The Old Catamaran
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011
The Old Catamaran
Image by Boogies with Fish
www.messersmith.name/wordpress/2010/07/05/the-old-catamaran/
You have read of many dives here on Madang – Ples Bilong Mi of dives near Pig Island at a spot we call The Eel Garden near Pig Island. It is probably our most popular dive for several reasons. It is close, only a few minutes from Madang. It is also usually sheltered from waves, so that it is comfortable for those staying on the boat. It is an easy dive and has a variety of habitats from sandy bottom to outer reef. Last, but not least, it has a wreck . . . of sorts.
We’ll get to the underwater shots after I show you our orange lilies, from a slightly different angle, glowing in the morning sun:
After you cross over a huge wall of coral from the sandy bottom of The Eel Garden, you come upon a curious wreck which appears to be an old barge made of two slender hulls, making it, boatwise, a catamaran:
This is how they appear as you approach them from the bow end.
In between the hulls is a tangle of strange structures which may once have held the hulls together:
In this area is a wild menagerie of life. It would be easy to spend an hour between the hulls cataloguing the crazy tangle of coexisting critters.
During this dive there was a Bluefin Trevally (Carnanx melampygus) bustling around us. They are extremely difficult to photograph, because they never stop darting around:
As you can see, the shot above was “spoiled”. As the fish darted past me, I spun around and grabbed a snap shot. I expected it to be motion-blurred. What I did not expect is that, after minimal massaging with Photoshop, it turned out to be an interesting bit of art. It certainly conveys the sense of motion.
Here is another shot of the tangled mess between the hulls:
You can see a diver’s bubbles behind the lattice.
This shot is from farther toward the stern. You can see that I was moving toward the back end of the hulls. As the sunlight angle changes and the distance decreases, the coral at the left of the shot above changes to a deeper, warmer tone, since there is less sea water between it and the camera:
If click to enlarge and look at the extreme left of the image, you can barely make out the image of a diver’s fins as he moves off to the left. You can also make out his bubbles trailing above and behind him.
Most of these shots were taken with the iris stopped down to ƒ/8 to increase the depth of field. Yes, some more “Deep Focus” shots. I’ve found a whole new way to bore you.
My next project is a gigantic model train layout with tiny towns and miniscule pine trees. I will explain every detail of this to you when it’s finished.
