Great Hammerhead Shark Video Clip, Bimini, Bahamas

I just returned from a grueling trip to Bimini, Bahamas.  Bimini is the closest of the Bahamas Islands to the US.  It is only 60 miles from Miami.  Ironically, it's the most goddamn difficult island of the Bahamas that I've had to get to.  I've flown to Nassau in one day, filmed scenes for a commercial the next day, and flown all the way back home from Nassau on the third day, easily and without stress.  This trip was nowhere near as easy.  It was one of the most stressful trips I've had to take, because these days, if you miss your connection, you are sh** out of luck with the airlines and have to find a way home by relying on the largesse and professionalism of the airline that is supposed to fly you back. 

There is no reliable way to get to and from Bimini.  I'll write more, but I wanted to post a clip today.  I finally got back to my home today after three days of planes, ferries, and automobiles.  More on that later.  Here's a clip:

I was scheduled to dive with great hammerhead sharks for five days, but the trip was cut short by weather.  So I had one day of diving with these spectacular animals.  I got to Bimini on Saturday afternoon, flying Silver Airlines from Fort Lauderdale.  Unfortunately, most folks' checked luggage did not arrive with the flight.  (Silver Airlines had not made their scheduled flights for the three days before Saturday.  The small plane was packed with folks who had been stuck at the airport, literally, since Wednesday.  One couple on our trip had been forced to sleep overnight at the FLL airport because there were absolutely no hotels available anywhere within a 100 mile radius or more).

I therefore only had my GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition camera.  I had never used it underwater before -- just for surf videos and stills, and aerials with my drone.  I had no lights.  I had no way to hold the housing well.  But the next day we went out, and the sharks were there.  The good folks leading the trip let me dive with loaner gear but did not have any wetsuits, so I dove with just running shorts (sorry, everyone on the dive -- you saw my very large gut).

I am impressed with the GoPro footage.  This clip was shot at 1080 frames at 60p.  I then conformed it to 23.98 fps, so it is slowed down a bit.  These sharks are spectacular, very cool to see.

Thanks to Joe Romeiro and Bill Fisher of 333 Productions for organizing the trip, to Mike Black and Jamin Martinelli for working so hard for our group of divers (doing EVERYTHING needed), and the Bimini Big Game Lodge for being so understanding when we got weathered out.  And hey, I have to thank United Airlines for getting me back home relatively easily when my plans changed.  I usually complain about airlines, but United Airlines did good.

A last note:
I just saw on Facebook that our trip leader, Mike Black, a terrific and gentle guy, got beat up in Bimini a day after seeing most of our group off the island. If he got beat up by thugs sent by the competition, then that is really monstrous, vile, and shocking.  He may have voiced opposition to the tagging of these sharks. 

The older hammerhead sharks all had numerous tags on them; one or two had 4" squares of flesh ripped off behind their dorsal, probably from "researchers" who had caught them and glued tags on them, which then ripped off. I used to study marine biology, even was in the PhD program at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. But I am now sickened and opposed to the constant, unending tagging of large marine animals.


Update 3-3-15: I've received a few comments from researchers.  One of the comments was the usual stuff that you get from any researcher who feels offended or disagrees with something you say.  "You're ignorant, you're an idiot, you are not qualified to say anything, etc."  

Another comment was actually more reasoned.  When I have the time, I'll post the comment and my answers.  Sean, if you read this, please send me your email address so that we can communicate directly and privately. 

As for tagging: Like anything else, too much of something can make that -- not a good thing. My strong opinion is that there's been too much tagging now. My friend and mentor Howard Hall wrote a good piece about the subject of tagging at:

 http://wetpixel.com/articles/howard-hall-tagging-a-celebration-of-science

Here's the concluding paragraph and a later comment from Howard after his article:

"A post-graduate credential often qualifies marine biologists for permits allowing the tagging of endangered animals as well as species in marine protected areas. As sport divers we generally celebrate these programs and accept the damage done to wildlife as a justified sacrifice in an effort to conserve ocean habitat and species. And I am sure many of these programs are critical in that regard. But I also suggest that, as members of the sport diving community, our acceptance should not be blind."

