While this week’s image was taken back in 2010, it wasn’t actually used until last year for one of the Profiles of Nature posts, which was actually the weekly topic for the previous year – I was just throwing more down as I felt like it. This is a cownose ray (Rhinoptera bonasus,) photographed at the NC Aquarium in Fort Fisher I believe – probably obvious because I had no ability to do underwater photography and I likely wouldn’t have caught one this close (and in this lighting,) much less while feeding. Now, I did see and photograph cownose rays while living in Florida, but always from above the surface and some distance off, so I never bothered featuring those shots here. Had I possessed the ability to do underwater photographs while living and snorkeling there – beyond using a little Kodak disposable film camera I mean, which I did attempt a couple of times – I likely wouldn’t have gotten much anyway due to the turbidity of the water: visibility was two meters at best, and not too many critters allowed that close of an approach. I know I tried it with a mother and calf manatee, slipping into the water quietly as they moved off about six meters away, but I never caught sight of them when I attempted to catch up.
That might have been the session where I fumbled the disposable camera while removing the snorkeling gear, watching it fall into a gap between the rocks and hearing it clatter down no small distance. I was quite distraught because I was pretty sure I had some cool shots on it, and no amount of maneuvering produced a glimpse of it; these were large rocks piled together to make the causeway, and so had countless gaps between the rocks. I shifted a few here and there, still never seeing the camera, a challenge in itself because my eyes were adjusted for the bright sunlight and I simply couldn’t see into the deep shadows under the rocks. I was on the verge of giving up when I climbed much lower and pulled out another one of the smaller rocks that I could actually move, and there sat the camera on the sand floor within this little cave, within arm’s reach even. I can remember the feeling that I’d recovered some potentially great photos (as great as they might be with a cheesy little plastic camera,) but honestly don’t know which of the negative pages holds those pics, or even what pics I thought I was losing. Memory’s a funny thing.