I suppose this could be in the man and nature gallery due to the unfortunate tags and brand on the animal on the right but I decided to put it here. Hope that's OK. It does bring to mind Howard Hall's awesome rant about animal tagging:
http://www.howardhall.com/stories/taggin.html
Anyway, aside from the tagged animal I'm fairly happy with this shot. It was taken off of Soberanes Point on the Big Sur Coast at a spot called Lobos Rocks which features a large colony of California Sea Lions
Zalophus californianus. You need calm conditions to dive here and we had them today. The best place to get sea lion shots is in the extreme shallows up in the whitewater near the rocks and it's a tough place to shoot. Lots of movement, lots of bubbles to stick on your dome port, too many subjects and very high-contrast scenery. I took about 300 really bad pictures from this dive and 3 or 4 that were worth keeping like this one. It isn't a perfect composition but with this many subjects it's almost impossible to get them all to pose at the same time!

Loads of fun though, even if you aren't getting shots as there are few wild animals more truly playful that Sea Lions.
Nikon D200, Tokina 10-17 FE Zoom at 17mm, Subal Housing, 2x Sea and Sea YS 350 strobes at half power. ISO 320, f/8 1/250th. Fixed focus at around 3 feet from the front of the dome.
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2 comments- Luke