SEO For Photographers, Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important for photographers. With the growing number of photographer websites on the internet, it is increasingly difficult for a photographer’s website to be noticed by photo buyers who rely on search results. Good positioning in search engine results translates into revenue. Here in a nutshell are some of the SEO ideas that I have found effective in the 12 years that I have maintained a stock photography website.
Inbound Links and Link Juice. No secret here: to become highly-ranked your website needs inbound links from external websites that themselves are ranked well. It is widely accepted that acquiring inbound links is the singlemost important factor in achieving high search presence (i.e., being found on the first page of search results). The obvious implication is that your website should offer content valuable enough that others will link to it. Suppose Z.COM links to your website A.COM. The more highly Z.COM itself is rated (such as measured by its Google Rank or other metrics), the more “link juice” will flow from Z.COM to A.COM, increasing A.COM’s likelihood of appearing in search results. As your website accumulates inbound links from external sites that have a equal or higher Google Rank than yours, increasing amounts “link juice” flow to your website with the result that your website’s presence in search results increases. The more “juice” you have, the better you will usually do in search results. Link juice is the steriod of the SEO game, and trust me you want a fix. Obtaining link juice is a numbers game, both in terms of the quantity of inbound links, the number of unique websites from which those links originate, and the ranking or “juice” that those sites have themselves. Yahoo, CNN, DMOZ, National Geographic, wire services, Apple and Microsoft are examples of sites which offer a lot of juice in their links. (Wikipedia is a notable exception which I explain later.) Note that while quality content that attracts links to your site is the goal moving forward, the number of inbound links you have today depends a lot on your website’s tenure. The longer your website has been in existence and accessible to the world, the greater the number of honest and juicy inbound links you are likely to have.
The above-mentioned issue of inbound links is so overwhelming in its importance to search engine ranking and SEO that the remaining items can be considered second order. I will mention them anyway. But keep in mind that obtaining good, honest, inbound links with juice must be your priority if you wish to have a highly ranked website that succeeds in being found in search results.
Inbound Link Text. The specific text of an inbound link is important. For instance, suppose you have a web page http://www.mysite.com/bed-bug.html. Suppose two links point to it but with different text: “Click here” and “Information about the Bed Bug”. Which do you think is more likely to cause search engines to rank your bed bug page highly when someone searches for “bed bug info”? That’s right, the second link with meaningful text is the better one. So, when you build links within your own website, make sure that the specific text that makes up the link is composed of relevant keywords for which you wish the target page to be associated. If you care about SEO then your days of making “click here” links are over.
Google Is The Bomb. Face it, Google search is where you want to do well right now. Yahoo, Bing and the others are small time, relative to Google. If you can achieve high rankings in non-Google search engines, it will result in some traffic. But the real money and the big traffic is through Google. Learn how Google works and apply it to your own website.
The URL. The specific URL of your web page is mighty important. Try to construct the URL so that the keywords or topics that it should be associated with are actually part of the URL itself. For example, http://www.mysite.com/bed-bug-information.html is much more helpful to having your bed bug page rank highly for the keywords “information about bed bugs” than is the URL http://www.mysite.com/content_3a-7.html or http://www.mysite.com/page?id=347
Keywords. OK, by now we all know, or have at least heard, that search engines no longer consider keywords in their algorithms. In the old days crafty HTML coders would define way too many keywords in the META NAME=”KEYWORDS”… field, in the hopes of appearing in as many search results as possible. The search engines caught onto this long ago, and at this point it is believed that none of the search engines use keywords in ranking search results. They probably still have some value and I continue to use them, but I don’t hold my breath that they are helping the search engine presence of my site.
Description. The META NAME=”DESCRIPTION”… field is very important. Keep it reasonably short but at the same time make sure to use keyword-rich and reasonably natural language. It is thought that words that appear earliest in the description are most influential as far as indexing and ranking. Consider omitting words that, while perhaps important in a description that would be read in a printed document, are not crucial to your search goals – doing this increases the keyword density and importance of the remaining keywords in the description field.
Headers. In a similar way to the description metadata, header tags H1, H2 and so on also factor into how search engines rank and index a web page. Consider wording headers so they are particularly relevant, dense in meaningful keywords and positioned highly in the HTML source of the page. Note: blog post titles are often defined in H1 or H2 tags, so chose your blog post titles carefully.
Keyword Rich Content. Again, no surprises here. If you wish a page on your website to be considered highly for a given topic or set of keywords, the content (text) of the page should be rich in meaningful keywords for that topic. In other words, keyword density is important. However, going overboard and artificially repeating keywords in text probably works against you. My personal feeling is that Google is able to recognize highly unnatural language constructs, including repeated keywords, and penalizes for it.
Topmost Content Rules. The first 100 words of your page’s content are considered more important than the next 100 words, and so on. In the same way that many web visitors will only read the first few sentences of your blog post, search engines probably only consider a portion of the content at the top, perhaps only a small portion. So, make the first few sentences of your content count!
Ordering of DIVs. Often the appearance of a web page is somewhat independent of the ordering of DIV fields in the HTML. (If you don’t know what DIVs are, don’t worry. If you use modern blogging or template-driven website software, chances are good you have DIVs in your code.) Provided DIVs can be reordered in your HTML code, you should place those DIV fields that matter most earlier in your HTML. For instance, suppose your blog has a DIV with a list of courtesy links to other websites (e.g., a blogroll) as well as a DIV with actual text of your blog post for that day. You should be sure that the DIV composed of links appears last. If you don’t, there is a good chance search engines will consider the links more important than your actual content! Most good blogging software takes care of this for you. But, if you use a custom template for your blog or website, you should check to ensure that DIV fields are ordered so that the ones that are most important for SEO appear first in the HTML.
ALT Text. This one is a biggie for photographers. Important images on your website should have ALT text associated with them. No ifs, ands or buts. Get that ALT text in your IMG tag or you are limiting the potential for the world to find that image in search results. The reason for this is simple. Search engine spiders know an image is on a web page by virtue of the IMG tag. But the spider and its associated indexing algorithms have no direct way of understanding what the image is about. Search engines must infer what the subject of the image is by examining text the precedes and follows the IMG tag. There is, however, one way that you can directly associate keywords with an image: the ALT field in the IMG tag. The ALT field is used to provide information in browsers which are incapable of displaying images, or in which image display is turned off. Granted, there are not many of those browsers any more. But the field holds immense importance for ensuring that your images are indexed and appear in searches such as Google Images. For instance, suppose your bed bug web page displays your superb photo of the rare species Nocturnicus itchius. At a bare minimum, the IMG tag should contain meaningful ALT text such as ALT=”Bed bug photo, Nocturnicus itchius”. Without this tag, search engine spiders will have to guess what the image contains. If the content (the text your visitors are reading) is well written, search engine indexing algorithms may make a correct guess that the image has something to do with a bed bug. But don’t make the search engines guess: spell it out for them by defining ALT text for the image that makes it crystal clear what the image is.
Reasonable Number of Links Per Page. Too many links on one page is ineffective, at least as far as getting search engines to notice them all. It is believed that search engine indexing algorithms discount later links on a page that contains many links, eventually ignoring links beyond the Nth link altogether. What is N? In other words, how many links on a page before there are too many? That’s something only Google can tell us, and they of course won’t. But the general idea is that you should not stuff too many links on a page if you want them to be noticed by search engines. More effective is to have a small number of well-crafted links, the ones you really care about, and save the others for another page somewhere else.
Presence in Web Directories. DMOZ and Yahoo are two of the oldest and most substantial internet directories. Before search became the way we found information on the web (remember AltaVista, the first of the good search engines?), there were directories. Yahoo was the first one I recall, and DMOZ was sort of an oddball directory that eventually became huge and is well organized. Some measures of relevance involved in search engine rankings likely factor in whether a page or website is present in the directories such as DMOZ and Yahoo. Not to mention, the many free “directories” in which you can register and enter your information. Most of these directories provide a link back to your website.
