GW, May 2024, this blog post is still about last year’s photo trip, but on a quieter note, I would like to send you about the kelp boat cruise I took the other day in Erimo.
Although I have visited many times, it has actually been six months since I have been on a kelp boat.
In the distance, there is already a large school of seals..!
This is the time of year when you can see newborn baby seals, so I will take pictures of them right away.
Incidentally, it was low tide around 3:00 p.m. on that day, and I especially wanted to take pictures of the baby seals in their slumber, so I decided to board the ship at 1:00 p.m.
Within a few minutes of boarding the boat, I entered a reef area and found ourselves in a baby seal paradise!
Probably a mother and child. Seals are a pest to fishermen, but they are still cute.
The distance is about 30 to 50 meters. The boat is maneuvered by a skilled fisherman who brings the boat to a good spot for shooting in the reef area and stabilizes the boat for photography.
The lenses I took with me this time,
Nikon Z9 + Nikkor Z 180-600mm
A single focal length lens is also good, but since it is possible to get quite close, a zoom lens is good for various compositions. (It is not as difficult to get as close as on the Shiretoko bear cruise.)
Also, since the ship is small, it can rock quite a bit, so a shutter speed of about 1600 is recommended. You may be splashed by waves, so if you are concerned about this, please take measures to protect yourself from seawater.
(Life jackets, coats, and boots are available for rent.)
As I proceeded through the reef area, I saw a large number of seals.
There are so many seals that it is hard to count them.
It was very exciting to see them, but I guess they must have an unusual amount of fish and shellfish in their bellies.
Looking a little further away, I saw an old man seal yawning widely while scratching his belly.
He is already treated as an old man in my mind. I can’t see him, but there must be a TV in the foreground and a remote control near him.
When you look at the rocks, they all look at you. If you get too close, they will run away into the sea, but the seals in the distance will stare at you.
I feel safe because we are on a boat and because we are accompanied by a professional boatman, but I’m reminded of our peculiar situation when I am in the middle of wild animals’ territory and they are staring at us.
Combined with the white part of her eyes, it makes her look like an idiot at once. If Erimo Weekly comes out, I would love to see this picture on the cover.
When I get close to it, its fur is fuzzy, so I guess it is still a child seal.
One of the attractions of a kelp boat cruise is the proximity between the draft line and the edge of the boat. As the name “kelp boat” implies, this fishing boat, which is used to fish for kelp, a specialty of Erimo, has a very shallow draft, partly because it travels along the reefs of Cape Erimo.
If you take pictures from this boat, which can touch the seawater surface if you put out your hand, you can bring the image plane very close to the seal’s line of sight, which makes it possible to take a lot of good pictures. really.
Most of the seals lounging on the reef are at the same eye level or even looking up at you, so you can see them in a completely different light than if you were peering through a telescope at the head of a cape.
I’ll leave the lecture at this point and concentrate on the rest of the photo shoot.
The parent seal is waiting for her in the ocean, and she repeatedly climbs up and down the rocky shore to lure the child into the sea.
Perhaps she is practicing her swimming skills.
When it was time for the boat to return, a seal, probably a newborn, said hello to us on a nearby rock!
The mother is probably on the right and the child seal on the left. The baby seal still has its umbilical cord attached, suggesting that it is less than a few days old. It seems that they can already swim at this stage, which makes me think that wild animals (marine animals) are very strong.
A baby seal almost falls off its bed of seaweed in reaction to the occasional wave. Waving his hands, the seal rises to his feet and struggles to pull himself closer to his mother.
It seems that the seal managed to get back to its body, and the sight of the seal moving closer to its mother was a little heartwarming, like the love between a father and his child!
It was a quick 60 minutes. （The cruise was a 30 minute course, but we extended it to an hour so we had Cape Erimo all to ourselves.) It was a very satisfying kelp boat cruise in Erimo with excellent photography.
If there are no other passengers scheduled behind us, the cruise can be extended, which is rare for a sightseeing boat!
Please try the kelp boat cruise once this year.
(You can check the operation status on the bulletin board in the parking lot at the cape, or on the kelp boat cruise web site, such as the captain’s social networking site).
