School of Yellowtail Scad

Blogged by Simon on October 05, 2008 12:35am | Last updated by Simon on August 14, 2010 5:52am | Category: Underwater Photography | Get a Print Get a Print |

School of Yellowtail Scad (Trachurus Novaezelandiae)This picture of a large school of Yellowtail Scad (Trachurus novaezelandiae) was taken on our recent weekend trip to South West Rocks, famous for Fish Rock Cave, an underwater cavern that is very popular due to it’s reasonably shallow depth and accessible nature.

It is a 5-6 hour drive from Sydney up the north coast so if you have the right certification level (the local dive centre asks for PADI AOD and above) and haven’t dived it so far, I can highly recommend it as the marine life up there is nothing short of spectacular.

On a single dive, we have seen 3-5 huge Grey Nurse sharks (Eugomphodus taurus) outside the cave, several Wobbegong sharks both inside and outside, a large green turtle feeding on Jellyfish, and a large bull ray in the cave, who insisted on his right of way, pushing through our crew of divers – plenty of fish.

The cave itself leads straight through the middle of Fish Rock Island and is small enough to be explored in a single dive without the need to turn around, which adds to it’s popularity. The dive typically begins at the deep entrance in about 25m where you penetrate the cave and make your way through a 2m wide tunnel that narrows the further you go. You then make your way up a “chimney” up to about 15m and have another 80m towards the exit at a similar depth. The good thing is that though it doesn’t look like it at first, there really is only one way through so you can’t get lost. Looking behind corners and underneath rocks on the way reveals the odd sleeping animal that probably wishes it wouldn’t be disturbed by passing divers.

Getting closer towards the exit and visibility permitting, you will first see the backdrop of the blue ocean against the cave opening from about 30m away, which is a spectacular sight again. There are plenty of small fish around and just outside the cave’s exit is where I found this school of Yellowtail Scad circling in mid water.

The photo was shot in about 14m of water with a 10.5mm ultra wide-angle fisheye lens on a Nikon D300, using twin YS-250 flash heads set to medium level strength to fill the lower part of the water column with light. I applied perspective correction in Aperture using the Fisheye Hemi filter and cropped it about 50% to get the school centered and some unwanted objects out of the frame. Some minor color and level correction was also added but nothing to change the overall look dramatically.

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