Category: Adventure

7/26 Looking for sharks with the North wind.

Smooth Hammerhead.

NOAA’s marine forecast was showing light North winds and calm seas.  On the south shore of Long Island, NY, that means its a great time to do a little exploring out on the ocean.  With my small boat, I need to pick my days so I don’t come home black and blue.  More importantly, on those calm days, the visibility over the surface of the ocean greatly increased.  The background pattern is simpler and its easier for your eye to pick out anomalies.  These breaks in the pattern are often just birds or mylar balloons, (#balloonsblow) , but occasionally they are something exciting:   dolphin, sharks, turtles, whales, sunfish.

This trip I found an 8 to 10 foot Smooth Hammerhead, Sphyrna zygaena, who was pretty chill, allowing me to approach and even a little curious to check out the boat.

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This is often the first you see of a shark – just a little blip of a fin.  You keep your eyes on it; It could dive out of sight without a moment’s notice.

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He seemed relaxed, slowly finning on the surface, so I tried to get a bit up-sun of him, while getting the Fire Island Lighthouse as a backdrop.  The long narrow dorsal fin is the first indication that this was a Hammerhead.   Several people online claimed that this was a Mola mola Ocean Sunfish, but a picture, while sometimes being worth a 1,000 words, is still just a static slice of time.   Although they both have large dorsal fins, their swimming behavior could not be more different.   Sunfish are best described as being “floppy”.   Their dorsal fins flop back an forth, lazily.   Their entire bodies flop over sideways as if they are sick or hurt and unable to swim properly.  Floppy.   They’ve been described like this: “They are clumsy swimmers, waggling their large dorsal and anal fins to move and steering with their clavus. Their food of choice is jellyfish, though they will eat small fish and huge amounts of zooplankton and algae as well.”  So they flop and eat small floppy things.  Here is one I found a few miles from the shark.  Jay’s friend thinks this is a baby whale.

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The shark was finning pretty much in one direction, so I approached at idle speed towards where he was heading to basically intercept him.  I got really close and took a few pics.

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I was very happily surprised by how close I got, so I tried another approach and grabbed my GoPro.

Here you can see that this is a Smooth Hammerhead, not a Scalloped Hammerhead.   The Scalloped have a slight indentation of the very leading point of their head or cephalofoil.  These sharks are predators, feeding on fish.  In accordance with this, their movement is vastly different than the Sunfish’s flop. I have witnessed them feeding on bunker (menhaden) pods.  They can turn incredibly fast, slicing and dicing through a bunker school.  Here is an older shot of one feeding.  He was turning in a very small radius, very quickly.

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After the GoPro pass, I wanted a few more photographs, but I got too close for my long lens on the next pass.  Just off the bow, he swam through a very still ripple free section of water, and I was able to see him in all his glory, all 8 to 10 feet of him.  The only picture of that particular sight is burned only into my brain.  I tried for one more pass,  changing frantically to a 24-105mm with a circular polarizer to help cut through the water surface glare.  Polarizing filters are highly recommended.  Driving and positioning the boat while changing lenses was a bit much and I lost track of him.  Gone – just like that.

Smooth Hammerheads migrate North to temperate waters and are seen fairly frequently here in summer.  They school up to migrate, but as adults here, they tend to be solitary.  Solitary blips out of the background.  Keep your eyes out!

 

 

Hammer Time.

Almost shark week… 🙂

The ocean on the south shore of Long Island really starts lighting up with life this time of year.   Along with tropical fish and startles, we also get some sharks that are better known to more southern waters.   The most common shark I have seen in the last few years is the Hammerhead.  They seem to like the surface.  I’m not sure of the species, but I would guess scalloped hammerhead.  (Hit the comments if you can identify!)  They are definitely feeding on the bunker (first pic).  These sharks are amazing to watch.  They are extremely maneuverable, and slice and dice through the ball up bait.  

Its been found that unusually structured vertebrae are what allow this tight maneuvering.  That crazy head – the Cephalofoil – helps with lift and turning, however its main function is more of a sensory organ.  All sharks have electroreceptors called ampullae of Lorenzini that help detect prey.   By spreading these out over the wider area of the cephalofoil, it acts like a radio antenna, allowing the shark to sweep broader areas for prey.

While we wait for this south wind to calm, here are some older pics from last year, this week.  

 

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I suspect  little photoshop on that last one, but look at that water.  Thats real!   Hit the comments for any questions or um..  comments!    Enjoy!

Bottlenose Dolphin, South Shore, Long Island.

FINS to the left! Pics at the end!

The Fourth of July brought with it, not only fireworks and celebration, but also a very flat, mellow ocean.   The north wind and a lack of swell made for smooth lake-like conditions.   

I love these conditions for running the boat out there because the surface is relatively smooth in shape and texture.  No whitecaps to distract the eye.  It essentially becomes a backdrop from which your eyes can pick out anomalies – small disturbances emerging out of the overall pattern.

All too often, these visual stand-outs turn out to be helium balloons.  (Please, folks, think about curbing the balloon use, or at least don’t let them go fly away.  They land on the ocean, and I can fill garbage bag picking them up.  They kill.)  

The next common thing you will see are seagulls.   Kind of boring, but worth a second glance.  I have found sea turtles that I initially thought were birds.

