Ellen Garvey on “What’s Down There” – *VIRTUAL* Regular Club Meeting Online

Presentation: Ellen Garvey of Swampscott, Mass., sharing an underwater travelogue.

Mary introduced the speaker, her sister, Ellen. She and husband Mike have been scuba diving and taking underwater pictures and videos for several years.

Ellen and Mike started sailing in warmer waters in order to escape from Boston winters. Then, they began to snorkel and eventually took up diving.

They dive in warm water, from land or from boats. They do three to five dives per day on their trips, including some night dives. They use a computer to track how much time they spend in the water, to avoid the bends. They dive in muck and on coral reefs.

To take pictures and video, Ellen uses an Olympus E-PM1 with flash, and Mike uses a Sony video cam.

Ellen shared pictures and videos from some of the places they have visited, including St. Vincent’s, Fiji, Tonga, the Philippines, and the Galapagos. For instance:

·         A mantis shrimp of fluorescent blue and green. She referenced this animal’s sophisticated color vision

·         Ribbon eels, which change color and sex during their lifetimes, from a black male, to a red male, to a yellow female

·         A mimic octopus changing its shape and color until it looked like flounder in the Philippines

·         Many other octopi, including a poisonous one and one in a coconut shell

·         A male cardinal fish with eggs in mouth

·         A humpback whale baby and mother

Many of the pictures showed examples of species interacting with each other, for instance:

·         A clown fish—white and orange, like the fish named Dory in the movie “Finding Nemo” within an anemone.

·         A crab that had covered itself with orange sponges.

·         A goby fish living with shrimp.

·         An eel and a grouper fish hunting together.

·         Sea urchins from the Pacific Ocean: One black, another bright red, and a magnificent urchin and its resident urchin shrimps. (Yes, magnificent is a type of a sea urchin and not just a description; I looked it up here: https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/03mex/logs/sept29/media/17.html)

Ellen and Mike have planned their next trip—to Cuba—in Oct. 2021.

[Notes by Rachel Hardy]