I'm on my way down to Cabo to catch a 10 day liveaboard trip to the Revillagigedos (aka Socorros) Islands on the Nautilus Explorer. I'll return to the office on Jan 16th.
During that time Optical Ocean Sales will be in the good hands of my new assistant Kalen. Orders and estimates will be happening, but shipping may be slowed a bit. Limited technical advise will be available. There will be No phone orders taken, but emails will be returned by her.
I look forward to a renewed energy (I need a vacation!!) and having lots of photos to share in the New Year!
I often get asked "What strobe should I get for my camera and housing". Here's a rundown on all the current strobes that Optical Ocean Sales carrys right now.
The Fantasea NanoFlash is a small, light and easy-to-use strobe. It has a guide number (power) of 12, so ii is fairly low power. Many people like them for tropical diving and for close up shots. It is a strobe-in-a-box with 3 power settings and several diffusers of varying strength. It will work with all digital cameras. Uses 2 AAA batteries that last about 2 dives.
I used to sell the UltraMax Strobe as a good value for a beginning diver. Unfortunately, recently we've been experiencing quite a few failures and I've discontinued selling it for now.
Next up is the new Fantasea Remora strobe, actually has the same flash tube and power as the UltraMax, different electronics and design. Much better power control; 10 to 100% dial and a very good lens and diffuser that spreads the light better. Much faster recycle time than the UltraMax. Still a 60 degree beam angle and also narrow vertically. Has a mount for a small NanoFocus light for aiming. However it does not have a sealed battery compartment, although a good seal on the door. It is floaty in the water, but not as much as the UltraMax. It’s a good step up for newer photographers with point and shoot cameras. I’ve been test shooting it with a Fuji F200, photos are here:
Much better is the Sea & Sea YS-27DX, 8 steps of power, great build quality, small, light balanced size, but neutral in the water. Sealed battery compartment. It has a wide 98x80 degree beam angle, and good power with a guide number of 20. Much faster 2-3 sec recycle time. Powerful enough for advanced point and shoots with wide angle lenses or a relatively inexpensive way to equip a DSLR with dual strobes.
Up from that is the Sea & Sea YS110a, guide number of 22, 13 steps of power control, bright target light, 105x105 degree beam angle, D-TTL auto control operation. Legendary Sea & Sea quality, with a sealed battery compartment and lighting fast 1-2 sec recycle time. It also has a hardwired sync port and can be used in conjunction with Sea & Sea's TLL converter. This is an excellent strobe with automatic operation and is a great companion for advanced point and shoots and DSLRs.
Sea & Sea also offers the awesome YS-250PRO which delivers a whalloping guide number 32 of power, and instant recyle with it's integrated battery pack. It has TTL with a light and audible signal and also has 12 steps of manual power.
Olympus offers two strobes; the UFL-1 and the UFL-2. The UFL-1 is older and basically a rebranded Sea & Sea YS-17. Although well- built with a sealed battery compartment, it is weaker than other competitively priced strobes (guide number of 14) and over-priced for it’s feature set. But it is popular with Olympus point and shoot owners.
The Olympus UFL-2 is designed to work well with their PT-E05 & PT-E06 DSLR housing systems. It has TTL automatic operation that can be controlled from the camera and a target light. It isn’t as powerful as the YS-110a, but is well integrated into the Olympus system with fairly rapid recycle time.
We also carry all the Ikelite strobes; The DS-51, DS-160, DS-161 and DS-200. These are powerful, generally well built with good recycle times. They have sealed battery compartments or battery packs, and some manual control. The DS-160, 161 and 200 have target lights. They are ideal companions for Ikelite housings that have built-in TTL including all their DSLR housings and many of their compact housings. Other housings with hard wired Nikonos ports work well with them, but there is no TTL.
The new DS-161 is the first strobe to include an integrated 15 watt video light as well as a target light.
For the Ikelite Ultra-compact housings we recommend one of the other strobes we carry like the Remora, or Sea & Sea YS-27 or 110a. We do not recommend the Ikelite AF-35 as it is weak and underpowered. Ikelite makes light controllers that work with point and shoot cameras to see their flash and sync with the Ikelite strobes. The controllers work fairly well, but are awkward and outdated, They are just another electrical connection to fail in our experience.