Now if you keep your eyes scanning, there is a good chance that you will see some wonderful things –  dolphin, shark, turtle, an occasional humpback or fin whale.  Keep looking for the anomaly in the pattern.  Your eyes will learn to see what you are looking for._DSC5364-2

On the Fourth, I spotted a few pods of migratory, bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops truncatus.    They were actively corralling and feeding on atlantic menhaden, also known as bunker.  (See video of a bunker school below.)  Many babies were in the mix. There seemed to be two separate pods of 15 to 30 individuals.  I was between 1/2 mile and 2 miles off, between Robert Moses and Kismet.  

 

I often see dolphin very close to shore.  On these calm days, consider bring binoculars to the beach with you.  You might get a nice surprise!

Photo tips:  You really need a telephoto lens with some reach.  You cannot get too close to these guys.  Its not safe, legal, or effective.  If you get too close, they dive deep and split.   I try to maneuver to within no more than 50 yards, and then stay parallel to the direction they are heading and get a bit ahead of them. Turn off engine, and let them swim towards you, on a line that still maintains your distance.

I’m shooting with a relatively cheap Tamron 150-600mm zoom lens.   At 600mm, I really want some wide depth of field, so I keep my F-stop at 8 or higher.  Shutter speed needs to be fast – subject is moving at a distance, so I try not to go below 1/1000th of a second.  For me, this works well in aperture priority mode.  If I can’t keep the shutter speed up at F8,  I raise the ISO just enough to get that fast shutter.   I use back button focus, because its faster for me, and you need to be fast for when a dolphin pops up.  It also allows me to pre-focus on where I think they will be, and then just snap the shutter. 

I can’t really say enough about keeping your eyes on the water, and observing the surface.   On the way in, at a slow cruising speed, I saw a small disturbance that I though might be a turtle.   Turns out it was the dorsal fin of a triggerfish.  I stopped and he swam under the cover of the shadow of the boat!

 

Enjoy, and keep those eyes open!  Here are a few shots from the Fourth of July, as well as a few from previous trips!

 

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Continue reading “Bottlenose Dolphin, South Shore, Long Island.”

Empty My Cache

(If I was a pirate…)

During the Carboniferous Period, 290 million years ago, the Earth’s churning mantle and other forces of nature forced a large mass of igneous molten rock into the more ancient metamorphic rock already in existence. The result was the granite bedrock underlying much of the lakes region of south-western Maine. As the molten rock cooled, crystals of quartz and feldspar and slivers of reflective dark and light mica formed, giving the granite its colors of whites, light pinks, light tans. Varying fluid pressures allowed for variable grain size of the crystalline structure. Higher pressure and slower cooling time allowed the individual crystals to develop larger in size. There are also dark colored rocks, the result of Mesozoic Era (225 to 65 million tears ago) intrusions of a new and different composition of igneous molten rock. These dikes can be seen as the narrow bands of basaltic black, cutting through the light granite. Some of these rocks and formations are quite beautiful, but they are only foundation upon which the glacial ice sheets carved their art.

The last ice sheet retreated in melt over 13,000 years ago. Glaciers are immensely powerful rivers of ice. They flow downwards at an exceedingly slow pace, but the weight and pressures created by the flow over the landscape is enough to carve out and pulverize the existing granite bedrock. This was this process that carved out an area that is today, roughly 47.5 square miles wide, reaching down to a depth of around 325 feet.

Sebago Lake is large enough to now serve as the public water supply for the city of Portland and surrounding areas. It also serves as Vacation Land, due to its beauty. Surrounded by the evergreens of the Maine woods, the shoreline of the lake consists of coarse sandy beaches, granite outcrops, boulders, cliffs, and marshlands. The fresh air smells of pine, and the water of the lake is possessed by magical properties of which you can drink. In summer, surface temperatures are pleasant for swimming. Dive to 100ft and you will feel yourself pass through five to seven distinct thermoclines. Your bubbles will sound oddly crystalline. It is cold. The clarity of the water and the geological artwork allow you to endure shivering.

522092_10150854859692275_1097173206_nDown there is this boulder, the size of a huge house. It is cracked open in the middle – a split of three to four feet. Within this split opening are lodged many smaller boulders that didn’t quite make it to the bottom. Fun swim-throughs. But what most people miss, hidden in the deep bottom shadows – is the Cave. Its at the base of this split rock. You enter a small dark chamber which leads to a small opening. You’ll need to take your tank off and feed it through, then follow. Your flashlight now reveals another small chamber that has a small drop-off ledge on the far side. Be very careful not to stir up any silt. A dive partner can place his arm into the opening to remain in contact with your fins. However, if you wish to explore a little more, you must break contact. You go alone. Proceed to the small drop-off ledge on the far side of the chamber. With full arm extension, you can almost reach the bottom of the drop-off. Breath. Reach. Move slowly. Feel around. There you will find a pillowcase. Breath. Be gentle. The contents of the pillowcase were hermetically sealed in a long fire-side night’s worth of candle wax, almost ten years ago. I have forgotten the brands and vintages, but I recommend the White with a Maine seafood dinner. The Red will work, chilled on a cool fireside night under the planetarium of stars. But don’t wait too much time after the dive to celebrate with shots of some good, smooth, aged, tequila. You won’t need any rocks.

Cheers…