Cuba is such an intriguing country. Thanks to its economic situation, Cuban reefs are exposed to less environmental stress than others in the Gulf of Mexico. Also, active protection of some of the marine reserves ensures an abundance of large species unseen else in the Caribbean.
I can’t wait to visit Cuba again in March 2020!
Check the planned trips in my blog.
We encountererd the moon jellyfish on most of the dives in the Jardines de la Reina. They may seem to be the most mundane subject until the low rising sun paints them with spectacular rainbows.
Groupers accompanied us on most dives at Jardines de la Reina. They usually yawn to display territorial behaviour. We photographed them coming to our dome ports without a single yawn. I captured three instances of yawning in a distance of circa one meter away. This one was the most dramatic, with the evil eye looking straight at me.
I saw Peter Brendt photographing this blenny in a piece of accessible coral. When Peter finished and I set the camera for maximum magnification with the Nauticam Super Macro Converter, I realised that this blenny actively stalks pieces of organic matter floating around. I had another three images with his eyes rolling and beaming at various pieces of fluff. I loved its expression on this image but unfortuntaly captured the frame without the floating subject. The plankton, therefore, comes from a different frame to give the blenny a reason to turn its eyes up. These blennies grow to diameter of 2-3 mm (0.1 in) and I worked with hair-thin depth of field (area of sharpness) so I was surprised to see some of the floating matter in the images at all.
The largest giant barrel sponges grow to height of two metres (6 feet) and are probably more than 2000 years old. The one photographed here (4 feet or 120 cm) can be circa 200 years old. They are common in the Jardines de la Reina and I thought a simple approach will be most suitable. I tried to illuminate the sponge without the light spilling over on the reef around it. Thank you, Peter, for being such a great model.
This spinyhead blenny found rather a fitting home for itself. Being loyal to the idea of the Cuban Revolution and clearly expressing its opinions, it could not find a coral or a sponge with a better colouration. Indeed, I am joking. However, the red sponge forms a brilliant background for the image. The sponge was growing low above the reef, on an old stick of coral, so I was able to get a two-finger-grip with my left hand and rest the camera with the Sigma 150 mm macro lens and the Nauticam Super Macro Converter on my left forearm to stabilize it. Stability was essential because these little buggers measure about 2-3 mm (0.1 in) in diameter.
There were three moments at Jardines de la Reina when I got really excited. I mean that mix of excitement and fear, when you feel intensively alive: one was when Nick More found a massive goliath grouper. The fish was good two metres (six feet) long and one metre (three feet) in diameter. It was not happy seeing us and started to make a loud thumping sound resembling an underwater explosion. Second one was being in the frenzy of five 2-2.5 metres (6.5-8 feet) long silky sharks when a wave rocked our boat on the surface. The boat hit the shark underneath and the shark pushed me with its body and its tail at least half a metre deeper. And lastly realising that there are two crocodiles in the water rather than just one… I feel reasonably comfortable with one croc. Clad in black I pretend to be a carrot and generally something the croc should not be interested in. No flapping hands, just slow moves, all tucked in and neat, camera with a massive dome port in front of me. This changes when there are two crocs in the water. The diving mask allows for only a narrow angle of view. And who knows what jaws and teeth lurk behind you. The title is a paraphrase of a song from the TV series How I Met Your Mother – “Two Beavers Are Better Than One”. It came to my mind when Alex Mustard said that it is nice to have a photograph of a crocodile. But having two crocodiles in one image is outright greedy! 🙂
04–13 November 2019
Enjoy world-class diving with Josef Litt to encounter hammerheads and whale sharks at Wolf and Darwin Island, and also marine iguanas at Fernandina. Seven nights aboard the economy-class yacht Pingüino Explorer. Includes flights from Prague or a nearby airport.
Price: 135,000 Kč (approx. £4,700)
I look forward to going to the enchanted archipelago again in the next few days, hoping for extraordinary encounters with the spectacular fauna of Galapagos.
Watch this space, new imagery coming soon!
In the meantime, check the stories from the islands in my blog.
