I recently learned about a new 'art installation' created using driftwood on Reddit. So, I decided to go on a weekend photo walk. I usually try to integrate a theme to a photo shoot; the large oil tankers in the background made for an interesting juxtaposition with the incredible driftwood art.

​The local artist scene is one of the best parts of living on Vancouver Island. 

Over the past 10 years, I've been extremely lucky to have participated in more ROV cruises than anybody I know.  Over 17 cruises, I've spent 119 at-sea days spent aboard 8 different research vessels.  Vast  majority of that time was spent using ROVs (used 5 different ones now!) dedicated to my own research that has broadly centred on mapping the diversity of benthic fish and invertebrates found in  the northeast Pacific Ocean.

What do you get when you spend so much time exploring the deep-sea as a trained marine biologist, have the 'asian-tourist gene', and have a natural tendency to 'catch them all?'  You accumulate a one-of-a-kind archive of images of marine critters.  With my most recent cruise, I thought it would be fun to start compiling all my highlight shots into the online, georeferenced, database iNaturalist.

Here, you will find images of all sorts of weird and wonderful critters that I've come across in my past decade as a deep-sea biologist-in-training. Research scientists are always 'in-training' because the continual pursuit of knowledge means we're never done learning!