NOFOLLOW Links Do Not Help You. “Nofollow” links are links that contain the NOFOLLOW attribute. Search engines will notice these links but the link will not add to the ranking of the target web site. A notable example of this is Wikipedia. At one time, links from Wikipedia were very important in search engine rankings. Wikipedia is one of the most prominent and highly ranked sites on the web. A simple link from Wikipedia to, say, your bed bug page would go a long way toward increasing the ranking of that bed bug page. However, because of the rash of spam links inserted by crafty webmasters into Wikipedia pages specifically to improve the ranking of their non-Wikipedia web sites, the folks at Wikipedia decided to convert all outbound links to NOFOLLOW. I noticed the effects of this on my own website when my Google rank dropped from a 6 to 5 shortly after this policy change at Wikipedia was implemented — the links in the various Wikipedia sites that pointed to my website suddenly became invisible to the ranking algorithms, lowering the rankings of sites such as mine that were formally benefitting from Wikipedia links. Now, I’d love to tell Wikipedia that all those links pointing to my website are honest and should be left in place without the NOFOLLOW attribute, that I did not put them there myself for my own selfish purposes, blah blah blah, but Wikipedia made their policy change and and as far as they are concerned websites like mine can go pound sand. What would be neat is if the entire internet reciprocated by converting their links to Wikipedia into NOFOLLOW links. By the way, links in Flickr image descriptions and comments are NOFOLLOW as well.
Blog Comment Links Are NOFOLLOW. Many photographers maintain blogs that foster commentary and discussion. These are great, I love them. However, it should be understood that blog software will often convert any links appearing in comments into NOFOLLOW links. This is done in an effort to curb blog comment spam. If your blog allows full-juice comment links (i.e., links without the NOFOLLOW attribute), you can expect to be targeted by blog comment spammers who will try to pepper your blog with comments that simply link back to their own website. So, if you are making an effort to add comments in blogs that link back to your website, you should understand that often those links will not carry any juice since they are NOFOLLOW links. The blog owner usually has control over whether comment links are FOLLOW or NOFOLLOW, and it is my impression that most prefer NOFOLLOW. Note that links in the body of the post are FOLLOW links, and lend juice to the site to which they point. It is usually just the comment links that are castrated by NOFOLLOW.
Tenure of Domain Name Registration. The longer your domain name has been registered, and the longer until it must be renewed, the more substantial your website appears to search engines. Consider a web site that has been in existence for only a few years, and whose domain name registration expires in 3 months. Do you think Google is going to consider that site to be worthy of a high ranking? Not! You can’t do anything about how long your website has been in existence — time will take care of that. But you can make sure that your domain name is registered for 3, 5, even 7 years into the future. Search engine algorithms take both past and future tenure of domain name registration into account.
Web Hosting. If your web hosting service is spotty with frequent downtimes or slow response, it may affect your rankings negatively, especially if there are times that search engine spiders try to crawl your site but cannot reach it. Make sure you are with a solid hosting company. Enough said.
Social Media and Networking. I am not sure where the “social media” forms (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, photography community websites and forums) will take us as far as SEO and search presence is concerned. Social media seem effective for developing contacts and followers who in turn may link to your website. So in that sense working to achieve social media prominence may indirectly improve the search presence of one’s site by virtue of additional inbound links. However, if generating visibility in search results is the goal, I think social media may be helpful only in a second- or third-order way. Indeed, it may be misleading by giving one the sense that one’s website is being seen and quality traffic is being generated. In my opinion, for the photographer wishing to sell images, the best traffic does not come from other photographers encountered in social media networks but from actual photo buyers. I have yet to generate a single photo sale that I can directly credit to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or any similar networks. (Mind you, I am not prominent in these networks which may be the reason.) However, I have managed to touch base with a wide variety of talented, inspiring and interesting photographers, so in that sense social media networking has been productive and enjoyable so far. One is smart to stay abreast of the very fluid world of social media and networking; who knows what the playing field will be like in 2-3 years.
Geocoding and Geotagging. Read my past comments about geocoding and geotaggings your photos. Very few photographers currently geotag their photos so I am ahead of the curve in this regard. But not for long: technology is quickly making geotagging sufficiently simple that soon many photographers will be doing it. There are geo-oriented search situations in which geotagged images will appear and non-geotagged images will never be seen.
Link Farms. Don’t do it. In the old days smart-ass webmasters would set up a multitude of worthless websites, all linking to each other or even to a single target website, you know the one: Buyjunk.com. The idea was to fool Google into thinking Buyjunk.com was worthy of a high ranking due to the sheer number of external links (from the other domains in the link farm) that pointed to Buyjunk.com. Google caught on to this simpleton scheme long ago. It is thought that Google penalizes this technique heavily. Especially obvious are link farms in which all the domains are owned by a few owners or are hosted in close proximity to one another, something Google can determine easily by cross referencing domain name registration information, and by comparing IP addresses and traceroute paths.
Cloaking. Don’t do it. Another smart-ass trick some webmasters use is to present one set of content to human visitors but another to search engines. (This is done with server-side scripting and examining the user-agent to determine if the visitor is a human or a search engine crawler.) Search engine algorithms will detect this (by occasionally sending a crawler that looks to your website like a human and comparing the two versions of content that it see) and penalize you for it.
Flash Websites. You guessed it: don’t do it. That is, if you want a given web page to be noticed and well-indexed by Google, don’t make it a Flash page. We’ve all seen them, the beautiful web pages with moving images, slide shows, awesome user controls, etc etc. However, when was the last time you saw one of these pages showing up in Google search results? The only way a web page be effectively indexed and appear in meaningful search results is through the use of text content and tags (all those mentioned above). Flash obscures text. Flash is a visual tool and does not put emphasis on text. Flash web designers will tell you they can make hidden HTML and text code “behind” the Flash presentation. While text “behind” the Flash-presentation is possible, I still have yet to see one of those all-Flash web pages show up highly in a set of Google search results. By the way, a Flash programmer may structure a page to deliver text content to Google and other search engine crawlers but Flash content to human visitors. This is nothing more than cloaking (mentioned above) and will be detected and likely penalized by search engine algorithms. Challenge your Flash designer to point you to an example where a Flash-based website shows up highly in a Google search that matters; I do not think he will be able to. There are some exceptions to this caveat, in which Flash occupies only a portion of the page and is surrounded by textual content and tags that search engine spiders can latch onto and index. But in general, if you really want to have a Flash-based website, it is best to maintain two sites: a Flash-based website for your ego, and a text-based website for Google. You’ll see which one gets the traffic.
Summary: Offer Killer Content and Hope for Juicy Links. The most effective strategy for a photographer to achieve strong presence in search is to offer fantastic photos that others want to link to. Put great images on your site, surrounded by meaningful and interesting text, make sure to use keywords in the right places and in moderate amounts, and be generous in linking to others so that they in turn may decide to link to you. And cross your fingers that Google takes notice.
Resources: I would be remiss if I did not mention the excellent tutorial that Photoshelter offers about SEO techniques for photographers. None of the information is new, but it is assembled in a concise and informative presentation. Also, some months ago I posted remarks about Websitegrader.com, a great resource for finding weaknesses in your website’s overall internet presence.
In my experience, good positioning in search engine results translates into inquiries and revenue. I have reasonably good position in search results. With the exception of my blog, the code on my website is 100% homegrown and hand-written. My blog is a heavily modified version of Wordpress; I have made many changes to improve it for SEO purposes and to fit my own preferences. Much of the luck I have had comes from tenure. My website has been on the web since 1997, and my blog since 2005. My website may not be the prettiest but it has proven to be reasonably effective at being crawled, indexed and ranked highly for many of the subjects that I have photographed. By virtue of the way I have designed and maintained my website with SEO in mind, I have some 5000+ unique visitors each day, up to 10,000 a day if one of the subjects I have happens to be in the news and people are searching for photos of it. Some of those visitors are photo buyers. Some of those photo buyers like my image(s) enough to contact me and inquire. And some of those inquiries result in sales. Basically, my marketing plan is to continue adding images to my website, and sit and wait for the phone to ring. Admittedly, I could be more proactive and market my photos in traditional ways: submitting article proposals, contacting editors with story ideas or to inquire about what their editorial calendar holds for the coming year, networking with industry types, joining photography societies or developing a “brand”. However, life for me these days precludes any substantial marketing, so I instead pick the “low-hanging fruit”. In general a client will contact me about an image that he has found on my website, usually via search engine results. Note that this is a “self-selected client”: it is already established that he is interested in my image (or he would not have contacted me). So the only unknown is if we will agree on the fee. Low-hanging fruit indeed, due entirely to an appearance in search results. Note that I have never “exchanged links” with anyone who has approached me with a link exchange proposal, nor have I ever paid for any advertising or paid-link services.
