comparison with what we actually saw, but I was glad that I was at least able to capture some of it. I’ll upload it when I return from Indonesia.
Scary xeno crab is scary, originally uploaded by echeng.
We’ve had a day full of fantastic critter dives here in Alor, Indonesia. The first dive site was reminiscent of the muck at Laha in Ambon–a sandy slope with rubble patches–which was filled with photogenic subjects: rhinopias, seahorses, nudibranches, and more. We dove across the bay for the next 2 dives, where we saw at least a dozen species of nudibranch.
The xeno crab (pictured here) isn’t particularly rare, but they are one of my favorite subjects to photograph. There is no need to leave Planet Earth to look for alien life forms!
Sent from mobile. Apologies for brevity/typos.
Good bye, Hong Kong! See you next time. Thanks to everyone who made time to see me while I was here, including the AsiaD folks; Rae Chang, Adam Tow, and his family; Winnie Cheng; Ryanne Lai; Timothy Redel; Edward and Jacqueline Lai of Nauticam; Aey Komson, Mean Mora and Jan; Tammy Loh.
I’m off to Indonesia tomorrow for the Wetpixel Ultimate Indonesia Expedition 2011. I’ll have sporadic access to email while I’m away, and almost no image-sharing ability (except for posts to my journal via Flickr). See you when I’m back!
Timelapse video taken with Canon 7D and Tokina 10-17 fisheye zoom lens from 29th floor of the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong in Wanchai. 1 frame taken every 8 seconds from 16:05 to 18:48.
Support us: download the podcast on iTunes ( find “Shark Diving French Polynesia!”)
In July, I went to French Polynesia with Fabrice Charleux of Plongeur.com to capture stills and video of the incredible schools of gray reef sharks that call its remote atolls home. At that time, I posted only a few still frames from the trip—not because I didn’t want to share, but because I had something larger planned. When I returned home, I called up Mary Lynn Price of DiveFilm and asked her if she would be interested in collaborating in a podcast episode. Luckily, Mary Lynn was excited about the project, and together, we have finally finished and published a new DiveFilm HD episode on the sharks of French Polynesia. To see the video, please download it from iTunes. DiveFilm is currently the only ocean-related podcast featured by Apple, and the only way to make sure it stays there is to have folks download and view it through iTunes!
Links to podcast: DiveFilm HD on iTunes. The episode is called “Shark Diving French Polynesia!”
Special thanks to Fabrice Charleux (gracious host and organizer; translator; subtitling), Mary Lynn Price (editor; podcast goddess), Don Kehoe (grumpy photo assistant), Dave Patchen (supporting friend), Adam Tow (interview camera assistance) and Rae Chang (interview assistance). This would not have been possible without all of you!
Footage taken with Canon 7D, Canon S95, and GoPro Hero camera in Eye of Mine flat-port housing.
Pam and I went out on the water yesterday to photograph the Blue Angels, who flew for about an hour during Fleet Week festivities. A friend had invited us to enjoy the show from his incredible boat, which was stable enough for me to be able to use a tripod-mounted Canon 7D and 500mm f/4 lens. I’ve never photographed planes before—it was a lot of fun!
The full album is here: http://ech.cc/fleetweeksf
I’ve recently moved my local Dropbox folder to a folder that lives in an encrypted sparse bundle. I have nearly 50GB of data in Dropbox, and it was starting to take a toll on my startup volume, which is small—a 250GB SSD. I changed the folder from within the Dropbox preferences area, and it moved my files over successfully.
This setup only works if the encrypted volume is mounted before Dropbox loads (Dropbox complains, otherwise). In particular, this is an issue if Dropbox loads on startup (and the encrypted volume has not yet mounted). I solved the problem by using an AppleScript that mounts the sparse bundle, waits a few seconds, and launches Dropbox. I added the AppleScript to my Login Items, and it is all working perfectly. You must save the sparse bundle password to your keychain for this to work.
do shell script ("hdiutil mount \"/Location/of/sparse/bundle/volumename.sparsebundle\"")
set theAppList to {{name:"Dropbox", vis:false}}
set theDelay to 5
repeat with currentApp in theAppList
tell application (name of currentApp) to launch
delay theDelay
tell application "System Events"
try
if background only of process (name of currentApp) is false then
set visible of process (name of currentApp) to (vis of currentApp)
end if
end try
end tell
end repeat
Note that one can use the same script (without the “hdiutil mount” part) to launch an arbitrary number of applications after a delay. Delayed launch script source: MacWorld Hints
WARNING: This setup can really screw up applications that sync using Dropbox. Your Dropbox will no longer always be available because it can be unmounted. Do this at your own risk.
I recently added a solid-state drive (SSD) to a 2011 MacBook Pro 15″ to use as a new boot / applications drive.1 The MacBook Pro came with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion installed, and I installed the new SSD using the same method I’ve used with every other machine I’ve owned in the pas:t
- I partitioned the SSD into a single volume with a GIUD partition table, choosing Mac OS X Extended (Journaled) as the file system.
- I used SuperDuper! to clone my old drive to the SSD
- I used Disk Utility.app and ran Repair Disk on the SSD (In the past, I have had problems booting from newly-cloned SSDs in the past without first repairing).
I rebooted the MacBook Pro, and everything seemed to work perfectly—the Mac booted quickly and was immediately an order of magnitude more responsive (as is normal when using a machine with SSD storage). However, when I went into the Security & Privacy preference pane to enable FileVault (FileVault 2), it gave me an error message:
FileVault can’t be turned on for the disk XXX. Some disk formats don’t support the recovery partition required for encryption.
It turns out that FileVault cannot be enabled on drives that do not have the Recovery HD partition that is created when Mac OS X Lion is installed. Because I had cloned the bootable volume to the new hard disk without actually installing Lion first, no Recovery HD partition was every created. To solve this problem, I had to first install Lion onto the destination hard disk (the SSD). The installation process creates the necessary Recovery HD partition. After installing Lion, I again cloned my old volume onto the new volume (on the SSD) using SuperDuper!.2
I have just completed this process, and FileVault is now encrypting my SSD.
Useful links/information:
- To download the Mac OS X Lion installer without installing it, run App Store and hold the Option key down while you click on the Purchases tab, and when you click on “Install Mac OS X Lion”. The Install Mac OS X Lion app will be downloaded into your Applications folder. When you run the installer, it will self-destruct, so be sure to back it up somewhere. [more info]
- To burn your own Mac OS X Lion install DVD or USB drive, follow the instructions here.
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