Capturing the Moment

Still dry in my wetsuit   Snorkeling in Alaska!   This week I wanted to put our wetsuits to the test. Here in Southeast Alaska the ocean temperature is hovering around 40 degrees, unless you get too close to a glacier where the temperature plummets even farther. Our wetsuits include a 7mm bib, 7mm ¾ jacket, 5mm hood, 5mm gloves, and 5mm booties. You are pretty well covered. Even your face is mostly covered by your mask and snorkel setup. Still, it is a wetsuit, not a dry suit. So water does flood inside all of those layers of neoprene but hopefully your body can heat it up and insulate for warmth. This was the test.   Our snorkel location and timing were chosen after careful researching of the tides and conditions. Some of the islands off of Cape Fanshaw have been productive in the past so we headed to one in particular where mid-morning we should experience a -4.1ft tide, thus exposing the usual intertidal life above water and getting us snorkelers deeper i...

It was a beautiful day on the South shore of Maui and the visibility reports were coming in positive all day so Heidi and I came up with the plan for a night dive at Makena Landing. It turned out to be more than we could imagine, with photo opportunities around every turn.    Our first big find was my first adult Spanish dancer nudibranch. Our underwater lights lit up so many shades of red, orange, and pink along its sinuous body. I had seen juvenile spanish dancers in shallow tidepools at night before but never this giant. Spanish dancers can grow to a foot in length, making it the largest nudibranch in the world. Usually I have to strain my eyes to focus on tiny nudibranchs much smaller than a finger. Often we come across spanish dancer egg cases which look like velvet roses attached to the rock.    These nudibranchs have something in common with spanish shawl nudibranchs which I often found in the waters off California. They are able to swim and cover vast...