I am pretty sure my search engine presence is organic, honest and based on simple SEO tactics. For example, take the latin name (scientific name) of virtually any subject of mine, add the word “photo” or “photos” to it, and search for it in Google. Chances are good my site will appear on the first page of results, often in the top 3. A few examples: Balaenoptera musculus photo, Megaptera novaeangliae photo, Cardinalis cardinalis photos. Similarly for common names combined with the word photo/photos: sea lion photos, jumping cougar photos, tiger shark photos, photo of Mesa Arch, Vernal Falls photos, and here’s an odd one: list of fish species. Results shift around a bit over time, but today most of those examples show one of my pages appearing first in the results and (today) none is lower than #3. By the way, you will notice Ron Niebrugge’s and Q.T. Luong’s websites appearing very highly in those results too. As well, in his recent post Top 10 SEO Tips for Photographers, Jon Cornforth offers some examples of how his SEO work has put him at the top of search results for some of his Alaska photo subjects. This is no surprise, all three of these professional photographers have exceptional images and well-designed web sites. In fact, Q.T. Luong’s site is one of the few photographer sites that receives a Google Rank of 6. (I used to have a 6 but when Wikipedia changed their links to NOFOLLOW I dropped from 6 to 5. Damn you, Internet!)
Keywords: SEO, search engine optimization, photography SEO, website design for photographers.
Rose Atoll, A World Treasure in Peril
View this blog entry in Google EarthLatitude: 14° 32' 48.99" S, Longitude: 168° 8' 38.4" W, Coord: -14.546944°, -168.144°
Filed under: Ocean Realm, Rose Atoll on 11/8/2009
by Phillip Colla and Harrison “Skip” Stubbs, Ph.D.
This post was originally published in Ocean Realm Magazine in the Spring 1997 issue, one of a series of articles I contributed to Ocean Realm in the ’90s. In August 1995 a thirteen-member inter-agency scientific team of which Skip and I were a part visited Rose Atoll National Wildlife Refuge to assess injury caused by the 1993 grounding of a Taiwanese fishing vessel. While the specific injuries to Rose Atoll are unique and the coralline algae composition of the atoll is uncommon, many other isolated atolls worldwide face similar dangers. It is their remote nature, and the unique assemblages of life that they often support, that make such atolls special. Yet their isolation also means that little, if any, enforcement to protect them from damage by fishing and shipping activities exists. The authors collected photographic and videotape evidence in support of litigation and ongoing injury assessment and research efforts. Rose Atoll NWR is jointly managed by the United States and American Samoa governments and on January 6, 2009 became a National Marine Monument.
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| Rose Islet. Image ID: 00839 Location: Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA  View this Image in Google Earth! |
Remote, tiny and unprotected, Rose Atoll stands alone at the eastern extreme of the Samoan archipelago, 14 degrees south of the equator and southernmost among National Wildlife Refuges. Among the world’s smallest and most pristine atolls, Rose is a nearly square reef surrounding an azure lagoon dotted with coralline bommie towers. Tiny Rose Island rises above the waterline at the atoll’s eastern corner. Rose Atoll’s beauty lies not only in its geometry but in the vibrant pink hue of its reefs — it is one of the few atolls whose primary element of construction is the pink calcareous coralline alga Porolithon.
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| Rose islet and Pisonia trees. Image ID: 00830 Location: Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA |
Rose’s reef system is of the classic spur-and-groove type: massive coralline shoulders extending outward from the atoll separated at regular intervals by deep troughs, grooves through which open ocean wave energy is funneled back to sea. The shallow reef flat surrounding Rose’s interior lagoon is broken only at the atoll’s northern corner by an ava, an opening through which water, elevated within the lagoon by a constant influx of waves, rushes out in a perpetual current. Where the submarine outer reef graduates from a ledge to reef flat is the forereef, an abrupt ten-foot wall of cement-hard coralline algae just beneath the waterline. Crucial to the health of the entire atoll, the forereef acts as a structural armoring that reflects and dissipates wave energy and protects the reef flat from erosion. Injury to the forereef could change gross reef structures and alter established current patterns about the atoll, allowing new avenues of erosion to threaten the atoll’s fragile island.
An Eden in the center the Pacific, Rose Atoll is lonely and beautiful, but virgin no more. The pristine nature of Rose Atoll was violated in October 1993 when the Taiwanese fishing vessel Jin Shiang Fa ran aground on the atoll’s southwest arm. The destructive effect of this event on Rose Atoll was, and continues to be, many-faceted and difficult to quantify.
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| Debris, wreck of F/V Jin Shiang Fa. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA. Image: 00807 |
Debris, wreck of F/V Jin Shiang Fa. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA. Image: 00827 |
Propellor and debris, wreck of F/V Jin Shiang Fa. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA. Image: 00810 |
Structural reef injury to the southwest arm of the atoll was extensive. The Jin Shiang Fa hit the reef obliquely, plowing a deep trench through several reef spurs before coming to rest hard aground. Debris washed overboard, including fishing line, nets, garbage and plastics, snagging on coral heads at the wreck site and in the lagoon. For months, major hull sections remained perched on the reef ledge against the forereef and gradually broke apart in pounding waves, slamming into the forereef wall and carving deep gouges in the brittle coralline reef structure before being towed off the ledge and dumped into deep water by a salvage tug. Remaining are many fragments of the boat that may never be removed. Mangled refrigeration pipes and balls of line are wedged in the reef ledge and the forereef wall. Thirty-foot long hull plates, boiler tanks and much of the vessel’s superstructure slid in pieces down the outer slope of the atoll, leaving behind a swath of crushed reef. In 1994 many of these massive fragments returned to the shallow reef ledge, lifted by hurricane waves, while some pieces came to rest on the reef flat or all the way into the lagoon. Virtually all of the hull debris is still subject to wave movement and continues to erode and weaken the protective forereef, sending a smothering layer of sand up onto the reef flat.
Changes to the atoll precipitated by the release of toxic chemicals may ultimately prove to be more devastating than the grounding itself. The Jin Shiang Fa’s fuel tanks broke open along with a refrigeration system, spilling approximately 100,000 gallons of diesel, 500 gallons of lube oil and 2,500 pounds of ammonia that eventually spread over portions of the outer reef, reef flat, lagoon and ava. A survey conducted two weeks after the grounding, while the vessel was still leaking oil, found evidence of extensive die-off of reef invertebrates (including Tridacna clams and Echinometra urchins) and major reef-building coralline algae (Lithophyllum and Porolithon). Five months later, most of the southwest reef was covered with invasive filamentous cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) which overgrew the reef-building coralline algae. These patches of cyanobacteria marked areas of stressed or dead coralline algae since, for healthy coralline algae, growth occurs just below a thin surface layer that is constantly sloughed off as a natural defense.
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| Paul W. Gabrielson, Ph.D., collecting algae and coral samples. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA. Image: 00824 |
Debris from wreck of F/V Jin Shiang Fa. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA. Image: 00793 |
Debris, wreck of F/V Jin Shiang Fa. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA. Image: 00814 |
Our survey dives at Rose Atoll were superb. Along the outer reef we could constantly hear the vocalizations of the South Pacific humpbacks that swam near us several times. Well away from the wreck site, vast tracts of pastel pink coralline algae and clear water dominate the underwater landscape, a canvas across which is painted a menagerie of wary gray and black-tip reef sharks, swirling blue-spotted jacks and parrotfish schooling by the hundreds. Near the ava sea turtles cruise the reef, soon to mate in the lagoon and nest on either Rose Island or a small sandbar generously named Sand Island. Sixty-foot coralline towers in the lagoon are home to dense communities of Tridacna clams and strange clusters of procreating nudibranchs.
Yet each dive brought us a measure of dismay to temper our sense of wonder. The physical damage from the Jin Shiang Fa is stunning and contrasts harshly with the sections of pristine reef that we had seen earlier. A deep hull scar leads directly to the grounding site where the engine block and propellers, massive enough to resist hurricane waves, sit in the deep bowls that they have gouged out of the shallow reef ledge. Along the forereef and ledge, thick coralline algae structures lie broken underneath the pipes, hull plating and antenna tower that litter the wreck site. Coral heads are wrapped in balls of fishing line replete with steel hooks poised to snag passersby. Chinese videotapes, hip waders, plastic tarps, storm boots and large metal tanks are spread across the sandy floor and the coral rubble slope inside the lagoon.
Most troubling were our reef flat observations. It seemed that the chemical spill injured the coralline algae, as well as the community of invertebrates that normally graze on cyanobacteria, enough to unnaturally trigger a succession of species that are replacing or smothering the reef-building Porolithon. Cyanobacteria, although ephemeral, was first to recruit and overgrow the reef flat. By our visit it had given way to the finely-branched, non-reef-building coralline alga Jania, which had spread to include about one-third of the entire reef flat, well beyond the wreck site. We found that, although earlier aerial surveys provided useful information on the gross effects of the ship wreck, ground-based and underwater field work is the best way to investigate the temporal dynamics of this tragedy. Unfortunately the remote location of Rose Atoll, which so long kept it pristine, may now hamper scientists who try to monitor its future.
