Nothing in a lifetime of dive travel across the Asia/Indo-Pacific region had prepared me for this...
Here I was, an Australian in Japan and everywhere...the country, the people, the hospitality, the courtesy and impeccable manners, the diving, the marine parks, the incredible diversity of marine life, the mountains, the forests, the beaches, the clean, clean, clean of the countryside and a respect for learning and natural values was beyond anything I had ever experienced...
For most divers, seeing a monkeyfish Erosa erosa would not represent a dive discovery, but for me this extremely venomous little guy was a highlight of the adventure.
(Photo Neville Coleman)
The Invitation
Long-standing friend and natural history/aquatic photographer/author Rudie Kuiter had the Australia-wide agency for Nexus camera housings and in this role he and his son had been invited to visit the Anthis Nexus camera housing factory and go diving in Japan.
My Nexus camera housing was certainly the best I had ever experienced, especially when combined with the F4 Nikon and 105 Micro - nikkor lens. It made fish photography and underwater fish ID a positive snack.
Due to school obligations Hendrick couldnt make it so (out of the blue) Rudie asked if I could manage an all expenses dive trip across Japan, a chance to see where my camera housing came from AND go diving, wasn't a difficult decision to make. I just needed to come up with the fare.
Nexus Camera Housings/Anthis Factory
After a stopover in Hong Kong we eventually landed at Nagoya airport where our hosts Toshi and Junko Kozawa awaited. The gear was packed into the van and we headed to Okazaki where Toshi and Junko lived near the Anthis factory complex.
The amount of what appeared complicated machinery, pressure testing units, the sheer numbers of housings and their components, all manufactured on the premises from equipment designed and built by Toshi seemed incredible to me.
Housings and accessories for all types of cameras and videos, just looking at it and envisioning the work that must have gone into the design and manufacture of each piece just blew me away.
The precision, expertise, professionalism, quality and perfectionism shown by dedicated and skilled technicians in every phase of the process was outstanding and pride in workmanship, a pleasure to observe.
Our two hour surface intervals went very quickly sneaking up on fantastic butterflies, dragonflies, wasps and beetles that were very abundant at the site.
(Photo Neville Coleman)
For me this was a fantastic opportunity to see real craftspeople at work. Having been using housed cameras for 30 years, it had never occurred to me before what skills were required to ensure everything worked so that the ocean stayed on the outside.
I must admit in most cases, I had just counted the O rings, learned how to put the camera in and change film and went diving.
The wild monkeys along the roads were an interesting feature at Kashiwajima. There were dozens of them, especially at the lookouts along the coast, yet I did not see one single road kill.
(Photo Neville Coleman)
I had met Toshi and Junko a year previously on an expedition to the Maldives helping to get materials for Rudie's Fishes of the Maldives book.
During the expedition Toshi noticed how I had set up my Nexus F4 housing with twin Nikonos 105 strobes on a simple frame with a couple of flat perspex mounts allowing both maximum and minimum lighting for the micro-Nikkor 105mm lens inside.
There I was a year later and Toshi had improved on my idea and built an accessory set for his camera housings which he calls NC arms. Who would have ever thought my simple idea would have merit with one of the worlds best camera housing designers...and then to see it at the factory actually completed.
Southern Sojourn
We left Okazaki and headed south in the van down towards Kashiwajima, Shikoku Island and Kyushu Island. The roads were excellent, roadside cafes and takeaways everywhere.
Everything was a new experience for me: the people, the culture, the places and at some dive sites I could hardly believe how many divers had cameras (all in housings).
Perfect diving conditions in a perfect setting. The clear, calm water still beckoned even after our usual two dives per day.
All the diving we did was shore diving and in some cases the sites were a fair way from shore. On some dives we joined up with local photographers who knew of the whereabouts of certain species. Besides everything else Rudie was looking for seahorses and I wanted to see some allied cowries (Ovulidae), all the invertebrates AND one of the most famous Japanese basslets Sacura margaritacea.
Living on the giant spikey soft corals Dendronephthya sp. were colonies of Whitworth's Egg Cowry Pseudosomnia whitworthi. The larger female in the image has just completed laying its egg capsules around one of the polyp clumps.
(Photo Neville Coleman)
Fishing Village
We stayed at a Divers Inn right on the jetty. Restaurant and common room was downstairs and accommodation upstairs. Sliding doors and translucent paper walls with sleeping bag on slimline mattress was more than adequate and could be rolled up out of the way when it was time to work on cameras.
Typical of many inlets a combined village and fishing port was all protected by concrete walls with aquaculture farms adjacent. The dive shop/boarding house where we stayed was just across the road from the wharves, and jetties.
