Plage de l’Escalet near St. Tropez – New Discoveries
Aguillette, Needlefish, or Garfish
A few weeks ago, I went to visit the small town of St. Tropez. The town itself is rich and full of pomp. Huge yachts, fancy cars, lots of celebrities all about, and expensive designer shops. Not exactly my kind of place.
The town was nice enough, I enjoyed to architecture and the setting quite a bit. However, the highlight was the nearby beach of l’Escalet. What a jewel. Clear water, beautiful sands, and a healthy ecosystem as far as I could tell.
I have never seen as many fish anywhere in the Mediterranean as I saw there. Huge schools of sardines and saupe were everywhere, and at times, I could hardly fit even a small part of the schools into the view of my wide angle. I took a bunch of video, and condensed it down to around four minutes.
While editing the video, I realized I had over ten solid minutes of footage of huge schools of fish. School after school passed my angle of view, and it was honestly hard to cut it down.The end result is below. I just want to say that I accidentally grabbed my chipped wide angle dome on the way out the door (I bought another one after I chipped my first one, and kept it for spare parts). It is fine for photos – it rarely ever shows, but for video, it shows almost all the time. I also had something on my lens on the interior of my camera, but once I hit the water, there was nothing to be done about it. Sorry for that and I hope you can enjoy the vid just the same!
Sole (flounder) and a grande vive (greater weever)
To my absolute delight, I finally got close to a bunch of species that I had either very rarely seen from a distance, or never even knew existed in my area. These included the aguillette (needlefish, or garfish), rombou, petite sole jaune (both are varieties of flounders), grande vive (greater weever), and what I think is a dragonnet, but I have not been able to get a positive identification on it yet.
I got some decent photos of all of them, and then immediately began researching my new discoveries online the second I arrived at home. It turns out that the vive (or weever), has a vicious poisonous sting that can cause intensive pain for up to two weeks. It has dorsal fins with spines that if touched, will inject their venom and make the aggressor wish they had never gone near.
I also learned that the aguillette (or needlefish) has been known to be attracted to flashy objects, sometime propelling themselves towards the object while airborne. In other countries, these fish are a huge danger to fishermen while fishing at night. They will occasionally hurl themselves out of the water towards the light source, and stick their shark points into whatever they hit, including people. Their sharp beaks can pierce arteries, organs, and flesh. I even read one report of a young man in the Mediterranean who was pierced through his nose and out the side of his cheek. A little bit of surgery later, and he was good as new.
However, such attacks are rare in this area. But this leads me to a huge question; why do I always seem to learn these types of things AFTER I go chasing after something with my camera?
As always, enjoy the photos!
That’s Show Biz Baby!
Well, TF1 sent over a camera crew a few weeks ago to film our club (the CIPA) and Guillaume Nery. They filmed for about 3 hours and took a ton of footage. We were pretty excited that everyone from our club were going to get onto french TV. As it turns out, once the story aired, they only aired approximately 4 seconds of the footage from our little sortie. The whole segment was about Guillaume and his freediving the Dean’s Blue Hole clip. As disappointing as it was, Guillaume is a truly exceptional diver, and he deserves the limelight.
As it was, I showed off the clip to my parents and told them about how I was in the background somewhere during the 4 seconds of footage. We had a good laugh when we saw it. I guess that’s just how it works sometimes. As they say, that’s show biz, baby.
The actual footage is below. You can see the members of our club for just a second on the surface of the water just after the jellyfish swims by.
Possible Shark Sighting at the Promenade in Nice
Two days ago, the beaches along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France were evacuated due to what was a possible shark sighting. It was never confirmed whether this extremely rare sighting was indeed a shark. It was noted that it could be a mola molas (poisson lune) or a dolphin.
Below is a clip of the local TV report (french):
Later reports cast doubt on the theory of a shark in Nice waters, as it was discovered that a female dolphin was found dead today near the island of Saint-Honorat in Cannes. It apparently died after giving birth leading some to believe that this was what was seen in Nice two days ago.
I Guess Guillaume Has Gone Viral…
Well, I saw the Guillaume Nery base jumping at Dean’s Blue Hole Video on our club forums about a week ago, and thought it was a very beautiful and well executed work, but I didn’t really think much about it after that.
Would you believe it, today, I am on the phone with one of my employees from Wisconsin, USA, and he says to me “I saw this really cool video over the weekend of this guy base jumping underwater.” I immediately knew what he was talking about,a and when I swung over to youtube, the video had over 620,000 views. Pretty impressive. Plus, my employee was pretty astonished when I told him that he was our club president. Small world, huh?
If you haven’t seen the video, swing over to his blog and check out the video. It is seriously a nicely executed dive piece.
I have been getting quite a bit of traffic from people searching for Mr. Nery since this video came out, so for those who are interested in learning more about him and the sport, here is some info: Guillaume is a world champion free diver, and recently set the French depth record for apnea (free) diving at 115m (377 feet) in the constant weight class. For more info on Guillaume, here is his home page. I also wrote a short piece on him not too long ago here where I go into some of his other accomplishments, and there is a pretty good video there. You can find a ton of videos about Guiallaume Nery on his videos page: http://guillaumenery.over-blog.com/categorie-10432728.html.
He also has a ton of videos about him on youtube. I really enjoy this one.
It’s really great to see him getting all the press. If you find that interesting, and you don’t know anything about the sport, you can learn a little about it at Wikipedia. If you are in Nice, France, and want to try it out, you can click on the CIPA (our club) link to find a nice place to learn. It is a great sport, and very fun. Just remember, don’t EVER, EVER, EVER try it alone, or don’t try to attempt it without proper technique and security training. It can be very safe if done correctly, but if done incorrectly, it can easily be fatal.
Below is a well done clip discussing in-depth some of the dangers of the sport:
NSUC: Samba and Blackouts from USFA Inc. on Vimeo.
Odds and Ends From Last Summer’s Adventures in Nice, France
I was playing around the other night, and I ended up throwing together a video compilation of odds and ends from various adventures in and out and near the Mediterranean last summer. It’s about 5 mins long, and I thought it was kind of fun. There is nothing spectacular, but you can see some free diving clips, and some of the local flora and fauna in and out of the water. Plus, toward the end, you can see some birds dive-bombing for fish in the sea. That was a pretty amazing spectacle. Enjoy!
Fish, Man’s Best Friend
This unique video, courtesy of Alexandre Boscari, was taken a little over a week ago while diving in Port-Cros. The fish in question is a Grouper or “mérou” in French. They are usually pretty tolerant of people, but this one is downright friendly.
Evidently, this fish is known by the locals as the “Mérou Calin”.When it sees divers, it approaches them slowly, and waits to be petted, just like a dog! Check out the video after the jump to check it out. Thanks again to Alex for this great footage.
Video from Port-Cros
My first, and incredibly lame, attempt at shooting underwater footage. It was more of an experiment than anything, but I think I will try again pretty soon. Take a look. Sorry if it is a bit shaky:
