Photo Of The Day and Natural History Commentary

The fellows who freedive at Isla Guadalupe (Mexico) in search of giant fish are some of the most skilled and intrepid hunters in the world. They literally enter the food chain in a way that terrestrial hunters do not. This notion is especially true at Guadalupe Island, a haven to great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) at which several divers have been attacked, some fatally, in the past. Furthermore, freediving spearfishermen have the opportunity to fire only a single shot at a passing fish, using a band-powered speargun that they must reload with their own strength if they miss. They have only as much time to stalk a school of fish as they can sustain on a single breath of air, for this is breathhold diving and not supported by SCUBA, which is too cumbersome, noisy and is illegal for spearfishing in Mexican waters, not to mention unsporting. Once they strike their prey, they must haul the huge thrashing fish in on a thick cord and somehow dispatch the fish by hand before sharks sense the struggle and investigate. These guys are real watermen, very fit and tuned in to the waters that surround them. Since 1992 we have dived Guadalupe Island each summer with a group of spearfishering and diving friends, touring the island on the liveaboard dive vessel Horizon. It is a real pleasure to watch the freedivers at work in the water and hear their stories when they return to the boat. An added plus is the fresh fish we eat each night, barbequed perfectly and served with Jerry’s famous brew.

Craig OConnor and his pending spearfishing world record North Pacific yellowtail (77.4 pounds), taken on a breathold dive with a band-power speargun near Abalone Point. Guadalupe Island is home to enormous yellowtail. The three most recent spearfishing world records for Northern yellowtail have been taken at Guadalupe. July 2004. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 09590   Species: Seriola lalandi Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico

The 2004 trip was marked by Craig O’Connor’s good fortune at spearing a new world record for North Pacific Yellowtail (Seriola lalandi). Nowhere in the North Pacific do these fish get as large as they do at Guadalupe Island. They are brutes. The 1999 trip yielded two back-to-back world records for this species, first to Joe Tobin and then three days later to Doug Kuczkowski. But Craig’s fish topped them both, barely. In addition, a lot of sizable yellowfin tuna were also shot on the trip (as they have in the past), including these two by Joe Tobin and James Tate of Australia.

Joe Tobin (left) and James Tate (right) with yellowfin tuna (approx 60 pounds each), taken by breathold diving with band-power spearguns near Abalone Point. Guadalupe Island, like other Eastern Pacific islands, is a fine place in the world to spear large yellowfin tuna. July 2004. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 09593   Species: Thunnus albacares Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico

James Tate with yellowfin tuna (approx 60 pounds) taken by breathold diving with a band-power speargun near Abalone Point. July 2004. Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 09600   Species: Thunnus albacares Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico

Craig’s fish was written up in the San Diego Union Tribune and the IBSRC’s website of spearfishing world records.

Joe Tobin (left), Doug Kuczkowski (center) and Craig OConnor (right). In July 2004 OConnor shot a pending spearfishing world record North Pacific yellowtail (77.4 pounds), taken on a breathold dive with a band-power speargun near Abalone Point, Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Mexico, July 2004. Kuczkowski is the current record holder (77.0 pounds, July 1999) and Tobin is former record holder (74 pounds, July 1999). H&M Landing, San Diego, California, USA. Image: 09747

Keywords: Guadalupe Island, freediving, spearfishing, yellowtail, world record, underwater photo, Seriola lalandi, Isla Guadalupe

In the world of wildlife study, in which efforts are made to identify and track individual animals over time, researchers can fall prey to the temptation to name their subjects. There is considerable debate about the merits of this, as some scientists feel that assigning names to the animal subjects of a study causes the researchers to lose a certain amount of objectivity in the course of their observations. We have had the good luck of working with humpback whale researcher Dan R. Salden for a number of years, and observed that he made sure to always identify “his” humpbacks with an ID number rather than a descriptive name in an effort to avoid developing an attachment to them. However, it is unavoidable that over many years of work some individual animals receive a nickname in addition to their simple ID number. In the case of Dr. Salden’s whales, one such animal was “Mr. November” who had 30 days of fame when a photograph of his fluke appeared on the November page of a wall calendar.

We have been allowed to name five research subjects. It turns out that in some research efforts, the “right” to name an animal subject is given to the first person to photograph or videotape the animal. In this case, the animals happen to be great white sharks which I photographed and videotaped at Guadalupe Island. Three of them are females, big and beautiful sharks two of which are now named for my daughters who are happy to have the distinction of being the only students at school after whom killers have been named (the other female is named for my mother!). The remaining two are males, real brutes and good looking to boot, whom we decided to name for two notable lotharios of Sex in the City fame: Big and The Russian.

A great white shark underwater. A large great white shark cruises the clear oceanic waters of Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe). Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico. Image: 10111   Species: Carcharodon carcharias Location: Guadalupe Island (Isla Guadalupe), Baja California, Mexico

Oceanlight.com is a natural history stock photography website that first appeared in 1998 as an exercise to learn what the world wide web and websites were, learn to write the HTML to bring a site into being, get it hosted and see if the world thought anything of it. Considerable thanks is owed to Mike Johnson, a good friend and skilled photographer with sublime images of pelagic animals and blue whales, who offered much early advice about the entire process. At the time, the only photos on Oceanlight.com that were of genuine interest were those of blue whales. Originally all the pages were static and created either by hand or via primitive tools such as NetObjects Fusion.

