Dive A Lot, Film Unusual Behavior
I have recently had really good luck filming a series of unusual and curious underwater animal behavior episodes. The footage I caught probably isn’t in the category of clips which will be talked about in awe for future decades, BUT it’s probably more interesting that the majority of underwater videography seeon on the internets, in my opinion.
So, are there any tips to getting good underwater video? One tip is dive a lot, always with a camera, often in the same places so that you get to know its animal inhabitants, and try to disturb the fish as little as possible. If you will statistically come across an unusual act of predation, escape or mating by fish every 300 minutes, then you are unlikely to see the behavior during a single dive, but you’ll have a very good chance if you do 10 dives. Over the years, I found that time spent underwater is a major predictor of success in underwater photography and videography.
Fangblenny Attack
An example of the aforementioned dynamics is this video of a fangblenny going after a much larger red-breasted wrasse. I certainly wasn’t planning to film this behavior – it would be impossible to do so. A few friends and myself were simply having a look around on the reef. How did I get the shot? Number one, I was probably flailing around less (or not at all) than most other divers, and moving around smoothly. The fish were not scared of me. Number two, I was observing the environment closely. And, I had my camera on hand. Sometimes it pays to just film a scene, and something unusual will happen in front of your lens. Also, this is a dive site where I have probably done 250+ dives over the years. Check out the video:
Best Fishes,
Klaus
