 |
 |
 |
 |
Archive for the ‘Starfish + Urchins + Kin’Feb 28, 10 Comments (0)
 Photographing a Red Heart Urchin Hello all. I hope and believe everyone had a good weekend. Our friends on the daily blog range from hot places, in southern Texas all the way up to the New York area, where they are piled thick with snow and all these storms, so everyone either stay cool or warm. Today’s photo is of our friend Mark from the Dive Bus, who is photographing a heart urchin. Mark and Barry do lots of diving together. When they are around each other it is pretty crazy, what a pair! As you recall it was Mark and another friend that Barry photographed jumping out of the helicopter! He is always up for a good time.
Now this is a heart urchin, and as you can see, it is covered with tons of tiny little spines. It uses these spines to help dig under the sand, where it is usually buried. They actually spend most of their time buried under the sand where they feed on organic material. There are actually quite a lot of heart urchins in most dive spots that we go to, but because they are usually hidden, the average diver seldom sees them. The most likely time to find a heart urchin is at night when they will more often come above the sand. Heart urchins, as their name implies are related to the sea urchins and the sand dollars, which most people are familiar with.
Ok, have a great week. Hope you enjoy.
Aimee
Jan 17, 10 Comments (0)
 Glowing Sea Urchin Good morning friends, by request here is another glowing sea urchin that I shot for you last night. This little beauty was found by Emily a few days ago on our walk to Saint Joris, we found five in total that morning but this one was the hands down winner! Each urchin we find has it’s own unique stripes and patterns and I am now finding out that the good one’s like this one are hard to come by. For this urchin I placed a little red piece of beach glass in the middle to block the light but after it’s 10 second exposure it turned yellow and now looks like a volcano filled with molten lava! I have some others I am still working on to send you as well so there is bound to be more of these colorful creations headed your way.
Lets see what’s going on in Curacao? The weather is great, not to hot but still pretty windy. You have all heard of Greenpeace?? Well their famous ship went by the aquarium yesterday, it was the first time I have ever seen it here. It has a big rainbow painted on the front and whales, birds and dolphins in other spots and in big letters along the side it said, “protecting our oceans”. It was a long ways out when we saw it but I did get a fairy good shot if any of you are interested in seeing it. Emily is working on getting certified to dive while here and we can hardly wait to go with her on her first underwater adventure!
That’s about it, we are all tired, Aimee is working hard these days and is still asleep although I think she has to be to work soon so I better go wake her up!! Be back again tonight, Barry
Dec 29, 09 Comments (0)
 Sea Urchin with Flowers Good evening all, cough, cough, sniff, sniff, yes I still have a dumb cold. I stayed home all day doing close to nothing and trying to lay down but find it impossible to sleep during the day! While snuggling my camera in bed I thought why not finally do something with the piles of sea urchins I have laying everywhere, I’ve been saving them for a day just like this. Every time Aimee and I go to the beach we are on the lookout for these dried up urchins but most of them are always broken or the birds have cracked the shells looking for a snack. So today I rounded them all up and proceeded to check each one in a dark room with a flashlight for the one with the best glowing color. I found out that most of the ones we have are not going to work for this type of shot as they are to dark but will be nice as a collage instead. I spent about an hour setting this shot up, in my mind it seemed like it was going to be so easy but I quickly found out there was more to it than meets the eye. Anyways something a bit different for you all, I know you all get tired of being underwater and want more topside stuff and I do keep a list of all the requests I receive.
I wish I had something exciting to tell you but it was just one of those days!! Have a great evening all!!
Sunny Curacao regards, Barry
Nov 15, 09 Comments (0)
 Spawning Brittle Star Hi friends, here’s another cool picture of a Banded-Arm Brittle Star spawning. Look carefully and you can see the hundreds of tiny eggs that are being released! I found out the night I shot this that trying to sneak up on a spawning brittle star is close to impossible! Not impossible as you can see but close as I took hundreds of photos. They are so sensitive to light that the second you shine light on them to focus with the camera they are gone! You wouldn’t think a little creature like this could move very fast but boy would you ever be surprised!
I called in sick again today and spent the whole day going thru old photos. I’m going thru and picking out all the best birds, reptiles, dolphins, shots of Curacao, family pictures, flowers and so on and so forth and putting them all on my new 1TB hard drive so I can find things easier. I have so many full cases of cd’s and dvd’s and about ten 500GB mini hard drives that are all full, that’s a whole lot of pictures!! Someone asked me the other day how many dives I have done since I have been here, I stopped counting at 1000!
It’s off to bed, hope you all had a wonderful weekend! Sunny regards, Barry
Oct 24, 09 Comments (0)
 Brittle Star Good evening my dear friends, are you getting the most out of your weekend?? Our days are spent mostly at the Sea Aquarium and then in the evening’s Aimee rushes home to walk the dogs in what little light we have left. Today at 1:30 my friend Kenji and I went on a dive as we had no more programs for the rest of the day. The water was pretty murky in the shallows plus big waves overhead didn’t help the visibility but we still had a pretty good dive. Aimee and I were just looking at some of the photos I took today and in one photo of some encrusting sponge she spotted a see-thru shrimp that I accidentally took a nice photo of, I never even saw it?? This really seems to happen quite a bit, I shoot something and then get home to find another little treasure in the photo, let’s just call it a bonus!
This is a Sponge Brittle Star that Aimee found on the night we saw the grooved brain corals spawning over in front of Aqua Electra. These sponge brittle stars don’t seem to be affected by light like their cousins the regular brittle stars, those guys are scared of everything! Eva was with us the night we found this, Aimee kept me pretty busy with one cool find after another.
