Ken Kurtis
Contributor
Want to travel??? Upcoming 2017 vacation trips:
• July 21-August 2 - Yap Immersion #2 (WE'RE BACK!!!)
• September 1-6 - Great White Sharks of Guadalupe on the Nautilus Belle Amie [ SOLD OUT!!! ]
• November 2-12 - Fiji (SW area near Suva) on the Fiji Aggressor [ SOLD OUT!!! ]
• STARTING TO THINK ABOUT 2018 - WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO???
GET MORE INFO ON ALL OF OUR VACATION TRIPS HERE: www.reefseekers.com/foreign_trips.html
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Upcoming local dives & classes:
• WORKING ON AN AUG/SEPT/OCT SKED
To sign up for any of these dives, either call us at 310/652-4990 or e-mail us at kenkurtis@aol.com
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What a fabulous time we had in Yap . . .
WE'RE BACK - There's no question I love Yap. In fact, when it came time to leave, I told them it felt more like I was leaving home than going home. And the folks at Manta Ray Bay sure do take good care of me and our divers. It was also very interesting for me to see the differences between the experiences of the first group and the second group, who arrived exactly two weeks after the first. The short version of this (I'm still organizing the trip report) is that the second group got a fairly lousy weather week that made us alter our dive plans. The first group had fairly benign weather except for one day and we were able to dive both sides of Yap as well as all three of the main cleaning stations. (Goofnu is the active one now. M'il and Stammtisch not really, although we did spot a manta at Stammtisch with group 2.) But the second group got better and more mantas, partly because we did a couple of extra Goofnu dives due to weather, but also because we had more multi-manta days than did group 1. And it all underscores how much luck plays into all of this. The weather systems that were causing issues for group 2 were very unusual for this time of the year in the region, so you just chalk that up to bad luck. It's like when we went to Roatan in 2013. A buddy of mine was there literally the week before us, leaving the day we arrived. He had perfect weather. We had rain every day and fairly crappy water conditions. Luck of the draw (or lack thereof in this case). And no matter how well you research your destination, no matter how much your check historical record charts, you just don't know. It's the same role of the dice for me in two weeks on my eclipse trip to Nashville. I'm hoping we'll have clear skies, like we did in Australia for the 2012 eclipse. But it could be overcast and rainy, like it was for us during the 2009 eclipse in Shanghai. No matter what you do and where you do it, weather will always be a variable. When I was working for KCET, they had to replace the roof on the building that housed all of our editing suites. So they picked August because we all know it never rains in August. Sure enough, as soon as the roof came off there was a freak rainstorm and hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment was ruined. So it doesn't matter what you do or where you do it, weather can play a big role and you've just got to roll with the flow.
MANY, MANY PICTURES - Fortunately, bad weather didn't hamper our ability to dive SOMEwhere in Yap each day all during July. And we've got the pictures to prove it. A number of you were following our daily Top 10 Pix posts on SmugMug. Now, instead of having to sort though each day, I've put up pix for the entire trip in one folder. (The daily shots are still up too.) Some will be repeats from what you may have seen previously, but many of them are ones you haven't seen before. Be forewarned, there are LOTS of pictures. (But I was there almost a month and shot over 4,000 images.) I've combined everything into one large collage and gallery so you can either use the link below to go to the page and just scroll down through the collage and if you see something you like, click on it to make it full-screen. Or you can hit the SLIDESHOW button and the images will change automatically every few seconds. I've tried to group things thematically, starting with mantas, then sharks, land shots, then themed picture series (two or three or four pix side-by-side that are related), and then everything else. One series I'm especially happy with is right here, which is the growth sequence of the Yellowtail Coris. They start at this bright orange darting fish (called a Clown Coris), then get the blue dots on their tail, then mature a bit more, and then become full-grown adults, looking nothing like they did as juvies. Take a peek:
THE BIG ENCHILADA - I suppose given that it's Yap, I should have said, "The Big Taro" but I wasn't sure you'd catch the meaning. (Or maybe I should have gone with "All the Betel Nut Fit to Chew.") At any rate, here's the SmugMug link to all the final mix of pix: YAP 2017 (I was there for a month, so there's a lot of images) - kenkurtis.
MANTA VIDEO TOO - One of the really great things about being there so long and making so many visits to the cleaning station was you really got to "know" some of the mantas and their habits. Some were very comfortable with divers around, others a bit skittish, and some skittish at first but then OK once they realized you were just lurking. With group 2, we were there one day and I brought both my big Nikon D750 with me and my GoPro on a tripod. My intent was, while the cleaning station was empty, to go plant the GoPro in a fixed position pointed at where the mantas got cleaned, and just let it run. As I was setting the camera, I heard the jingle/jingle of the DM's jingler, which meant a manta was on the way. And as I turned to look over my left shoulder and make my escape, the manta was almost there, freezing me in place. So I decided the best thing to do was hold my position and not spook the manta, and the upside is that I was treated to five minutes of up-close viewing, all while the GoPro was recording too. I laid some music under the video and you can view it on my YouTube page. Bear in mind, I've got the camera set on "wide" so the manta's basically 5-10 feet from me the entire time (closer in reality than it may appear on the screen), with the right-side wing sometimes almost grazing my head. Pretty special and I'm delighted to share it with you: .