(Photo Neville Coleman)
The weather was excellent and sea calm. However, the amount of concrete docks with chains and steel rings everywhere, the heavily-constructed sea walls around the village with huge concrete gates that could be wound shut on worm gears showed the reality of waterfront living here.
Known as the Spanner Crab Ranina ranina in Australia, those at Kashiwajima were no different in appearance from those at home.
(Photo Neville Coleman)
Using the Divers Inn as a base of operations we dived several sites in the immediate vicinity, all of which were excellent, with clear water, multitudes of reef fish, huge spiky soft corals, gorgonian sea fans, sea whips and zillions of species, many of which I had never seen, but knew from the many excellent marine fauna guides produced by Japanese scientists, photographers and naturalists.
The Beautiful Grubfish Parapercis pulchella was fairly common on the sandy slopes, and very easy to approach.
(Photo Neville Coleman)
One night, off in the distance I heard what seemed to be a frog calling from the docks. Intrigued I got my head torch and camera and went off in the search.
What was a frog doing in the middle of a fishing village, warehouses, docks and old machinery was a mystery in itself, let alone one calling a mate?
Looking fit and healthy this frog had obviously found a perfect habitat in a rain-filled dingy on a jetty. Sometimes nature finds a way to survive in spite of human nature
(Photo Neville Coleman)
It took me the best part of an hour to track down the call some half a kilometre away as it wasnt continuous.
The call appeared to be coming from some old dinghies on a small piece of vacant allotment with a few weeds and old machinery, then as I got closer the light shone on the highest dinghy and something jumped.
When I got there it all made sense; the old dinghies were full of rain water and overgrown with vines, a perfect habitat for my first pictures of a Japanese jetty frog.
Pebble Beach
Certainly one of the most picturesque dive sites, this little bay with its clear clam water, sandy sloping sea floor with inshore fringing reefs and excellent species provided a number of photographic opportunities.
In between dives, the fantastic butterflies and spiders on the bushes and fresh water crabs in the cliffs made the surface intervals just as exciting as it was at 20 metres.
(Photo Neville Coleman)
Small Zebra Lionfish Dendrochirus zebra was sheltering up against a stick trying to appear unthreatening to any small fish in the vicinity.
(Photo Neville Coleman)
Many of the species underwater were exactly the same as on the east coast of Australia and, at times, I had to really concentrate because the surroundings were so familiar. However, once over the inshore reef down onto the sand at 20 to 30 metres the known species were interspaced with ones which were new to me.
One of the virulent of the stinging sea anemones, the Armed Sea Anemone Dofleina armata appears almost docile in its sandy sea floor habitat. It is capable of stinging divers and should not be interferred with.
(Photo Neville Coleman)
Down at 25 metres was an iron-framed fish holding cage which had been lost at some time. Completely overgrown with algae, sponges and ascidians it was home to black sea urchins and their resident little black coral siphonfish Siphamia argentea, long orange sponge-encrusted pipefish hung amongst the growths, while beautiful thorn-spined sea urchins Prionocidaris baculosa grazed on encrusting organisms next to giant tubeworms.
Rudi Kuiter coming ashore from one of the perfect shore entry dive sites that we experienced on this marvelous adventure. Toshi, the owner and designer of Nexus housings was there to meet him and we all shared in what he had found and photographed.
On the sand were huge Japanese saucer scallops Amusium japonicum, tusk shells, lizardfish, tube anemones, sand anemones, shrimps, helmet shells, cockles, tellins, sand snails, sea pens, soft corals, spider crabs and my favourite, the monkeyfish Erosa erosa.
Close up study of the flower - like pedicellariae of the Flower Urchin Toxopneustes pileolus. These decorative defence systems may seem harmless, BUT have deadly venomous pincers concealed beneath them. Never, touch these with a bare hand.
(Photo Neville Coleman)
Although this fish regularly comes up in the trawler nets on the north east and north west coasts it does not normally inhabit dive site areas and I had been searching for one for years. The first few I found were so overgrown that they looked like rocks with eyes. The fourth one on the last dive was perfect, perhaps it had shed its old skin recently for even though quite large it was clean with good colour.
Marbled scorpionfish Sebasticus marmoratus have reached Australia.
(Photo Neville Coleman)
Found on several species of sea urchins this Adams sea urchin crab Zebrida adamsii was at home on the venomous flower urchin Toxopneustes pileolus.
(Photo Neville Coleman)
Whether it was checking the mammoth Marine Fish Identification Guides available on Japanese species to what we saw, or the bycatch of the local trawlers, it was all in a day's work at Kashiwajima.