Two weeks ago I went snorkeling with colleague Chris (his hands can be seen in a picture in the previous post) as we figured making a pact would speed up the process of getting in the water. Spring has been so-so and sticking your head beneath the surface was a bit painful but in the end we stayed in for 45 minutes or so. Unfortunately the visibility was very bad. The sea was almost like a soup: you could feel the algae streaming down your face. However, lots of small jellyfish could be seen and occasionally a wrasse darting off. In slightly deeper water, the seaweeds were dominated by Oarweed or Tangle Laminaria digitata. Seaweed diversity seemed much higher in the shallows and the bright light green of the Sea lettuce, the pink of the Harpoon weed and the blue of the Bushy rainbow wrack looked quite amazing.  Last week I went back by myself during a lunch break with the audacious plan of taking some underwater pictures with my iPhone. There are quite a lot of (cheap) underwater housings for iPhones nowadays of which I had bought one recently (the ‘amphibian waterproof case’). I tried it out holding it under a tap with distilled water (if it would leak there would not be any damaging salts at least) and that seemed to work. I later saw a patch of moisture but this was minimal condensation that did not seem to any harm. The case:

The water seemed quite a bit less cold the second time around and the visibility was slightly better as well. However, Castle beach is exposed and the wave action results in a lot of debris (such as pieces of dead seaweed). Also, it seemed that some of the seaweeds were already ‘over the hill’; the Harpoon weed often seemed discolored for instance and not that pretty anymore. I have noticed the proliferation and die back of some seaweeds before and it makes sense that there is some seasonal succession (I will keep tabs on the growth of the different species month-by-month in an excel spreadsheet). It should have come as no surprise that my plan of taking crisp, brightly colored underwater pictures with my iPhone in a flimsy case turned out to result in blurry, out of focus and badly composed shots, but it was still a bit disappointing. Some of the least crap ones:

It was quite neat to sea mermaids purses (ray or shark egg cases): bright white and fat (i.e. alive) instead of the black and empty wrinkled ones you find on the beach. I have no idea what species they are but they seemed relatively common and I only found them attached to my favorite, the Bushy rainbow wrack Cystoseira tamariscifolia. *edit, most probably eggs of the Nursehound (or Bull huss) Scyliorhinus stellaris.* I also tried some quick shots in the rock pools as the water is more clear there, but the pictures did not turn out to be too great in there either:

Although quite cheap and -knock on wood- safe, the iPhone case is not a substitute for a real underwater camera. All pictures turned out quite hazy (although this was certainly also due to the bad water conditions). At times it is hard to operate the touch pad and there isn’t a cord to attach it to your wrist which makes the experience a bit less relaxed. I have a Panasonic Lumix that can go 10 meters deep and an old Canon Powershot with an underwater housing which seem to do better (although neither of them in turn can be compared to a SLR in an underwater housing). I will try to explicitly compare some shots with these cameras soon. Next time I go snorkeling I will also try a less exposed spot where visibility will hopefully be better.