All strobes are available with whatever tray and arms package you like. All tripod screw mount point and shoot housings (most all have this mount) will fit all the trays we carry. Ikelite Compact and UltraCompact housings will only fit our flat tray. Olympus and Sea & Sea RDX housings will only fit our DSLR Tray. See Optical Ocean Sales Lighting Packages.
Clearing the Fog About Fantasea Big Eye Wide Angle Lenses
Although I am a dealer for Fanatsea, I'm first of all a diver and photographer. I care a lot that my customers have a good experience with the products I sell. There have been some reports on dive forums as to reported "fogging" of the inside of the Fantasea Line Big Eye lenses.
Fantasea is concerned with the quality of their products and do stand behind them, to the extent of pulling bad ones off the market, or testing and retesting until they are sure there are no problems. Case in fact is that the Remora strobe was held off the market for nearly 7 months due to some very minor issues. That gets expensive. But it is a better strobe now.
I contacted Howard Rosenstein, the president of Fantasea about their manufacturing process. According to his engineers the lenses ARE manufactured in a completely humidity controlled environment, aka clean room conditions. He will have more information posted soon. They are taking steps to improve the mounting skirt on the G10 model and looking at the shock cord attachments to see how they could improve them. I think some small Fastec quick release buckles would help.
After ascertaining that they were unable to do true cold water dive tests in Eliat (!), Howard readily agreed to my taking a lens out of stock (nothing special about the unit), and doing some dives with it. I used a Fuji mount, but this is exactly the same lens and came from the same as other early adopters according to him. I told him I would give him my results first, but that they would be published on ScubaBoard and my blog unedited.
I tried to the best of our local conditions here in Seattle to recreate the issues surrounding this lens. I am not a trained engineer/product tester, my approach was to basically punish the lens and use it under local conditions like any other diver would.
Temperature & Fogging Not having 80F days here, I gave it some temperature bath tests and couldn’t recreate any fogging.
I repeatedly plunged the lens into my hot tub at 104F for 10 mins and then a cold ice bath of 50 degrees. I didn’t see any immediate problem or when I left it in the cold bath. Tried 3x times. No fogging on the inside of the lens at all. Yes, definite fogging on the outside, which immediately is removed upon immersion. No other problems.
Dive Testing I did a total of 3 dives with the lens and Fuji F200. Again not empirical, but enough to see if there are defects in the design.
First dive was at the Seattle Aquarium where I'm a volunteer science diver. They have an open-system 400,000 gal tank we get to feed the fish in. It has filtered water, but otherwise is directly linked to Puget Sound.
I set up the Fuji F200, FXF-200 housing with the Big Eye lens and one Remora strobe.
Air temps were mid-60s+ warmer in the sun, and water about 52F. I warmed the lens again over a hot air duct as much as I could and then left it in the sun on a cement pool surround for 30 mins. I brought it into the tank, cleared it and observed it on the surface, then again at the bottom at 25'. Took shots for 20 mins and again observed the lens. No fogging, or other problems in rather bright conditions were found.
I would say that the Remora's beam coverage horizontally was quite good, but vertically I observed a rather sharp fall-off with this lens, even after swiveling it upwards considerably.
Second and Third Dives, were off my friend's boat out on Puget Sound. Air temps were about the same and water was bout 52F on the surface and 48F at depths not exceeding 65'.
I took about 120 shots with the Fuji and two Inon z240 strobes, which I used for their much broader power and coverage to see if I could induce the light flare artifacts noted by users.
I again observed the lens at the surface, and throughout the dive for fogging and found none.
I was finally able to recreate the issue of lens flare and by adjusting the strobes and swiveling the camera very slightly format he sun, I was able to eliminate it. Lens flare with any dome is always a problem and for best results you should use longer arms and move your lights behind the camera and swivel them outwards to use edge lighting. This also reduces backscatter.
Here's a series: Pronounced flare
A "fog" looking flare
No flare
Conclusions By in large, I found the lens to be a ball to shoot with. As you set the camera in macro mode for focus, you can get extremely close and have amazing depth of field with the lens.
It also is ideal for close-focus, wide angle shots. There is a lack of corner sharpness, but this is to be expected with a point and shoot set up. I have shot the Inon dome and yes, I would say it is sharper, but it is also about 1.5x the cost. By my eye I think many users would enjoy the sharpness and coverage offered by the lens. It adds a big tool to the average P&S'ers toolbox.
