Yesterday I had the pleasure of tagging along with a group of students taking the PADI underwater photography specialty course. Our first stop was Rocher Marcel, a free-standing rock surrounded by reef in Anse Marcel. After a few exercises to improve buoyancy control and see the effects of distance when photographing, we headed towards the underwater canyons near the rock and took some photos.

My favorite sighting was a banded jawfish that kept peeking out of his burrow in the sandy channel. As you can see from the photo below, in addition to excavating burrows, they use larger rocks and coral rubble to create a masonry-like structure around the entrance. Usually they retreat into their burrow when approached and are reluctant to re-emerge, but since we were in the vicinity for so long doing exercises, I think this one grew tired of hiding and kept popping back up. I also saw a lancer dragonet, but with the fisheye lens I wasn’t able to get a good photo of something so small.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 4th, 2010 at 8:04 am and is filed under Diving. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.