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The first time I set my eyes on these strange creatures I thought…… Wooooooooo…… Devilfish, ……because of the prominent horns.

Later I found out that they’re actually called Cow fish which I think is rather more appropriate because of the horns and also they live among the sea grass (geddit!), not sure whether they eat the sea grass though (or smoke them for that matter)…… and actually if you look closely, their mouths do look like cows’ mouth.

I realized after that…… that I should avoid going around naming stuff……leave that to the latin speaking dudes in labcoats.

I felt so lucky to be able to get this shot. These two “cow fishes” were swimming to and fro, back and forth, and I was struggling to get a good picture that includes both of them. Like most of my pictures, I honestly can’t take any credit for them. It’s mostly 99.9% luck and 0.1% skill (and even that is stretching the truth a bit). You’ll get moments when the stars suddenly falls into alignment…… and voila……

click for slideshowI first started SCUBA diving in 2001 and took my first underwater pictures in September that year. These were among my first photos taken on a single dive in Pulau Tioman, Malaysia. The dive site is call Bahara.

I’ve never done any photography before that but I wanted so much to take photos of my diving adventure, so I bought a Sony DSC-P1 because there’s an OEM underwater housing available for it, thus making it so much cheaper than buying third party housing…… but still it was one of one of my most expensive single purchase ever.

Because of the expense I said matter-of-factly to my boss that I needed to win some photography contest to make my investment worthwhile. Off course, him being the motivational expert that he is…… looked me straight in the eye and…… laughed at me……

To make a long story short, entered two online contests and this picture made finalist in Nikon.net December that year¹:-

and this picture was finalist on photo.net²:-

Talk about beginners luck .

1. I won a large print (nearly A4 sized) photo. Although the contest was for US residents only, they nevertheless shipped the prize to Malaysia. Either somebody didn’t read the contest rules or turned a blind eye to it. [back]
2. For finalist on photo.net……(drumroll)……they printed my picture in a some sort of book……that’s about it ……bah…… [back]

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Jellyfishes might not be the most interesting of subjects for underwater photography. I’ve not really encountered them much except looking at them from boats, but when you do see them up close underwater it is a pretty special experience… especially with the ever present fear of being stung .

My encounter with this one is right after entry into the water near ‘sugar wreck’ dive site in Pulau Perhentian, Malaysia.

So at this point I was struggling to descent with one hand deflating my BCD ¹ and the other fiddling with my underwater camera.

In all of the shots you can see a fish that lives symbiotically with the jellyfish.

1. BCD stands for ‘Buoyancy Control Device’ which is basically an air bladder worn like a jacket which allows the diver to increase or decrease his buoyancy by controlling the amount of air in it. [back]

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One of the main attractions of diving in Pulau Perhentian, Malaysia is the abundance of Puffer fish. The Puffer fish here are used to divers and therefore not very shy. You can very easily swim up to them.

Because they are quite used to seeing divers, it is very difficult to see them in their defensive state where they literally puffed up. So I was quite surprised when one decided to “blow up” in front of me!

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I’ve had a trip to Pulau Perhentian on May 2005. Normally I upload my pics onto Sony’s imagestation but figured out why not try flickr this time around.

Flickr is now my image sharing site of choice (for the time being at least ).

Among the highlights are :-

1. A puffer fish in full inflation
2. A strange creature which I think is a kind of nudibranch
3. A jellyfish (…well I’ve never photograph one this close before )

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I’ve no idea what this is. It looks like some sort of nudibranch swimming freely…you can see a shipwreck in the background BTW.

I’m using wordpress to power this website. Why….well it’s free and after surveying a few other blogs software on opensourcecms.com it’s the one I liked best, the main reason being it’s good third party support for extensions.

In other words “I’m impressed with wordpress” and you can quote me on that.