Dolphins in December

My mate called round for a morning surf, and I got laughed at as usual as I strapped on my goggles and camera. We trotted down the hill to find some lovely little waves coming in, but not only that a pod of bottle nose dolphins were playing near the rocks. I left my friend to go surfing and clambered down the cliff and went straight out to see the show.

It was incredible. A crisp clear sunny December morning with decent vis under the water and as soon as I paddled over the dolphins came to investigate me. My goggles really came into their own as they circled just a couple of feet away eyeing me inquisitively. With a quick nod and a burst of sonar clicks in my direction they were off and I watched them splashing their tails nearby before they shot back past me riding a wave towards the rocks. They jumped out of the back of the wave and raced underneath me, it was amazing.






My footage is not quite so incredible as I was using the Go Pro wrist mount which has the dome lens on it which blurs the underwater footage (and it's shaky too). Still it's better than nothing and I am really glad to have a record of what turned out to be one of my best and most interesting dives with the dolphins to date.

They played with me and around me for an hour or more, surfing, circling me and when I dived down they would come and investigate me it was a really special experience and one I know I'll never forget. We drifted along the coast with the tide and I noticed that two or three of the pod were friendly and playful whilst the largest stayed at a distance. I also wondered why they were staying in one place, only moving with the current. It was only after my camera battery had died that I found out why.

There was (what I thought was) a baby dolphin with them, but it quickly became clear all was not well. The baby was not surfacing and the other dolphins were nudging it, then bringing it to the surface over and over again. It was a heartbreaking scene. I finally got close enough while it was at the surface to examine it. It was about 2.5 to 3ft long and its nose was very stubby, it had lacerations on its head and other abrasions and was clearly dead. My excitement had quickly turned to sadness so I released the dead calf back to the sea leaving the dolphins to their vigil. I climbed the cliff with a heavy heart.

As it turned out I was wrong on just about every count! I called the Dolphin people at Cornwall Wildlife Trust and agreed to go back and try and retrieve the body for autopsy. I returned to the sea for a frustrating two hours unable to catch up with the pod who were spending most of their time underwater. They buzzed me a few times but there was sign of the calf.

It was only when I returned home exhausted and called the Wildlife Trust back that we realised my description matched not a baby Bottle-nose Dolphin but a young Harbour Porpoise. I checked some images and confirmed the species, it turns out Dolphins often kill their smaller brethren! That certainly put a different perspective on things! If I had known that I would have brought the body back straight away, but at least I could describe their behaviour which was really unusual under the circumstances.

A fantastic day and my ridiculous looking gear paid off sooner than expected!

What makes a good surf?

Ahhh the surfing season has definitely arrived! Crisp sunny offshore days and great waves! And even better some great showings by the local wildlife.

We turned up for an early morning session last week,the waves were not anything special to be fair but the morning sun was creeping over the cliff and catching the spray beautifully. What made the session really memorable however was a surprise appearance by a pod of bottlenose Dolphins. A set came through and we saw large dark shapes darting within the wave, then suddenly they leapt from the face in a group – incredible! Everyone was smiling and hooting, even the arrival of a trio of long boarders couldn't dampen our enthusiasm.

The dolphins surfed with us, played around us and generally put on a fantastic show. Jumping, flipping upside down, waving their tails in the air and gliding right under us. I dived down to meet them squinting my eyes underwater and often seeing their silhouettes pass right past me, I could hear their high pitch squeaking as they inspected me. There is no better experience in the sea than encountering wild dolphins it really does set you on a high.

After a half hour they moved on and I was left with a warm glow that stayed with me all day.

Today I also had a great surf, lovely crisp, hollow little waves. Another sunny morning - this time with great waves! But again nature put on a great show, as we waded into the water we could see 3 seals playing in the shallows, and more out in the surf. They spent the whole session regarding us carefully, sometimes hooting mournfully in the distance. Several times the smaller females popped up very close by and one duck dived in front of me as I took off on a wave, riding down the line I could see her racing along under me in the clear shallow water.

I've procured a set of small swimming goggles to wear round my neck when I'm surfing from now on so that next time I have one of these encounters I will be able to dive down and see it all clearly!

I think I will also get a wrist mount for my GoPro so that I always have my camera with me as well, just in case.

How things change...

I decided to return to a spot that I haven't dived for a while. When I first started spearing it was one of my regular haunts even though I never had much luck there (apart from spider crabs) but it is a stunning location.

It was a crisp clear day, the sun was out but the promise of cold was in the air as I got changed and hiked down to the beach earning some curious looks from walkers out enjoying the weather.

There were a couple of characteristics about this bay that stuck in my mind, firstly that there was always deep gullies out of my reach that I thought must have been FILLED with all the fish I'd failed to find, there were after all always fishermen here casting off from the rocks. Secondly I remember finding a cave and I wanted to try and revisit it.

