Description

It’s not difficult finding Turtles, they exist on pretty much any reef anywhere in the world and thanks to education and human compassion they are making a massive comeback in our oceans. This is good for photographers, we get far more opportunities spent with them and hopefully snap some shots like this one from time to time.

We were diving on a pinnacle South of Phuket in Thailand named Hin Daeng, famed for Manta & Whale Shark, though we didn’t see any there that day we got this amazing Hawksbill, he swam with our group for quite some time and after everyone else had taken photos I went in to see what he was doing. He saw me and immediately dove under a big rock, I could see an exit point so I went and sat in front of it camera at the ready hoping he would swim out at my chosen spot. He did not, I waited patiently but he definitely was not coming, so I popped up to see where he had gone, that is when he appeared right in front of me coming out of the hole he just dove head first into.

This shot is actually me wrenching my rig into position as he tries to turn and go the other way, but it made for quite a nice photo of him between the two sides of the pinnacle with the bright green grass coral on one side and the darker area on the other with a crystal clear blue water backdrop. In the end I was happy he didn’t go where I thought he would because he made for a much better shot by trying to avoid me!