Hot Item: Panasonic Lumix FT-2

I recently purchased this camera on a whim while in Kagoshima, but despite my lack of careful deliberation, doing so turned out to be a smart move. The complete radness of this camera is not limited to the orange finish: as one of the latest 'tough' cameras to come to the market, it is shock resistant to 2m drops, waterproof to 10m, and captures 14MP images. Oh, and it shoots some quality HD video.

This is my crew in a sea cave in Miyako. The approach to this cave requires wading through water, so taking my DSLR was out of the question (and I can't afford a waterproof housing).

The images are rather outstanding when shot at close range underwater. Shooting at longer ranges naturally subjects your image to more external circumstances like water turbidity and lighting, so image quality seems to drop off rapidly with distance. My longer range underwater shots from this day are pretty unremarkable, so I'm not posting them here. However, I think that the camera is capable of beautiful underwater photos with the right conditions. That is to say that the camera has not been the limiting factor in my photos so far. I look forward to taking it to the limit next time we have a nice dive.

The excellent HD video capability is the unexpected best feature of this camera. Overlooking the poor quality of YouTube, check out this video:

I didn't wear a weight belt that day, so I kept floating and colliding with the tunnel overhead. Still, pretty cool.

Anyway, having underwater photography (and sweet video) has unlocked a new zone of shareable adventure here in Miyako. Look forward to more stuff.

O-HISASHIBURI

I've been pretty lame at updating lately.  Here's what's news (new's):

We've been going at diving pretty hard recently, which is great.  So have the sea snakes.  two Sundays ago my buddy and I counted 12 snakes over the course of a short 30 minute dive.  As I read when I was researching them, these Colubrine sea kraits are indeed quite docile.  New Caledonian children play with them and they are unaggressive toward divers.  They are a curious sort that are fun to observe swimming around and surfacing for air.

And their venom is 15 times more potent than that of the king cobra.  Cheers.

The previous Friday I spotted a reef shark of some sort.  Couldn't tell what it was exactly.   Not too large, however-- perhaps only 1.5 m or so.  Didn't hang around.

I've taken up spearfishing as well.  Like most things new to me here on Miyako, I experience painful disappointment with this activity because of my inability to do things well.  But on this past outing I managed to jump a nice-sized parrotfish that was preoccupied with eating something on the reef.  I landed what appeared to be an ideal hit-- straight into the gill area-- and pinned the fish to the rocks.  It was a tough catch with a pole spear because of the depth of the water, and I was very pleased with myself.  As images of tempura danced through my head, the parrotfish thrashed about and managed to tear its own body apart off of the spear and dash into a hole.  I was pissed.  I think fishing is great, but, like most people, I don't particularly enjoy killing or causing animals grief unless I am going to eat them; I'm not there just to ruin some fish's day.  Damn.

On that same dive I reached a depth of 11.9 m.  That's a new high score. 

Diluvian Tales: Snakes in Miyako

There aren't any. While other Ryukyu islands (Ishigaki, Iriomote, Okinawa, etc.) do have snakes, Miyako doesn't. Sources say that relative sea levels were higher in previous eras and much area of the islands was previously underwater. Miyako, being the geographical oddity that it is (it is extremely flat), was likely entirely submerged while the higher elevations of other islands remained above the water. Snakes (and presumably other animals) found refuge from the sea there, but no such purchase was to be found in Miyako.

However, we still have sea snakes. And they sure are curious about humans in the water.

EDIT: Apparently there are land snakes on the island. And a few sea snakes pursued us in the water today (13 MAR).

Snorkeling

We had a good dive this past Saturday. Early in the morning we headed out to a small beach next to the fishing harbor near the eastern cape. Visibility was excellent and the surface was extremely calm. With that, we were able to stay out for a long time and see a lot of good stuff. Watching a few sea turtles lazily glide around was the highlight of the morning. Maybe we'll see some sharks next time.