If you definitely are seeing moistureinside the lens, you have a service issue and Fantasea will repair or replace the lens under their one-year warranty. See: Fantasea Customer Service
More photos can be found here:Fuji F200 Shots (the Big Eye are the last 12 shots in this set - Note, all photos are directly from the camera with no retouching, etc.)
I hope this clears up some issues with this product, they are very popular and remain in short supply.
Test shooting the F200EXR in Fuji's WP-FXF-200 housing and two of the new Fantasea Remora strobes has led me to believe that it's a good uw photo rig, not perfect, but quite capable of wonderful shots at a reasonable price - if you shoot within it's limitations.
The Fuji F200EXR camera is Fuji's foray to using innovative Extended Definition and Range in a point and shoot camera. But underwater I've found little value to this technology, mainly because they've crippled many of the controls to make them simpler for the "average" user. This leads to the camera getting confused. For instance set to EXR mode, you cannot fire the strobe in DR D-Range Priority sub mode. You are limited to Resolution Priority, fine, but then it uses too slow a shutter speed. Setting it on EXR Auto picks the low-light, Hi-ISO SN sub-mode, as it thinks (rightly so) you are shooting in low light. Which is sort of ok for available light shots, but gets grainy and worthless with an external strobe.
But not all is lost. There is a manual mode that works pretty well. You can access the extended range if you set the ISO to 200 or above. Then you get extra Dynamic Range, which is cool. But again, under the "what was Japan thinking" they crippled the manual mode, you can select shutter speeds, but are limited to f/3 or f/9 at wide angle, (and higher f/stops at greater telephoto extension of the lens)! Ok, so set it to f/9 and use the shutter speeds and strobes to control your shots, it's not a bad situation, just annoying. There is also a "P" mode that has an "Auto" setting, a not-so-good idea underwater (as it is on nearly all cameras) and an Aperature priority mode. which is ok, except that once again it picks too slow a shutter speed uw when you use a flash. There is a dedicated underwater scene available, and it did ok on available light shots. It might do better in bluewater (filtering cyan cast) if you weren't using an external flash, but I couldn't test that.
You can generate up to 12MB images, depending on which mode you are using. I wish the camera manufacturers would bring back RAW output, it costs them nothing to do so, the F200 does a nice job with JPEGS however.
The WP-FXF-200 is a decent, $170 housing, small and with all camera controls available. I did remove the large flash diffuser to attach the sync cord, it didn't work well when just put on the front of it. I taped off he inside of the housing to remove any light leaks from the internal flash. The housing is depth rated to 40 meters (132'), and I tested it to 95 feet in cold water without any incident. About the only problem I had was hitting the mode dial on the back of the housing with my thumb.
Several really good good features make this camera very responsive and easy to use underwater.
One is "Dual IS Mode", it's built-in image stabilization mode. I found this worked pretty well, steadying some shots at the lower shutter speeds it selects on some of the auto modes, but again it only seems to kick in when you zoom. The second is sort of a sleeper; located under Power Management is a "Quick AF" mode, speeding up auto focus and supposedly using more power. In my test shooting, it made the F200 respond much faster, with very little shutter lag, a bane to most P&S photographers. BTW, "Face Detection" also works on fishes - kind of cool, moving the auto focus around as the fish moves.
Speaking of power management, I found on an hour or more of fairly steady shooting that I only used 1/4 of the lithion battery, much better than older Fuji models. Shooting movies will use it much faster.
The F200 focuses quite well in low-light, and if you don't mind grainier shots, can take good available light photos and hold both the highs and lows in a (flatter looking) shot using DR. A focus light makes it work that much faster.
Another high point of the camera is it's built in macro mode, simply awesome, most of the time I can touch the housing to the subject and it is exceedingly sharp. Coupled with Fuji's rich, saturated colors from it's great sensor, I personally think it's amongst the best P&S cameras, especially for macro, even without additional lenses. You just need to be aware of it's design limitations, they may be deal-breakers for you.
Fantasea Line has developed a range of available wide angle and mcro lenses, red filters and adapters to fit the Fuji housing. Their Big Eye FXF-100/200 restores the refraction you loose underwater, not truly super wide, but still gives a very nice result. They will have an adapter to take 67mm lenses as well, which opens a whole range of accessory lenses from a variety of manufacturers.
