March 2020

Learn about the underwater photography featured in March of the Underwater Paparazzi 2020 calendar! These images were taken last year on my Vancouver Island adventure to God’s Pocket! Some of the coldest water I’ve been in, but some of the most amazing diving!

I have such a soft spot for these goofy looking muppets! Meet the wolf eel! With the most amazing lumpy bumpy faces that you’ll ever see! These amazing creatures are not actually eels though! They are a long skinny fish with pectoral fins behind their heads! The wolf eel also mates for life and both the male and female will guard the eggs. The juveniles have beautiful coloring with shades of burnt orange and purple. As they get older, the color fades to grays and browns. No matter what age though, these guys have crazy strong jaws to bust through urchins and other hard shelled snacks.

Lingcod can be quite the cooperative photo subjects sometimes! This beauty posed nicely for me for numerous shots on a bed of anemones. The lingcod has a large mouth and some pretty crazy teeth that will rip apart its prey. They are known to reach lengths of five feet and the females can produce between 60,000 – 500,000 eggs! This is another species where the male solely takes on the role of aggressively guarding the eggs till they hatch!

These whimsical yet alien like creatures are actually a sea slug! These nudibranchs are also known as Melibe leonina or hooded nudibranch. Their hood is lined with tentacles and will close around food particles. It’s pretty mesmerizing to watch these creatures pulse in the water. It’s almost like a dance! We do see them as far south as San Diego, but the ones in Vancouver Island were huge!

There are so many variety of colors of rockfish! The copper rockfish is also found up and down the wild pacific coast, but they had such gorgeous backgrounds in Vancouver Island. Here one poses with a bed of anemones and a sea star. These fish can grow up to 26 inches long!

The 2020 Underwater Paparazzi Calendar is now available! Proceeds go to a great cause!  Buy your new calendar here !

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