This is a photo I took of a seahorse the other day that was swimming in floating vegetation from upriver. It was quite small ( about 0.5 cm) so I had to take a lot of photos to hopefully get one sharp image. As it was close to shore, the surge was pushing it one metre this way and one metre that way, so I was lucky I even got this one! Well it is quite amazing that a creature this small can survive for any length of time without getting eaten, but it does, and quite successfully too. These seahorses need seagrasses to live on which can be a problem as river dredging is pretty popular on the gold coast! Seagrasses have many assets but a big one for us is that they stabilize sand banks which limit the movement of sand. Slowing the movement of sand was one of the reasons we started dredging in the first place. Oh well!

Since I am studying dissolved oxygen I thought I might start talking generally about it in my posts. It's a topic that most people would find a bit boring but I find it fascinating. Just for starters, these fish in the image I took yesterday need oxygen just like us. Everyone knows H₂O is water but what it means is that there is one atom of hydrogen and two of oxygen. These oxygen atoms are always bonded to the hydrogen atom. So there are three atoms each taking up 33.3% of space. This ratio in the water never changes. But organisms including fish do not breathe this. What they breathe is the dissolved oxygen (DO) that diffuses by itself in the water, and is not bonded to H₂O at all. I have to stop now!!! Hope you like the photo!

After living around estuaries I have really learnt how to partially appreciate their value. Besides being beautiful places to live they can be home to mangrove forests. These forests provide so many assets such as protection from storm surges and erosion; they filter the water systems of nutrients and waste, and basically make our life a lot easier. Here is a good example of another reason why mangrove forests are so necessary: they provide shelter and spawning areas for many species of fish. You can see the fish hiding from me. This is a mangrove propagule, much like a 'ready-to-go' seed. It can float around for months before washing up on a shore and growing into another mangrove tree. I am glad I finally got out and took a few really nice photographs today! 

I have missed a few posts through the past few days due to lack of brain size and excessive university assignments. Although it is interesting, sometimes I really wonder why I am studying bio-geochemistry at my age. This is a really beautiful image of a squat lobster in a crinoid that I took a couple of years ago. They are less than a centimetre long by the way.

I have completed B&W series of turtle images which look really impressive on my wall! I have a commissioned set which I am preparing for a private collector and I hope to have this completed by the end of this week. Just a quick thank you for everyone that has subscribed to my wordpress blog. You can link to this via the tab on the left of this website and it is greatly appreciated!

Well I wouldn't say that I am totally scared of sharks but let's say that I have a healthy respect for them. Today I was going to go out to the mouth of the Tweed to take some photos but the water was quite murky so I decided to can it and go back in. Although I spend quite a bit of time in this river there are a lot of bull sharks and I really like to see what is going on around me as you can understand. This was one of those days when I decided that a cold drink on the boardwalk was a better option. Anyway I snapped this image and although it is the only one I took it does show how the water can turn green from algae (which feed on nutrients coming from upriver) can make the water look!

I have been a little busy with my studies at the moment so have missed out a couple of posts! This is an image of a clam I took a couple of years ago in Tanegashima Island in Japan which I thought was interesting. Although they are very colourful clams can still manage to produce some pretty affective camouflage. The river is clearing up on the Tweed River near where I live so I will be able to post a few recent images soon!

I took this in Clovelly Bay in Sydney last year. I grew up in Clovelly before it became too expensive to live in, but a great place to grow up none-the-less. It is good to see that the fish are still there though! Usually when the driving force behind people is money a lot of our natural wealth seems to suffer.

This is quite a clear and uncluttered photograph. I love shots with lots of space and shooting around sandy areas can give you lots of freedom. I hope you like this one.

I had a pinched nerve in my spine when I took this shot in Ireland in 2007 so I can almost remember the pain I was in. I couldn't surf for a while but this day I was so bored that I swam out and took a few really nice photos and the pain almost disappeared momentarily when I swam around which was a welcome bonus.