Settings I gravitated to are using Manual mode, f/9, ISO 200 with a shutter speed of 1/60th for W/A and moving the shutter speed way up to 1/1000th and ISO 100-200 for macro, for the sharpest shots.
The Remora is a new product for Fantasea and represents their first true amphibious strobe. It has a guide number (power) of 18, which seems to be true in my experience. The recycle time is quite fast and the strobe features a 10-100% varible output, usually found on more expensive strobes. Although it uses nearly the same flash tube as the UltraMax UDXS strobe, they have a better lens and diffuser that gives off a nice quality of light. The color temp is daylight balanced.
About my only two complains, ok 3, are:
No sealed battery compartment, if it floods, it's toast. Most other competing strobes have a separate compartment. It does have a curved back that leads water away from the opening very well. They held this product off the market for quite some time to improve the seals, but even my prototypes worked fine down to 90'.
A rectangular flash output, you have to watch which way you spin them, I use mine upside down/angled pretty often. This gets a bit annoying.
Controls on the side. Again depending on their orientation you have to really bring the whole rig down to see the adjustment. You can turn them without looking, but a couple of times I adjusted them the wrong way.
With use, you'd get used to some of these quirks.
All that said, it is a decent strobe for the money, and you can mount a focus light for targeting it. It needs a sync cord, and my testing shows that for best operation with two you should use two sync cords.
Street price of the Remora is about $200, plus a $30 cord. The next strobe up from it price-wise, is the Sea & Sea YS27DX which has a GN of 20, a much wider beam and 8 steps of adjustment. It is smaller physically and has a better build quality and sealed battery compartment. I'd definitely pick this strobe if you can afford it's $350 cost. But for it's value the Remora looks like it has a nice niche.
I used a prototype of the new Optical Ocean Sales Flat Tray (available in early September), along with handles and arms to hold the strobes. It makes for nice control of the rig and the balance overall was just slightly negative.
Compact DSLR Systems; Comparing the Olympus PT-E06 and Sea & Sea RDX Systems
I get quite a few emails asking about the Olympus PT-E06 and Sea & Sea RDX systems, as they are light, compact and relatively inexpensive. Sea & Sea's RDX housing has a received a recent upgrade for the Canon T1i 500 camera which has video, 15MP, and a lot of other new technology. It also has a more expandable lens base than the Olympus E620 or Nikon D60. Lets look at a comparison, keeping in mind that both are systems and you really need to figure lenses, ports and strobes into the picture.
Both the Sea & Sea and Olympus housings are reasonably small and lightweight, quite neutral in the water, and easy to swim. This is due to their plastic polycarbonate construction. The S&S has a 200’ depth rating, (the Oly is 140’), has metal latches, beefier build quality and controls. The Oly is a bit lighter in build quality and its overall look and feel, but both work well and fit your hands easily. You can substitute a different viewfinder to the Sea & Sea.
The S&S has two hardwire strobe ports in addition to the dual optical sync ports that both feature. You can add a TTL converter and it uses a better, industry standard bulkhead (plug) - more choices on strobes down the line. The Oly has one bulkhead and it is proprietary, only hooks to Oly strobes. Both are easy to load; camera goes on a tray that slides in and locks down.
But most people use fiber optic sync anyway as it is cheaper, easier and the Olympus UFL-2 strobe provides nice TTL, controllable from the camera, but it is a less powerful strobe than the Sea & Sea YS110a (same price for both strobes). In my experience its recycle time is also slower. The YS-110a allows for D-TTL with the fiber optic connection. Some have used this strobe on the Olympus system with good success. There is also the less expensive, manually controlled YS-27DX strobe. It's less powerful, but you can buy two of them for about the price of one YS-110a, and it’s not a bad product.
The ports are quite different. The Oly uses a screw on port. Each lens pretty much requires a different port and they are a bit limited to working with Olympus lenses. The dome port for wide angle is high quality glass, but pricey. Their ports include a focus gear to drive the zoom. There are third party ports that offer different options.
The S&S uses a bayonet mount. The RDX system has a standard port that accommodates the “kit lens” as well as the 60mm macro! You can buy an adapter ring and then you have access to a very extensive array of NX S&S ports. You have choices on dome ports, etc. for various wide angle lenses Third party lenses are supported to an extent. Focus gears are sold separately.
