Stock video footage / show reel of a reptilian snake eel (Brachysomophis henshawi) and a white-eyed moray (Siderea thysoidea) eel, taken with an underwater endoscope (wide-angle macro). Lembeh Strait, Indonesia.

Footage shot with a Canon EOS 7D digital SLR in High Definition 1080p @ 29.97fps, H.264 @ 40Mbps.

Apologies for the obnoxious timecode in the middle. I’ll edit all of my footage from Lembeh into a best-of video as soon as I can!

I had to put this together for a submission to a production company, so I thought I’d post it here. Despite all the time I’ve spent in the water with sharks, I’ve only had bull shark encounters a handful of times. I was once rammed by one in mid-water, which was very exciting, but most of my encounters have involved me holding my breath trying to get close to them.

The exceptions were encounters at Beqa Lagoon in Fiji, and at Walker’s Cay in the Bahamas, which were prolonged and close. This footage is all from Walker’s Cay, where the water can get quite murky when stirred up. It was shot in 2006 with a Sony Z1u HDV camcorder in a Light & Motion Bluefin underwater housing and was one of the first times I took a video camera into the water.

Another day, another timelapse. Even though I was really, really tired after a full day of swimming with sperm whales, I dutifully set up my tripod and grabbed this sunset timelapse in Dominica. It’s on Vimeo in 1080p; click over if you want to see it in high-definition.

Timelapse of Tony Wu and me packing cameras and dive gear in Isla Mujeres (timelapse images taken with Canon 5D Mark II — 1 frame every 2 seconds. around 1750 frames in total).

3D (cross-fused) video tour of Isla Mujeres from our golf cart, taken with dual Canon 5D Mark II cameras and Canon 15mm fisheye lenses. Special thanks to Sterling Zumbrunn for his help, and to Tony Wu for the loan of a 15mm lens. The color in the videos is different because Tony’s lens is much older.

Atlantic sailfish (Istiophorus albicans) with a sardine in its mouth.

We left dock at 6am this morning in search of more sailfish. The sun broke through for half an hour on our way offshore, which was fantastic — until she was swallowed up by a sky full of clouds. As Anthony so cheerfully exclaimed yesterday, “Come to Mexico! Bring a snow jacket!” (read more »)

Tony Wu, Sterling Zumbrunn and I have just returned from our first day out on the water looking for Atlantic sailfish (Istiophorus albicans) with Keen M International. We had great luck and dropped into the water with two schools of sailfish hunting sardines. Both schools numbered more than 25 individuals — and those were just the ones we could see at once.

Sailfish took turns approaching the baitball of sardines, slashing individual fish with their bills and wounding them enough to separate them from the safety of their school. Isolated sardines were consumed within seconds by sailfish moving at incredible speeds. In some cases, the sailfish would actually spear sardines instead of slashing at them — the precision with which they hunt is truly awe-inspiring.

Now all we need is for the sun to come out! (read more »)

Beautiful work by FreezeLight! (read more »)

The sixgill shark segment on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Oregon Field Guide is now online! The OPB folks filmed this segment during our charter with Team Hydrus [original trip report].

Sharks which normally spend their lives at the bottom of the world’s oceans have been found living in the relatively shallow waters of Puget Sound. Recreational divers and researchers lure sixgill sharks in for up close encounters. It’s believed Puget Sound is a sixgill shark nursery: a safe place to give birth and raise hundreds or perhaps a thousand or more young sharks. There has never been a report of a sixgill attack on a human.

First Broadcast: 2009
Producer: Vince Patton
Videographer/Editor: Michael Bendixen
Video & Stills Courtesy of : Eric Cheng-WetPixel.com and the Seattle Aquarium

Appeared in episode: Boat Building, Sixgill Sharks, Tsunami Update

Unfortunately, Andy Letourneau, a crew member with Team Hydrus, recently passed away in a diving accident. Vince has posted a tribute to Andy on the OBP website.

Update 1: October 11, 2009

We arrived in the Ogasawara Islands two days ago after enduring a typhoon in Toyko and an arduous 25.5-hour ferry ride. Ogasawara is 1000km due south of Tokyo and sits, isolated, at approximately the same latitude as Okinawa. As the ferry approached land, Tony Wu translated what was being broadcast over the ship-wide speaker system.

