Photography has been a great love of mine for as long as I can remember, but underwater photography is a whole ‘nother ball game. My merman husband is really good at it, probably because he can breathe underwater (basically) and because the photography gene runs in his family — his dad was a photographer/underwater photographer back when underwater photography was way harder. Like, everything in manual and shot on a Nikon film camera hard. Now, we’re blessed to have technological advancements that allow the not-as-proficient swimmers like me get underwater and go snap happy.

On a side note — I’ve just asked Ian to write a guest blog in the coming weeks so he can share some photos of his own too!

Most of the time, Ian and I go snorkeling together and I’ll mess around with the camera taking photos of whatever strikes me as pretty or interesting. Ian on the other hand, when he has the camera, likes to get super close up and plays around with the fancy technical features that I can barely even figure out, like microscopic mode and strobe flashes. On this day in particular, Ian was out SUP surfing down at Pua Trees, and I was snorkeling by myself in the middle of the lagoon practicing on the microscopic mode (hello blurry photo of the tiny crab!) and then gave up, and resorted to my usual scenic shots. When Ian finished his surf sesh, he joined me for a snorkel and we cruised along further out on the reef and snapped a lot of really cool kind of vignettes of our underwater marine environment. We saw tons of parrotfish munching at the reef while black damselfish tried to chase them away from their algae farms. We saw a tiiiny baby sea cucumber (I’ve never seen one so small before). A bunch of little critters hiding in the living reef. And like, four different moray eels. Our friends, Traci and Ano, were out spearfishing and I told them I spotted a bunch of groups of big mullet near the shore, so they scoped it out and both Traci and Ano caught a mullet each! They invited us over afterwards for a late lunch to share their bounty (many thanks to them).

Photos by Nerelle and Ian Moffitt, taken on May 1, 2021.