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| Brown booby. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA. Image: 00914 Species: Sula leucogaster |
White (or fairy) tern. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA. Image: 00872 Species: Gygis alba |
Brown boobies. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA. Image: 00908 Species: Sula leucogaster |
Since we originally joined the science team to assist with underwater surveys of the wreck site, neither of us was prepared for what we would witness during our visits ashore, a spectacle of wildlife that emphasizes the critical importance of the atoll for nesting and roosting seabirds. While essentially only twenty acres of compacted coral rubble, tiny Rose Island manages to support a small forest of rare Pisonia trees and a rich assemblage of wheeling, diving, nesting, hatching and crying seabirds. Chicks and eggs seem to be under every bush and tree while juveniles walk openly about, fearless. Inquisitive boobies — red-footed, masked and brown — hover above the shoreline in large groups, crying incessantly. Brown noddies and sooty terns flush from the cover of Pisonia, soon to return to their stumbling chicks and nests laid on the barren coral rubble. Red-throated frigate birds hover high above, sky-borne pirates poised to steal a lesser bird’s catch. Diminutive white terns gracefully flutter about among the trees, pure alabaster but for their large black eyes and exotic blue beaks — could there be more delicate and enchanting creatures?
Such magical visits ashore afforded us time not only to intimately observe these captivating and naive birds but also to contemplate a sobering thought that is at the heart of our team’s work at Rose Atoll: This solitary speck of land atop the atoll, cradling a unique abundance of life, is nothing more than a fragile rubble aggregate, subject to the whim of tides and currents that may have already begun to change in the wake of the grounding.
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| Paul W. Gabrielson, Ph.D., collecting algae and coral samples. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA. Image: 00824 |
Wreck of F/V Jin Shiang Fa. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA. Image: 00709 |
Debris from wreck of F/V Jin Shiang Fa, lagoon talus slope. Rose Atoll National Wildlife Sanctuary, American Samoa, USA. Image: 00789 |
Rose Atoll’s coralline algae reefs have managed to withstand natural disturbances such as hurricanes, varying salinity and changes in sea level. Can they also adapt to the unnatural changes caused by the Jin Shiang Fa? Of greatest concern is the death of the slow-growing, reef-building coralline algae through local structural reef injury and widespread toxin-induced die-off and replacement. The disappearance of these coralline algae may lead to long-term bioerosion that ultimately weakens the reef, altering current patterns and threatening the existence of Rose Island, its forest and its avian inhabitants.
Rose Atoll’s misfortune may ultimately serve to illustrate how delicate the link is between reef welfare and the existence of remote seabird and turtle nesting sites, and how vulnerable such ecosystems are worldwide. Groundings such as that of the Jin Shiang Fa injure tropical reefs and atolls, yet few such incidents occur in countries with the means and interest to carry out damage assessments, sponsor follow-up research efforts, or attempt to mitigate injury to the reef. By chance, had the Jin Shiang Fa ran aground elsewhere, would anyone have heard about it?
Kelp Forest Reminiscing
As he has with all of my past articles, Skip Stubbs critiqued my writing and offered important advice.
Kelp forest underwater photography. This story was originally published as a pictorial in Ocean Realm Magazine in the Spring 2001 issue, the last of a series of articles I contributed to Ocean Realm in the ’90s.
My first experience with seaweed was as a kid combing the shores of Newport Beach where I grew up. After storms my brother and I would find clumps of the brown stuff pushed up the beach. We would pick through them to pop the small bubbles attached to the leaves. If the seaweed was fresh and still had its rootball attached, we would break it apart to reveal a mix of tiny animals: brittle stars, baby octopus, urchins, crabs, little shells and worms. The glimpses of marine life that seaweed brought to our shore triggered a childhood curiosity in the ocean and its inhabitants. Yet it was not until I began diving in kelp that I gained a fuller appreciation of the ocean world.
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| Kelp forest. San Clemente Island, California, USA. Image: 04651 |
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| Jack mackerel schooling amid kelp forest. San Clemente Island, California, USA. Image: 00256 |
Kelp plants growing toward surface and spreading to form a canopy. San Clemente Island, California, USA. Image: 01293 |
Kelp fronds and forest. San Clemente Island, California, USA. Image: 01497 |
It is my spirited opinion, one that I enjoy defending over a beer after a long day on the water, that diving amidst giant kelp is the most magnificent diving in the world. I am fortunate enough to have had some amazing experiences underwater — watching swarms of hammerheads soar overhead, riding the broad back of an accommodating manta, being eyeballed by an inquisitive whale. However, the diving I consider most dear is that found in the splendid kelp forests along the coast and offshore islands of California. Vast beds of giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) line the shore, rising from rocky reefs nearly 100ft deep to reach the surface before spreading out to form a thick floating canopy. Underneath this canopy, the sensation of swimming amid the columns of kelp plants is akin to flying through a terrestrial forest. Corridors between kelp stalks lead to wide openings in the forest in which schools of fish hover. Shafts of light filtered by the canopy above fall across kelp to the reef below. When the current shifts and bends the kelp stalks in a new direction the topology of the forest changes, creating new avenues and rooms to explore.
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| Kelp canopy. San Clemente Island, California, USA. Image: 02118 |
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| Kelp forest. San Clemente Island, California, USA. Image: 02409 |
Kelp bed. San Clemente Island, California, USA. Image: 02502 |
Divers and kelp forest. San Clemente Island, California, USA. Image: 02988 |
Central and Northern California kelp forests are bathed by cold, nutrient-laden currents. The waters here are generally not clear but are rich with animal life. Invertebrate displays on the rocks below the kelp forest are some of the most profuse and interesting in the world and it is common to see large schools of rockfish and pelagic jellies hovering among the kelp. Kelp forests here breed some of the world’s hardiest divers, those who manage year-round dry suits, beach entries and surface swims, winter swells and the distinct possibility of meeting great white sharks in murky water just to dive in Macrocystis.
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| Kelp canopy. San Clemente Island, California, USA. Image: 06119 |
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| Giant kelpfish in kelp. San Clemente Island, California, USA. Image: 05141 Species: Heterostichus rostratus, Macrocystis pyrifera |
Northern kelp crab crawls amidst kelp blades and stipes, midway in the water column (below the surface, above the ocean bottom) in a giant kelp forest. San Nicholas Island, California, USA. Image: 10215 Species: Pugettia producta, Macrocystis pyrifera |
Kelp forest. San Clemente Island, California, USA. Image: 04675 |
Further to the south, Santa Barbara and Catalina Island kelp forests offer somewhat less profuse animal life but warmer and clearer waters. While I don’t dive these two islands often anymore, I do dive kelp originating from these islands throughout the summer: drift kelp. I was introduced to the notion of seeking out floating paddies of kelp by bluewater photographer Mike Johnson and have been hooked ever since. It is a strange pursuit, driving miles of open ocean in search of drifting kelp in the hope of finding something under it. You see, kelp plants that lose their hold on the reef continue to float and grow, drifting with the winds and currents until they are beached or reach warm water. Along the way they gather a variety of passengers including juvenile fish, Medialuna eggs, barnacles and pelagic nudibranchs. Paddies and their passengers further attract a variety of open ocean life: diving birds, bait fish, yellowtail, tuna and marlin, blue and mako sharks. Perhaps the oddest of these visitors is the ocean sunfish (Mola mola), which recruits small fishes at paddies to clean it of parasites — a cleaning station for the largest bony fish in the world, miles from shore in deep oceanic water, circling a scrap of drifting seaweed.
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| Ocean sunfish schooling near drift kelp, soliciting cleaner fishes, open ocean, Baja California. Image: 06308 Species: Mola mola |
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| Blue shark underneath drift kelp, open ocean. San Diego, California, USA. Image: 01006 Species: Prionace glauca |
Pacific white sided dolphin carrying drift kelp. San Diego, California, USA. Image: 00043 Species: Lagenorhynchus obliquidens |
Half-moon perch, offshore drift kelp. San Diego, California, USA. Image: 01933 Species: Medialuna californiensis |
When the goal is simply to swim in and admire a kelp forest, nothing beats the (relatively) warm clear waters of Southern California’s San Clemente Island in late summer. On a good day the panorama at San Clemente is stunning: kelp in all directions reaching from seafloor to surface, summer sun and canopy shadow constantly changing, fish swimming the avenues of the forest and visible over a 100′ away. One is enveloped — literally — by life as far as one can see, an effect I have experienced only a few times, and fleetingly, elsewhere in the ocean. On a day like this I will spend as much time in the water as possible, staying just below the surface to take advantage of the wonderful quality and variety of sunlight in the canopy, waiting for subjects to photograph against a backdrop of kelp. There are always garibaldi, kelp bass, various wrasses and juvenile fish hidden among kelp fronds to photograph year-round. It is September and October — the magical Indian summer months at Clemente — that are my favorite as they have brought torpedo and bat rays, seals and sea lions, huge schools of salema and mackeral and enormous sea bass though the forest in front of my lens: wonderful animals in a spectacular setting to spite my limited ability to capture them on film.
