Tuna in oceanic fish cages

Dear wetpixellers,

I have the opportunity to jump in the water in some of the offshore "holding cages" for Southern Bluefin Tuna off Port Lincoln in South Australia.

I want to get some shots of the fish as they swim past me and I would imagine it'll be a bit of a challenge to nail it. These fish are fast and I doubt they'll be hanging around for me to compose.

If anyone has some suggestions for techniques or ideas of any pitfalls, I'd be most grateful.

I'll be shooting with a D200 in an Ike housing with a Nikonos SB105 strobe. I was planning on using the 10.5 as I imagine some of the fish will be pretty close to me. Happy to take advice here.

I'd love to hear from anyone who has done something like this, or even any of you who have some ideas about how you might shoot it yourself.

Thanks heaps.

I would assume that you will be relatively shallow. Maybe go strobeless so you can just hold the trigger down and fire away in machine gun mode.

Yeah, you are right William. I don't imagine it'll be particularly deep.

I'll prob give the strobeless thing a go for some shots, but I'm a bit worried that they'll be moving so fast, that I'll need the strobe to freeze the movement.

Looking forward to hearing more suggestions. Any thoughts on the lenses?

You might want to PM mr cheng on this one, i know he has done this, just to make sure he has seen the thread.

I personally would think a wide zoom like 12-24 for a variety of different composition though.....

Maybe look at Alex's Magic filters as well.

Dive safe

DeanB

I did a similar thing with cobia in an offshore aquaculture cage. This was quite different becuase they don't move quite as fast, and we were surrounded on all sides by netting (dark!).

As for what lens to use... it depends what kind of shots you want. Do you want to include the cage as part of the shot or make it look like you are out in the wild? I would imagine the 10.5 would be good if you want to include the cage and the environment, but the 12-24 might allow you to zoom in on clumps of fish and crop out the cage part.

The cage I was in had a center spar around which all the fish swam, so I went into the middle of the cage and shot outwards towards the netting, and all the fish just circled around me.

Tuna Cowboys...saw a special on that. It be real cool to go out on one of those tuna ships and dive with the guys fixing the nets whilst swimming with large Makos, hammerheads, whalers etc...

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the suggestions. I don't know if I'll be in the cage alone or with the "cowboys".

Your experience is very useful Roger. I'm thinking I'll want to go with a bit of both, so I'll prob start on the 10.5 and then get some 12-24 action on the second dive all going well.

Thanks Mike for the suggestion of contacting Eric. I've PM'd him.

I'm off tomorrow Dean, so it might be a bit late for the Magic, but I'll definitely be getting some in the future for all my wide angles.

If any of the shots work, I'll post em when I get back.

Any more suggestions, don't hesitate to post - I'll still be reading when I'm over there.

Well, I'm home again now and I can report back. I'll post some photos soon. In case anyone else is contemplating such a shoot...

The 10.5 was definitely the lens to use. The viz was very poor and overhead light was cloudy. I ended up going natural light as suggested by William - the flash/tuna combo was waaaay too reflective and just didn't work well. I wouldn't recommend the 12-24 due to light availability and limited DOF of a rectilinear.

I managed to get into a harvest net where the fish are coralled into a much smaller area. Shooting without strobes and high iso I got some shots that I'm reasonably happy with. In the larger nets, the viz was too crap to get anything decent other than some natural light schooling shots.

Thanks for all your suggestions folks.

Pics coming soon...

Sorry -- I just saw this thread!

I shot with strobes, but it was impossible to get close to the cowboys because the tuna + cowboy combos were thrashing around so much that you were likely to get smacked. Mark Conlin went in and had his mask and strobe knocked off.

I only had an hour in the tank, and managed to get some nice shots of bluefin as the seine net was being pursed.

Look forward to seeing your shots!

OK folks

As promised here are some photos from the shoot.

I was doing some work for Forbes magazine relating to a story on SBT in South Australia.

There are more photos on my website.

Thanks for all your help guys.

And a couple more...

btw, how do you add images directly into posts??

Hey Anthony.. some cool shots there! nice skies on those last two..

Easiest way to add to the post is to make sure the pics are already online (like on your website)

Then hit the IMG tag in the reply box and copy and paste the link to your img in there

Thanks Mike,

Will know for next time...

Great shots Anthony. Perhaps they do not as good at full resolution, but those are better than "reasonably happy"

Ya, I agree. really good color in that second shot!

James

Thanks William and James - really appreciate the feedback.

And yeah, my fav is the 2nd shot too. I love this DSLR thing - so much easier than shooting with film! D200 AF rocks for this kind of stuff

Fantastic shots!!

I have wanted another chance at the tuna after being in the net for just 30-45 minutes or so -- and, we were in the murk of the farm itself, not in the clearer water offshore.

It looks like you had reasonable conditions?

Thanks Eric - means a lot from a guy who has done it.

Wouldn't say the conditions were necessarily ideal. We had 1-2 m swell and plenty of wind chop. I was sloshing from one side of the net to the other with each wave.

I was in the aquaculture farm cage too, but they ran a smaller purse seine net around inside the main cage and coralled some of the tuna into a smaller area. The viz would have been around 2-3 m and most of my shots have far less colour than the one posted. The viz got worse as the harvest continued - as the blood from the boat washed into the water - ewww.

The fella in the pic above is less than 20 cm (less than foot) from my port. In fact several of them inadvertently bumped into me in the frenzy of trying to escape the net. I was very glad that I had on ike's smaller port - rathern than the 8" because I think it provided a smaller target that was less likely to be bumped off! They also crashed into my strobe a couple of times, but luckily it is the bomb proof 105 and didn't seem to suffer any ill effects.

I was in the water for around the same time as you I'd say. It was certainly one of the most exciting things I've done. The guys were saying that "you should have come last week when the water was really clear" - but there are always better conditions when you're not there right? They wouldn't let me scuba and the crappy borrowed snorkel I had kept filling with water, but I still had an absolute ball! I'd do it again in a second.

I can't think of anything I'd change specifically, except perhaps to take my own snorkel B)

To see the final slideshow - click on the following link.

Forbes Magazine.

Or, you can follow the links on my website.