Another few photos today, these ones the “slight story” photos.

First, a story about the camera that I think got eaten last night. I have a bad rep with electronics and water. I flooded my GoPro, went snorkeling with my HTC One S and opened the lens port on my D400 last year. This new camera housing is my last attempt at it. If this fails any time soon, I’m giving up on underwater electronics (except for Toughie, which is amazing).

My new scuba housing has a vacuum seal, so you can create a vacuum inside the housing before you go underwater. This ensures that water can’t get in, because the internal pressure keeps the housing sealed. It also has a leak detector, with a convenient LED to tell you what state it’s in. Also, it’s slightly positively bouyant, so it floats slowly upward when you let go. Technology!

But all that technology can’t help prevent my idiocy and clumsiness. As we’re rolling into the water off the boat for our second dive, I caught my leash (which I use to ensure it stays with me while diving) on my fin. I roll into the water, and the camera gets yanked off the boat with me. There’s bubbles everywhere and confusion and I’m being told to swim away from the boat and I don’t have my camera in hand and I haven’t seen it and I’m told it’s in the water and fuck. They tell me it’s probably sinking, I tell them it floats. Someone says that another diver has it, and everyone starts to dive down. I still haven’t seen my camera. >.> I try to dive, but can’t and Rocky (my dive guide/buddy) comes up to ask why. I tell him that I don’t have my camera and he says it’s probably on the bottom. I don’t believe him, but have no choice right now but to follow him down. Also, that I couldn’t sink.

We get to the bottom of the ocean and one of the other divers hands me my camera.  …  … Why on earth couldn’t we have had that exchange on the surface?! I was there, he was there, my camera was there, my panic was there, just hand me the $2000 worth of technology and gadgetry and all will be well!!

I slowly calmed down.

Now here are some awesome photos! 🙂

Very spikey! But if you look carefully near the top left hand side you’ll see a little fish nestled in between the spikes. Protection!

There were rays everywhere on our first and third dives, just everywhere. This guy had been waiting under some sand until just before this photo when we disturbed him and he flew away.

The sun from about 20 feet below during our 3 minute safety stop.

I don’t know what this thing was, but moments before this photo it was closed off and scrunched up and then a dive guide did something to make it do this.

We swam near a wreck. It wasn’t a terrible amazing wreck, so I looked for good angles and framing rather than interesting things.

When you have the opportunity to frame the wreck with the wreck itself, you should take it.

This fish was funny. I took a photo of him and moved on. Then every photo I took for the next few photos magically seemed to include him. I think he was interested in being famous, so I’ll give him his 5 seconds here.

This is super cool. One of the other divers had this sweet camera, and “ancient” Nikonos, which was a line of underwater designed cameras for film. The two sticks you see popping out of the camera are lasers, which he uses on the surface to point at a card that he has a specific distance away. Then he uses his viewfinder to manually focus on the point where the lasers cross. Then he takes the card away and goes diving. The point of all this is because he doesn’t have an LCD display (FILM!), and it’s a manual lens (no auto focus) and the viewfinder is often hard to look through while diving, he just has to line up the laser points while diving and whatever is at those points will be in focus. Because it’s a macro lens, with an incredibly thin depth of field. An ingenious solution to a problem that I just don’t have because I spent a lot more money. 😛

This creature looks boring, but you won’t be saying that when it gets bigger and climbs out of the ocean to destroy your home and family. It looks a bit like a starfish, but it moved at a regular speed, crawling with all it’s limbs across Rocky’s hand. I don’t know what it’s called, but it’s going to haunt my nightmares for a bit.

The striped fish on the left was getting a cleaning from all the other fish when we showed up. He decided he didn’t want to do this in front of the cameras, and swam off. Then seconds later, his friends slowly went and joined him. Repeat this scene two more times while I’m watching. Fish are funny. 🙂

A safety stop selfie with Rocky and I. Rocky was a gruff ex-Canadian Special Forces dude from Nova Scotia. He was very matter of fact, and I felt most of the trip like he thought I was a bit of a bungling fool, because I screwed up so much. But he was great, showed me a lot and had some good conversations.

One more diving post to go, on my new favourite fish – the puffer fish. I didn’t have a favourite fish before this trip, and I’m stoked to leave with one. We’ll talk about how amazing this little fish is over the next 10 photos.