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| Garibaldi in kelp forest. San Clemente Island, California, USA. Image: 01055 Species: Hypsypops rubicundus, Macrocystis pyrifera |
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| California bat ray in kelp forest. San Clemente Island, California, USA. Image: 00267 Species: Myliobatis californica, Macrocystis pyrifera |
Jack mackerel and kelp. San Clemente Island, California, USA. Image: 00380 Species: Trachurus symmetricus, Macrocystis pyrifera |
Kelp fronds. San Clemente Island, California, USA. Image: 03423 Species: Macrocystis pyrifera |
See more kelp forest photos.
Keywords: kelp forest, macrocystis pyrifera, photography, stock photo, california, underwater, picture.
Skip Stubbs in the Sea of Cortez (2009)
My friend and diving partner Skip Stubbs was doing a little diving in the Sea of Cortez with a group of long-time diving friends. Skip shoots primarily video, but on his trips he always takes some time out to shoot a few still photos with his Canon G10. I particularly like his sea lion shot with a school of herring and the island of Los Islotes visible in the background, so that’s the first you see below! Yes, click on it…
From Skip: I have just returned from a week in the Sea of Cortez diving with a small group of friends off a private yacht owned by a good friend of ours. Our trip was interrupted by Hurricane Rick so we spent a day in port at La Paz rather than going up to Las Animas, but we still had a great trip, even though limited to the near diving sites. The temperatures reflected el Nino effects with the water at 84 degrees, and not as clear blue as it should have been in late October. However, the reefs showed large schools of fish (various grunts, sergeant majors, Mexican goatfish, and bigeye scad), and much better numbers of leopard grouper and yellow snappers than in recent years, thanks in part to the efforts of Sea Watch and the vigilance program. We were happy to see that buoys have been placed at Los Islotes to keep small boats from approaching the main sea lion rookery. Finally!
I hope to return again next year!
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Click the image above to see some of the stills that Skip captured in the Sea of Cortez this year! You can also see a sampling of Skip’s past trips.
Heat Run: Humpback Whale Behavior Photos
Humpback whale underwater photography. Originally titled “Heat Run”, this appeared in Ocean Realm Magazine in April 1995, the first of a series of articles I contributed to Ocean Realm in the ’90s.
Each winter North Pacific humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) converge on Hawaii to calve, form consort pairs and eventually mate. These social activities often culminate in “heat runs”, exciting and only partly understood spectacles of competition unique among cetaceans. It should be pointed out that the term heat run is colloquial suggesting the female whale involved is “in heat” (estrous). In fact there is little direct evidence that estrous is occurring in these events. But since the behaviors involved are thought to be related to courtship and mating, and since heat run continues to be widely used (and not just in Hawaii), I have chosen to leave it in this account. If I were to write this today, I would probably elect to use “rowdy group” or “surface active group”.
“We’re out of gear.” The props have stopped spinning and humpback pod 1994-181 has surfaced, heading directly toward our research boat. Slipping into the water I immediately sense their presence. An immense deep thrumming sound sets my hair on end, as if I were inside a huge cathedral organ. The mother-calf-escort trio appears 80 feet away and the male escort is singing, a behavior typically observed only in solitary resting males. As the escort glides below, the mother and calf come directly toward me while I hang motionless 15 feet deep. I am awestruck, alone with three enormous humpback whales, all of us breathholding in deep blue water. The mother brings her calf near to examine me, undoubtedly the first human it has seen. I must lift my legs to allow the mother’s 12 foot long pectoral fin to pass underneath. Her calf’s body coloration is just emerging and it is without significant diving ability, staying just below the surface and hugging closely to its mother but on my side, an indication of the mother’s acceptance of me. This calf is so close I could touch it! I take a few photos, recording the whales eyeballing of me as they pass. In contrast to the infant whale’s awkward swimming motions, the mother lifts her fluke in an easy kick, an uncommon opportunity for a tight underwater fluke shot as they move by.
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| North Pacific humpback whale, cow/calf. Image ID: 00140 |
Before losing interest and swimming off, pod 181 offered us four more close passes, enough to capture scientifically valuable video images and identifying photographs. In terms of information, this pod provided an ideal encounter. Photographs revealed the mother was previously seen in 1993 in the company of several identified males, one of which could be the father of this calf. This represents a rare potential escort-mother-calf link, a connection important to the study of the long-term social affiliation characteristics of humpback whales. In addition, the male currently escorting the mother in pod 181 may sire her next calf. Beyond the social affiliation implications, pod 181 also symbolized the assumed culmination of a winter social activity among humpbacks known in Hawaii as the heat run, a beautiful, violent and unique phenomenon believed instrumental in determining courtship and mating associations and ultimately resulting one year later in that most characteristic and endearing humpback group, the mother and calf.
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| Molokai and water pools, viewed from west Maui. Image ID: 00253 |
Once a single land mass of four volcanoes, the islands of Maui, Molokai, Lanai and Kahoolawe now seem like an enormous hand sunken so only the palm and fingertips are visible. Wild and lonely Pacific waters swirl through these fingers and temporarily find calm in the wind lee of Maui, dominated by towering Haleakala volcano and the cloud-ringed West Maui mountains. In this lee, tucked tightly against the coast from Maalaea to Olowalu, humpback mothers regularly bring their new calves to swim in the shallow nearshore waters, to nurse and to gain strength for their coming journey to Alaska. Lanai also has a lee shore where, in addition to mothers and calves, subadult whales are often found socializing, singing and lamenting after being rudely “dropped off” by a mother who has gone to find this year’s mate. But away from shore, calm frequently gives way to weather as the trade winds funnel through the Pailolo channel and streak across Maui’s low-lying midlands into the four island basin, creating shifting windlines that can change glassy calm water into whitecapped swells within minutes. It is here, on the open water among volcanoes and clouds, wind and waves and blazing sun, that Dr. Dan Salden studies the Hawaiian humpback whale.
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| Humpback whales a the surface, volcano and clouds. Image ID: 00425 |
Dr. Dan R. Salden steers our small zodiac towards a large pod of surface active whales, at least twelve in number, swimming quickly across the Auau channel. From the strength and frequency of the whales’ distant blows we had earlier determined, while still several miles away, that the animals were exerting themselves tremendously. Positioning the boat alongside and slightly behind the pod, we match speeds with them and begin observing their behavior. Over the past thirty-one years Dr. Salden has mastered the art of approaching humpbacks without disturbing them. When the lead whale blows and makes a shallow dive the rest of the pod follows. Underwater the whales slow, turn and move directly below us. As they return to the surface we find ourselves amid the pod with whales beside, ahead and underneath the boat. Two whales glide just yards below the keel, each almost twice as long as our skiff. One has ghostly white pectoral fins spanning 30 feet tip to tip. The whales are clearly aware of our proximity and make no overtures toward us, exhibiting exceptional body control as they repeatedly pass within feet of the hull while working amongst themselves to establish position. As whales surface to breathe and dive again, we situate ourselves to photograph identifying markings and scars found on the underside and trailing edge of their flukes. These photographs will be matched against the Hawaii Whale Research Foundation’s (HWRF) database of “fluke IDs” in order to establish individual histories and verify repeat sightings. Dan is now truly in his element, photographing new flukes and pleased to recognize animals from past encounters. Their sequential blows are heard over the boat engines, massive exhalations of breath mixed with atomized water and carrying a thick fishy smell. Dan points out the pod’s two focal animals immediately in front of us — the female seems to be dictating the direction of the pod’s travel while flanking her closely is the escort, a whale whose bloody head nodules and scarred, raw dorsal ridge attest to recent violent encounters.