Sea & Sea supports a pretty expansive list of lenses and more are being added all the time. You can piece together different rings and adapters with various ports to work with other lenses, which you can’t do with the Olympus. This also becomes a factor when traveling, as you have to take several ports for the Oly, but maybe only a couple of ports plus adapters for the S&S.
As far as trays and arms, Sea & Sea sells the excellent, but again pricey Grip Stay-L RDX tray that will fit either the Oly or S&S housings. It has pistol grips and lots of adjustment with a cool quick release clamp. However, Optical Ocean sales will be offering a new DSLR tray with taller rubber grip handles for about half the cost of the Sea & Sea offering. It will also fit both housings and is lighter weight but sturdy. It should be available in a couple of weeks.
So overall, the S&S is more expensive going in, by about $7-800 more, but you’ll cover more lenses and get a higher quality, and more flexible, system overall. Like all DSLR systems, you want to put your money into lenses, ports and strobes, as these can be used over and over as you progress with new bodies and housings.
If I was to be buying a system at this level, the S&S RDX-500/Canon t1i 500 with the YS-110a strobe is what I’d get. It’s a better camera than the Nikon D-60 or the Oly E-620, albeit more expensive.
The new Olympus PT-E06 housing is now shipping for the (also new) E-620 DSLR. Features are identical to the PT-E05 with a few controls moved. Includes cam-lock closure, dual rear o-rings, slide out mounting tray, etc. Dual optical sync ports along with one Olympus hard-wired bulkhead. Previous Olympus ports are compatible. 40 meter/140' depth rating.
I also tested it's fit on the Sea & Sea RDX Grip Stay-L Tray. Olympus doesn't have a decent 2 handle solution (or certainly one that is available in the US). It fits very well with lots of room for adjustment. (On the photos I've moved the handles in quite a bit.) Although it is expensive (MSRP $335) it does have a quick release that's a very nice feature. It's about 2.5#, and I believe that it will make the Oly system a bit negative, but not more than a pound or so. I've added Optical Ocean Sales Ball to Base adapters, the tray only comes with the standard S&S slide-on mounts.
Dusted off the fins and got back into the water today.
Jim and Stan met me under cloudy and wet skies. However the rain held off enough for us to get into the water, with even a trace of light from the sun.
After taking off an ACB weight pouch packet to get it sewed, I managed to leave it at Fisheries Supply last night. So I went with one pouch and stuck 10# of weight in my drysuit pocket. Not very comfortable, but enough to get me down.
We swam out and dropped down. I saw Jim for a bit and then he was gone. Stan apparently aborted due to a suit leak, and after Jim checked on him he couldn't find me. I was shooting some of the 3/4" red flabelina nudis I seem to find there. It's funny I never see any larger ones, just the itty bitty ones. But good foil for the 50mm macro on my demo Oly E520 rig.
I shot them, some fairly large golden dironas and a painted greenling hiding under an anemone, along with some other critters. Very few fish around at all. I was also shooting some environmental shots of eelgrass for a state job I'm working on. Not a real exciting dive, but it sure was great to be back in the water.
The Olympus E520 shot pretty well, with the UFL-2 strobe's TTL pretty well spot on in exposure. The light was a bit contrasty as I didn't have a diffuser supplied.
The Live View was very slow to shoot, almost unusable, and I reverted to using the viewfinder. That worked fine. My only other complaint is that the strap on the right side is a bit small for dry glove use, need to be longer. The rig overall was very light, easy-to-use and nice to handle compared to my Nikon D80, but the D80 is much more responsive with a relatively huge viewfinder. Not a fair comparison, as the Oly E520 is about 1/3 less expensive. They are coming out with a new model, the E620 in a couple of months that is more responsive and more of a mid-range camera. I also shot with one of the Big Blue 1x5AF focus lights and it was great, nice wide, even beam, with good brightness.
I thought the 50mm macro was ok, certainly sharp, a bit slow on auto focus, even against my older 60 Nikor without an AFS lens motor. But with a little use, I got accustomed to it. I used the S-AF-M setting and could auto focus then dial in manual focus, without missing a beat, no switches needed and the setting can be changed with a push of the button.
Olympus Imaging has recently reved it's 2009 Stylus lineup with new rebranded "Tough" cameras and now the new PT-045 and PT-047 housings.
