Bryan Chu Photography, 2440 F Cliffe Avenue, Courtenay, BC (2026)

11/26/2023

Hello lovely people, yes I am still alive, just very busy spending quality time with my daughter and doing non-photo work! The good news is, I had time to do a couple of dive trips this year and I made time to put together calendars for 2024, which I just received. As usual the print shop did a fantastic job and they look great!

Same as last year, it's all local Vancouver Island photos, and the calendars were all printed here in the Comox Valley at Sure Copy. Calendars are standard 8.5x11" wall calendars.
If you'd like one please put in your order on my Etsy store (link below), or you can send an interac e-transfer to [email protected], and put your mailing address in the message.

Calendars are $25 each, and shipping anywhere in Canada is $5, or you can arrange to pick up from my house in Courtenay for free (to not pay for shipping on Etsy, use the coupon code LOCALPICKUP).

https://bryanchuphotography.etsy.com/listing/1113346737

If you are in the USA it's an extra $5 CAD to cover the extra shipping. Please note, this year all calendars have Canada holidays only. My American friends always marvel about Boxing Day; unfortunately, it's not as exciting a holiday as the name might lead you to believe :-). International is the same added cost as the US, and you should be able to put the order in on Etsy. If not then let me know.

Thanks so much for all of your amazing support, and for your enthusiasm for our beautiful oceans! I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and get to spend some nice, relaxing, quality time with your families!

12/09/2022

An undersea garden of pink Gorgonian corals!

Although gorgonian corals are generally a tropical species, we do have them in our waters, too. Just, they tend to be very deep, beyond recreational depths. Fortunately, though, there are locations where they can be found at shallower depths, although usually at a smaller size.

At one of these locations, many of this smaller species covered the rocks, side-by-side with anemones, orange cup corals and assorted other invertebrates, forming a unique undersea garden that I had the pleasure of enjoying for the whole of a tranquil, peaceful dive!

Gorgonians look hard and bumpy from a distance, but up close they are covered in polyps that look like little anemones - with sticky tentacles they extend into the current to grab food. The ones in this photo have the polyps closed since we were diving at slack tide (ie no current to feed in).I have included a couple of closeup photos of a pink soft coral's polyps extended - these are very similar to what you'd find curled up in each of the nodules you see in this photo. Very cool!

This image is included in my 2023 Calendar here: https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/1113346737/2023-vancouver-island-underwater

Taken with my good friends at UB Diving!

12/07/2022

My 2023 Vancouver Island - Beneath the Emerald Sea calendars have arrived and I am extremely happy with how they turned out! Same as last year it's all local Vancouver Island photos, and the calendars were all printed here in the Comox Valley at a local print store. Calendars are standard 8.5x11" wall calendars.

If you'd like one please put in your order on my new Etsy store (link below), or you can send an interac e-transfer to [email protected], and put your mailing address in the message.

Calendars are $25 each, and shipping anywhere in Canada is $5, or you can arrange to pick up from my house in Courtenay for free (to not pay for shipping on Etsy, use the coupon code LOCALPICKUP).

https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/1113346737/2023-vancouver-island-underwater

If you are in the USA it's an extra $5 CAD to cover the extra shipping, and I had some USA calendars made which have the USA holidays instead of the Canadian ones. International is the same added cost as the US, and you should be able to put the order in on Etsy. If not then let me know.

Thanks so much for all of your amazing support, and for your enthusiasm for our beautiful oceans!

12/06/2022

This last year has been an exhausting one. We have continued to see the impacts of the climate emergency manifesting and wreaking havoc around the world, but I have also been raising a baby, and for me this is the #1 reason I am exhausted! She is a little girl, Mira, and she is my new world.

I have only been out diving once in the past year, which is the least I have ever gone diving since I started doing this 7 years ago. But it’s been amazing watching Mira grow and develop, while also indoctrinating her with the wonders of our ocean and all its fantastic critters. Although she can’t talk yet, she just loves when we read her books about the ocean.