This little cove was home to at least eight turtles. For years I wanted to take a split image of a turtle breathing on the surface. I followed this massive friend around for about half an hour. I missed two opportunities and got the shot at the “third breath”. This turtle was the big boss in the pond because it demonstrated a territorial behaviour towards the smaller turtles. The visibility was rubbish, so the photos are not great. However, I’ve got them if anybody needs them.
This bird followed me for some time, very interested in what I do snorkelling around with that big black box.
The Panamic cushion stars (Pentaceraster cumingi) are indigenous and common in the shallow waters around central and southern islands of the Galápagos archipelago. I mean they were everywhere. It was not that difficult to find them in a pleasing formation on the Day 1 when we dove alongside Islota Mosquera between North Seymour and Baltra.
The Landslide appeared to be our most popular dive site at the Wolf Island. We usually checked the Eagle rays and then continued to the hammerheads enjoying the ripping current. Unfortunately, the breathtaking scenery was ruined by a thermocline which blurred the view and renders the images unusable. I descended beyond the edge of a sloping wall to approximately 25 metres to get deeper below the thermocline and to capture enough of the hammerheads without the blur.
It was getting late. When the sun gets low above the horizon and the wind makes the surface choppy, the light does not have much chance to penetrate the water. Only four of was (I think Damien, Theresa, Nadya) out of usual seven were up for this dive. Shortly after negative entry, we encountered a big school of jacks. My three buddies went to check them out. I felt the low light would not suit a good picture. I stuck with our dive guide Juan Carlos and gave the others a few moments with the Jacks. As it took some time Juan Carlos and I moved closer to the reef to find a good spot for watching the hammerheads. And they arrived. One, two, five, eight, fifty… There were moments I did not know where to turn my camera as they were everywhere. Over my head. From left. Right. Behind my back. I just screamed through the regulator when I thought I got a shot. This took good fifty minutes, then a nudge to the shoulder scared me to death. Hammerhead? No, Juan Carlos reminds me it is time to go up. My buddies were already on the boat. It turned out that they were swept by current as they took pictures of the jacks and they had to resurface after nine minutes as the current carried them into the dangeous rocky area (deadly Sector #1). Thanks to all of them for spending almost an hour on the boat waiting for the two of us. Juan Carlos and I were extatic, the three were tired and longing to go back to the boat. Juan Carlos called this the dive of the year so far. I do not have such an experience to compare but it certainly was mental!
The Secret Cave at the Wolf Island is formed by a partially submerged lava tube. A lava tube is a natural conduit formed by flowing lava which moves beneath the hardened surface of a lava flow. The entrance into the Secret cave is submerged as is the majority of the cave. There are two pockets of air in the Secret Cave. The smaller one – a dome with a diameter of perhaps 2 metres and then a large one, which feels like a proper underground hall within a cave. The large hall serves as a kind of sanctuary for sealions. They find a relaxingly cool place inside away from annoying flies. Our guide Solon assumed the role of a model and he managed to strike this beautiful pose at the entrance, after good five minutes of moving around without breathing.
I spent the last two days waiting for the right opportunity to photograph the spotted eagle rays at the Wolf Island. They love to glide in the current away from the reef and back again in an effortless move. If treated with the respect they will happily hang above divers’ heads for few moments. It took them 6 dives with us before one of them assumed the bomb-deployment position above my head. This image is special to me. I took a very similar photograph on the same place five years ago and that picture made it to a double-page spread in a national diving magazine. Although the eyes of the eagle ray were blurry because I had the aperture way too opened. Believe me, I was determined not to make the same mistake again. With f/19 the eye is pin-sharp!
As soon as we arrived to the Darwin island we were astonished by its life teaming waters. Dolphins played around the boat and we saw an occasional breach of a whale from a small pod of what we thought were pilot whales. After the second dive, we convinced our skipper to take us snorkelling with the pod. We tried to quietly slide into the water from the zodiac. The pod has some baby whales amongst themselves so they were quite vary. The males came closer to us showing their size, standing upright in the water and blowing bubbles. Time to get back into the boat. When I looked closer on the images I believe these were no pilot whales, I guess these are False killer whales (Pseudorca crassidens).
