Solui, this island was once called. The first hydrographic expedition found this island beyond the peninsula, and it is no wonder, from the sea it looks like a peninsula, visually merging with the mainland, which is only 3 km away. Later this mistake was corrected and the island got its new name - the Island of Misunderstanding. This place is famous not only for its history, unusually beautiful sunsets, fishing, the remains of the fish factory and the village of Rybachy. Of course, this place is very attractive for recreation, but I want to tell you about the extraordinary beauty of this island hidden from view. Next, I will tell you about what the sea surface hides under itself. Having dived there for the first time, I was amazed by the picture that opened up.
The island of Misunderstanding, which is located 20 km from the city, has an underwater spit, it is clearly visible in the image above. It seems to be an unremarkable part of the underwater landscape, but it seems so until you dive. I came to the island in order to shoot in this very place. This helped me a friend Dinar, who owns colorful houses on the coast, where we settled. On the first day, the dives were made in freediving mode, and the survey was conducted on a fisheye lens.
The underwater landscapes of this spit are amazing. For the first time, I was surprised by an anemone forest on round stones covered with reddish-lilac algae, along which green sea hedgehogs grazed. All this under the radiant blue of the sea surface looks unusual and even fabulous. In addition, the transparency of the water near the island was several times higher than in the bays near the city. The size of many anemones was impressive, they exceeded an outstretched hand in growth and looked like strange palm trees or flowers.
Some sea anemones differed in coloring, standing out as a bright spot in the general background. All this strange beauty is in its essence a colony of predators resistant to the poison of jellyfish, with which they feed not without appetite, and they themselves are also shocking. However, this predator also has its own hunters - nudibranch mollusks. These poisonous comrades are resistant to poison, and they eat, not without pleasure, desperately defending actinium with stinging threads.
This little world is rich in every small living creature, and for shooting a macro, the field is not plowed. A huge number of various mollusks, small crustaceans, hermit crabs, crabs, fish and even ugly catfish inhabit this magical forest. Yes, there is definitely worth diving with scuba gear and taking a macro shot, carefully moving along the bottom.
Returning to the shore, I met a jellyfish Cyanea hunting over Zostera thickets. It is better not to contact with this jellyfish, its long thin tentacles are poisonous enough and you should be careful not to collide with them. The cyanoid tentacles are very numerous, and their length reaches several meters and sometimes they come off, freely floating in the water. Separated tentacles do not lose their stinging ability for two weeks and this should be remembered even when you find a dead jellyfish on the shore.
Cyanea plied from the surface to the bottom and again to the surface. I lingered near her and took a split with a jellyfish. This did not happen from the first or the second time. The excitement at sea made it difficult to shoot and I had to work hard to control my own emotions about the unsuccessful attempts to catch the right frame. I was able to go to the houses only having achieved my own from the jellyfish, with which I spoiled the hunt with my rattling. The little meduska above the hunter was lucky; the predatory mane, having straightened her trapping net, began to dive.
The next day, Dinar needed to go to the city, and, left alone, I decided to dive with an aqualung in order to photograph the underwater streamer macro-world. I took the aqualung from Dinar. A year earlier, I dived here with an aqualung, I knew what to do, so I did not need help. Remaining on the farm, began to prepare for the dive.
With the beginning of low tide began to carry equipment to the water's edge. He took the raft, flippers, a camera, a 14 kg weight belt and an aqualung weighing 21 kg, after which he went to the house to change into a wetsuit. While dressed, the water moved further away, I had to drag equipment to the water a second time.
The scuba diving wasn’t; the eardrum burst during my diving, it was already 7 times for all my dives. But still, in spite of this, I took a few shots. My attention was attracted by these strange creatures. It turned out to be shell clams chitons. The animal is quite ancient, which was especially surprised when I read about them, the number of eyes in one individual - up to 11,000 simple eyes! The species exists on earth for more than 450 million years.
And this is a close-up shot of a sea urchin. They look very interesting under water, but the camera suddenly began to refuse. She issued a lens error message asking to check the contacts. I refused the equipment at the hottest moment, from which I was very angry and almost bit off the mouthpiece. The problem was in the lens. In general, my goal was nudibranchitis. These are very unusual creatures, the variety of types, shapes and colors of which is very huge. I really wanted to show them. And I managed to find an interesting specimen that crawled from stone to stone and, like a bridge, hung over this precipice. Hovering the camera refused to shoot again. Because of the camera tricks, I surfaced and dived several times, with the result that sea water got into the membrane.
In addition, the others did not remove the nudibranchion. This Kadlina is a smooth, the only southern species of nudibranch mollusks that has penetrated into the Arctic.
At home, I took out a macro lens and found out what was going on. One of the wires going from the contact area to the board was broken, although there were no visual damages, except for traces of opening the lens with unsuitable tools. Perhaps that is why the price of this, though seemingly new, but a used lens was much lower than that of other vendors. The seller was lucky, he got rid of a buggy lens that did not fail when checking at the time of purchase. Well, I was lucky that my hands were not crooked, the posting was discovered and immediately soldered as it should be. Glitches disappeared, but I could not dive.
Incredible images! Absolutely breath taking!
Thank you! :)