FULL TRIP REPORT - I hope to get it done sometime this week and will send you a separate note when I do.
MINOR CHANGE TO TSA PROCEDURES - Mid-July TSA announced they were screening more closely electronics, and now you have to remove - including TSA PreCheck - everything larger than a cell phone. So this now includes tablets and e-readers. A couple of stories have said it also includes cameras but that was not the experience of group 1, nor group 2, nor a couple of other photogs I've talked to who have traveled recently. I even specifically asked in both Guam and Hawaii if they wanted me to take cameras out and they said no. So, at least for the time being, camera equipment does not seem to be undergoing any additional scrutiny.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT - I confess that I taped "Sharknado 5" on SyFy Sunday night and will watch it later in the week as mindless escape fare. But if you missed it and still want to see it, it's available through your cable OnDemand selection, plus it will repeat on Saturday at 9PM on SyFy.
TCHAIKOVSKY ANYONE? - Not dive-related but Ken-related. I have a Friday summer series box at the Hollywood Bowl. It's a pretty good box too, Garden 853, just left of center and the perfect distance back for fireworks. Because I'm flying out Saturday, August 19, for Nashville and the eclipse (which is one the 21st), I can't go to the Bowl for my Friday, August 18 show which is the annual Tchaikovsky program. It includes a number of his works and ends with "The 1812 Overture" (with the USC Trojan Marching Band - in sunglasses - adding brass power to the finale) plus synchronized fireworks. It's a pretty cool spectacle. I'd like to sell my two tickets. (If you need 4 or even 6, I can contact my boxmates to see if they want to part with theirs as well.) Face value on the tickets is $147. Parking at the Bowl (not included) is $20 or you can do a Park-&-Ride. If you're interested in the tickets, either e-mail me or call. I'll also put you in touch with the boxmates so you can decide if you want to co-ordinate food with them. We usually picnic in the box pre-show and then have dessert at intermission. Let me know if you're interested.
And that'll do it for now. Have a great week, and let's go diving soon. . . but likely after the eclipse.
- Ken
• July 21-August 2 - Yap Immersion #2 (WE'RE BACK!!!)
• September 1-6 - Great White Sharks of Guadalupe on the Nautilus Belle Amie [ SOLD OUT!!! ]
• November 2-12 - Fiji (SW area near Suva) on the Fiji Aggressor [ SOLD OUT!!! ]
• STARTING TO THINK ABOUT 2018 - WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO???
GET MORE INFO ON ALL OF OUR VACATION TRIPS HERE: www.reefseekers.com/foreign_trips.html
—————————————————————————————————————————————
Upcoming local dives & classes:
• WORKING ON AN AUG/SEPT/OCT SKED
To sign up for any of these dives, either call us at 310/652-4990 or e-mail us at kenkurtis@aol.com
———————————————————————————————————————————
What a fabulous time we had in Yap . . .
WE'RE BACK - There's no question I love Yap. In fact, when it came time to leave, I told them it felt more like I was leaving home than going home. And the folks at Manta Ray Bay sure do take good care of me and our divers. It was also very interesting for me to see the differences between the experiences of the first group and the second group, who arrived exactly two weeks after the first. The short version of this (I'm still organizing the trip report) is that the second group got a fairly lousy weather week that made us alter our dive plans. The first group had fairly benign weather except for one day and we were able to dive both sides of Yap as well as all three of the main cleaning stations. (Goofnu is the active one now. M'il and Stammtisch not really, although we did spot a manta at Stammtisch with group 2.) But the second group got better and more mantas, partly because we did a couple of extra Goofnu dives due to weather, but also because we had more multi-manta days than did group 1. And it all underscores how much luck plays into all of this. The weather systems that were causing issues for group 2 were very unusual for this time of the year in the region, so you just chalk that up to bad luck. It's like when we went to Roatan in 2013. A buddy of mine was there literally the week before us, leaving the day we arrived. He had perfect weather. We had rain every day and fairly crappy water conditions. Luck of the draw (or lack thereof in this case). And no matter how well you research your destination, no matter how much your check historical record charts, you just don't know. It's the same role of the dice for me in two weeks on my eclipse trip to Nashville. I'm hoping we'll have clear skies, like we did in Australia for the 2012 eclipse. But it could be overcast and rainy, like it was for us during the 2009 eclipse in Shanghai. No matter what you do and where you do it, weather will always be a variable. When I was working for KCET, they had to replace the roof on the building that housed all of our editing suites. So they picked August because we all know it never rains in August. Sure enough, as soon as the roof came off there was a freak rainstorm and hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment was ruined. So it doesn't matter what you do or where you do it, weather can play a big role and you've just got to roll with the flow.