Her favourite toys are a quadrapus (an octopus with only half the legs), a crab, a stingray (I try not to let it bother me that the mouth is on the top instead of the bottom - I think I need to make a complaint to the toy company!), a walrus, and a puffin. Her favourite songs are Baby Beluga and Baby Shark. Her room has big wall decals of a humpback, orcas, turtles, jacks, and a seal. She is off to good start.

I can’t wait until she can talk and I can take her down to the ocean to show her the wonders my parents showed me all those years ago that got me hooked for life. Sit with her and watch Blue Planet 2 on our big screen TV - quite the step up from my childhood of taping National Geographic shows on our VCR and watching on a TV from the 80s with a bit of a green tinge on one side of it.

I’m really looking forward to being able to take Mira on the tide pool pilgrimages and middle-of-the-night extra-low-tide gumboot chiton hunting adventures my parents took me on 30 years ago. I can’t wait to see the wonder on her face when she sees her first big moonsnail plowing away as a “moving sand lump” just beneath the wet sand. And my parents may finally get some payback if she takes up my childhood hobby of collecting dead sea creatures, drying them out in the oven, and then storing them in cookie tins (one of the prides of my collection was a dead bat star I found washed up on Mackenzie Beach - our cabin developed quite the smell on that trip).

The big question is, what kind of world will I be showing her, and what will she see when she grows up and takes up scuba diving (which I assume she will - but no pressure)? Will we continue on our current trajectory, where salmon populations continue to flounder, wild herring are commercially harvested and never recover to their former abundance, irreplaceable old growth forests continue to be logged, and a lack of concerted efforts to create meaningful and effective no-take marine protected areas means that our many beautiful rockfish populations just continue to scrape by? Or will we finally turn the corner?

I dearly wish for the latter, that I will get to show her a marine wonderland that is cleaner, healthier and more abundant than it is now. And be able to tell her how we were on track to destroy the natural wonders of Vancouver Island’s marine biodiversity, but we caught things just in time, and now every year things are getting better and better. Whether this happens or not, is up to all of us.

Yes, if you are wondering, I did manage to get calendars made last-minute for 2023. I have missed sharing photos with you lovely people, but this is all I have had time to do :-(.

I just got them today and put them up on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/1113346737/2023-vancouver-island-underwater?ref=listing_published_alert

12/19/2021

Last Chance! I still have a few calendars left, and if you are looking for a last-minute Christmas gift, local pick-up is available until Tuesday. I can also still put them in the mail, though no guarantees on how long they will take to get there! Details below.

*****

My 2022 Vancouver Island - Beneath the Emerald Sea calendars have arrived and I am extremely happy with how they turned out! This year it's all local Vancouver Island photos, and as with last year the calendars were all printed here in the Comox Valley at a local print store. Calendars are standard 8.5x11" wall calendars.

They are $25 each, and available at my favourite local stores, or directly from me. Here are the options of where to find them:
🐙 UB Diving in Courtenay
🐟 Island Affair Giftware in Comox
🐠 Dogs Do Smile in Comox
🐋 Pickup from my house in Courtenay
🦭 Delivery for $5 to anywhere in Canada

If you'd like to get one from me, please put in your order on my new Etsy store (link below), or you can send an interac e-transfer to [email protected], and put your mailing address in the message. Calendars are $25 each, and shipping anywhere in Canada is $5, or you can arrange to pick up from my house in Courtenay for free (to not pay for shipping on Etsy, use the coupon code LOCALPICKUP).
https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/1113346737/2022-vancouver-island-underwater

If you are in the USA it's an extra $5 CAD to cover the extra shipping, and I had some USA calendars made which have the USA holidays instead of the Canadian ones. International is the same added cost as the US, and you should be able to put the order in on Etsy. If not then let me know.

Thanks so much for all of your amazing support, and for your enthusiasm for our beautiful oceans!

