12. 9. 2011

The Galleries Havana 2011 and Maria La Gorda 2011 have been added. The database has not yet been updated, so the species in the new galleries are not searchable yet. Close to Havana I found the (to me) new dive side "Kilometer 35". By car it is about 40 Min drive from the center. Although the landscape there is not appealing (only rocks, no shade and remainings of an old oil field), the diving is nice with clear water and a lot of fish. I have even seen several barracudas there. Maria la Gorda, on the other hand, was disappointing, compared to the other times I had been there. While the underwater landscape is still excellent and worth a visit, most of the corals are dead. That is probably due to several devastating hurricanes that hit this area in the last years. The service in the hotel and restaurant was also worse than in recent years.

5. 9. 2011

The search pages have been considerably improved. You can now also search German names of the species in the Galleries. If you select a Common, German, or Scientific name in the drop-down menus, the complete taxa of the species is automatically shown. You can now search this species in the Galleries or in external databases (WORMS and ITIS). The search table can also be used to translate German into English common names and vice versa. The second search table lets you select a complete Order or Family of species. Be aware that this might result in a large number of hits. The third search table, finally, lets you search fragments of names that you directly type in. Just play with the search functions, I think they are now quite useful. In future I plan to add a search by region, but that requires some time to re-structure the databases.

12. 6. 2011

It took a while, but I finally got a D7000 as replacement for my D80. What a camera! The performance, especially under low light conditions, is amazing. As underwater housing I chose the Aquatica D7000 since it got excellent reviews. I just got it a couple of days ago and checked it in the pool. A great combination of camera and housing and I am really looking forward to get it underwater.

17. 1. 2011

I spent the two last weeks in December in Hawaii. Diving was good, although the Hawaiian coast suffers from overfishing and lack of protection. More frustrating was that the underwater housing of my Nikon D80 broke during the trip. A fine crack in the body of the housing close to the main O-ring seal results in a major leak. There is nothing that can be done to repair it, and therefore I have to look around for a new underwater housing. So, I enjoyed diving without camera which was also great. The only picture I got was a school of barracudas shot with a small digital camera I got during one dive.

24. 11. 2010

Original or copy? A puffer and a filefish look almost the same. Why this has advantages for the filefish is explained in Science and the Reef.

23. 11. 2010

The search pages have been slightly improved.

10. 11. 2010

I finally updated the database, there are now more than 420 searchable species in the galleries. You can search the common names or scientific names or the families. Try the taxa search which shows you the complete tree of life in pictures from the database. You don't have to know the scientific names of phylum, class, order etc., just browse the pictures. There are still some bugs in the search, I therefore plan to re-design it completely. Comments and suggestions are very welcome!

26. 10. 2010

After travelling to Australia this summer I finally added four new galleries. One gallery with underwater pictures from Heron Island and one with a manta ray and some sharks, also from Heron Island. The two other galleries show pictures taken at the Fish Rock in New South Wales. Sill, the data base needs to be updated, work for the Winter months.

23. 4. 2010

Check out the new galleries "Jardines de la Reina". This remote place is Cuba's best diving site and since many years strictly protected. I added separate galleries for the Caribbean Reef Sharks and the Silky Sharks which are abundant in this spectacular place. I still need to identify many of the species in the pictures and update the data base.

6. 3. 2010

The "Equipment" pages have been updated.

29. 11. 2009

The database has been updated. Now all 1256 pictures are searchable. There are 330 different species in the database, most from the Caribbean.

10. 11. 2009

A short page about the lionfish invading Cuban reefs has been added.

7. 11. 2009

The new galleries of August and September 2009 are added: Havana II and Maria La Gorda II. The species in these galleries are not yet searchable, I have to update the database.

5. 8. 2009

Major change in the galleries. The Turning Gate (TTG) Highslide Gallery is used to generate the galleries in Lightroom. The visual effect is similar to Flash, but without using a Flash plug- in since TTG Highslide is based only on HTML and Java Script. The engine behind the TTG Highslide Gallery is based on Highslide JS which I also use on several pages (e. g. for the Search Results page).

The "Species Search" has been replaced by "Taxa Search" which allows to search the complete taxonomic tree of all species in the database. Thumbnails with examples of each class, family, order etc. are shown to make it easier to find specific species.

25. 6. 2009

The search function has been improved.

2. 6. 2009

The "Science and the Reef" has been modified. Still not much content, but I don't have as much time as I wished.

17. 04. 2009

The search menu has been extended. You can now select between "Name Search" and "Species Search". The new "Species Search" shows you thumbnails of representative species ordered by scientific classification (order or family). If you click it you will get all pictures of species of this order or family in the galleries. So far, only fishes have been implemented.

05. 04. 2009

New galleries "Cuba 2009" have been added.
The design of the web site has been improved.
The search function has been improved. In the results page you get also Class and Order of the species found in the database.

25. 11. 2008

An external search via the WoRMS (World Register of Marine Species) database has been implemented. The "Science and the Reef" has been improved a little bit.

20. 11. 2008

The search function has been extended. Now, species assigned in all the galleries can be searched. A preview is shown in thumbnails.

11. 11. 2008

Now you can "Search the Reef". You can search common or scientific names of the species in the pictures. Programming in MySQL/PHP was painful, but now its working. So far, I added only the data (from the metadata of the pictures) of the 2008 galleries. The others will follow as soon as I have time.

24. 10. 2008

Gallery Islas Medas added. These tiny islands at the Costa Brava in Spain are protected and show how rich the Mediterranean Sea once was.

17. 09. 2008

Gallery Grevelingenmeer added. Although the visibility was very low I got a couple of nice pictures of lobsters.

16. 09. 2008

First page of Chemistry of the Reef added. In future I plan to add more discussions of chemical processes of importance to coral reefs. I also added some information "about me".

02.05.2008

Maria la Gorda info added.

20. 04. 2008

Several pages updated.

18. 04. 2008

New 2008 galleries added: Havana, Bay of Pigs/Playa Larga, Maria La Gorda

I did not yet have time to identify the creatures in the Bay of Pigs and Maria La Gorda galleries.