Copyright: Jurgen Brauer, Augusta, Georgia, USA

My younger son, Leon, and I took a week-long sailing and scuba diving trip from Miami to a set of islands, known as the Bimini islands. The islands form the western ridge of the Bahamas.

The welcome sign.

The flag of the Bahamas.

The "End of the World" bar, a popular watering hole for port night, or for relaxation after crossing over from Miami.

Bimini does sport an airport, of sorts. Seaplanes land in the water, and then roll up onto the land strip.

I could not resist to catch the triple meaning. Mr. Weech rests in peace, so does the young man next to the grave and, behind him, a ship wreck.

Improbable sign. Only the drunk would drive on, and he wouldn't see the sign in the first place.

Tropical paradise.

A school of Grunts.

A Scorpionfish close-up. Lying perfectly still, this fish is camouflaged to look like a coral head. Unsuspecting fish are caught when the Scorpionfish rapidly opens its mouth, which creates suction the prey cannot escape. The fish also sports a poisonous dorsal fin spine. No wonder it lies so still and lets divers approach. They have nothing much to fear.

A French Grunt captured in front of a coral head.

Underwater business to attend to?

Sorry -- don't know my corals well enough to give a name to this one.

An Atlantic Spade Fish. They usually swim about in small groups, as did this one (I was just lucky to be able to pick it out of the group to photograph it).

Leon peering through an opening in the coral formation.

More colorful soft coral.

Here, a number of divers are arranged in a semi-circle, sitting on the ocean floor. In a moment, bait will be released for a shark-feeding event. Spearfisher are occassionally bitten by sharks, but I have not (reliably) heard of divers being bit (at least, not sensible divers who follow the rules).

Here is a reef shark. Note the bubbles of the divers in the background.

Another reef shark.

And one more. Beautiful, awe-inspiring creatures. This shark dive was my 200th dive.

Leon and I were working a bit on modeling. Here he is with about 40 feet of water above him. I may have done better to turn him around, so that the sunlight would illuminate him.

A fellow diver, Sonia, from France, poses as a model on the wreck of the Bimini Barge in about 80 of water. Note how much natural sunlight there is this deep in the ocean. Sonia's shadow is clearly visible.

Another set piece, this one inside the Bimini Barge wreck. Note the coral-encrusted structure and the beam from the underwater light Leon is holding.

Moonlight, shot with a 1 second exposure (handheld) on the gently rocking boat.

A silhouette shot. Focus on the sunlight and capture the high-intensity exposure, then reorient the camera toward the subject and shoot the picture. The subject will come out dark, as here. The added effects of placing the subject in front of the sun (to create the glow) and of having a hand in the water and the other hand reaching into the sky, make for nice variety. The clothes pins pinned to the ears are just because Leon likes to kid around.

A night dive on the wreck of the Hesperus in 18 feet depth resulted in this picture of a hawksbill turtle. There were too many divers in the water, chasing too few turtles, so I was about to ascend up the mooring line when something BIG and heavy bumped from below into the left-hand side of my chest and pushed me vigorously out of the way. It was this turtle. I flipped around to its left side and caught it on film. The white specks are stirred up sand particles illuminated by the camera flash. It looks as if the turtle is swimming in the heavens.

We also did a day dive on the Hesperus, remarkable for its many stingrays. All you had to do was lay down in the sand and be still. Wait a minute, and the stingrays would come to stir up the sandy bottom to find little critters to feed on. The rays were certainly aware of our presence but so long as you held still or moved VERY slowly, they'd be perfectly comfortable with us in the water. (This species, I believe, is the Southern Stingray.)

Stingray. The sting in the base of the tail is used solely for defense.

Stingray stirring up the sand.

Stingray "wing" movement. It is exhilarating to watch the creatures "fly" through the water.

The stingray's mouth is at the bottom, and it sucks in its prey.

Another close-up, frontal shot.

This stingray is well dug into the sand.

My best photograph of a Red-banded Shrimp yet (the original, which I can't release on the web, shows dramatic detail of every spiky hair protuding from the legs and body).

