Band of Thugs!

Band of Thugs!

I've just returned from 10 days on the northern tip of Vancouver Island "playing with" a wide variety of aquatic mammals - good fun! I'm starting things off with a bit of an animalscape (or should I call it a dolphinscape?).

While touring the waters around the northern tip of Vancouver Island, we had the privilege of encountering a "super-pod" of about 200-300 Pacific White-sided Dolphins on two consecutive days. The region is exceptionally rich biologically, and while we were watching and photographing the dolphins we had a number of other species aquatic mammals within eyesight, including killer whales, humpback whales, and Steller sea lions. Having this huge group of dolphins "mob" our boat was impressive enough, but watching the group shift their attention from us to another "target", and then absolutely swarm the killer whales, humpbacks and sea lions was beyond fascinating. In this shot the dolphins have lost interest in us and are just leaving to go engage with a killer whale and its calf.

The "they're just playing" view of the interactions between the dolphins and the other species we observed them mobbing is pleasing to us. But, when you see how all the other species absolutely high-tail it when the dolphins close in suggests it isn't a whole lot of fun for the "victims" of the mobbing. Interestingly, ALL the species that we watched the dolphins harass eat fish, and have at least some overlap with the diet of the fish-eating dolphins. I suspect that the mobbing of the other species has more to do with removing food competitors from the vicinity than having some fun with them. Simply put, before long these dolphins seemed to be nothing more than a real "band of thugs!"

But enough biology...back to the photography! It was no accident that I captured this portion of the super pod with the great backdrop. I had to lay on the deck of our boat to get this low and include the dolphins and distant ridges in the frame. I also used a shorter focal length lens than I often do (in this case a 70-200mm zoom) to include a wider angle of view - both so that I could capture the distant ridges and to increase the probability of capturing one or more dolphins when they breached. And, of course, patience - to get the right "configuration" of subjects, a high shutter speed to freeze the action, and a comparatively narrow aperture for a wide depth of field, all contributed to the "formula" I used to capture this image. The particular region we were in when I shot this often is sunny (but slightly misty) and calm, which gives you wonderful lighting and almost pewter-coloured water (with hints of blue in it) to work with.

Oh, and one last thing - the one dolphin with the yellow-orange side is a young calf swimming beside its mother (both killer whale and some species of dolphins bear young where the portions of the body destined to become white are initially yellow-orange).

Subject: Super-pod of Pacific White-sided Dolphins (Lagenorhynchus obliquidens) in pursuit of female killer whale and calf
Location: Northern Vancouver Island, BC, Canada
Camera: Nikon D4
Lens: Nikkor 70-200mm f2.8 VRII lens - hand-held from sailboat. VR on and in "Normal" mode.
Exposure: 1/2000s @ f9; ISO 900. +0.33 stop compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.
Crop: This is full-frame horizontally - some cropped from top and bottom to get to pano-style format

Additional details about the image (including processing details) available here:

http://www.naturalart.ca/galleries/latest/.

Comments and critiques welcomed - probably best to view the larger version prior to doing so!

Cheers...thanks for looking...

Brad