I’ve done this a few times. During the last City Nature Challenge I did in the Bay Area I hung around the boatramp near the Benecia Pier where fishing boats were coming in and asking if I could take pictures of stuff people caught. I ended up getting the only observation of white sturgeon for the CNC.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/5738718
Politely asking to photograph people’s fish catches can pay off.
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I tried sticking my phone in a underwater diving pouch which sorta worked but not well (picture quality, my phone is fine).
I’d love to hear about your DIY underwater drop camera
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Thats something I plan on trying when I go to the beach in a few days.
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I have a little lake and stream in my backyard, and there are fishes (minus the obvious bass, blue gills, etc). I was wondering if there other ways of getting eye-level with these small fishes. The water is not something I’d put my head in, but it tends to be clear enough (at least when the GA clay isn’t disturbed), that I can see them. Do they sell “Deer cams” for underwater use? I’d love to set up some sort of passive observation system.
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Thank you for posting this honestly. I live in WA State and there is a severe lack of non tidepooling/recreational fishing fish observations. There are a few streams and lakes near my house I’ve fished but never thought to dipnet. It’s not like I’ve got a lot going on this summer so I don’t see why I shouldn’t give it a go (once I get a dipnet; any suggestions are appreciated)
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My understanding of Texas regulations is that we’re pretty heavily limited as regards to what minnow traps are legal. I could be wrong but 24" limit, throat size limits and (I think) the holes in the trap have to be a certain size or larger. Plus you’re supposed to have tags on the trap (though no one’s given me grief over that).
We get some fish dipnetting but mostly gambusia and the odd sunfish or killifish.
I do have one of those waterproof cameras on my wishlist but it’s 500 damn dollars. But then I could actually take photos from the canoe too–I’ve been really reluctant to bring my DSLR out on it.
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So many fish missing from INat but people able to SCUBA dive or access areas with the gear to get good photos is just soooo small. I really wish that people would add fish photos as representatives of that species, even from collections or reference guides, to get them on the map.
I really wish many of the ROV streamers (Okeanos, Falkor, Nautilus) would allow screenshots from their backlogged Youtube videos to be added to iNat. I’m sure copyright is an issue and most of that information has scientific value that they don’t want to be released to a public forum until AFTER the scientific publications come out. It would be fun to map out the species, especially since they are the ONLY access to live photos of deepsea creatures. No divers or iNat users have access to the deepsea.
There are also very poor “Places” for marine life because the boundaries are poorly delineated. I would love to have a “Caribbean” place to search for identify instead of searching country by country or state by state. Even “Eastern Pacific” from Alaska to Chile can limit the biogeographic search options.
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Just a note that posting screenshots from livecams that the observer doesn’t own isn’t allowed on iNat for multiple reasons. See
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/live-camera-screenshot/51044
for context and other threads.
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Yeah, and to follow-up on that, web cam owners can probably set up some way to for people to screenshot things and turn them into usable data, there are some projects on Zooniverise that do stuff like that, I think. https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/elwest/woodpecker-cavity-cam
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Yeah but the owners of the footage could in theory contribute their data. If the desire is there. Even starting under an account devoted to these screencaps (account as the ROV Name). There are a lot of nerds that would sift through that footage for free if it was allowed. Even for things that are undescribed could be listed at genus level or range extensions that may have been overlooked could be mapped.
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What do the last four replies have to do with freshwater fishes?
As someone that does have underwater photo gear, the prospect of diving in freshwater is very unappealing. The low visibility conditions would make photography difficult or impossible and the significantly lower water temperature requires a dry suit, which is another significant expense and hassle. My camera is also too big to realistically operate in a few feet of water.
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Dry bag for phone There’s a better product for that. I only used mine tidepooling in case I dropped the phone. But it took decent pics. I tested the bag first, and it was very waterproof.
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That is a matter of location. According to discussions on, for example, ScubaBoard, Puget Sound (a saltwater environment) is known for terrible visibility except in the winter drysuit season. Whereas in the locations where my underwater freshwater observations were made, the water was swimsuit-warm (in the warm season) and had enough visibility for the smallish organisms that need fairly closeup work. For example, this one of water shield, observed in late May in the Elbow Lake Creek system in Oregon:
That is probably true of professional-grade equipment. My Fujifilm XP, waterproof to 50ft, is about the size of a deck of playing cards.
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This set of observations from Sonoma Creek (in northern California)
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=2764&q=gopro
include several freshwater fish and were taken with a GoPro camera on a stick lowered into the creek. My former colleagues at Sonoma Ecology Center took the video (wearing hip waders) from which I took and uploaded stills. I was impressed by the quality of their video and ever since have been wanting to try this out. Our local public library has a GoPro camera one can check out, and some time soon I hope to do so.
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Great topic, You inspired me to make my first ever fish observation:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/225588396
I often see fish when I am paddling my kayak, but have never tried to photograph them, because they are usually shadowy brown shapes in murky brown water.
But the other day there was conveniently a school of small ones right at the water’s edge.
I know nothing about fish, so I used iNat CV to guess that these are Brown Bullheads. (still needs ID)
It’s not an especially useful OBS, because lots of iNatters in VT have observed them (we have lots of lakes, and lots of fisherman) but it’s a lifer for me. Yay!
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I know a few people have pointed out that inaccessibility is probably the main issue contrary to what you’ve said, but I just want to highlight the fact that your problem seems to be that inland bodies of water don’t get observations of fish that aren’t easy to catch with a pole and the example you used to highlight that inaccessibility wasn’t the problem was pointing out that there are fish observations in places that have hundreds of guided scuba tours, places to rent scuba gear, and even walk-in shops where you can buy scuba gear, yet you seemed to have assumed that 1. most everyone who made those observations actually owned the equipment they were using and 2. most everyone who made those observations traveled from inland. I’m sure one of those two things is true for most every reef observations, but both of them being true seems like it would actually be particularly rare.
Unrelated to that, the Midwest in particular has a problem with blue-green algae from fertilizer and cow paddy run-off. This makes it not only dangerous to enter non-flowing bodies of water in the Midwest, but it’s also straight up prohibited in most public parks (at least in my state). The ocean isn’t really that prone to having an outbreak of concentrated poison because it’s so large, the poison will disperse, making the ocean more accessible most of the time
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I don’t do scuba but I love to snorkel when I can. I bought an Olympus underwater camera for my trip to Hawaii last year and had a blast shooting marine fish. Back in the 1980s I did some snorkeling in clear spring fed streams and ponds in Florida but did not have an underwater camera then but wish I had; lots of good photo ops. But it’s certainly true a lot of freshwater streams and ponds are simply too turbid or polluted to allow underwater photo’ing. So opportunities to shoot fish in these situations without catching them is limited.
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In my area (suburban New York, USA) water quality is the biggest issue. The amount of cleaning I would have to do on my camera after sticking it in a local freshwater habitat is too intimidating. The pathogen levels in most bodies of water are horrifying.
Most of the cleaner bodies of water are stocked with fish, so it would be difficult to tell if the observation should be marked casual or not. Anyone have any thoughts about this?
I took a look around for fish observations, and there aren’t that many even for salt water fish in my area. I had though of asking people fishing. I’m glad other people have had success with this method! I’m going to give it a try! And I might try tossing my GoPro in some of the cleaner spots.
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