It had been a sunny day with clear vis and from the surface I had seen a large spider crab at the bottom of a hole in the rocks. I remember diving for it and thinking it was right at the limit of my abilities, when I reached to grab it I glanced up and saw a cave ahead of me, light glinting at the far side. I shot back up to the surface my mind filled with images of giant conger eels.

Today the visibility was nothing like as good but I knew the area fairly well and struck out round the headland with confidence. I had to duck close to the rocks and under some Anglers Lines, asking of course before hand, earning a few glares for my trouble. Anglers don't generally have much time for Spearos which is a shame. I always try to stay out of their way and am more than happy to let them know what fish I've seen around and where if they only ask.

I did some warm up dives and began to explore. It immediately became apparent how much I have improved since the last time I dived here. I found myself quickly lying on the seabed at the bottom of the gullies I had always eyed in the past. The deepest one was only 11 or 12 meters. Unfortunately the huge fish I had always imagined lurking down there were proving elusive.

I was on the way back when found the cave. I quickly dived down to the entrance and realised that it wasn't that deep and that it was also much wider than I remembered. I checked the exit as well, it's important if your going to swim a cave to make sure it's safe first. A good test is to swim down to the entrance look in, then swim up and around/over it to the exit and look in, if you can do that (and the cave is wide enough) then you can be fairly sure you can make it. But be careful and always dive with a buddy!





I had done some diving through underwater obstacles an Chepstow with the free-divers so felt much more confident and after a calming breathe up made my attempt. After the initial excitement almost disappointingly easy and I went back through a few times, taking the time to hang around in the cave. It was really fun, there's just something eerie about being in an enclosed space underwater and it was really rewarding to see how much more confident I was underwater compared to a few years ago.

As usual I had a great time, despite the poor vis and the lack of fish!

Underwater Surfing... sort of

As the diving season comes to a close so the surfing season comes around. The crowds thin out (a bit, not as much as they used to unfortunately) and the swells pick up.

I decided not to take my board in but instead try some underwater surfing and took my camera along to try and get some footage. There were big regular lines coming in and a stiff offshore wind sending plumes off spray into the air as I put on my old fins and my mask and backed into the shore break.

It turns out I am no George Greenough! For those of you not familiar with his work, check out Crystal Voyager, a classic 1975 surf film, George pioneered filming inside the barrel and there is a long ambient section set to Echoes by Pink Floyd that will blow you're mind!

Check it out on Youtube

I managed to take a few poundings in the shore break (I'm still getting the sand out) and very few even passable shots, certainly no decent footage! I did manage to catch a few waves underwater which was fun, but another lesson was learnt. Don't use your favourite free diving mask! I took an underwater wipe-out (a first), and the mask got torn off and immediately lost. With that kind of swell running there's a lot of water moving around there was no chance of recovering it.

Still it was a lovely day with rainbows forming in the spray behind the waves filling the air with colour. I need to find some way of preventing water droplets on my lens above water as all my attempts to film them ended up blurred.

Close Encounters

The basking shark survey stopped it's work earlier in September so I was surprised to see four of them feeding in the bay this late in the season, one small one was very close to the shore. I rushed off to get my Kayak and diving gear together. By the time I was running down the hill with the kayak slung over one shoulder an idiot on a stand up paddle board had chased the smaller shark out to sea. DON'T chase basking sharks! Stay still near their feeding area and they will more than likely cruise past you without getting disturbed.

By the time I had made it to the waters edge I was disappointed to find that I could no longer see the sharks at all. Undeterred I waited for a gap in the swell and paddled hard for the open ocean, I didn't want to get caught by a wave with all my gear lashed to the kayak!

It was a lovely sunny evening and aside from the gentle rolling of the swell the sea was calm, I caught site of a fin a long way out and headed off in that direction. When I finally got out to their feeding area I found huge shoals of Mackerel creating waves of spray all around with great whooshing sounds and 3 sets of distinctive fins circling a wide area. Just sitting on the kayak watching was amazing!

I hurriedly put on my fins and mask, grabbed my camera and slipped into the water. The visibility wasn't too bad and I was immediately buzzed by huge shoals of Mackerel, their fantastic colours glinting in the sun, below me another shoal swirled, almost in a baitball. I headed past them and waited for the biggest Basking Shark to circle back to me. I floated motionless keeping the Kayak out of the way and was rewarded by a direct approach, its huge silhouette resolving into fantastic clarity, the sunbeams illuminating the inside of its mouth I could see right through its gill rakes as it swept majestically past me.

It came so close I was concerned it might hit me, certainly too close to film effectively! But what an experience! I could see every mottled mark on its skin, its dark eye regarding me and the bright red of its gills as they flared. It was probably over 15ft long and at its stately pace seemed to take a long time to pass, or maybe my excitement caused time to slow. Finally its great tail fin swept elegantly right past my face and it swam into the gloom and out of view.




