Underwater photos: Britain and the Maldives

Award winning photographer and local expert on marine life Cate Barrow once again entertained us with a fantastic talk illustrated with stunning images of underwater life.

Cate entertained us with a series of pictures from home and way. The fascinating collection of shapes and forms is a delight for a photographer and Cate takes her time to capture these delights in full technicolour.

She started her talk with a description of the techniques and equipment before showing us pictures from UK waters which may be cold and a little cloudy at times, but we still have some wonderful creatures.

Off to the warmer parts of the world and to reefs and open water and things got even more spectacular and to many of us frightening with some stunning coral, polyp and shark pictures such as this one taken by Cate and shared here with her permission of a Bull shark with 10/17 mm lens at Beqa Lagoon Fiji March 2010

For those of you who are not photographers, a 10/17mm lens is a wide angle lens that makes things look further away than they really are so this is incredibly up close and personal with the shark

As usual Cate's talk was not just a visual spectacular, but informative as well. The descriptions she gave us of the measures taken to ensure she protects the environment whilst getting the pictures was fascinating.

You can see more of Cate's pictures on-line HERE and a write up of one of her adventures with sharks  HERE.

If you would like to hear more why not join us as she has already offered to talk to us again.

Buterflies and Underwater Exotics

Cate Barrow entertained us royally last night with three talks, one about Butterflies and two about underwater exotics all supported by her excellent photography

She described herself as not being a Butterfly expert, but though leveraging the expertise of others including our very own Jeff Curtis and by spending a lot of hours in the field she has already done very well on reaching her goal of photographing all the UK butterflies

After that insect fest she showed us some of the underwater work she's being doing in various parts of the world including New Zealand, Australia and the Maldives.  Fantastic pictures of sharks, loads of smaller fish and many of the varieties of underwater invertebrates such as crabs, corals and polyps or many kind. She also shared come of the complexities of taking pictures in the underwater environment

Some more of Cate's picture can be seen on the Bristol Underwater Photography Group website

For anyone who loves looking at really well executed pictures of wildlife she's already offered to entertain us again next year so we're already looking forwards

The Effects of Cleaning Stations on Dark Damselfish Territorial Behaviour & Nova Scotia

Our 2011 Biosciences Prize winner Zalina Bashir Ali gave us an absolutely superb presentation tonight and totally typified the type of excellence that we were hoping would be inspired by our award.

With some superb photographs of the reef animals taken on the Cardiff University Biosciences trip to Tobago she  gave us a very clear description of the work that she had done and the theories that had been considered in her work

Zalina receiving her certificate and award from Mike Dean Secretary of the Cardiff Naturalists Society

Zalina giving her excellent presentation

The Cardiff Naturalists Society is proud to award a prize for the best 2nd year Student fieldwork in memory of our former member Professor Ursula Henriques.

Full Details of the award and information about Professor Henriques can be found Here

Following this talk in lieu of the planned main speaker we had another excellent presentation from Margaret and John Samuel who stepped in at late notice to give us a real insight into an area that few of us have considered visiting, but is a real nature and history lovers paradise

We would like to thank both of our speakers tonight for a most entertaining eventing even if it did not go entirely as planned