11/28/2021

The science is in: fish feel pain. Many people see fish as not having any feelings because they don't have facial expressions the way that humans do. They can't scream or make sounds of pain like mammals. But more and more scientific evidence is specifically showing that fish do feel pain, that when they are hurt their reactions are not purely instinctive, but in fact based on pain. Some studies detailed in the article below show them actually responding to pain.

When they have grabbed a hook and are wriggling about as they are pulled in, they are in pain the whole time. When they get pulled onto the boat and lie gasping in the air, unable to breathe, they feel pain. When they are caught and released, put back in the water with a hole in their mouth, how would that not be painful either?

This cute, juvenile copper rockfish had some attitude, whenever I came near his territory he would put up his spines and swim at me, protecting his territory. Fortunately, he lives in a rockfish conservation area. If he settles somewhere in the RCA as an adult, then as these rockfish travel no more than 1 mile from their chosen location over their lifetime, he could live out his whole 55 year lifespan without feeling the pain of a hook. Hoping this is the case!

I used to love going fishing, but the last time I went was a few years ago. This was before I knew about fish feeling pain, but I clearly remember feeling sad and sick, watching a cod we pulled up on a line get hauled onto the boat, having its gills slit, and then being tossed into a bucket to bleed out, as it twitched and gasped for breath.

At that point I had been diving for a few years and had been spending a lot of time watching fish in the wild, seeing their personalities. After that, I only went on one more fishing trip, for a bachelor party, and then I couldn't do it anymore. I still have many fond, treasured memories of fishing when I was a kid. But now I just feel too connected to my fish friends to purposefully cause them to suffer.

I get that our relationship with our food is very complicated, and that lots of animals suffer pain and fear to feed humans. I also get that this is part of how we have been raised and who we are - when I was growing up, I ate a lot of meat. I do still eat some meat, but I have moved to being about 95% vegetarian, and focusing the bulk of my remaining seafood eating on filter-feeding shellfish. Not saying this to make people feel bad, but just to make people think. Cutting back on some meat or fish here and there will help reduce animal suffering and will also help reduce our impact on global warming. Even a 10% reduction is a big step in the right direction... every bit helps!
https://hakaimagazine.com/features/fish-feel-pain-now-what/

Olympus OM-D E-M1 III, Oly 30mm macro lens, Nauticam housing, dual Z-330 strobes w/ glowdive dome diffusers. 1/100, f/5, ISO 800. Hooded Nudi Bay, just off Browning Pass near Port Hardy.

11/21/2021

My 2022 Vancouver Island - Beneath the Emerald Sea calendars have arrived and I am extremely happy with how they turned out! This year it's all local Vancouver Island photos, and as with last year the calendars were all printed here in the Comox Valley at a local print store. Calendars are standard 8.5x11" wall calendars.

If you'd like one please put in your order on my new Etsy store (link below), or you can send an interac e-transfer to [email protected], and put your mailing address in the message. Calendars are $25 each, and shipping anywhere in Canada is $5, or you can arrange to pick up from my house in Courtenay for free (to not pay for shipping on Etsy, use the coupon code LOCALPICKUP).
https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/1113346737/2022-vancouver-island-underwater

If you are in the USA it's an extra $5 CAD to cover the extra shipping, and I had some USA calendars made which have the USA holidays instead of the Canadian ones. International is the same added cost as the US, and you should be able to put the order in on Etsy. If not then let me know.

Thanks so much for all of your amazing support, and for your enthusiasm for our beautiful oceans!

11/14/2021

~Hanging Out in the Rain~
This northern kelp crab was perched very nicely on a stalk of bull kelp in lovely, calm Hooded Nudi Bay, just off Browning Pass by Port Hardy. The red of the crab contrasts nicely against the rainy skies - if you look around the edge of Snell's window (the round window of sky) you'll see that it was pouring rain topside!

Northern kelp crabs are often found hanging on kelp stalks, just like this pinchy little fella. They are adept at this clinging, gracefully holding on even when the kelp is moving a lot in the surge.

