Night Diving for Cowries - Okinawa

Waterlogged Date: 9/21/97

There are an untold number of great night dive sites on Okinawa, but undoubtedly, one of the best for the close-up/macro photographer is Tengan Pier. Located in Tengan Bay on the Pacific Ocean side of Okinawa, this particular spot offers one of the highest concentrations of marine life found anywhere in this region. Because of the bays location, dive sites within the bay often have more restricted visibility than the dive sites located on the South China Sea which often boast of 100'-200' visibility. However, the same geographic conditions that cause this limited visibility also creates a large and dynamic food chain in which many varieties of soft and hard corals, tropical fish, crustaceans, and shells live. Tengan pier can be easily accessed by shore, but we wanted to dive the entire length of the mile long pier and preferred to use my 14' Achilles inflatable as our dive platform. As 'public' boat ramps are non-existent on Okinawa, we chose to use the Ishikawa fishing cooperative launch ramp. In an ironic twist, this launch is also used by an amphibious ultralight plane service to launch planes which can sometimes create interesting situations at launch time. The boat launch was uneventful, and shortly thereafter my 40HP engine was zipping us to our dive destination. There wasn't any wind to speak of which caused the water to be as flat as glass. To top it off, there hadn't been any recent storms to agitate the silty bottom which would further reduce the already limited visibility at Tengan. Positively, it was going to be a fine night for diving! Since the launch ramp is only a mile (as the crow flies) from our destination it didn't take long before we closed in on the pier and began choosing our anchorage. We began our night of diving at the end of the pier and planned to work our way towards the middle. With so much to see and photograph there was doubt we'd be able to execute our plan as we wanted. Once the pre-dive ritual was out of the way, my buddy and I rolled over the side, gathered our cameras and descended to the base of the pier which sits in about 45' of water. We delightfully discovered we had over 40' of visibility which is almost half the distance across the pier. The size and number of pilings used for support make the pier an absolutely perfect environment for an artificial reef, however, due to the silty bottom we had to be extremely careful and be watchful of our buoyancy control if we wanted to continue to enjoy the 'good' visibility. The Tengan Bay area has long been known for the amazing numbers of Cowries that can be found there, and on this dive I was concentrating on finding live Tiger Cowries (Cypraea Tigris). Finding them was one thing, photographing them another. They are usually found roaming around on the same silty bottom we were trying so hard not to disturb which indicated this was definitely going to take some work to get some good shots. On this particular dive I was using a NV and 35MM lens with dual SB105 strobes. I was also using a Nikonos Close Up Kit to include the 'stock' framer which I prefer in these situations. As live Cowries can be very sensitive to concentrated beams of light I avoid using the 'Spot Shot' framer in these instances. To further reduce the possibility of disturbing the Cowries, I was using a small, 4 "C" cell dive light; not much with only 40' of visibility to play with, but it would ultimately make for better photo opportunities. The initial part of my search for Tiger Cowries was proving to be unsuccessful, so I decided to search the cracks and crevices of the pilings for other species of live Cowries. Moving up the pilings about 20', I adjusted my buoyancy and began my search. I was in luck; on the first piling I found several Pacific Deer Cowries (Cypraea Vitellus). At first it was hard to tell which Cowrie I had found; their mantles covered their shells in their entirety which meant I had to get one to retract slightly so I could make my identification. After several shots I swan to another piling and noticed a few Arabian Cowries (Cyprea Arabica). Their extreme sensitivity to light causes them to quickly withdraw their mantles making them very difficult to photograph. I was successful in getting a couple of them to pose for me and managed to get some nice shots. I wasn't even 30 minutes into the dive and I had taken some good photos, but I still hadn't found what I was looking for so I decided to get closer to the bottom and renew my search for Tiger Cowries. It was my lucky night; after searching for only 5 minutes I came across not one, but two Cowries within inches of one another. Remembering not to disturb the bottom, I ever so slowly moved close to them to watch for a minute. While not speedsters, they do move at an appreciable rate and I noticed they were on a collision course of sorts. I was thinking it would be nice to be able to get two Cowries in one shot so I decided to wait for them to converge. It took about 10 minutes, but they finally got close enough for a good portrait. Varying strobe output and positions, I very slowly took over 20 photos before I was out of film. I signaled my buddy, or at least I waved my light in the direction I thought him to be, and ascended to the surface and began the short swim back to my boat. We had been right in our observation that we might not cover much of the pier, but then again, that's why we had taken 6 tanks and many rolls of film with us.... Contact PADI instuctor Steve Schalk in Okinawa for information on diving the area. Story by Steve Schalk.

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