"Thanks for all your comments. After forty years watching the decline of wildlife in our oceans, this particular hypocrisy has become especially irritating for me. I read the report Melvin mentions about sea lions targeting salmon that are tagged with transmitters. An unforeseen consequence of tagging. And I would love for Tony to write about humpback fatalities due to tags. That should get the blood pumping. And it is great to hear the Rachel has moved from tags to photo IDs.
I'm presently at Tiger Beach. Earlier this year researchers caught and landed over forty tiger sharks, cut them open, and installed transmitters in their peritoneal cavities. A few of these sharks still come back to Tiger beach and you can see the stitched up incisions. Other sharks have disgustingly infested holes in their dorsal fins from bolt tags implanted years before. Just lovely."

Back to my thoughts: 

Tagging of marine life has reached ridiculous levels. I've seen images of researchers fishing and landing great white and tiger sharks, then lifting them on small boats to tag and otherwise manhandle them -- in the name of science. Who knows how many of these animals die after being so severely stressed? 
A bird biologist told me a story about researchers counting roseate spoonbill nests in Florida. Roseate spoonbills suffer from reduced/changed habitat. They are easily stressed and will leave their nesting areas. Researchers are concerned about their population. A study was proposed and funded, and researchers studied a population in one roosting area by rousting the birds off their nests, banding the parents, counting eggs and chicks, etc. They stressed the birds so much (not hard to do at all) that all the birds left the nesting area, their nests, and their eggs and chicks. In the name of science, these researchers managed to very quickly destroy one of the few remaining roosting sites preferred by these roseate spoonbills.

I am not a bird expert so some of my facts may be off-course, but I believe the basic premise that researchers disturbed a bird species enough that they left an uncommon nesting site. Here's what I found from a quick read of Audubon's archives:

http://archive.audubonmagazine.org/birds/birds0107.html

"But a great many nests have failed on the other keys. Since the late 1970s spoonbills in the bay have re-nested if things have gone wrong, and I see signs that some failed nesters have moved over here to try again. Let's hope."
Attempts by many of the bay's breeding pairs to nest or re-nest often fail, as (despite Lorenz's hopes) they did this spring.

Thumbs Up to Uber

I am not an early adopter, but I've been hearing from friends that Uber is great (another app that I like very much and was recently introduced to is Waze).

I gave Uber a try when our cruise ship (well, it was really a ferry gussied up as a cruise ship) docked in the Port of Miami from Bimini.  A fellow passenger and I took a cab from the port to the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Miami, about one mile away, to pick up rental cars.  The cab driver was surly, never looked at us, grunted at us when we said hi, and then he lied to us -- twice.  The first lie was that he had to take the long way around to the hotel, adding $6 to the $12 fare, because the streets were one-way (I was using Waze so could see that he was taking a long way to reach the destination).  The second lie was when I tried to pay with my credit card.  His cab had a credit card reader in the back, but when I asked if I could use my credit card, he said that the machine was not working.   We ended up paying the cab driver about $15 (thanks, Steve, since I had no cash). 

I had to go back to the Port of Miami and pick up my gear, then get a ride from there back to the same Intercontinental Hotel.   This time I used Uber.  The experience was surprisingly and refreshingly pleasant.  A woman pulled up in a Toyota Sienna; she seemed like a housewife type and was friendly and nice.  I could track her car (Uber gives the time away and the description of the vehicle, as well as the driver's name) as she approached me at my pickup spot, and she called me to confirm where I was and what I looked like.  I did not need to do anything other than use the Uber app to give my destination.  She showed me the right way to get to the hotel, so it took half the time to get there as the cab driver and the cost was $5.  Half the time and half the cost of the cab, and a pleasant experience versus the typical ill-mannered taxi event.   Icing on the cake: I did not have to pull out my wallet and pay cash.  I had already registered my credit card with Uber so I just had to rate the driver and leave. 

I've heard that Uber is ultra-competitive and has used some dirty business practices.  Here's a link that describes some of these dirty business practices:
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/uber-dirty-tactics-expose-pains-for-sharing-economy

However, my one experience with Uber has been great.  I expect to use them again.  I would do almost anything to avoid having to use a cab.  I don't want to make generalizations, but the cab business and many taxi drivers have crappy attitudes that I just don't need to put up with.

Here are a couple of examples:
1.  I learned this lesson a long time ago.  I was young, poor, and had gone to an Our World-Underwater meeting at a Hyatt in Chicago.  I had a couple of suitcases without wheels (those were the days before wheeled luggage was invented), and I needed a ride from the Hyatt to the subway, about four blocks away.  Not knowing what was going on, I went out a door of the hotel (accidentally at the back of the line of cabs) and kept asking for a ride from each cab in the line.  Each and every cab driver shook their head, yelled at me, and pointed ahead, at what looked like the next car.  Being utterly naive, I thought that the drivers all wanted me to go to the cabs in front of them.  (I also have a hearing disability, so often I can't understand what people are saying).