Their diet varies seasonally - in the summer months when algae is prevalent, they eat nearly exclusively algae - kelp, rockweed, sargassum and some types of red algae. In the winter, they are more carnivorous, eating small mussels, barnacles, bryozoans, and hydroids. And apparently, they sometimes store extra pieces of kelp to little hooks on their shell, so they can eat them later.

Also, although I fortunately have no experience with this, multiple sources mention they are surprisingly strong and can give a painful pinch! https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/49723-Pugettia-producta

Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III, Oly 8mm fisheye lens, Nauticam housing, dual Z-330 strobes w/ glowdive dome diffusers. 1/125, f/9, ISO 640. Taken with my good friends at UB Diving!

11/06/2021

Some intertidal treasures from Seven Tree Island, Browning Passage, Port Hardy. Ochre stars, green surf anemones, pink-tipped anemones, short plumose anemones, barnacles, even a couple of chitons and limpets! What fun!

Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III, Oly 8mm fisheye lens, Nauticam housing, dual Z-330 strobes w/ glowdive dome diffusers. 1/400, f/10, ISO 200.

11/03/2021

It's a Trap!! As a lifelong Star Wars fan, I was super excited to meet the real-life Admiral Ackbar 40 ft beneath the surface, at Hussar Point, Browning Passage. I took a lot of photos, but unfortunately, at no point did he utter his famous words.

There are some parallels between this black rockfish and Admiral Ackbar's Mon Calamari people, which go beyond the appearance. Both have suffered very badly under the powers that be. The mon calamari were oppressed and enslaved by the Empire, while our local rockfish populations have been devastated by decades of over-fishing. Rockfish are extremely vulnerable to fishing pressure - they grow very slowly, they reach sexual maturity only after quite a few years, and older fish are more productive at reproducing.

Black rockfish reach sexual maturity between the age of 6 and 8 years, and can live up to 50 years. Some other species of rockfish take longer to reach sexual maturity and can live for 100 years or more. Imagine what a 50 yr old rockfish has seen. Times of abundance, to relentless fishing, to populations that are only 10-20% of what they once were (it's hard to find data, the only estimate I could find was for yelloweye rockfish, whose biomass crashed by 90% between 1920 and 2010). No wonder they look so sad.

From my personal experience, diving in the rockfish conservation area (RCA) of Browning Pass is like night and day compared to diving in other parts of Vancouver Island. In RCAs, no fishing is permitted, which has allowed slow-growing rockfish populations to begin replenishing and recovering. Diving in areas without conservation measures in places, the waters feel empty. There should be schools of rockfish around, but they are all gone. And once populations have been so badly destroyed by commercial fishing, then all it takes with these slow-growing fish is some recreational fishing to catch the productive individuals and keep the population from recovering.

Some RCAs, like Browning Pass, are working, because there are dive boats there a large portion of the time, keeping an eye on things. Many other RCAs in BC are not working, because they are continuing to be fished.

Galiano Conservancy has been doing some amazing work on spreading awareness and reducing the amount of fishing that happens in rockfish conservation areas (sadly, a lot of fishing still occurs in designated conservation areas). For some more info about these amazing, pouty fish and the work being done to try to help them recover:
https://galianoconservancy.ca/rockfish/

If you do fish in BC's waters, you can make a difference! Learn where the RCAs are, don't fish in them, and help spread the awareness to others! It will be good for everyone, as restoring rockfish populations to their former abundance is a big benefit to recreational fishermen as well.

Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III, Oly 60mm macro lens, Nauticam housing, dual Z-330 strobes w/ glowdive dome diffusers. 1/125, f/8, ISO 500.

