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Hi, welcome to Just Kiddin Around, an all-kids special edition of Missouri Outdoors!
Today we're going to explore something very exciting:
an Ozark stream... from under the surface.
Fish rolling rocks, clams fishing with lures and turtles like you've never seen turtles before.
It's all coming up as we take the plunge into Swan Creek
with noted underwater photographer Bill Roston.
There's an incredible amount of life in an Ozark stream,
and most of the activity is going on right down there
under the surface, hidden from our view.
But all it takes is a mask, snorkle and the willingness to get wet,
and a whole new world comes to view.
You've heard of birdwatching, well we're about to go fish watching
with underwater photographer Dr. Bill Roston.
Take off your mask, okay?
To start out with, to get a mask that fits,
you should be able to take your mask, do not put the strap on it,
and stick it to your face and inhale through your nose.
(voiceover) Before we take the plunge, we need to go over some snorkeling basics.
(Dr. Roston) Can all of you do that? Can all of you suck it against your face without air coming through it?
Get your strap up on top of your head so it's comfortable.
Let's check and make sure we don't have any leakages before we get out there, okay?
As soon as I got my face under the water,
I realized just how different this adventure was going to be.
Just a bit of glass in front of my face put everything into focus.
From the surface, a body of water looks like a mirror, hiding the world below.
As soon as I went below with a mask,
I became a part of the underwater environment.
But in order to stay there, I was going to have to master the snorkel.
And that was a little tricky at first.
(Dr. Roston) I saved a little air in my mask so I could puff
and blow the water out of my snorkel, that way I could keep looking at this thing that I'm looking at.
I think probably what you need to do is
practice a few more puffs, clearing your snorkel.
Snorkel around the periphery or the edge of this pool
in the shallower area until everybody gets accustomed to it.
And then we'll see what we can do to find some critters.
(Dr. Roston) When you put that mask and snorkel on and actually look,
it's teeming with life, you know?
There are a lot of species of fish along with all the turtles
and insect larva and mollusks and stuff like that that are interesting.
You just have to get in and look at things.
If you have a desire to learn, then it's fun.
Okay, let's take a look and see what we can find in this hole.
(voiceover) I couldn't believe all the life under the surface.
Fish, turtles, clams, and a whole lot of stuff I've never seen before.
It's different than looking into an aquarium.
You're in with the wildlife, living in their world.
We all had our share of adventure.
(Mallory) I saw a turtle!
(Kyle) It was fun because we got to see a lot of things underwater.
(Omar) It's pretty cool.
I got to see some crawfish and some turtles and some clams.
(Tyler) I think it was fun because we just swam around
and swimming is usually fun, especially when there is wildlife all around you.
(Keenan) I saw some pretty big fish, some small fish
and a couple of sucker fish.
It was a pretty wild world of fish down there.
With his years of experience under the water,
Dr. Roston was able to point out some things we might have missed.
(Dr. Roston) There's a mayfly larva on that rock
and I was in this stream last spring
I was photographing at night, and there was a hatch of mayflies.
The hatch started and there were literally thousands of these things that were coming out of the water
and they were all white. It looked like snow in reverse.
We have that one fish here called the log perch,
that's in the darter family and it will come into a gravelly bottom like this and start turning over the rocks.
It turns over the rocks with its nose.
And those insect larvae that are under the rocks sometimes lose their lives that way
because that fish has enough intelligence to know that
it's food is under the rocks. That's the log perch.
We've seen some wild stuff down here,
but now here's the challenge:
I want a picture to take home. Let's talk to Dr. Roston to see how he does it.
I started seeing all this stuff underwater that was kinda neat
and I had somebody tell me, there's nothing in freshwater that you can photograph.
So, to take up the challenge I went out and got me an underwater camera.
And it's always interesting because since I'm in freshwater, it's a frontier.
Nobody else is doing this.
That's what's intriguing to me, to be able to do something
in this world that 20 million other people haven't done before.
Dr. Roston's photographs capture the hidden excitement and drama of the underwater world.
By concentrating his efforts exclusively on lakes and rivers instead of the ocean,
he's exploring uncharted terrain.
Most of the pictures that you take in freshwater,
you're dealing with six foot of visibility or less,
so you have to work close up and that's part of the challenge,
is to be able to get the fish, or whatever you're photographing underwater, close to the lens.
(voiceover) But how does he get the fish to come to him?
(Dr. Raston) I feed them a lot, you know?
You can take something in the water and feed them.
Also, you can get close to them at night
If you take a flashlight in the water at night, you can get right on top of them.
If you're gonna get the professional equipment it is expensive,
but if you're just gonna take snapshots,
you can buy a very inexpensive camera
for less than 15 dollars that will take underwater photos.
When you're underwater, number one - there's not much noise or commotion,
there's no telephone. It's peace and quiet.
It's tranquil - so much of a different type of environment than what the surface is.
They say when you go underwater it's a whole new world, and it really is.
The thing that has really kept me going back time after time is the photography,
because every time you go in the water and you shoot a roll of film,
there's always something different and that's what keeps me coming back.
What an adventure!
I never knew how much was going on right underneath the surface.
I'll never look at another stream the same way again.
There's a whole world waiting to be explored,
so get out and experience Missouri Outdoors!