04–13 November 2019
Enjoy world-class diving with Josef Litt to encounter hammerheads and whale sharks at Wolf and Darwin Island, and also marine iguanas at Fernandina. Seven nights aboard the economy-class yacht Pingüino Explorer. Includes flights from Prague or a nearby airport.
Price: 135,000 Kč (approx. £4,700)
Pregnant whale shark female at Darwin Island in the Galapagos. In 2014, members of the Galapagos Whale Shark Project reported sightings of 27 whale sharks, all females, all but one pregnant around Darwin Island in the Galapagos archipelago.
Photograph © 2011 Josef Litt
We know very little about the biggest bony fish in the oceans, the whale shark.
Whale sharks are the world’s most giant fish, growing up to twenty metres in length – more than a bowling lane and almost as long as a passenger train coach. We don’t know how fast they grow and what is their maximum age. The best estimates are that the big ones may be more than one hundred years old.
Scientists determine the age of sharks by counting growth rings in their vertebrae. This method seems to provide reliable results for younger animals. However, one needs an atomic bomb to make the reading more precise in case of the older sharks. The nuclear tests performed in the 1950s and 1960s increased the amount of radiocarbon in the atmosphere. The radioactive material entered the oceans and imprinted a timestamp in the whale sharks vertebrae. Today, this timestamp helps to establish the age of older individuals.
Juvenile whale shark. We encountered this juvenile on top of the shallow platform underneath the Darwin Island in the Galapagos.
Photograph © 2011 Josef Litt
Photograph © 2011 Josef Litt
To paraphrase Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: ‘Whale sharks are big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big they are.’
From that slightly facetious perspective, it is no surprise that the scientists use the Hubble Space Telescope to identify individual whale sharks. The spots behind their gills form an ornament as unique as a fingerprint. Jason Holmberg, the co-founder of WildMe.org, adapted an algorithm used by NASA with the telescope to recognise and compare the patterns. Thanks to that anybody who photographed a whale shark anywhere in the world can upload their images to the Wildbook for Whale Sharks. Almost 8,000 people identified more than 10,000 whale sharks during close to 60,000 sightings. The data give scientists information about the distribution and movement of the gentle giants, hopefully leading to their adequate protection.
‘Whale sharks are big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big they are.’
Photograph © 2011 Josef Litt
Since 2016, IUCN describes the whale sharks on its Red List as Endangered. The reason is the demand for shark fins in Asia and the nature of whale shark meat, often referred to as ‘tofu shark’. Infuriatingly, despite their size, they also end up as bycatch. Since early 2017, whale sharks enjoy protection as migratory species in more than 125 countries. A number originating from research in 2004 estimates their value to tourism at over USD 47.5 million a year – an amount that is indisputably higher today. Hopefully, governments will realise the species’ importance and enforce the protection they committed to.
Photograph © 2016 Josef Litt
Photograph © 2011 Josef Litt
Members of the Galapagos Whale Shark Project in 2014 reported sightings of 27 whale sharks, all females, all but one pregnant around Darwin Island in the Galapagos archipelago – this seems to be a typical situation confirmed by tourists’ observations. Jonathan R. Green, the leader of the Galapagos Whale Shark Project, explores a hypothesis that the deep sea surrounding Darwin Island serves as a breeding ground for whale sharks. However, nobody has ever seen a whale shark to give birth or breed.
I heard a fisherman speculate about the reason why the whale shark males avoid the Galápagos. Their little cousins, the silky sharks, frequent the islands waters in search of food. Remoras belong to their favourite staple. An attacked remora would hide among the whale sharks’ claspers to protect itself. The ferocious silky shark will hardly differentiate between a remora and a clasper. The poor male whale sharks are afraid that they may get hurt in such a sensitive place, so they avoid Galápagos at all cost. I wonder whether there is a scientific base to this speculation.
Photograph Simon Pierce https://www.simonjpierce.com.