A fellow diver brought this crab to me to photograph (also on the Hesperus night dive). It tried to rapidly make its way to safety, and almost got a claw on the camera.

A school of Black Margate fish.

A Sea Cucumber.

Another coral.

Feather worms.

Hm. These critters are nearly translucent, are very small, and hide on white sand. One usually does not see them until they move, and they are hard to photograph. Probably a goby or a blenny, but I cannot identify it for sure.

A Rock Hind.

A Fairy Basslet (or Royal Gramma). These small fish flit back and forth along a coral head. Very hard to photograph because they never hold still for the photographer to focus the camera. This is the first time I got a reasonably sharp picture. These fish orient their belly toward the coral so that, underneath a coral overhang, they actually swim "upside down."

This Bicolor Damselfish also has given me trouble over the years. They, too, constantly, swim about, never holding a pose for the photographer to snap. On this dive, I took a dozen unsuccessful photographs, then, in frustration, switched to videotaping its behavior, and swam off to the next coral head. On the way back, I stopped again, and noticed that the fish dashed at the camera and then back again, and repeated this behavior. Anticipating this, I finally got this picture. At least you can fully see the fish, even though the composition of the photo is not what I would like.

All Blackbeard Cruise dive sites have moorings on them. But on one occassion we couldn't find the mooring ring and threw the anker. Then, on the dive, Leon and I found the mooring ring (two, in fact) nearby.

The Trumpetfish. One cannot take a close-up of the entire fish -- it's too long.

A Flamingo Tongue, an underwater snail. This is the only one I saw on this trip.

Some coral. I liked the intensity of the yellow color.

Yet another wreck. This is the Sapona, a ship built of cement during WW I. It's been at this site since about 1926 or so, that's nearly 80 years! The bottom of the wreck is only 15 feet deep.

Here is the spot where I had an "incident" a few years back. We were doing a transition dive (in during fading daylight, out at night), but diving conditions were difficult. In particular, tremendously heavy swell (up and down movement of the water column) simply picked up off the ocean floor at 15 feet, threw me to the surface and sucked me into the wreck! But what goes up, goes down, and what is sucked in, may be spit out. Fortunately, so it was -- and I aborted the dive (as did all other divers). The conditions were too dangerous. So, I was happy to revisit the Sapona is calm conditions this time around. And what a beautiful dive it was.

Here, a swimmer off another boat climbs up a rope to make it to the deck and jump back in the water.

A pair of Spotted Goatfish alongside the wreck. They use barbels underneath their mouth to stir up sand and catch small prey. With a bit of patience they are easily approached and photographed.

A big, pleasant surprise: Orange Cup Coral inside the wreck during daylight. This species of stony coral is believed to have arrived in the Bahamas only in 1985.

A Sea Pearl, one of the largest single-cell organism in either the animal or plant kingdoms.

A Porcupine Fish, this one pretty big at perhaps four or five feet in length. When disturbed, they puff up to increase the appearance of their body size.

A part of the structure inside the wreck. In fact, this is the spot where I was sucked in. The opening is pretty big, and it is unlikely that I would have banged into anything or have become entangled. But, at the time, there was no way of knowing. Here, things look peaceful, and the swim around the wreck was gorgeous. (This particular wreck does not require wreck-diving certification.)

Someone had a crab meal.

Son Leon in another light-hearted moment. The hovering position is actually an excellent exercise, as buoyancy control is an important dive skill.

One of my favorite moments. My favorite fish, the French Angelfish (on the left) being cleaned by a (juvenile) Spanish Hogfish. I had never observed this fish behavior before.

The Doctorfish (note the vertical bars along thebody which distinguish this fish from the Ocean Surgeonfish). These fish usually are found grazing the ocean floor or on corals but they are wary and move away from divers, so they are hard to photograph. But this one, like the French Angelfish, came to be cleaned and held (relatively) still and let me approach. They are called Doctorfish because on the base of the tail fin (the back fin) is a clearly visible horizontal spine (outlined in light blue), sharp as a surgeon's scapel. In defense, the fish slashes its tail fin back and forth. When the tail is not flexed, the spine folds flat against the body.