As inbound links to Oceanlight.com began to accumulate and the resultant traffic (mostly from AltaVista and later Google) built, more images were added to the site and publishers began to contact us to license them, usually for use in editorial books, magazines and news publications. It was realized that Oceanlight.com had become a defacto stock photography enterprise, and was actually one of the first of its kind for marine natural history images on the web. In mid-2002, armed with about 1000 images and a need to search through them by keywords (open vocabulary), simple category and hierarchical relationship (closed vocabulary), work with PHP and MySql was begun to create what has now become a powerful, well-indexed and comprehensive online image search feature. So powerful, in fact, that many of the subjects of which we have coverage now appear quite high in the Google rankings by virtue of the dynamic search engine we developed. For example, do a Google on “kelp forest photo“, “Guadalupe Island“, “blue whale photos” or “Carcharodon carcharias photos“; as of January 2005 (and October 2007), these all show up in the top 3 Google results, some of them via Gygis.com, an ancillary site of ours that it nevertheless driven with the same PHP/MySql/search engine.

The past few years have brought an acceleration to the whole process of making photos, getting them on the web and in front of photo researchers and publishers, and licensing them. We are adding roughly 4000 new images to the library each year, using digital cameras such as the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II, EOS-1D Mark II N and 5D, with lenses like the 500 f/4, 300 f/2.8, 70-200 f/2.8 and 24-70 f/2.8 (all killers). The image search, keywording and categorization aspects of the Oceanlight.com photo library are now highly automated and need little further work, but the addition of textual content is an area still in need of streamlining. For this reason, we have adopted the technology of the online weblogging crowd to address the issue of content management. Currently, WordPress is the server-side software we use for this purpose.

Phillip Colla is a natural history photographer and writer. He focuses on wild marine mammals, the California kelp forest, inhabitants of remote eastern Pacific islands, National Parks of the American West and, most recently, waves and surfing. He is fortunate to have visited many spectacular terrestrial and underwater settings as well as to have encountered a variety of threatened and endangered animal species in the ocean. His natural history photography has appeared in the pages of BBC Wildlife, National Wildlife, Ocean Realm, Ranger Rick, Reader’s Digest, Skin Diver, and National Geographic Books, has been used in various advertising and publicity campaigns, is in use in aquaria and museums, and is occasionally recognized in photographic competitions. His underwater videography has been broadcast in various productions in the United States and abroad.

Click here for a list of publication and broadcast credits.

For Sale: Theory of Plates and Shells by Timoshenko, original classic black monograph version – like new condition, never used, opened perhaps half dozen times.

Title: Theory of Plates and Shells, Timoshenko, ISBN 0070647798
Hardcover: 568 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies; 2 edition (June 1959)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0070647798
ISBN-13: 978-0070647794
Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.2 x 1 inches
Weight: 1.8 pounds
Price: $50.00 + $10.00 for USPS Book Rate Shipping in the continental United States.
Amazon Link for more info.

Note: this blog entry is dated January 1 2005 deliberately, so that it does not appear at the top of the blog – I don’t want to clutter my blog with For Sale items, but I do want search engines to pick it up, which is why its in the blog but with a old post date. If you see this blog entry, the book is still available. When I have sold it, I will delete this blog post.

For Sale: Theory of Elasticity by Timoshenko, original classic black monograph version – like new condition, never used, opened perhaps half dozen times.

Title: Theory of Elasticity, Timoshenko, ISBN 0070647208
Hardcover: 608 pages
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies; 3 edition (June 1970)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0070647208
ISBN-13: 978-0070647206
Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
Weight: 2 pounds
Price: $50.00 + $10.00 for USPS Book Rate Shipping in the continental United States.
Amazon Link for more info.

Note: this blog entry is dated January 1 2005 deliberately, so that it does not appear at the top of the blog – I don’t want to clutter my blog with For Sale items, but I do want search engines to pick it up, which is why its in the blog but with a old post date. If you see this blog entry, the book is still available. When I have sold it, I will delete this blog post.

For Sale: Foundations of Solid Mechanics (International Series in Dynamics) (Hardcover) – very good condition, some might call it like new condition, never used, opened perhaps half dozen times.

Title: Foundations of Solid Mechanics, Fung, ISBN 0133299120
Hardcover: 525 pages
Publisher: Prentice Hall (June 1965)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0133299120
ISBN-13: 978-0133299120
Price: $75.00 + $10.00 for USPS Book Rate Shipping in the continental United States.
Amazon Link for more info.

Note: this blog entry is dated January 1 2005 deliberately, so that it does not appear at the top of the blog – I don’t want to clutter my blog with For Sale items, but I do want search engines to pick it up, which is why its in the blog but with a old post date. If you see this blog entry, the book is still available. When I have sold it, I will delete this blog post.