The T-8000 now sports 12MP, with the T-6000 at 10MP. Both cameras are practically indestructible feature a shock, crush, freeze and water-proof design. The T-6000 is depth-rated to 10' and the T-8000 to 33'. Both have a great 3.6x lens with a 35mm equivalent of 28-102mm and dual image stabilization for blur-free photos, first seen on the 1030sw. Built-in macro can shoot down to .8 of an inch. New is a "Tap" control where you can access certain camera features simply by tapping the side of the camera case, even with gloves on.
Besides their durability and depth rating, what makes these cameras ideal for underwater photographers is their four built-in underwater settings to adjust the camera for different types of shots. These include Underwater Snapshot, Wideangle 1 & 2, and Macro. This is great for new users to capture different shots right out of the box. More advanced users will enjoy Programmed Auto and other modes. Much more information is available from Olympus.
As nice as these upgraded cameras are, what makes their release for underwater photographers even better are the sexy new black housings the PT-045 (T-8000) and PT-47 (T-6000). Olympus has copied features from their run-away best-selling PT-EO5 housing for the Olympus E-520 DSLR camera and brought them to point and shoot simplicity.
Features of both the PT-045 and PT-047 housings are nearly identical.
New is a locked twist cam closure, that along with simple drop-in alignment, makes this a plug and play housing, no trays, screws or other internal mounting is necessary.
But the black isn't just there for looks, divers that use an external strobe have for years blocked off all the light coming from the camera's flash, except for a small area where a fiber optic sync cord is mounted to fire an external strobe. The trend today is for manufacturers to include a plug-in port for an optical sync cord on many DSLRs. Olympus now extends that idea with a black slide-in plug mount that replaces the strobe diffuser. The plug fits the standard Olympus, Sea & Sea, Fantasea and other plug-in cords.
Other intelligent features of the Olympus housings include a "hotshoe" style mount for a small strobe or focus light and ranked, labeled, camera controls that are separated both by position and height, so that use with gloves is much easier. Ports have 55mm screw-in threads and accept external wide and macro angle lenses from Fantasea and others.
The cameras and housings are available separately or in bundles together.
Besides the above cameras, Olympus also released the value-priced PT-046 housing for the new FE-3010.
We've been spotting these guys now again this summer. They are rare to see and very shy, usually hiding away deep in a nook or cranny. They seem to like the wood pilings at Seacrest Park, our local after work divesite here in Seattle and do tend to come out a bit at night.
A few weeks ago, while testing my drysuit (and without camera, of course) we found 5 of them on one log! I had to go back with my camera and see if I could hunt them down. There is one very large Warbonnet, maybe 12-15' (and they are only supposed to get to 10") at the end of the log. I call him "Big Daddy". Then there are usually a few smaller ones around. I found Big Daddy ok, and he was playing his usual games of diving into the interior of the log. But as I was swimming away, I saw another freely swimming down the log. But quickly lost it (her?) in the growth. I swam around for a while hoping they'd poke out again and searching the log I found it amongst the tunicates, sponge and anemones.
Having a clear go, I cranked off a huge amount of shots, as the D80 and z240 strobes can shoot very quickly. Shot with/without my woody diopter and between f/14-f/16 at 100th sec.
I was quite pleased with the results and on the way back almost missed one of the largest octopus I've ever seen. Apparently there are 3 of them hanging around, keeping the crab population in check. Macro to wide angle; Seacrest is an amazing site.
I spent the day with my friend Dave Hancock, aka "DiveAlert Dave" out on his boat on Sunday. We went to Lopez Island in the San Juans, north of Seattle to dive a couple of sites.
Long Island is a high current area and has lots of color and life. We also dove a nearby rock off the south end of Lopez Island that turned out to be pretty good, once we found the sweet spot. Weather and seas were calm after a huge storm the day before.
Shot with Nikon D80 Sigma 17-70 and Nikon 60mm macro, a Woody at times and 2x Inon 240z.
Four of us went out on my friend Doc Kay's boat yesterday. The goal was to get Denise comfortable and the Carl Baird & I more comfortable with our new DUI suits. Doc was also fiddling with new equipment configurations, or course, what else is new? ;-)
The day was perfect for diving, a bit overcast to keep the heat down with just a bit of a northerly blowing. We got through the locks after a dog & man overboard incident (guy was letting his dog pee and fell off from another boat..!). We headed north to Boeing Creek and motored around to find the slope of the reef (we thought) and dropped anchor with little current showing.