MANY, MANY PICTURES - Fortunately, bad weather didn't hamper our ability to dive SOMEwhere in Yap each day all during July. And we've got the pictures to prove it. A number of you were following our daily Top 10 Pix posts on SmugMug. Now, instead of having to sort though each day, I've put up pix for the entire trip in one folder. (The daily shots are still up too.) Some will be repeats from what you may have seen previously, but many of them are ones you haven't seen before. Be forewarned, there are LOTS of pictures. (But I was there almost a month and shot over 4,000 images.) I've combined everything into one large collage and gallery so you can either use the link below to go to the page and just scroll down through the collage and if you see something you like, click on it to make it full-screen. Or you can hit the SLIDESHOW button and the images will change automatically every few seconds. I've tried to group things thematically, starting with mantas, then sharks, land shots, then themed picture series (two or three or four pix side-by-side that are related), and then everything else. One series I'm especially happy with is right here, which is the growth sequence of the Yellowtail Coris. They start at this bright orange darting fish (called a Clown Coris), then get the blue dots on their tail, then mature a bit more, and then become full-grown adults, looking nothing like they did as juvies. Take a peek:
THE BIG ENCHILADA - I suppose given that it's Yap, I should have said, "The Big Taro" but I wasn't sure you'd catch the meaning. (Or maybe I should have gone with "All the Betel Nut Fit to Chew.") At any rate, here's the SmugMug link to all the final mix of pix: YAP 2017 (I was there for a month, so there's a lot of images) - kenkurtis.
MANTA VIDEO TOO - One of the really great things about being there so long and making so many visits to the cleaning station was you really got to "know" some of the mantas and their habits. Some were very comfortable with divers around, others a bit skittish, and some skittish at first but then OK once they realized you were just lurking. With group 2, we were there one day and I brought both my big Nikon D750 with me and my GoPro on a tripod. My intent was, while the cleaning station was empty, to go plant the GoPro in a fixed position pointed at where the mantas got cleaned, and just let it run. As I was setting the camera, I heard the jingle/jingle of the DM's jingler, which meant a manta was on the way. And as I turned to look over my left shoulder and make my escape, the manta was almost there, freezing me in place. So I decided the best thing to do was hold my position and not spook the manta, and the upside is that I was treated to five minutes of up-close viewing, all while the GoPro was recording too. I laid some music under the video and you can view it on my YouTube page. Bear in mind, I've got the camera set on "wide" so the manta's basically 5-10 feet from me the entire time (closer in reality than it may appear on the screen), with the right-side wing sometimes almost grazing my head. Pretty special and I'm delighted to share it with you: .
FULL TRIP REPORT - I hope to get it done sometime this week and will send you a separate note when I do.
MINOR CHANGE TO TSA PROCEDURES - Mid-July TSA announced they were screening more closely electronics, and now you have to remove - including TSA PreCheck - everything larger than a cell phone. So this now includes tablets and e-readers. A couple of stories have said it also includes cameras but that was not the experience of group 1, nor group 2, nor a couple of other photogs I've talked to who have traveled recently. I even specifically asked in both Guam and Hawaii if they wanted me to take cameras out and they said no. So, at least for the time being, camera equipment does not seem to be undergoing any additional scrutiny.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT - I confess that I taped "Sharknado 5" on SyFy Sunday night and will watch it later in the week as mindless escape fare. But if you missed it and still want to see it, it's available through your cable OnDemand selection, plus it will repeat on Saturday at 9PM on SyFy.
TCHAIKOVSKY ANYONE? - Not dive-related but Ken-related. I have a Friday summer series box at the Hollywood Bowl. It's a pretty good box too, Garden 853, just left of center and the perfect distance back for fireworks. Because I'm flying out Saturday, August 19, for Nashville and the eclipse (which is one the 21st), I can't go to the Bowl for my Friday, August 18 show which is the annual Tchaikovsky program. It includes a number of his works and ends with "The 1812 Overture" (with the USC Trojan Marching Band - in sunglasses - adding brass power to the finale) plus synchronized fireworks. It's a pretty cool spectacle. I'd like to sell my two tickets. (If you need 4 or even 6, I can contact my boxmates to see if they want to part with theirs as well.) Face value on the tickets is $147. Parking at the Bowl (not included) is $20 or you can do a Park-&-Ride. If you're interested in the tickets, either e-mail me or call. I'll also put you in touch with the boxmates so you can decide if you want to co-ordinate food with them. We usually picnic in the box pre-show and then have dessert at intermission. Let me know if you're interested.
And that'll do it for now. Have a great week, and let's go diving soon. . . but likely after the eclipse.
- Ken