10/30/2021

~Shelter from the Storm~
In a shallow, sheltered bay off Browning Pass, I came across this lovely tangled collection of anchored kelp and "uprooted" kelp all clumped together. You can see amongst the tangle a number of the holdfasts, which are the structures that bull kelp uses to anchor itself to the rocks. Holdfasts are extremely strong, holding 60 ft long kelp plants firmly rooted in place even during heavy currents and storms. Clearly something very strong ripped these kelp off the bottom, and then they collected in this bay.

It formed a scene reminiscent for me of mangroves in the tropics, with the tangled root systems providing shelter for large schools of juvenile rockfish. Here you can see lots of juvenile yellowtail and (I believe) widow rockfish taking shelter. These sheltered shallows are ideal nurseries for juvenile rockfish, providing them cover from predators and lots of food to support their growth into big, strong, pouty adult rockfish! 💪

If you look carefully at the surface of the water you can see tons of raindrops, it was raining like crazy while we were down here, sheltered beneath the storm by the water of the bay and this tangled canopy of life. I enjoy how very green and "Pacific Northwest" this photo feels!

For more info on holdfasts here's a nice post by the Marine Detective: https://themarinedetective.com/tag/bull-kelp/

Olympus OM-D E-M1 III, Oly 8mm fisheye lens, Nauticam housing, dual Z-330 strobes, glowdive dome diffusers. 1/160, f/8, ISO 1600. Taken with my good friends at UB Diving on one of their many annual Port Hardy charters!

10/28/2021

Browning Wall is so spectacular because all day, every day it gets swept by strong currents of our nutrient-packed waters. This supports a profusion of invertebrate life over every swuare inch of exposed rock, but means you can only safely dive the site on slack tide, or off slack on very low tidal exchanges.

At slack, the current completely stops. But on this site I prefer having a small current, just before or after slack tide, so I either get in early, stay long, or do both (having a gigantic steel 130 cuft tank helps with that). It's so meditatively beautiful and ever so peaceful floating motionless in the water, but it's even better when you don't even have to kick much to move along the wall, you just drift, with the current gently pulling you along.

You just dial in your buoyancy, get yourself into a comfortable trim, slow down your breathing, quiet your body, and quiet your mind. The wall drops off straight down, beyond recreational depths, and here you are at 80 ft of depth, drifting past this wonderland of colourful marine life stretching as far as the eye can see in all directions. You become immersed in this amazing world, the worries and stresses of topside lift melting away into the slow, rhythmic pattern of your breaths.

Colourful scaly-head sculpins perch on their soft coral thrones, watching you suspiciously as you pass. Nudibranchs feast on sponges, while crabs pick through debris, giant acorn barnacles frantically extend and retract their cirri, red soft corals extend their polyps and sway in the current, and the schools of rockfish are everywhere. Oh, the rockfish!

The way to see the best rockfish schools is with current. When there's no current, you have fish swimming about willy-nilly, grabbing bits of food from the water haphazardly and in all directions. But once that current starts running, the most beautiful thing happens. The fish all line up, facing into the current, grouped together, beating their tails to keep in place.

Some parts of Browning Wall get more currents than others. Some currents are going up, some down, some one way or the other way along the wall, all based around the sharp topography and the prevailing current out in the channel. The perfect place to catch the rockfish show is around an outcropping on the wall, where the currents are the strongest. Find a good spot to tuck away out of the current, and watch the fish swimming in place right in front of your face.

The longer you stay still and quiet, the closer they come. You can tell that they are curious about you; once they feel safe, they close in and look at you with curiosity. It's an amazing feeling, all of these little sentient beings coming and checking you out. And you can just hover there, taking it all in. It doesn't get any better than this!

Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark III, Oly 8mm fisheye lens, Nauticam housing, dual Z330 strobes, glowdive dome diffusers. 1/100, f/8, ISO 640. Taken with my go-to for diving Browning Pass, my good friends at UB Diving.

Bryan Chu Photography

11/26/2023

12/09/2022

12/07/2022

12/06/2022

12/19/2021

11/28/2021

11/21/2021

11/14/2021

11/06/2021

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10/30/2021

10/28/2021

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