It turns out that the cab industry has a rule that it's developed, that I ran up against.  I am sure that it works for them, but it sure worked against me that day.  After dragging my bags up the line of cabs and being yelled at continuously up the line, I finally got into the cab at the front of the line.  The driver asked me where I wanted to go, and when I told him that I wanted to go just four blocks to the subway station, he exploded, screaming at me.  He screamed at me for the entire ride.  I actually had no clue what he was mad about.  It wasn't until a few years later that someone was talking about a similar situation, and I figured out what had happened.

What had happened, of course, is obvious now.  The cab drivers at that hotel had their own rule -- they formed a line and no hotel guest could get into any cab other than the one at the front.  The guy at the front may have been waiting there for an hour, only to get a crappy four-block fare from me rather than a nice fare to the airport.

I still feel sorry about the situation, but I would have been happy to get in the back of the cab line rather the front.  As it was, I still remember my confusion and the hassle of trying to get into cabs and then being bitched at over and over again, dragging my bags to another and yet another cab.

2.  This happened for years but seems to have been solved (thanks, Monterey Airport Commission): Whenever I arrived home at the Monterey airport, the taxi drivers there had parked right in the crosswalk where folks coming out of baggage claim had to exit.  I always had lots of bags, and in those early days, I dragged around three coolers (without wheels) most of the time.  If someone was picking me up, the taxis blocked access to the crosswalk and often took up the spots nearest to  the baggage claim exit, so I had to walk around them with my coolers after every trip.  I was exhausted after my trips, and this was really the last straw.  If I had the gall to say something to these cab drivers, they would immediately start screaming and yelling -- very hostile and mannerless people.


Uber, you have a good product.  I hope you do well and that you realize that customers like polite companies that play fair and have good manners, as opposed to the taxi drivers that you are competing with.

Pelican Over Breaking Wave, Carmel

As an underwater photographer, I usually carry around a ton of gear, and once I reach a diving destination, I just sit on the bottom.  The amount of gear required to do professional underwater photography is monumental, as is the maintenance required to keep the gear working.   Now a pro has to buy a new camera or video camera just about every other year to keep current.  That means buying new housings for the cameras too.  Ouch!

As a result, I've always loved the simplicity of just going out on a good day and boogie boarding.  I've also been taking surf photos for many years, starting with a Canon film camera in a surf housing (having to swim back after shooting 35 frames on a roll of film was a real pain in the butt), and graduating to Nikon D200 and then Canon 7D cameras in Delmar and SPL surf housings. 

But the GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition cameras have been the bomb for surf photographers and surfers everywhere.  These guys have thought of everything.  They are the perfect surf cameras.  I wish that the quality of the still images was higher, but you can't get everything.

Here are two video clips I shot on Tuesday.   I've always admired the way pelicans skim across the tops of breaking waves.  The first clip shows a pelican doing just that, coming right over me as I filmed the wave breaking.

 

Problems and Solutions That I Had Installing Mavericks and Yosemite Over Mountain Lion Mac OS 10.8 to 10.10

This blog post will help those users, probably longtime Mac users, who have been holding off on updating their OS X upgrades and are now having trouble upgrading.  I talk about installing Mavericks over Mountain Lion below, but I believe folks will have the same problem installing Yosemite over Mountain Lion also.

Here’s my particular situation, and it might help you.  I don’t like updating to new OS X systems.  I am generally pretty happy with what I have and every time I upgrade to a new OS X system, I find that several of my apps stop working.  I then have to rush around and spend hundreds of dollars to upgrade those apps or to find new apps that do the same thing. 

I’ve been working with OS 10.8.5 (Mountain Lion) for a year or so now.  I just shot some surf with my GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition files, shot at 1080 and 60fps.   I want to make those clips into slow motion.  Well, my old Final Cut Pro 10.0.9 app tells me that in order to export those clips, I need to buy Compressor.  So I bought Compressor 4.1.3. 

