DID YOU KNOW?
Look for Roney Rodrigues any weekend and you’ll most likely find him under water.
Since relocating to Hawaii from Sydney, Australia, and joining SSFM initially as a Project Coordinator and now as a Technology Specialist with the PM Group, Roney continues his love of the oceans. It runs in the family. It was his wife Damaris (Dama) Torres-Pulliza’s appointment as a Marine Biologist with NOAA that brought them to Oahu. For Dama, diving is part of her job. For Roney, it’s a lifelong passion—especially underwater photography. “I started taking photos so I could remember my dives,” Roney explains. That practice evolved to his fascination for registering amazing critters. He has recorded over 2800 images (and counting) with iNaturalist, a world-wide database of observations of plants and animals maintained by a community of over a million scientists and naturalists to help each other learn more about nature.
Here is a link to Roney’s observations:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?user_id=shallowreef
A favorite species is the Harlequim Shrimp. Roney says “seeing a Harlequim Shrimp (Hymnocera picta) is on the wish list of most scuba divers.” They are commonly found in pairs and if undisturbed, they bond together for their entire lives. The Harlequim’s differ in color from one region to another with predominantly blue spots in Southeast Asia (left inset photo, taken in Bali), and magenta hues in Hawai’i (right inset photo). Roney likes to say that he and Dama replenish their vitamin-sea three or four times a week locally, and they try to dive internationally at least once a year.
DID YOU KNOW?
Look for Roney Rodrigues any weekend and you’ll most likely find him under water.
Since relocating to Hawaii from Sydney, Australia, and joining SSFM initially as a Project Coordinator and now as a Technology Specialist with the PM Group, Roney continues his love of the oceans. It runs in the family. It was his wife Damaris (Dama) Torres-Pulliza’s appointment as a Marine Biologist with NOAA that brought them to Oahu. For Dama, diving is part of her job. For Roney, it’s a lifelong passion—especially underwater photography. “I started taking photos so I could remember my dives,” Roney explains. That practice evolved to his fascination for registering amazing critters. He has recorded over 2800 images (and counting) with iNaturalist, a world-wide database of observations of plants and animals maintained by a community of over a million scientists and naturalists to help each other learn more about nature.
Here is a link to Roney’s observations:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?user_id=shallowreef
A favorite species is the Harlequim Shrimp. Roney says “seeing a Harlequim Shrimp (Hymnocera picta) is on the wish list of most scuba divers.” They are commonly found in pairs and if undisturbed, they bond together for their entire lives. The Harlequim’s differ in color from one region to another with predominantly blue spots in Southeast Asia (left inset photo, taken in Bali), and magenta hues in Hawai’i (right inset photo). Roney likes to say that he and Dama replenish their vitamin-sea three or four times a week locally, and they try to dive internationally at least once a year.