Denise and I dropped in and went down a stern anchor to 30'. She had no problems clearing and seemed to do well. We swam out west thinking to find the reef, but after a circle I decided we'd missed it and after swimming quite a ways north we found it's edge. Carl found it ok as well.
The water was very clear, viz about 35'+ and the reef teamed with life. Lots of fish, and I was very excited to see a huge school of black rockfish going all the way to the surface. A few browns and olives as well. Most were smaller, obviously coming of age since the recent order protecting them in Puget Sound. There were a few larger Quilbacks and Canaries as well as an assortment of lings, C-O sole, even one larger Cabazon. Nudibranchs and other small invertebrates dotted the rocks along with kelp and plumose. The reef in such clear conditions was really beautiful.
Denise did quite well, seeming to be comfortable, until she got a bad leg cramp. So I helped her back up the slope and back to the boat, then continued my dive. I dropped down the anchor to find the scooter tied off, Doc was going to use it, but it seemed inoperable. I saw him, and then did a rather determined spiney lumpsucker search n the shallows to no avail.
Doc had a frustrating dive missing the reef, and while the scooter seemed to work ok on the surface, it didn't work on the bottom for long. Battery was fine and there were no floods, etc. I haven't used it for a while, as I'm usually carrying a large camera, so I thought I'd see what was going on.
Carl and I were up for a second dive, he was working out his weighting and trim. I am pretty comfortable in my new DUI CF200 suit, nice not to have to patch a suit every time I dive. Doc moved the boat north and Carl and I dropped in.
We swam around for a while finally coming upon a large anchor block and old buoy line. I did find a rather large Heart Crab there, with it's triangular body covered in thorns. We swam slowly back until Carl signaled he was low on gas and we came up and safety stopped and swam to the boat. I still had 1600#, so I took the scooter to do some testing. After going along just fine for a ways, I headed down the slope, at 33' it stopped. I swam it back up a bit and then it went off again fine. I scootered along in 15-20' for a long time, buzzing ling cod and generally making a pest of myself. Then I went back down the slope. 33' it stopped again. OK, depth related, I swam it up and at 30' it worked ok. Hmmm, depth is shorting the "kill switch". I tested it 3 more times and it was very consistent. Scooter is rated for like 200' and I've had it down to 120' for quite a while at times, so something is amiss. The guys at UWS will sort it out.
We headed back to the locks in the sun, and got home after a long wait, as they are only using the large locks this summer.
Last week as part of the 4th of July festivities there was a tall ships festival. For the first time in 20 years the Coast Guard cadet training ship "Eagle" came to town. This ship was originally built as a Nazi training ship and was taken over as part of war reparations.
The Eagle is a three-masted sailing barque with 21,350 square feet of sail. It is home ported at the CG Academy, New London, Connecticut. It is the only active commissioned sailing vessel in the U.S. maritime services. She is one of five such training barques in world. Remarkably, her surviving sister ships include the Mircea of Romania, Sagres II of Portugal, Gorch Fock of Germany, and Tovarich of Russia.
Today's Eagle, the seventh in a long line of proud cutters to bear the name, was built in 1936 by the Blohm & Voss Shipyard, Hamburg, Germany, as a training vessel for German Navy cadets. It was commissioned Horst Wessel and served as a training ship for the Kriegsmarine throughout World War II.
Horst Wessel (1907-1930) was a Nazi party member, SA Stormtrooper and purported pimp who was killed fighting German Communists in 1930. Some months before he died, Wessel had written the verses to what would become the "Horst Wessel Lied" but it first gained popular currency when a choir of Stormtroopers performed it at his funeral. It was later recorded, and in 1931 it became the official anthem of the Nazi Party, played alongside Deutschland über Alles at all official occasions.
I do some work of the the coasties and they asked me to shoot some stuff for fun. Might sell a few shots for their office walls. Their guys were up in helos, I'm angling for that the next time... These were shot with my Nikon D80, using a Sigma 17-70 and 70-300. I used a polarizing lens on most of them, it was very hazy, hot and and humid.
Adventurer, diver, sailor, photographer, writer and sometimes graphic designer.
Proprietor of Optical Ocean Sales, LLC.
Volunteer scientific diver for The Seattle Aquarium.
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