Photo of the Week: January 09, 2012

Hi Gang!

In late November of last year I used an image of a diver swimming with a bottlenose dolphin that I captured during a trip to Mexico’s Revillagigedo Islands. The picture was taken at a site called Cabo Pearce at Socorro Island. In that POTW piece I mentioned that while in my experience close encounters over a prolonged period with pods of wild bottlenose dolphins are generally considered to be unusual events, at one time they were fairly common at Cabo Pearce. 

Well, it happened again. I can’t say for certain that it was with the same animals, but during my recent trip with Captain Steve and friends aboard the Rocio del Mar a group of bottlenose dolphins approached us during several dives at Cabo Pearce. On the first dive one of the dolphins swam up to Steve and stopped only a foot or so behind his head. At least, that is what I was told. I was not with the Captain at the time. I felt like the tale might have been exaggerated somewhat, but I couldn’t be sure. Apparently, Steve didn’t see the dolphins until they were swimming away, and he didn’t really know what had happened until some other divers told him about it once he was back onboard.

Skip ahead to our next dive. This time I was with Captain Steve, and after about 20 minutes I turned to look at the Captain and I watched one bottlenose dolphin swim right up to the back of Steve’s head and stop literally a foot or so from Steve’s head. Steve had no idea a dolphin was right behind him, and neither did several other divers that were swimming in very close proximity to the Captain as they were all engrossed in trying to photograph some manta rays. 

I am not sure why I was looking back at Steve at the time, but I was. After a few seconds another diver swam up to Captain Steve, tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at the dolphin. Within a few seconds Captain Steve started to record the action as several dolphins swam amongst our group of divers. 

The cameraman in the bottom right hand corner of this week’s POTW is Captain Steve with his video system capturing the action.

I was using my Tokina 10-to-17 zoom lens at the time and had the lens set to 10 mm. In other words, the lens was “seeing” a 180-degree field of view. In short, I was using a fisheye lens and was able to fill a large portion of my frame with the dolphin. That is because the dolphin was only three feet or so in front of me. What a great moment, and a great dive!

The POTW I shared last November was shot in much deeper water, but this time I was only a few feet from the surface so I had a lot of sunlight to work with. The visibility was not at its best, but it was certainly good enough. The bottom line is that I couldn’t have asked for a much better photo opp, and neither could Captain Steve.

I hope you enjoy this week’s POTW!

See you next week with another image from our Revillagigedo trip,

Marty