Gotta run, talk to you all tomorrow, Barry
24-10-2009
Oct 16, 09 Comments (0)
 Spawning Brittle Star Good evening readers, guess what I did today, yep, NOTHING! I had a fairly relaxing day at home while Eva went to the Aquarium and did some shopping on the beach and Aimee had to work. About the only outside adventure I did today was to take the dogs for a nice walk at the salt ponds and while I was there I picked all my trail tools I had hidden over there in the brush. I spent most of the day backing up photos onto mini-hard drives and burning DVD’s, I took a whole lot of pictures this week!
Here’s a fun shot from last night, this is a large Brittle Star Spawning! I tell you it’s such a strange and wonderful thing to see! It’s like an underwater alarm is sounded and all at once every brittle star crawls out from underneath something and starts mating and spawning. Here you can see the body raised up high and all those eggs being released into the water, I mean is that cool or what?? I raced all around trying to get more of these type of shots but it just happens so fast! I am going back tonight at 7:00 to see if that was it or if it is still going, stay tuned.
I am off to a birthday party at work, talk to you later, Barry
15-10-2009
Sep 30, 09 Comments (0)
 Sponge Brittle Star Hey gang, how was your day today?? Sure is a lot of strange things going on in the world right now with the weather being at the top of the list! I guess for the most part that’s what’s nice about living here, it’s always the same weather just about every day of the year and hurricanes just go around us. Today was really windy which always means rough seas, the good side is no mosquitoes!! Aimee had the day off and spent most of it working on key-wording the photos I have ready to send to the States which will then be available for sale on our www.wildhorizons.com site, check it out.
Here’s something we see on every night dive but I never get tired of shooting it. This is a Azure Vase Sponge with a beautiful little Sponge Brittle Star hanging out on the side. These brittle stars spend all day out of site hiding from the fish who will eat them if given the chance. At night long after the fish have gone to bed they then slowly crawl up out of these sponges or from under coral heads and feed on algae or any other left over goodies they can find. Lights don’t seem to really bother these guys they just continue to go about their business knowing that as long as it’s night they are safe!!
Aimee is out walking the dogs again, she already took them for two hours this morning to the beach and yes they are two lucky dogs!! I had to take my rear bike rim into the Dasia doctor today, I need a new cog in the back, broken spokes and time for new liquid in the rear tire to help prevent flats. That’s about it, headed to a Photoshop party tonight so I better get moving. Later Gators, Barry
30-9-2009
Sep 16, 09 Comments (0)
 Variegated Urchin Good evening friends, what’s happening?? I took the day off because my finger was pretty swollen still and Inca was acting strange?? I took her out to the trails so many times to try and get her to do her business but nothing each time and then she would look at me and slink back to the car acting like she had just been beat? Finally at 5:30 tonight she finally decided she had to go and did go but is still acting weird, will be glad when Aimee gets here!! So we didn’t do any kind of walk or hike today neither one of them seemed to excited about it. I spent most of the getting ready for a helicopter photo shoot that we are going to do tomorrow at around 12:30. Sport Diver magazine is doing an article on helicopter diving and needs a specific shot so tomorrow with the help of Mark again and one of his friends we are going to give it a try over by the Marriott.
I was a good boy today and cleaned up the house before Aimee’s arrival! Geez after sweeping the whole house it’s amazing how much hair Indi looses?? It looked like a baby kitten in the dust-pan today! We are still expecting Aimee to arrive tomorrow night but I haven’t heard from her in the past 24 hours so not sure if there is a new plan or not?
Mark called me today and said on their night-dive last night around 7:00 they saw the brittle stars spawning!! I can’t believe I missed that?? I have all my gear in the car now and am running down to Pier Baai to do a night dive to see if there is still spawning tonight, it’s worth a try hurt finger or not!
Your photo this evening is a close-up shot of our local Variegated Urchins that we have everywhere on the reef. These are one of the few urchins that you can handle, you can carefully pick them up and they will crawl around on your hand, it feels really cool!
That’s it, glad everyone liked today’s photo so much love the compliments! Bye now, Barry
16-9-2009
May 1, 09 Comments (0)
 sea-urchin-in-mangrove-leaves Good evening readers of the blog. Here’s another fun shot from one of my morning walks to the ocean. This was taken along the waters edge and left high and dry as the tide slowly went out. The leaves are all from Mangrove trees that grow all along the coast and the pretty green thing is an internal skeleton of a dead sea urchin called the interambulacral area. Many of my morning walks consist of looking for these urchins and carefully bringing them home, a difficult task considering they are about as fragile as an egg! I have a whole pile of these things here at the house, I want to eventually use them in a fun photo with all of their different shades together.
It was another very busy day at work and tomorrow is the same, Aimee had the day off and pretty much just relaxed all day without having to go do anything stressful! Have a great weekend, Barry
05-01-2009
Apr 25, 09 Comments (0)
 sea-urchin Good morning from little o’l Curacao! Too busy last night to get this out and have to hurry this morning as well as work is a calling! I found this super cool sea urchin last night as I was leaving the Sea Aquarium. At first glance I thought it was just a dead crab laying on the rocks but with a closer look found out it was a molted crab shell being used for camouflage! What a great disguise! The crabs around here lose their shells or molt as it’s called quite regularly and we see their old shells floating everywhere but have never seen one used as sea urchin clothing before? His buddies must be so jealous! If you look to the top left corner of the photo you can see another urchin laying just under the water line with piles of sea weed and kelp attached to his shell not nearly as attractive and clever as a dead crab shell! These urchins pretty much just stick to one area most of the day and slowly move around eating whatever is attached to the rock, like slime. They have to be careful because if they release their grip on the rock to much a wave could hit them and turn them upside down leaving their bellies exposed to predators.
I have to run, have a wonderful weekend, talk to you again this evening. Sunny regards, Barry
04-24-2009
SITE MAP
CategoriesArchives |
|
