Posts filed under 'SCUBA'
Looking for deep water gorgonian corals can be tough business, given that they’re a rare find South of the USA-Canada border on the West Coast. A team of divers from Northwest Dive Club and I headed up to Nootka Sound just off of beautiful Vancouver Island for a week of diving and relaxation in the great Canadian wilderness. A town with a population of around 350 during the Winter months, Tahsis, BC is not only off the beaten path – it’s completely off the grid. Pristine emerald waters, filled with life ranging in size from the smallest Opalescent Nudibranch to the largest Sea Lions awaited us.
Continue Reading October 28th, 2009
Of all the fancy dive gear we don to enter the seas (and lakes), no other is as essential to movement in the water than a set of fins. A good fin can make a significant difference in terms of air consumption, maneuverability and motility. Every few years I take a survey of the fins on the market, to best determine which manufacturers are producing ergonomic, rugged and well-designed fins. This time around, there’s a clear winner for the category of cold water, technical diving.
Continue Reading October 8th, 2009
The Alki Junkyard is a lesser known dive site, just around the corner from several very popular Seacrest dive sites, that offers some hidden jewels in the rough. From “Shaggy Mouse” Nudibranchs and Giant Sea Spiders to Juvenile Wolf Eels – it’s a great spot to shoot photos and to enjoy making a dive plan for a moderately current intensive dive site (read: OW classes aren’t held here). The eel grass looks like wheat, blowing in the wind – to be enjoyed during your safety stop, and there’s the occasional score that a bottle hunter can enjoy finding at this dive site.
Continue Reading September 18th, 2009
A new map has been published, detailing a number of great dive sites in Puget Sound. The online PDF version can be found here, or you can pick up a hardcopy in any number of dive shops around the Pacific Northwest. (Via Janna Nichols)
August 28th, 2009
This past weekend a group of Northwest Dive Club buddies and I headed out to the Olympic Peninsula to dive in Lake Crescent. This alpine lake is nestled in the Olympic National Park, a temperate rainforest and one of Washington State’s great natural treasures. Among the group of technical divers in attendance, we had four gentlemen who played various roles in the solving of a 72 year-old mystery, involving the disappearance of a young couple back in the late 1920s. A team of divers was able to discover the location of the submerged car that carried this young couple to their tragic deaths, so many decades ago.
Continue Reading October 1st, 2008
Today I did my first solo CCR dive, and brought along the new Nikon D300/Subal ND30 rig. It was also my first time using the 105mm macro lens (and accompanying port). I didn’t get fantastic shots, but it was one of the most challenging, complex dives I’ve ever done, simply because there was so much to think about (both camera and CCR) and no buddy to depend on or ask for help.
Continue Reading September 18th, 2008
One of my favorite dive sites in the Pacific Northwest is about to be destroyed, so I went diving there recently with a couple good buddies and shot the last photos I’ll ever take at this gem of a dive site. A long story short, Governor Christine Gregoire’s Puget Sound Initiative aims to remove pilings in our waters containing the chemical “creosote”. But, there are several red flags pertaining to the selection of this site, among hundreds to choose from, since this particular set of creosote pilings happens to be home to an abundant amount of local marine life.
Continue Reading September 8th, 2008
Well, this afternoon my good dive buddy Nailer and I (and our new buddy Larry) threw up our caps (hoods?) as we graduated from Advanced Closed Circuit Rebreather (CCR) Trimix class (I believe this is called Mod 3 in Europe). This means that I can use hypoxic amounts of oxygen (less than 16%) mixed with helium and nitrogen, in various amounts, as diluent when mixing with pure oxygen in a closed breathing loop. I am now certified to dive to 330 feet, which opens up a lot of diving options.
It seems like forever ago, but just 7 months prior I started my first CCR class, Air Diluent CCR cert. It did take me months to find the groove on the Meg, but sometime along the way it just clicked. I’m glad I stuck with it because honestly, those first dozen dives or so had me thinking, what have I done?. Now I feel pretty natural in the water again, not as carefree as on OC before I made the switch, but definitely confident, which is huge.
Continue Reading June 16th, 2008
My dive buddy Josh, aka Nailer99, offers up his account of our recent COPIS Megalodon CCR training from Silent Scuba instructor Mel Clark. All day, every day for a week solid – this was some of the toughest dive training I’ve ever done – but the end result is that we can now stay down for hours on end, and this opens up our NDLs tremendously so that we can stay deeper for longer. With virtually no bubbles, fish and other marine life came right up to us. I can’t wait to shoot some stills and video with the mCCR. I’m looking forward to doing many dives with my new COPIS. It wasn’t cheap (in terms of time or money) but the training corresponds to the higher level of proficiency and diligence needed to dive a Closed Circuit Rebreather like the manual Megalodon from Innerspace Systems.
Continue Reading November 23rd, 2007
After taking a few videos of sixgill sharks lately, I realized just how lacking my Casio EX-Z1050’s video capabilities are. So, I decided last week that it was time to take the plunge and so I’m delving into the world of underwater high-definition video. I won’t tell you much about it yet, since I haven’t even gotten this rig wet yet – but I’ll leave you all with some photos that should make your mouth water.
Continue Reading October 4th, 2007
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