Friday, July 1, 2011

... swimming with a sealion ... and the new point and pray camera ...

andy and the girls were swimming over by the penguins ... and i was swimming closer to shore with drew ... there had been a sealion in the rocks and he wasn't there anymore .... and i was hoping to see him in the water ... 

oh... there he is ... quick ... snap a pic ... 

 oh no ... that's drew's leg.....

so drew and i kept swimming and there was a sealion swimming ... and that sealion seemed to be toying with me ... swimming in circles around me ...

here's a pic of him ...
 uh oh ... missed it... he's a fast swimmer ... hard to capture him ...

but really, he's circling around so much he'll come by ... i'll get a shot ...

oh ... here it is ....
 wow ... that sealion is FAST ... it crossed my mind that maybe it wasn't playing with me .. could he be scurrying away from a shark ... no ... too shallow ... it's playing with me ... going in large loops around me ...

oh ... there it is close ... click the pic ....
 nope .... that boy again .... i'm not sure if the sealion is a male or female .. with adults, it is easy to tell, the male is much larger ... but this one seems like a juvenile ... not a baby, maybe a teenager .... but smaller than the adult females i'd seen ... or is perspective off under water ... does the water make it look bigger? does that mean it is a baby?

there it is ....

 alas ... more boy ... but i do keep seeing the same (i think) sealion darting around me .... i have about 20 pictures of just water ... it's very clear on my roll of film just where i thought i was getting pictures of the sealion ....
 but i missed .... i got not a single picture of it ... it wasn't ever very close ... and it was very fast ...
 and then i tread water and talked to drew ... did you see it? do you see it? where'd it go? what's it doing?
 he didn't know anything that i hadn't already surmised ... and i went back underwater ... and that sealion swam RIGHT up to me ... a foot away ... eyeball to eyeball ... and when we made eye contact? did he taunt me and say haha, you didn't get a good photo of me? nope, he thought, OH MY GOSH what are you doing here ... and yikes, i better get out of here ... and he turned tail and swam away .... never to be seen again ... he was not messing with me .. he was just messing around ... and i think when he realized i was there spying on him, he was done ... gone ...
 but, lest you think all of my underwater pictures are of drew and rocky bottom and empty ocean ... i did get some nice fish pics before and after my sealion encounter ....
 the ocean life was plentiful ...
 it's kind of hard to take underwater pics ... you look in the viewscreen and see ... well .... nothing .... or, much of the time i saw myself ... somehow being underwater made the digital screen into a mirror ... so instead of a point and shoot camera, it was a point and pray ... i'd pray i'd gotten the intended into the screen ... not the case at all with the sealion ....
 but when there were hundreds of fish, i could usually get some into the picture ... the trick then is to hope they are in focus ....
i have dozens and dozens and dozens of underwater pictures of blurry fish ... i'll spare you those ....

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