Buy GALÁPAGOS on Amazon now.
Photograph © 2017 Ivan Jiskra
I look forward to going to the Galapagos again in the next few days, hoping for extraordinary encounters with its spectacular fauna.
Whale Sharks are receiving increased attention from the scientists and the public. This results in amazing discoveries with Galapagos being the playground.
Galapagos photographs from Josef Litt’s many trips to the islands. Most of the images, underwater or land-based, were not published anywhere else.
Diving Palau, the archipelago full of mushroom-like islets covered with lush vegetation above the water and stunning coral reef underwater, was on my bucket list since I started to dive. Finally, we made the dream came true with All4Dive, our favourite dive club from Prague in the Czech Republic.
As a preparation, I made a list of animals I’d like to encounter and places I’d want to visit. Mantas, sharks, nautilus, aeroplane wrecks, the Chandelier cave and the Jellyfish lake, belong to the unmissable attractions. The chains of islands itself are a spectacular view, best enjoyed from the air.
I could have hardly seen all this beauty during one week of liveaboard diving. Also, the weather was not the best during our trip and caused some lousy visibility at the beginning of the journey. We saw mantas, but I did not have a good enough photographic opportunity to capture their majesty.
Despite the weather, we had a great time aboard Ocean Hunter III, and I was able to bring back some images. There are so many aspects of Palau we did not explore. We will be back and report.
In the meantime, enjoy the pictures from the last trip.
A pair of pink skunk clownfish in the safety of their host anemone.
Look at the green colour of the whip coral.
Strong current hits the Blue Corner dive spot and draws in pelagics.
It is a bliss to release your dive buddy as a hot air balloon. 😉
We found Palawian turtles on almost every dive.
This turtle was quite comfortable, contrary to its expression.
Some of the coral growths were truly impressive.
I encountered this flatworm swimming in free water in the night. It took good 10 meters of depth before it settled back on the wall.
I wanted to get a “cover page style” photograph including an interaction between a diver and a subject.
A juvenile pink skunk clownfish hiding amongst the anemone’s tentacles.
I pretended to take something out of my imaginary trouser pocket to attract the attention of this curious Napoleon wrasse. No surprise my diving buddies accused me of being indecent while taking photographs… ???
…and beautiful.
The increasing salinity combined with the effects of El Niño seems to be the reason for the population collapse of non-stinging jellyfish in the Jellyfish Lake at Palau. The authorities closed the lake for tourists to help its recovery. After a break, the conditions had improved, and the jellyfish started to return. However, the jellyfish numbers are minimal in comparison with the situation in 1999, when estimated twenty million jellyfish swam in the lake.
Japanese Aichi E13A long range reconnoissance seaplane, named JAKE by the allies. Kinda wrecked…
Allegedly, the Chandelier cave hosts a geocache.
We all had tremendous fun. Join me on my next adventure.
04–13 November 2019
Enjoy world-class diving with Josef Litt to encounter hammerheads and whale sharks at Wolf and Darwin Island, and also marine iguanas at Fernandina. Seven nights aboard the economy-class yacht Pingüino Explorer. Includes flights from Prague or a nearby airport.
Price: 135,000 Kč (approx. £4,700)
Varied underwater environments in different parts of the archipelago offer stunning encounters with Galapagos wildlife in both, warm and cold waters.
The night settled on Wolf Island in the Galapagos. My teeth chatter, and there is nothing I can do with my whole body shivering in the pitch-black underwater darkness. The sandy bottom, thirty meters under the surface, is as empty as beach chairs in Greenland. You can pretend you are a fur seal. But it will not help you in 13°C degrees water which in my numb mind is just above freezing point. I would love to sit in the boat lounge with hot tea in my hand. But I am down here as cold as a frozen herring, and my lamp flickers in search of the elusive red-lipped batfish, Ogcocephalus darwini, a quirky representative of peculiar Galapagos wildlife.
The book I am writing about the Galapagos would utterly fail without a photograph of the batfish. And, I will run out of the air in the next fifteen minutes. Ah, but wait! Something just moved on the sand in front of me!