Suddenly a challenging male rushes in from the side, lunging forward and out of the water, its head completely aloft. Crashing its chin down upon the back of the escort, this new whale tries to displace the escort. The challenge has been made, and a “heat run” has begun. Within seconds, the escort parries the challenger’s head lunge with a peduncle throw, a behavior as exciting to observe as a full breach. Converting his forward momentum into a crack-the-whip rotation, the escort pivots about his submerged head, thrusting his entire fluke and peduncle (the muscular rear portion of his torso) out of the water and laterally at the challenger. An opening behind the female forms as the fighting males move away from the rest of the pod. Before a lesser challenger can fill the gap, the female slows and waits for the escort to rejoin her. Whales begin trumpeting loudly as they surface to breathe, a series of rolling “harumph-umph-umph” sounds that may be attempts at intimidation or simply the result of strenuous exertion. Additional challengers draw in tightly behind the escort, determining among themselves who gets to make a new challenge when the current conflict is resolved. The escort repeatedly blocks the primary challenger, actually pushing him sideways across the surface, then quickly resumes his position beside and behind the female to await his adversary’s next move. Giving up after several failed attempts to displace the escort, the primary challenger breaks off from the pod and departs. Another whale in the pod, who has perhaps been waiting “its turn”, takes his place and the battle continues.
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| North Pacific humpback whale, escort in competitive group makes fast close pass. Image ID: 06057 |
The “heat run” is a setting for spectacular acrobatics and provides an opportunity to study the humpback courtship process. The focus of the run is usually an adult female although there are all-male surface active groups. Typically she is without calf and swimming at speed so that the males pursue quickly, close to the surface. As the season progresses and calves appear more frequently, we encounter runs in which the pace is slowed by a mother with her calf. (In 1993 we observed a surface active group that formed around a sleeping mother / calf pair.) Today, the female is without a calf and has allowed an adult male to accompany her. This escort flanks her continually hoping ultimately to mate with her, wary of others who wish to usurp his position. Staying ahead of the female and escort and careful to keep out of the fray are three subadult whales just a few years old, not challenging the escort but instead apparently just observing the adult’s behavior in anticipation of their own future roles one day.
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| Humpback whale dorsal fin damaged during competitive group socializing. Image ID: 04334 |
The escort’s principal concern is a lineup of challenging males spread out behind him. Each challenger may attempt to displace him from his position with the female. Challenges are an escalating series of maneuvers that may stop at intimidation or culminate in physical injury. On rare occasions Dr. Salden has observed cooperation among challengers, teaming up to defeat the escort. Lesser challengers often engage in side skirmishes among themselves away from the pod, perhaps to establish a pecking order. A successful challenger may become the new escort if the female is accepting and if he can resist further challenges. Determining the gender and roles of the female, escort and seasoned challengers in an active group is straightforward: unlike the smooth skin of females who do not battle, adult males who have accumulated the skill and strength to challenge are scarred and often display dorsal fins that are merely stumps, sheared off by a past opponent’s attack. The dorsal ridge (the backbone leading from the dorsal fin to the fluke) is usually carved with gouges, rips, and white scars, grim testaments to the effectiveness of a humpback whale’s barnacle-encrusted chin as a hammering weapon.
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| North Pacific humpback whale, competitive male with wounded head nodules from colliding with other escorts during competitive interactions. Image ID: 02152 |
Interpreting heat run events from a boat can be difficult, especially with a large pod. The role of animals not directly involved in the conflict is unclear, and the gender of younger whales cannot be determined from superficial scarring. The role of each challenger is fluid, with males jostling for optimal position relative to the female. Whales with white pectoral fins are the most distinguishable underwater, even when 50-80 feet deep. Some individuals have other distinguishing features, such as dorsal fins — hooked, pointed, stumped or gouged — that are visible whenever they break the surface. The rest are usually known only by their fluke patterns, any unusual scarring, or perhaps by their maintaining a constant position in the pod throughout the run.
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| Humpback whale fluking up, ventral aspect of fluke visible. Image ID: 04150 |
When the whales have long down times we must enter the water with them to better witness how the skirmish is resolving itself. Allowed under HWRF’s research permit, underwater study offers opportunities to more fully assess the sex and social roles of key animals and to observe chance behaviors such as nursing and penile displays. (Although whales have internal genitalia, gender can be determined by observing the genital slit and surrounding features, located on the ventral peduncle anterior to the fluke.) Given a change in direction that results in the pod swimming toward the boat, Dan stops for us to enter before moving the boat out of the whales’ path. Only free diving equipment is used and special care is made to minimize water disturbance and to remain unobtrusive. Once the animals are in sight we swim parallel to them and do not dive below them unless they have already shown that they fully accept our presence in the water. For the fortunate few researchers allowed in the water these are often the most rewarding moments of our work, occasions to observe up to a dozen 40-ton whales at once, racing and jostling and flying by.
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| North Pacific humpback whales, socializing trio of adults. Image ID: 05933 |
Getting away from the departing boat’s prop wash is nerve-wracking — whales will be here in moments and I cannot see through the bubbles. Once into clear water I make out the female, leading the pod with four others some 50 feet behind her. Their sounds are a wild dissonance of low pitched calls quite different from the orderly singing of resting males. If they see me, as the female and two of the others do, the whales usually cruise by without changing their behavior. It is amazing to see them corkscrew in order to position both eyes for a stereoscopic view of me. The low contrast of grayish whale against blue water makes it difficult to see all the animals, especially some that pass behind or below. Battling whales that do not see me are a danger and I stay ready to move out of their path. The escort and primary challenger are now drawing near and are intent on one another, flukes pumping and heads driving furiously against each other. Diving, they leave a roiling footprint on the surface and pass within a body length of where I float. The escort has the advantage of bearing down on the challenger from above, pushing with his rostrum and using his pectoral fins to maintain position, while the challenger manages to twist and lash at the escort’s body with lateral fluke swipes. Although the combatants have not actively sought food since leaving Alaska in January, they are expending enormous amounts of energy. I feel insignificant in comparison. When they have faded from sight all that remains is a bubble trail that one whale left behind, a three hundred foot long contrail glistening in the sun, rising silently to the surface.
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| North Pacific humpback whale, male escort bubble streams alongside mother and calf. Image ID: 05926 |
Whales constantly enter and exit heat runs, some of which last an entire day. Distant animals may hear the activities and rush over to investigate. Defeated challengers and disinterested subadults often veer off and disaffiliate, perhaps later to breathhold (rest) or sing. On several occasions we observed two surface active pods cross paths. In the ensuing chaos whales shuffle between pods and wholesale changes in a pod’s temporal social hierarchy may occur.
In one sense, a breach is any behavior in which a substantial portion of the whale breaks the surface. But in practice, a breach is considered to be that most dramatic of events, when the whale launches itself headfirst out of the water with such force it becomes almost entirely airborne. Breaching associated with the heat run most often occurs when a humpback affiliates (joins the pod) or disaffiliates. In addition to the possibility that whales are visually scanning their environment while breaching, Dr. Salden feels the breach has a communication function as well, an opinion shared by other researchers and formulated from years of anecdotal observations. An expert in nonverbal communication, Dr. Salden suspects breaching is the humpback’s way of announcing It is I!, with any surrounding activities forming a context in which the breach must be interpreted. It may be an aggressive signal from an arriving whale (It is I, watch out!) or a parting shot from a disaffiliating whale (Remember me!). When accompanied by a breach, whatever the whale is communicating is “said” with emphasis. An adult whale’s full breach is the most exciting singular behavior humpback observers see. A mighty launch rockets 45 tons of twisting whale skyward, pectoral fins flinging sheets of water aside, ending in a slow motion body slam heard for great distances.
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| North Pacific humpback whale, breach. Image ID: 00205 |
Underwater, a full breach is a frightening thunderclap, a painfully sharp crack. Captain Jill Mickelsen and I experienced a particularly memorable breaching session one day while in the water observing a mother-calf-escort trio off the north shore of Lanai. Strangely, as the mother and calf slowly circled us, the escort unleashed a succession of more than 25 breaches quite close to our boat. Wind chop, combined with his splashes, reduced the water visibility to less than 60 feet, forcing Jill and I to search continually for the escort deep below as he prepared to rush upward for his next launch. Occasionally, we could see him spiraling and pumping as he approached the surface and we could signal to the boat where he would emerge. More often we would simply hear his breach and realize gratefully that he did not land on us. Researcher David Glickman was able to capture these breaches in a video record that shows the escort slamming one pectoral fin against the water each time he landed, as if to add to his impact. He eventually stopped after the mother directed several peduncle throws at him. Did she tire of his show, or was her calf becoming distressed? No sooner was the breaching finished than Galapagos sharks appeared, swimming erratically with pectoral fins lowered. Had they been attracted by the surface activity or had the breaching been directed at them as a warning? In either case, we were swimming in waters filled with many large pieces of humpback skin shed during the melee — a whale-scented chum line! Four sharks quickly approached me from below, nipping at my fins. I have been told a video camera was still recording as I yelled for the boat and scrambled aboard, rattled.
