Underwater Photography in Morro Bay

by Gary Powell

I am thrilled to be asked by the SLO Coast Journal to write about my love of Morro Bay and my photographic experiences here.  I continue to be amazed at the work of the very talented  Central Coast photographers, many of whom have had their work showcased in the Journal.

Ken and Gary

I became a certified scuba diver in 1986 and within a few years bought my first 35mm underwater film camera, a Nikonos V,  an indestructible workhorse. In those days we were limited to 36 exposures. Of course, the once-in-a-lifetime whale shark would swim by after I had fired off that 36th frame. Digital changed all that.  No longer limited by remaining exposures, I was now free to take almost unlimited images and can nail that tricky whale shark waiting until I had run out of film.

The first requirement for underwater photography is to be a competent and calm diver.  In my early years underwater, I was neither.  My photography reflected the anxiety I felt about being underwater and keeping track of all the things that keep you alive:   depth, remaining air, decompression time, and ascent rate.  As my diving confidence gradually improved and my anxiety lessened,  my underwater images slowly began to improve.

Blenny

I began diving in Morro Bay in about 1992, at the behest of my dive buddy and friend, Ken Bondy, to photograph the incredible marine life that was rumored to exist under the North T-Pier.  I remember my first Morro Bay dive:  tying a rope on my camera and lowering it down into the water, suiting up in a thick wetsuit with 32 pounds of weights around my waist, then stepping off the end of the pier in a very inelegant feet-first plunge 10 feet down into the cold murky water of the bay. After retrieving my camera and descending to the bottom — only about 30 feet down — I felt the icy cold bay water fill my wetsuit.   I could only see eerie dark silhouettes and vague shapes of mysterious lurking objects in the murk and wondered,  "What was Ken thinking?" With time and many, many more dives, I finally began to "see." 

A favorite quote by W. B. Yeats goes, "The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper."  The magic here is the marine life which inhabits the bay under the old T-Pier. Life on the bottom of the bay, however, does not readily reveal itself.  It is cold and dark, often with a swift current pushing you toward Los Osos.  I learned eventually to  move slowly or just lay quietly on the bottom facing the incoming current and patiently watch.  The multitudes of critters that live and thrive there would begin to emerge.  They were there all along — my senses just weren't sharp enough yet.

Janolus fuscus nudibranch	Triopha catalinae nudibranch	Pipefish
Sanddab	Anemone	Hermissenda crassicornis nudibranch

The pier bottom and pilings offer habitat. The incoming tides bring nutrients from the open sea.  The pier bottom is 'littered' with thousands of discards that have become homes for marine critters. In the sea, habitat is scarce and in high demand. Marine life often needs a substrate to attach to, lay eggs on, hide in, or seek prey from.  Nature here quickly recycles our human objects to its own needs.

The pier pilings host lush, colorful gardens of anemones and colonies of red bryozoans.  Discarded beer bottles are homes for blennys, octopus take over cans and empty clam shells, and nudibranchs attach their egg clusters to old anchors and lost nets.  Everything is used.  There may be many other reasons the waters beneath the Morro Bay North T-Pier foster an oasis of marine life, but as a diver and underwater photographer it is truly a special and unique place for me.  I have dived here more than 200 times. 

Ken and I created the website Below Morro Bay so others could also enjoy the underwater life that abounds here. With our oceans increasingly in peril,  pictures can deliver the important message that our oceans nurture us ways we cannot even comprehend and must be preserved for itself, for us, and those to come.  Our website has and continues to receive thousands of views from all over the world.

Many thanks go to my Morro Bay friends in Photo Morro Bay, especially Michael Baird, Jerry Kirkhart, and Steve Corey. For helping me identify the many exotic critters I've photographed here, thanks to David Behrens, author of Pacific Coast Nudibranchs, Lisa Needles, Gary McDonald, and Jeff Goddard. Thanks also to the Morro Bay Museum of Natural History, to my dive buddy, friend, and mentor, Ken Bondy, and to my patient and supporting wife Sharon.

Anemone

Image at top of page is Triopha maculata nudibranch.