Aside from not causing distress to them the advantage of not chasing them is that they remain unperturbed by your presence and I was lucky enough to have another six close encounters like this with three different sharks as a result. I couldn't have been happier (except if my girlfriend had been there to share the experience!). The sharks moved away and I let them go, taking the opportunity to load my spear gun and catch some Mackerel for dinner, the shoals were massive and kept returning. On one shot my spear came back with two attached and in the end I decided to stop at five as that was enough for all of us for dinner.

I returned to shore a very happy diver! It made the horrendous hike up the hill carrying my kayak worth it!

Bits and bobs

I film using a GoPro HD camera which gives much better results than the old GoPro wide low-res camera. But if you're thinking about buying one for underwater use be aware that at present the GoPro HD does not focus properly underwater. For underwater use the camera requires a flat lens rather than the dome lens that it ships with, currently you have to purchase a 3rd party modification to achieve this (or do a custom job yourself). When I contacted them about this they said I was on my own as they don't advertise it as an underwater camera which is amusing as they clearly state it's waterproof to 180ft.

I went with this goforfocus.com its a simple lens replacement that you fit yourself. The process is very easy and the results are excellent, making it a cheap effective solution.

I've been through several mounting set-ups as well and have settled on a modified hang-glider camera mount for my spear-gun. It has Velcro straps so is easy to fit and a movable arm allowing me to adjust the camera position quickly. I'd recommend exploring these options before shelling out the extra cash for a GoPro branded mount.

Up until recently I used a mount on top of my torch for night dives but I discovered that as the camera was facing directly down the beam of light it washed out the subject. The light reflects back from particles in the water as well and the effect is compounded if your filming straight down the beam. You get much better results if you hold the camera separately and shine the torchlight in from an angle.

I generally use Windows Live Movie Maker which is more than adequate for the little clips I put together but I ran into a couple of problems with this as well. Annoyingly you need to convert videos from MP4 to a format that WLMM can read, I settled with mp4cam2avi which does a great job batch converting to .avi format.

The next problem was (as you can see from some of my earlier videos) that WLMM kept putting a black border around my hi-res videos. I have just found out that there is an aspect ratio setting (under the “view” tab) that when set to wide-screen eliminates the problem.

Just a few bits and bobs that I hope might save someone some time!

While I'm posting here is a fun outer space screen grab I took from my last lot of footage....

The next generation.

I haven't had a dive for a while as I was surfing instead last week instead so was pretty keen to get in today despite not feeling 100%. I headed over to the south coast and saw there was a tiny bit of swell wrapping around and a really low tide. As soon as I got in the sea my fears were confirmed, lots of seaweed bits being stirred up and poor visibility.

Even in bad conditions when you get close enough to your subject (in this case about 1ft!) it still appears clear on film, however on returning and checking the footage my aiming is a little off on the close ups so a lot of the shots didn't come out :( Nonetheless I had a fun time filming some small fish and some Dead man's fingers (Alcyonium digitatum) which I've never seen before. I also found a picturesque little starfish nursery and some fantastic sea anemones as well as shoals of small Bass and Mullet.

I headed out deeper to explore one of my usual hunting spots and dived 12 meters into the gloom, to the seabed I don't normally see at higher tides. Down there I found a very spooky looking cave, I peered in but it was too dark to explore even if I was brave enough! Maybe next low tide I will take my torch.

Little did I know what an exceptional dive this was going to turn out to be! Initially I found my friendly seal basking on a rock, completely unperturbed to see me sneak past and looking very relaxed. Then I was surprised to find there was not one but two younger seals lounging nearby, they were a little more wary and regarded me cautiously if I got too close. Just a bit further along I found a much smaller pup which must be only 6 months old! I was thrilled! As I passed by she looked at me with wide eyes before slipping into the sea without so much as a splash.

Just when I had decided that would be the last I saw of her I accidentally discovered her hiding place - she was curled up in a corner under the kelp keeping a very low profile. No doubt unhappy to have been found she swam off casting a quick look over her shoulder as she went. I was keen not to scare her or pester her and let her come to investigate me, a delightful battle commenced between her caution and her curiosity. It was fantastic to see a young seal so closely! I was a bit concerned the mother might be protective but the pups are left to fend for themselves at quite a young age and mum was quite happy to sleep on the rocks nearby.



(left click to open in you tube, select high def and full screen for best effect).

I managed to get some great footage over a captivating half hour, sometimes she would peer out of the kelp watching me quietly and others she would dash around me at full speed. Seal pups have the most amazing huge limpid eyes and I was transfixed as we came face to face in the kelp, it was incredible, I'm still buzzing!

A close encounter with a Shag rounded off a great day! (click the links for full-size images).