Photograph © 2011 Josef Litt
What do you see looking at the batfish? I imagine my grandma after a heavy night. The night when she did her makeup by herself – without a mirror and while thinking about mass extinction. She was not a conservationist, but her gentle hand helped many unlucky farm animals back on feet. When her hand did not help, her colourful swearing certainly did.
The bottom-dwelling batfish spend their life crawling more than swimming, using their modified pectoral fins to walk. When disturbed, they swim in a comical waddling movement. Although it is strange-looking, this species is harmless to humans – unlike my grandma. Batfish are anglers, using a particular body part called an illicium, which extends outward above their head to lure prey. I believe this species is also proof that water absorbs the colour red first. Otherwise, this example of Galapagos wildlife would starve to death, because no self-appreciating fish would come close to that hungry, bright red mouth.
“I imagine my grandma after a heavy night. The night when she did her makeup by herself – without a mirror and while thinking about mass extinction.”
Photograph © 2016 Josef Litt
Still dark, only small waves splashing against the volcanic rock of Punta Vicente Roca on Isabela. We repeat in low voices the rules for an encounter with Mola alexandrini, the Southern Ocean sunfish: Wait until the sunfish comes to the cleaning station near a platform at 30 m depth. Do not use strobes until the cleaning starts.
The cold oceanic Cromwell Current upwells on the western side of Isabela, bringing from the depths nutrition to a whole food web of fish and marine animals. As a result, Punta Vicente Roca brims with life and even hosts a colony of Galapagos penguins, Spheniscus mendiculus. Did I mention the Cromwell Current is cold? Well, it is penguin-cold!
Harlequin Wrasse. These spectacular wrasses are frequently seen at Punta Vicente Roca.
Photograph © 2016 Josef Litt
We descend to 30 m and wait for the sunfish to appear from the depths. The visibility is poor, maybe five or six meters. The dawn is rising, and there is no sun to speak of. Depth and cold quickly kill our determination. After twenty minutes of idle waiting, my buddies start leaving one by one, either because of hypothermia or running out of the air. But I stay put.
Suddenly two flecks below us take on a darker shade of blueish-green. Two sunfish rise to the cleaning station and let the Mexican hogfish perform their cleaning duty, picking parasites from their skin.
No, we did not stick to the rules. Being excited, cold, and intoxicated with nitrogen, we did not wait for the sunfish to settle and we fired our strobes too early. Both animals disappeared in a few seconds. Only a single viable image remained from this encounter with this elusive specimen of Galapagos wildlife.
Photograph © 2016 Josef Litt
Writing a well-illustrated book about Galapagos took me to the islands multiple times. I travelled twice to photograph the underwater scenery and fauna of the northern islands, Darwin and Wolf. On another occasion, I visited thirteen islands during a two-week trip. I would recommend extending each trip with a stay on one of the main islands, Santa Cruz or San Cristóbal. Both offer a plethora of snorkelling and Galapagos wildlife spotting opportunities.
Galapagos offer one lesson. Despite being on the equator, their unique climate means that one is cold more often than desired.
Excuse me for now, please. Defrosted, I got to go and apologise to my grandma.
Apparently, the penguins would win no flying contest. It is a question for the Mythbusters to establish who are the better swimmers, the penguins or the cormorants.
The rocky outcrop of Punta Vicente Roca is home not only to Galapagos penguins but also to a few pairs of flightless cormorants.
Punta Vicente Roca on Isabela is an interesting volcanic formation featuring a cave formed out of tuff (compacted volcanic ash). The island in the background is Fernandina.
Punta Vicente Roca hosts a small colony of Galapagos penguins. There is a good chance to see them in the morning before the penguins head out to fish.
04–13 November 2019
Enjoy world-class diving with Josef Litt to encounter hammerheads and whale sharks at Wolf and Darwin Island, and also marine iguanas at Fernandina. Seven nights aboard the economy-class yacht Pingüino Explorer. Includes flights from Prague or a nearby airport.
Price: 135,000 Kč (approx. £4,700)
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