For Sale: Roark’s Formulas for Stress and Strain (Hardcover) – Fifth Edition – new condition, never used, opened perhaps half dozen times.

Title: Formulas for Stress and Strain, Roark, ISBN 0070725411
Hardcover: 624 pages
Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill (Tx); 5th edition (1975)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0070725411
ISBN-13: 978-0070725416
Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
Weight: 2.3 pounds
Price: $35.00 + $10.00 for USPS Book Rate Shipping in the continental United States.
Amazon Link for the current edition – note that the book for sale here is the Fifth edition.

Note: this blog entry is dated January 1 2005 deliberately, so that it does not appear at the top of the blog – I don’t want to clutter my blog with For Sale items, but I do want search engines to pick it up, which is why its in the blog but with a old post date. If you see this blog entry, the book is still available. When I have sold it, I will delete this blog post.

For Sale: Mechanical Engineering Design, Shigley, Fourth Edition, ISBN 0070568995 – very good condition, cover in superb condition, no highlighting or other marks within the book.

Title: Mechanical Engineering Design, Shigley, Fourth Edition, ISBN 0070568995
Hardcover: 624 pages
Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill (Tx); 4th edition (1983)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0070725411
ISBN-13: 978-0070725416
Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
Weight: 2.3 pounds
Price: $20.00 + $10.00 for USPS Book Rate Shipping in the continental United States.
Amazon Link for the current edition – note that the book for sale here is the Fourth edition.

Note: this blog entry is dated January 1 2005 deliberately, so that it does not appear at the top of the blog – I don’t want to clutter my blog with For Sale items, but I do want search engines to pick it up, which is why its in the blog but with a old post date. If you see this blog entry, the book is still available. When I have sold it, I will delete this blog post.

For Sale: Eshbach’s Handbook of Engineering Fundamentals, 3rd Edition (Hardcover), ISBN 0471890847 – used condition, no significant damage, all pages and covers in good shape, no highlighting or deliberate marking within the book.

Title: Eshbach’s Handbook of Engineering Fundamentals, 3rd Edition (Hardcover), ISBN 0471890847
Hardcover: 1560 pages
Publisher: Wiley-Interscience; 3rd edition (1975)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0471890847
ISBN-13: 978-0471890843
Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 2.5 inches
Price: $35.00 + $10.00 for USPS Book Rate Shipping in the continental United States.
Amazon Link for the current edition – note that the book for sale here is the Third edition.

Note: this blog entry is dated January 1 2005 deliberately, so that it does not appear at the top of the blog – I don’t want to clutter my blog with For Sale items, but I do want search engines to pick it up, which is why its in the blog but with a old post date. If you see this blog entry, the book is still available. When I have sold it, I will delete this blog post.

For Sale: Corrosion Handbook, Uhlig, First Edition (Hardcover), ISBN 0471157775 – like new condition, excellent, never used.

Title: Corrosion Handbook, Uhlig, First Edition (Hardcover), ISBN 0471157775
Hardcover: 1188 pages
Publisher: Wiley-Interscience; First edition (1948)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0471157775
ISBN-13: 978-0471157779
Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.4 x 2.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 5 pounds
Price: $85.00 + $10.00 for USPS Book Rate Shipping in the continental United States.
Amazon Link for the current edition – note that the book for sale here is the First edition.

Note: this blog entry is dated January 1 2005 deliberately, so that it does not appear at the top of the blog – I don’t want to clutter my blog with For Sale items, but I do want search engines to pick it up, which is why its in the blog but with a old post date. If you see this blog entry, the book is still available. When I have sold it, I will delete this blog post.

Note: this blog entry is dated January 1 2005 deliberately, so that it does not appear at the top of the blog – I don’t want to clutter my blog with For Sale items, but I do want search engines to pick it up, which is why its in the blog but with a old post date. If you see this blog entry, the books listed below are still available. When I have sold them, I will delete this blog post.

I am selling some of my engineering books. Click any of the links below to get a description. Cash, check or Paypal are all fine, see the description for a link to order by Paypal. These are classics, the latest (most current) versions in like-new hardcover condition:

Foundations of Solid Mechanics, Fung, ISBN 0133299120, the one and only
Theory of Elasticity, Timoshenko, ISBN 0070647208, classic black cover, monograph
Theory of Plates and Shells, Timoshenko, ISBN 0070647798, classic black cover, monograph
SOLD: Theory of Elastic Stability, Timoshenko, ISBN 0070647496, classic black cover, monograph

Another classic, also in hardcover like-new condition, a First Edition collectors item:

Corrosion Handbook, Uhlig, First Edition, ISBN 0471157775

Here are some others, not quite classics but still important for working engineers, however these are not the most current version:

Formulas for Stress and Strain, Roark, ISBN 0070725411
Mechanical Engineering Design, Shigley, Fourth Edition, ISBN 0070568995
Eshbach’s Handbook of Engineering Fundamentals, 3rd Edition, ISBN 0471890847