Big Blue Live airs tonight on PBS in the United States and on BBC One in the UK. Big Blue Live is a live television broadcast from Monterey Bay, California spread over three consecutive nights. At this time of year Monterey Bay is home to blue whales, sea otters, humpback whales, great white sharks, elephant seals, albatross and risso’s dolphins, all which will be covered by numerous cameras in the air and water.
On thursday of this past week, squid fisherman Kevin Reynolds witnessed a shiver of basking sharks off the coast of Big Sur. Before basking sharks were hunted to near extinction for their liver oil, large schools of them, or shivers, were common off the coast of Monterey. Reynolds estimates he saw 50 basking sharks at one time.
In this week’s episode of underwater photographer Norbert Wu’s favorite images column, he talks about his return to diving in Monterey Bay and an image of a juvenile crab in a pelagic jellyfish (Pelagia colorata) that he shot with a Nikonos equipped withe extension tubes.