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| North Pacific humpback whale, peduncle throw. Image ID: 02153 |
It is in large surface active pods that the potential for a heat run lies and that courtship roles become clear, although no direct evidence linking such social behavior to mating has yet been found. In-water observations allow us to examine facets of behavior not observable from the boat, including actions carried out in conjunction with social sounds. Courtship, mating and birthing activities likely occur in the North Pacific humpback wintering areas of Hawaii, Japan and Mexico. Still, the reproductive lives of humpbacks remain a mystery. Do humpbacks mate in Hawaii or on the journey back to Alaska? Where are the calves born, in sheltered waters or open ocean? Although we have recorded an uncommon underwater humpback penis display and analyzed a sample of humpback placenta, no confirmed direct observation of either mating or calving has been recorded. Pods exhibiting courtship behavior are thus valuable as they provide information about which whales are together this year, in anticipation of calves next year. These data will help us to answer broader questions about whether humpbacks form long-term social affiliations and what factors might influence such relationships.
The Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, designated by Congress in 1992, specifically recognizes the importance of the humpback whale and its winter habitat and will promote protection, research and education while monitoring both the whale and its Hawaiian environment. The Hawaii Whale Research Foundation studies humpback social affiliation and communication with the belief that if the behaviors of these magnificent animals are more fully understood, we may better offer recommendations that protect and preserve them. HWRF was founded and is directed by Dan R. Salden, Ph.D., past chair of the Department of Speech Communication at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. HWRF maintains a growing database of individually identified North Pacific humpback whales, including some that are known to winter in Japan and Mexico as well as Hawaii, and a video record documenting humpback behavior and social roles. HWRF is a publicly supported nonprofit organization staffed by a small group of volunteers. Five winter months of data collection and photo-documentation in Hawaii are augmented by year-round analysis, scientific publications, public service seminars and educational presentations. Field studies are governed by the provisions of NOAA Fisheries (aka, National Marine Fisheries Service) and State of Hawaii scientific research permits.
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| North Pacific humpback whale. Image ID: 00167
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More information about Dr. Dan Salden and Hawaii Whale Research Foundation can be found on HWRF’s website.
As he has with all of my past articles, Skip Stubbs offered important advice.
Some humpback whale behaviors often observed in association with surface active groups (heat runs):
Breaching
Underwater bubble displays
Mother / calf pairs
Lunging
Peduncle throws and tail lobs
Pectoral fin displays
Crucifix blocking
Keywords: humpback whale, megaptera novaeangliae, surface active, behavior, rowdy group, maui, hawaii, pacific.
Kelp Forest Pictures
My kelp forest stock photos appear on Oceanlight.com in addition to the kelp forest pictures I have on Photoshelter:
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Kelp Forest Pictures, Macrocystis pyrifera - Images by Phillip Colla |
If you cannot see the slideshow above, see this kelp forest photo slideshow on Photoshelter!
Keywords: giant kelp, macrocystis pyrifera, kelp forest, underwater photo, california, pacific, image.
Doug Perrine, Marine Wildlife Photographer
Today I would like to recognize Doug Perrine, one of the worlds most accomplished and respected marine wildlife photographers. Last night, his amazing photograph of a feeding Bryde’s whale was awarded highly commended at the annual Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition in London. Honestly, I cannot imagine why this image did not actually win the underwater category. It is one of the finest underwater whale photos ever achieved. I have spent a lot of time in the water with whales, and pursing photographic subjects in the open ocean, and I cannot over-emphasize how spectacular Doug Perrine’s photograph is. For those of you who do not take your cameras underwater, it may look like a simple portrait. In truth this whale was speeding by Doug, who captured the image breathhold diving, at the perfect moment when the whale’s body was aligned gracefully and fully visible, and while its throat was fully engorged from a feeding strike just a moment earlier. This behavior occurs in the open ocean, which is nothing like your casual vacation SCUBA dive. The open ocean can be disorienting, and having enormous creatures swimming by at high speed and at very close range, silently and from any direction including directly below, is intimidating. As he mentions in his caption to the photo, Perrine was nearly engulfed in one of the earlier feeding passes. Given these circumstances, capturing a once-in-a-lifetime image like this is a testament to his professionalism and composure. As I said, I consider Doug Perrine’s Bryde’s whale feeding pass image one of the best underwater photos I have ever seen and really congratulate Doug on his achievement.
This WPOTY award is on the heels of Perrine’s Bryde’s whales photos appearing in National Geographic Magazine.
It should be noted that Doug Perrine won the overall Wildlife Photographer of the Year championship in 2004 with some amazing photos from South Africa’s sardine run, so you know he is no stranger to top ranks of the competition! He is a really nice guy too, and has helped myself and many other photographers in myriad ways over the years. Doug Perrine founded the marine photo stock agency Innerspace Visions in Florida in the 80s. Now known as Seapics.com, and since sold although Doug still maintains a close connection, the agency is a premiere source for worldwide marine imagery by virtue of having most of the worlds best marine photographers as contributers (and me too). I may see Doug on a trip in a few weeks, where I will congratulate him on his wonderful photo and award. I am certain he will reply in his usual modest way: “Oh, we just got lucky.”
Note: why don’t I show a copy of Doug Perrine’s amazing image? It would be easy to do, but out of respect for Mr. Perrine’s work, not to mention copyright law, I instead just link to those places where his work is displayed properly. I’m sure his photo will be copied and pasted around the internet, by kids and bloggers and people who just don’t respect a photographer’s right to control where his work appears. But you won’t see it done here. Please go check the links I mention above to see Doug’s work, you’ll be glad you did.
Guadalupe Island Pictures
My Guadalupe Island stock photos appear on Oceanlight.com in addition to the Guadalupe Island pictures I have on Photoshelter:
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Guadalupe Island Pictures, Isla Guadalupe, Mexico - Images by Phillip Colla |
If you cannot see the slideshow above, see this Guadalupe Island photo slideshow on Photoshelter!
Keywords: Guadalupe Island, Isla Guadalupe, Mexico, stock photos, image.
Northern Shoveler, Anas clypeata
I photographed this Northern Shoveler (Anas clypeata) Sunday morning at Santee Lakes. The coast near my home was totally socked in with pea soup fog, but once I got inland to Santee Lakes the skies cleared. Santee Lakes has some great duck photography. I am not a bird-centric photographer, but I’ll be photographing mostly seabirds this January on a month-long trip, so I’ll probably make a few outings to Santee Lakes and La Jolla to practice my bird photography before I leave.
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| Northern shoveler, adult nonbreeding plumage. Image ID: 23393 Species: Northern shoveler, Anas clypeata Location: Santee Lakes, California, USA |
Keywords: northern shoveler, duck, anas clypeata, santee lakes, san diego.
Galapagos Pictures and Photos
My Galapagos Islands stock photos appear on Oceanlight.com in addition to the Galapagos pictures I have on Photoshelter:
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Galapagos Islands Pictures, Ecuador - Images by Phillip Colla |
If you cannot see the slideshow above, see this Galapagos photo slideshow on Photoshelter!
Keywords: Galapagos Islands, archipelago, Ecuador, stock photos, image.
Ocean Sunfish Pictures
What is the largest bony fish in the world? The ocean sunfish (Mola mola) of course! My stock photos of the ocean sunfish appear on Oceanlight.com in addition to the ocean sunfish pictures I have on Photoshelter:
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Ocean Sunfish Pictures - Images by Phillip Colla |
If you cannot see the slideshow above, see this ocean sunfish photo slideshow on Photoshelter!
Keywords: ocean sunfish, mola mola, underwater, Pacific.
Another Sale Bites the Dust
A few days ago I was contacted by an author who was interested in one of my photos for a book he is self-publishing. I got the sense there probably was not much budget when he mentioned in his email that the book would be available for free download. Regardless, I let him know what I typically charge for private-run book use. This was his response this morning:
This particular picture is very appropriate to its context in the book, but I have found one just as appropriate among Wikimedia commons pictures, so I suppose I’ll go with that. I guess if I was a media-seller I would hate the wikis, but for an author like me they are a godsend.
Sorry we can’t do business
I considered pointing out to him that it would not have been “business” if I, or any other photographer, provided the image for free. Some photographers see a need to “educate” their clients in a situation like this. It’s a nice thought but I just don’t have the time so I generally just move on.