“There’s another typhoon coming, and it’s supposed to hit tomorrow.”

Two typhoons in four days?! Given the prospect what high winds and huge swells might do to the tiny island we had just set foot on, an urgency suddenly materialized to get out onto the ocean as soon as possible. The six of us settled in at our modest accommodation for about an hour before heading out on our 42-foot dive vessel (which is very nice). Sea-Tac, the local operator whose vessel we chartered, is very knowledgeable about sperm whales and drove us east to a ridge line in about 1000 meters of water. (read more »)

Canon has announced their new flagship digital SLR, the 1D Mark IV, a 16-megapixel, 10 frames-per-second professional SLR body. From the first look, the body looks to be identical to the older Mark III cameras — good news for underwater photographers. However, we won’t know for sure until someone actually gets their hands on one. Especially exciting is the inclusion of HD video capture in the new camera. The 1D Mark IV will capture both HD and SD video. HD video support includes 1920×1080 capture @ 24p, 25p and 30p, and 1280×720 capture at 50p/60p.

Canon has posted a press release and an article explaining what’s new. Rob Galbraith has also published an article with more information bout the camera.

The 1D Mark IV is priced as $4,999.00 and ships in late December 2009. For underwater photographers, there is sure to be an active discussion in the Wetpixel forums.

– VIDEO REMOVED –

I’ve removed the video at the suggestion of a friend of mine, who tells me that it is worth real money. Contact me privately if you are interested in the footage.

Above is a video of six sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) in the Ogasawara Islands, Japan. The lead female sperm whale has the remains of a large squid (possibly, an Architeuthis giant squid) in her mouth. 15 minutes earlier, we had been in the water in the scattered remains of the squid (birds were feeding on it) before seeing this group of sperm whales close by. It looked as if the squid had been torn apart on the surface! (read more »)

A timelapse video of a 2.5 hour cruise in the Saint-Martin canal in Paris — very cool because there is an altitude gain of approximately 24 meters through a bunch of sequential locks.

I created the timelapse by taking 1510 images at 3-second intervals using the Canon 5D Mark II, Sigma 20mm/f1.8 lens, ISO 1600, manual exposure. The camera ran out of batteries about 60 minutes before the end of the cruise. Also, I cut out about 5-6 seconds of the first tunnel because it was too much of the same.

A sixgill shark in Seattle

Vince Patton, Producer for Oregon Public Broadcasting, just wrote me to tell me that their story on sixgill sharks in Seattle is finally going to air this coming October 22 at 8:30pm PST, and on October 25 at 6:30pm, as part of Oregon Field Guide. We gave Vince some space on our chartered boat a year ago when we were out diving with sixgill sharks.

Some of my underwater footage will be included, and you might even see me in some of the scenes. ;) I don’t have TV signal here at my place, but I’m told that the story will be up on their website after it airs.

Leafcutter ants in Utría, Colombia, taken by Eric Cheng, using a Canon 5D Mark II, 1080p @ 30fps. Exposures ranged from 1/40-1/60 second @ f2.8-f3.5, ISO 1600-2500 (it was really dark under the rainforest canopy). Click through to the YouTube video to see it in HD.

I didn’t know how special that first night was going to be; it was the only night without heavy clouds and rain!

Awesome! (via @jauderho)

Great use of the camera. Vote for Ian’s sponsorship entry.

More information… (read more »)

Christoph Rehage walks 4646km through China between November 9, 2007 and November 13, 2008 (via Jauder Ho)

All of the distance from Beijing to Ürümqi has been completed solely on foot, straight good old walking. There are instances where you can see me in the video sitting on a plane or riding a boat, but those are during breaks I had to take from walking, either to sort out bureaucracy issues or to take care of some personal things.

The core of this project is in fact my website www.thelongestway.com where I have posted my extensive travel diary, starting from day 1 (Nov 9th 2007) and describing every single day until the end one year later.

Lau says Whaaaaaa?

I was recently complaining about Skype’s deteriorating service (as is routine these days), and one of my friends on Facebook suggested that I try out SightSpeed, a service owned by Logitech. I downloaded the Mac client, installed it, and was instantly confused when I launched the application. Why did my camera just turn on, and why does it look like I just started up AOL? Seriously, it looks like a fake interface that you might see on an infomercial for turbo charging your internet access. (read more »)