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Those who had awakened earlier or had a wider lens got killer shots of three whales doing
synchronized breaches directly alongside the boat. We could hear the mighty crash as their sheer
mass pounded the surface, and as the mist drifted back to the boat we could even smell the distinctive
odor of humpback halitosis. What I couldn’t do was take a picture. With no time to change the lens
all I saw was a wall o’ whale through my 400mm lens. Yet I did have the presence of mind to set the
camera down and just enjoy the show, brief though it was. I captured it in my mind’s eye if not on
camera, and it was among the most inspiring sights in three decades of liveaboard travel.
Guys like Flip Nicklin (“Shooter,” Page 92) and David Hall (“Photo Techniques,” Page 100)
have made careers shooting in cold water and intimately know with certainty what I was only
belatedly figuring out: Above and below the cold waters of Alaska is found some of the most
beautiful scenery on the planet.
Seeing the sites
Our plan was to make an afternoon dive at a cluster of sites around Inian Island. The first,
Susan’s Hooters
, was the site of two nicely symmetrical rocks surrounded by kelp and inhabited
by a number of Steller sea lions.
I don’t normally get apprehensive before a dive, but for a guy whose whole career has been about
tropical diving, getting ready to make that initial descent in 46°F water created a little anxiety. I
have definitely spent more time in wetsuits than dry, so that first giant stride into dark water with a
discernible down current and marginal water clarity, coupled with the possibility of kelp entanglement,
was clearly a departure from routine. I was outside my comfort zone, and it was oddly stimulating.
Reacquainting myself with my cold-water skillset had a significant payoff. The creatures I would
photograph in these waters were unusual (for me) and very beautiful. The backgrounds were far more
colorful than many of the tropical locations I dive, and while the water clarity was rarely suitable for
sweeping wide-angle scenics, the macro life was certainly on par with the best of the muck sites of
Indonesia or Papua New Guinea. From the very first immersion, Alaska was an inspiring environment.
I descended to about 50 feet to find clear water, and once there, the color revealed by my strobe’s
model light was riotous. The first fish I found to photograph was a red Irish lord, a lovely fish I
discovered is very common to Alaskan waters. They’re ubiquitous like blue-striped grunts in Key
Largo, Fla., but still too beautiful to ignore, particularly since all the substrate surrounding the fish
were invertebrate and sponge life wrenched from the warm end of the color spectrum. The sheer
visual confusion of the macro life on the bottom made it hard to discern exactly what the guide was
pointing at. Was it an orange-peel nudibranch, which meant little to me, or was it some rare and
wonderful sculpin eluding my view? Mostly I guessed wrong, at least on those first few dives.
However, it wasn’t long before I was drawn back to a wide-angle approach by a squadron of
bombarding Steller sea lions. It’s pretty hard to ignore 7-foot, 600-pound playmates when they
nibble on your drysuit or bite your head. I tried to keep the visual of a crushed grape out of my
mind as I photographed the sea lions in front of me, ignoring the ruffians continually bumping
me from behind. It was all in good fun, albeit a bit overwhelming when they decided it was more
entertaining to harass me than hang out on a rock watching the kelp.
There are several really nice sites in the Inian Islands region, including
Wall of Life
and
Inian
Wall
. My only regret was our visits to the dive sites didn’t occur later on the trip itinerary when I’d
have been better accustomed to the cold-water routine, as these sites were incredibly productive
from a photographic point of view. But whether at the front or back end of an itinerary, like
virtually all of Alaska diving, these sites needed to be done at slack tide to avoid extreme current.
The large marine life in the Inian Islands region is fascinating, and we spent several days
photographing sea otters, humpback whales and Steller sea lions. The Stellers were very actively
hunting salmon. I don’t know how many humpbacks there were in the area, but I calculated it to be
dozens, and like all sea otters, those we watched frolic were irresistibly cute. The action was pretty
nonstop and again confirmed we’d made the right decision in balancing our trip with underwater
and topside photo opportunities; had we done more dives per day, undoubtedly we’d have missed a
great deal on the surface. If you’re cruising near the Inian Islands, you can’t ignore the topside.
A colony of Steller sea
lions basks in the late
afternoon sunlight at
Yasha Rock.
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