However, Compressor 4.1.3 will only work in OS 10.9.2 and higher.  So I had to upgrade my OS 10.8.5 machine to OS 10.9.  In the past, I’d get this system upgrade on a DVD, or I’d get a .dmg file that would guide me through everything.  I did get a .dmg file, but it would not work.  I’d agree to the terms, select the hard drive to install on, and click Start.  Nothing would happen. 

After some research, I found that I needed to get a thumb drive or another hard drive (I used a portable USB drive) and use that as some kind of installation drive.  So here are the steps and some screen grabs, and error messages:

1.  I am going to assume that you are experienced, and you clone your drives before updating the OS. 

2.  Get a USB Flash Drive of 8GB or higher, or a portable hard drive.  It can be a desktop hard drive.  It just needs to hold some “Recovery” data which you will then use to install Mavericks onto your existing hard drive.  Erase the portable USB hard drive, partition it for one partition, and select  'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)'.   You can name the drive “Untitled.”

3.  I obtained a .dmg file called “Mavericks Installer.dmg”.  Upon opening it, I saw a virtual drive (called “OS X Base System”) containing an app called “Install OS X Mavericks.”

4.  Usually, double-clicking this app “Install OS X Mavericks” would be all that I would need to do.  I’d choose a hard drive to install Mavericks on, and click Start.  However, this did not work in this.  Nothing happened when I clicked Start. 

5.  Upon some research, I discovered that I needed to create an installation drive.  There are at least three ways to do this, but I used the Disk Utility method.

a.   Open Disk Utility.  You will see the file “Mavericks Installer.dmg” at the bottom.  Under that will be the virtual drive called “OS X Base System.”  Choose that drive in Disk Utility and click Restore. 
b.  Disk Utility should now show the OS X Base System drive as the source. 
c.  The Destination should be blank.  Choose the Untitled drive that you just formatted and drag it to the Destination window.  Your Disk Utility should look like the below:

6.  When Disk Utility is done, the USB drive should have the name “OS X Base System” also.  It is now a bootable USB drive.  It will have the same files as the virtual drive.  Here are the files on it.  The only difference, is that this drive now has an invisible Recovery drive.  I am not real clear on this.  All I know is that now you can go into System Preferences and select this drive to be the startup drive.  Restart your machine.  The machine will now boot from this USB drive. 

7.  From there I was able to install Mavericks over my existing 10.8.5 system.  I believe I simply double-clicked on “Install OS X Mavericks” in the USB drive, but I may have double-clicked the app with the same name from the dmg file that did not work before.  I can’t remember. 

Here are some error messages that were relevant to this situation:

Feb  5 09:26:54 i7MacMini.local Install OS X Mavericks[513]: *** IFDCustomizationController_10_6 does not know the size of distant package at (null)

Flying Has Become a Horrible Experience and Giving Me Mouthwash Is Not Going to Help

Wow.  Airlines are really sticking it to their customers.  I've come to dread flying, especially long international flights.  The seats keep getting more and more cramped, and the airlines keep making things more and more complicated.  The amount of time that I waste on finding the right flight and airline to a destination is terrible.

I've been a longtime United frequent flyer, and belonging to their elite flyer status has some benefits.  I've recently flown three flights with United, and I've been pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to see their seating maps, to choose and change seats, and to even see what flights I can upgrade or buy using miles.  United's planes are kind of old, and the coach seats are way too close together both sideways and front-to-back, but I believe that's the same for all airlines these days.

I've been an American Airlines frequent flyer for many years also, but it's been over a year since I flew them.  I still get their email newsletters, however.  Here's one, and it shows how out of touch airlines can be:

Hey, American Airlines -- and all airlines: I don't need a bottle of Scope (R) mouthwash for my international flight.  I'd gladly pay more if I am flying coach for a seat with more legroom and more width so that the guy next to me doesn't alway elbow me whenever he moves.  I think that the airlines got away with downright fraud when they took away the ability for someone to transfer a ticket to someone else.  If I buy a ticket and can't make that flight, then why can't I give my wife the ticket so she can make the trip, for instance?  Your $200 change fees are ridiculously overpriced.   Just make the flight more comfortable, which means stop making the seats smaller and more crowded together.  I for one will be happy to pay a bit more to get more comfortable seats. 

Wow, if I pay for First Class, I get pajamas, slippers, and a bottle of mouthwash.
For Business Class, I get retro amenity kits.

Wow.  Who gives a crap about this stuff?  Why waste my time sending me emails about this ridiculous stuff?