© Peter Liu

Peter Liu wears many hats. He spent years working in the tech-driven world of Silicon Valley, California, and is now a tech and social media consultant in Hawaii. But he also has a passion for photography, so after becoming a certified scuba diver in the 1990s, he started diving with a digital camera in order to capture underwater creatures. The image above was taken while diving at Carlos Beach in Monterey, California. “This particular shot was a fluke that occurred on the way back from a dive,” Liu says. “One of my strobe arms got wrapped around a strand of kelp and I was untangling it when I turned around and noticed these curious sea lions following me back. I took the opportunity and pressed the shutter, even though the camera was still tangled and I didn’t have time to really frame the shot or get the settings right. It was terribly underexposed. It took some doing to coax the shot out later in Photoshop, but it was well worth it. The accidental composition is priceless.”

Photo © 2006 Pongsatorn Sukhum.

Diver Oramas Pinijchob swims alongside the wreck of the Royal Thai Navy ship HTMS Kut (731), formerly the USS LSM 333, during an inspection dive on September 30, 2006.

USS LSM 333 was commissioned on November, 25 1944 and served in World War II, patrolling the waters off Okinawa after the invasion, and participating in the occupation landings at Northern Honshu and Hokkaido. After the war, the Siamese (Thai) Purchasing Commission negotiated with the United States and British governments to obtain war surplus material. The ship was commissioned into the Royal Thai Navy in 1947. The ship was used during the Korean and Vietnam wars, then was used as a training ship for many years until it was decommissioned in 2004. It was sunk on September 17, 2006 as an artificial reef.

Sukhum is a shipwreck researcher and underwater photographer based in Thailand.