This would have to be the oldest image I have posted. I took it in Little Stirrup Cay, Bahamas, while snorkelling in 2003. I think it was one of the first times I took an underwater, or should I say, from the water, photograph. Although there are a few water spots, it makes the image look dreamy. I worked on this island for a few years. It was very isolated but really beautiful.

I have so many images like this that I must try to post at some stage. I love it when the water is really clear and this particular image was taken late in the afternoon which makes it look a bit darker. I hope you enjoy this one.

I took this while diving at a spot called Pyramid in Tanegashima Island in Japan a couple of years ago. Tanegashima was such a great place to live and work.

I have always liked this photograph that I took a few years ago. While it is not too clear and probably breaks a few rules of photography I always love looking at it. It just looks so timeless to me. This day the water was very murky but that made it even better. I hope  you like this one (although I have posted it before).

I like this shot I took a few years ago in Japan. This Sea Star looks like it is pretty comfortable here. I will add the name soon (if I can find it!).

This Jelly Blubber was dinner for a school of Bream and although it does not look like there is too much eating going on here, they made quite a meal of it. Jelly Blubbers are not harmful to humans by the way as they lack potent stingers. 

This pufferfish was quite small (about 3 cm) and they are commonly found in seagrass beds. They are great to look at but very poisonous to eat as they contain tetrodotoxin which is a neurotoxin found mostly in their ovaries and liver. Pretty good defence that one!

About 150 million years ago turtles began to evolve from land to sea dwelling reptiles and in that time these creatures have watched the dinosaurs enter and depart our world which is an amazing feat considering that Homo sapiens have been around for about 200,000 years. This is the same turtle for the last two posts so I thought I would have a bit of a turtle week. I sold this image to a shop a couple of days ago and it looks great all framed up.

I took this image of a turtle the other day while it was resting under a rock ledge. Turtles are always a favourite of mine as they have been on earth for so long. So long ago that they were here before the dinosaurs, during the dinosaur reign, and of course, after. 

Sergeant Majors are fairly common in Gold Coast rivers and estuaries. Usually they are seen in large schools but sometimes you can find them swimming around solo. Although they have a critical function in their habitat it is often overlooked at how fish add a great aesthetic value.

I took this today on the Gold Coast Seaway. Although the water was a little bit murky in places, when the sun managed to sneak through the clouds, the whole ocean floor would light up and that was when this Green Turtle swam straight past me.

This is the side view version of the sweetlips image I took a couple of days ago. It was moving quite fast here so I was lucky to even get it in the frame!

I like to teach people to dive although I know longer pursue the teaching avenue full-time. In the Gold Coast area of Australia (which includes Surfer's Paradise, Tweed Heads and Coolangatta) there are some great places to SCUBA dive and now and then I will teach a dive course. I always take people to the best spots so I have a constant but small referral system! I took this on one of those days this week. Sergeant Majors always seem to photograph well against the open blue.

Slate Sweetlips are quite common in shallow lagoons and estuaries and grow up to a metre in length. They are easy to photograph as they are very curious and swim close to divers. I took this today when I was working for Queensland SCUBA Diving on the Gold Coast Seaway. 

Sea urchins are from the phylum Echinodermata which includes crinoids, sea stars, brittle stars and sea cucumbers, and like all echinoderms they have five-fold symmetry and move with the use of hundreds of tube feet. Their spines obviously protect them from predators and you can see here that they use also them to secure themselves under this ledge. This could be handy in rough seas and strong currents where many sea urchins frequent.

I took this image yesterday evening after dip in the ocean. This lady had a great cast and in the space of an hour picked up a few good size fish. I know I do not usually post too many 'above water' shots but I thought this was a good portrayal of our connection with the ocean. 

The word "nudibranch" comes from the Latin word nudus, naked, and the Greek word brankhia, which means gills. As you know I have a lot of nudibranch photographs as I love their amazing colours plus they have a large species variety that will keep me busy snapping away at them for years.

These are a beautiful fish but so hard to find. I was lucky because a famous photgrapher was diving that same day and showed me where it was, when I was living in Tanegashima Island in Japan. Half the skill with underwater photography is actually finding everything! Well I hope you like this.