prcscct wrote:Great stuff as usual. What is that tank in DSC09727......emergency air lowered from the boat? Pete
That looks like a decompression tank Pete (as it says DECO on it ). For deeper dives, which wreck dives frequently are, they hang one or more tanks over the side at a specific decompression depth for the dive to take the guesswork out of where to make the decompression stop and to provide extra air for the decompression stop (can be 10 or 15 minutes) in case you are low at the end of the dive.
My brain is like an Internet browser; 12 tabs are open and 5 of them are not responding, there's a GIF playing in an endless loop,... and where is that annoying music coming from?
Yep the deco tank is hung from the boat at 5 meters to provide emergency air should you need it on the safety stop. Never got low on air myself but my dive computer did send me into decompression once or twice.
After diving six wrecks it was time for some reef where I could hunt down some macro marine life for the lens. Just inside of Grande Island lies Mystery Reef, a gradually sloping wall dive from 15 down to around 25 meters. Hard corals, sponges and feather stars were abundant here as were photogenic little nudibranchs of every colour imaginable, even some I had never seen before.
More to follow ...
Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed? - Hunter S Thompson
I must say that until now, although I've enjoyed your photos, they haven't been up to your normal standards (I'm sure there are technical reasons that would go straight over my untrained head). This latest batch however, are back to buksi best.
The reason is that my camera is suited to macro photography (getting very close), you can't shoot macro on wrecks (because they're huge) and I don't have the thousand dollar lighting/strobe kit to capture the correct colours in deep water which is why they don't come out so well. This is why I generally prefer reef diving in good viz and light for taking pictures. We did get some video also using one of those GoPro cameras, I'll have a play with editing it and post that later.
Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed? - Hunter S Thompson
They would be razorfish - they swim vertically so they can conceal themselves in the coral, this group were out in the open.
A final dive at 'The Canyons' offered some great underwater topography as the name suggests, great walls of coral greeted us but sadly fish life was limited here due to destructive dynamite fishing still practiced by the locals. The corals of Subic also suffered when Mount Pinatubo dumped millions of tonnes of ash into the bay in 1991, over 20 years later the reefs are re-spawning. Thanks to coral planting and artificial reef creation efforts by the dive team at Arizona the area is showing good recovery and growth.
Some overland shots to follow ...
Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed? - Hunter S Thompson
This is my first ever attempt at editing and creating a video from 2Gb of raw footage, I didn't actually shoot this one but can be seen diving in it taking stills. I've only been using the software for 3 hours and still haven't worked out how to do all the fancy stuff or add music so bear with me - I'm sure future ones will be better ...
Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed? - Hunter S Thompson
Getting better, figured out the music (though not sure if I'm allowed to use Enya) and some extra effects, seem to lose a lot of clarity when it gets uploaded to YouTube though.
Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed? - Hunter S Thompson
). For deeper dives, which wreck dives frequently are, they hang one or more tanks over the side at a specific decompression depth for the dive to take the guesswork out of where to make the decompression stop and to provide extra air for the decompression stop (can be 10 or 15 minutes) in case you are low at the end of the dive.