I have had good luck maintaining my fees over the years — even as stock photo prices in general have plummeted — probably because most of my saleable images do not have quality counterparts in the “commons” world. Yet. It is an uncertain time for stock photography. I think stock photographers (including myself) who wish to do well must further separate their images from the norm, otherwise they end up competing with the “crowd” and may lose sales to photographers who give their work away.
Postscript: five hours later I received a stronger-than-usual stock agency check in the mail (3Qtr2009). Hope remains.
Photos of the Wave and North Coyote Buttes, Arizona
View this blog entry in Google EarthLatitude: 36° 59' 45.49" N, Longitude: 112° 0' 22.28" W, Coord: 36.99597°, -112.00619°
Filed under: Arizona, Photoshelter, The Wave on 10/16/2009
My stock photos of the Wave in the North Coyote Buttes appear on Oceanlight.com in addition to the pictures of the Wave and North Coyote Buttes I have on Photoshelter:
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Pictures of The Wave, North Coyote Buttes - Images by Phillip Colla |
If you cannot see the slideshow above, see this Wave and North Coyote Buttes photo slideshow on Photoshelter!
Keywords: the Wave, North Coyote Buttes, Arizona, Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness.
Florida Manatee Pictures
My Florida manatee underwater stock photos appear on Oceanlight.com in addition to the Florida manatee pictures I have on Photoshelter:
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Manatee Pictures - Images by Phillip Colla |
If you cannot see the slideshow above, see this Florida manatee photo slideshow on Photoshelter!
Keywords: manatee stock photo, photo of Florida manatees.
Yellowstone National Park Photos
My Yellowstone National Park stock photos are organized on Oceanlight.com in additional to the Yellowstone National Park pictures I have placed on Photoshelter:
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Yellowstone National Park Photos - Images by Phillip Colla |
Note: If you cannot see the slideshow above, then see this Yellowstone National Park photo slideshow.
Keywords: Yellowstone National Park, stock photography, pictures
Sekonic L-358 Lightmeter for Sale
SOLD.
For sale: Sekonic L-358 Lightmeter / Flashmeter. It is in pristine condition, hardly used, I am the original owner. I bought it thinking I would do more portrait photography with flash but never got into it (my kids don’t like having their photo taken). Asking $155.00. Paypal echeck and personal check is best. Contact me if you are interested.
Here is Sekonic’s official product page for this meter: Sekonic L-358 FLASH MASTER.
Included is the quick-start guide and original soft case. I think I also have the original box and paperwork so if I can find them I will include them too, but cannot guarantee it.
Yosemite National Park Photos
My Yosemite National Park stock photos are organized on Oceanlight.com in addition to the Yosemite pictures appearing on my Photoshelter account:
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Yosemite Pictures - Images by Phillip Colla |
If you cannot see the slideshow above, then take a look at this Yosemite National Park photo slideshow.
Keywords: Yosemite National Park, Yosemite Valley
The Photographers Guide to Yosemite by Michael Frye
Today’s post is a recommendation for Michael Frye’s guide book for photographers, The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite. I’ve owned this book for years. While I know Yosemite National Park quite well, having made frequent visits to the park my entire life (now that’s saying something!), I now carry Michael Frye’s book with me when I am in the park and routinely flip through it to make sure I haven’t forgotten any of the park’s iconic shots or to seek inspiration for a hike to a new spot. The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite is one of only a handful of photography guide books that I routinely recommend to others. In the last 24 hours I’ve had the occasion to recommend it on Twitter several times, so I figure it’s time to say something on my blog too. If you are a photographer and plan to visit Yosemite National Park, buy it beforehand and study it, you won’t be sorry. It will help you make the most of your photography time in Yosemite National Park, especially the Valley which is so rich in photographic potential, and it will ensure that you are in the right spot at the right time for many iconic views.
The Photographer's Guide to Yosemite
Disclaimer: I do not have any arrangement with Mr. Frye or the book’s publisher, other than I am an admirer of his photography and love his book.
Curious what I have been able to shoot in YNP? Here are my Yosemite photos. Most of these are drop dead easy to make and The Photographer’s Guide to Yosemite will help you as it has me.
Aspens in Fall Beside a Creek
View this blog entry in Google EarthLatitude: 37° 11' 4.84" N, Longitude: 118° 33' 30.13" W, Coord: 37.18468°, -118.55837°
Filed under: Sierra Nevada on 10/7/2009
One image that just screams “eastern Sierra fall color” that I wanted to make when I last visited Bishop was one of turning aspen trees alongside running water. The three basins in the mountains above Bishop drain into the three three forks of Bishop Creek, and with aspen trees surrounding much of these forks I knew it was just a matter of looking to find a location that would yield a pleasing composition. I noted a few spots along the outlet of Lake Sabrina along with a couple possibilities along the outlet of North Lake but late in the afternoon when I surveyed the upper reaches of the south fork of Bishop Creek below South Lake I found what I was looking for: walls of color alongside a stream with enough water movement to form interesting blurs. This image was taken very near Parcher’s Resort.
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| Aspens turn yellow in autumn, changing color alongside the south fork of Bishop Creek at sunset. Image ID: 23323 Species: Quaking aspen, Populus tremuloides Location: Bishop Creek Canyon, Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, USA View this Image in Google Earth! |
The day I was in Bishop there were no clouds in the sky at all so contrast was a problem. I was finally able to find a composition with sufficiently low contrast after the sun had descended behind the peaks above South Lake. After that time the light passing through the trees and off the water was even enough to make good exposures without resorting to filters or any of that HDR / blended-exposure silliness. I simply set the aperature at its sharpest for this lens (f/11 on a 24-70 f/2.8 lens) and lengthened the exposure time until I nearly clipped the highlights in the stream. (Curious? See my post about Exposing to the Right and how to properly configure the camera to yield accurate histograms for this approach.) Correcting the white-balance, to account for the cool bias of the shady light, was about all I had to do in the RAW conversion.
Keywords: aspen, stream, creek, fall, eastern sierra, quaking aspen, populus tremuloides, autumn.
The Aspen Tunnel
View this blog entry in Google EarthLatitude: 37° 13' 44.72" N, Longitude: 118° 37' 8.43" W, Coord: 37.22909°, -118.61901°
Filed under: Sierra Nevada on 10/6/2009
Along the road that runs beside North Lake in the Bishop Creek watershed is a section I have heard referred to as the “Aspen Tunnel“, an apropos name certainly. Tall quaking aspen trees (Populus tremuloides) on either side lean over the road, creating a impressive cylinder of color. If you are looking for a spot where you can point your camera up and shoot that classic “aspen trees reaching for the sky” shot (here’s another example), this is absolutely the easiest place I have found to do it. I first saw this spot in early October 2006 at which time the color in the leaves was rich and bright. I was there again most recently in late September 2009 when the trees on one side of the road were green while those on the other side were gold. This dichotomy of color is not all that curious: trees in a stand of aspens are typically clones of one another by virtue of their root system and reproduction mechanism; they tend to change color in unison.
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| 2006: Aspen trees displaying fall colors rise above a High Sierra road near North Lake, Bishop Creek Canyon.
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| 2009: A tunnel of aspen trees, on a road alongside North Lake. The aspens on the left are still green, while those on the right are changing to their fall colors of yellow and orange. Why the difference?.
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The aspen tunnel spot is best photographed when the sun has risen fairly high in the sky. Go ahead and shoot the sunrise at North Lake from the usual spot. Then go for a walk around the lake (it’s a short and flat walk!) and kill some time wandering through the grove on the northwest side of the lake as you do so. When other photographers have departed (”the light is too harsh”, “I don’t shoot during midday”, blah blah), you can make your way over to the aspen tunnel and have it largely to yourself. If you choose your angles properly you will find that trees on both sides of the road are richly colored by the strong backlighting of the mid morning sun. A polarizing filter will drop the sky to a deep blue. Keep in mind, the wider your lens, the more of the color you can pack into your composition and the more accentuated the effect of the polarizer will be. I tend to use lenses such as a 15mm fisheye and 16-35mm superwide zoom in this spot in an attempt to find compositions in which the viewer feels immersed inside a grove of intense color and tall thin trees. (A 24mm lens, often considered “wide”, is definitely not wide enough here.) It is not a good idea to change lenses here, in fact you’ll see the dust from the dirt road hanging in the air all around you. When a car or horse trailer drives past I cover my lens and step off the road for a few minutes until the dust has cleared.
Keywords: aspen tunnel, quaking aspen, populus tremuloides, autumn.
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Updated: November 20, 2009
