Diver Dave1
Contributor
Recently returned from a week at St Croix. Dove the pier 3 days with Nep2une Divers using a private guide. Their guide service was wonderful. I highly recommend Jenny. It was a family vacation with only me diving so my dives were limited to three days. Water was 80°F and very nice. A fair amount of sand etc in the water so photos often have considerable back scatter. Green turtles were present on all dives, over 10 per dive on all dives. Turtles and Southern Sting rays were very relaxed around us and allowed getting within a few feet with no concern. Schools of fish were present but were not as friendly as I found at the salt pier at Bonaire last May. They did not run away but tended to keep a distance that was too far for any decent photos. But there were various fish available for photos as you can see.
Photos from diving the pier over 3 days
We came across a male and female stingray performing their mating ritual according to what I find online. Below is a link to the first of 8 photos of the stingrays. The much smaller male bits the wing of the larger female. In the two photos with a diver in them, the female's wing edge is raised which gives the male access to mate with her so those two shots might be of them actually mating. I welcome comments about this from anyone with more knowledge about it as I am certainly no stingray expert.
Photos of Stingrays perhaps mating
This was my first diving trip with my new camera system. I used an Olympus E-M10 Mark IV camera with the 14-42 f3.5-5.6 lens on 2 of the dives. I used the octopus housing. I tried the 30mm macro lens for one dive which tended to hunt and focus too slowly for my taste and photography. I used two Backscatter MF2 strobes. I much prefer my old system, a Nikon D7000 in a Nuticam housing with Inon Z-330 strobes but I moved down in weight and size which was nice.
Photos from diving the pier over 3 days
We came across a male and female stingray performing their mating ritual according to what I find online. Below is a link to the first of 8 photos of the stingrays. The much smaller male bits the wing of the larger female. In the two photos with a diver in them, the female's wing edge is raised which gives the male access to mate with her so those two shots might be of them actually mating. I welcome comments about this from anyone with more knowledge about it as I am certainly no stingray expert.
Photos of Stingrays perhaps mating
This was my first diving trip with my new camera system. I used an Olympus E-M10 Mark IV camera with the 14-42 f3.5-5.6 lens on 2 of the dives. I used the octopus housing. I tried the 30mm macro lens for one dive which tended to hunt and focus too slowly for my taste and photography. I used two Backscatter MF2 strobes. I much prefer my old system, a Nikon D7000 in a Nuticam housing with Inon Z-330 strobes but I moved down in weight and size which was nice.
