Finally!!!!

A bunch of things have happened recently, most of them good.

At long last, we got a new engine installed in our personal boat “Excellent Adventure” so now we can go boating and diving on weekends again. New engine is the same size, 5.7L or 350cid, but 310 horsepower. The old engine was only 188 horsepower. So once it gets broken in – and when the weather cooperates – the boat should run faster as well as better.

Ikelite sent back my camera housing so I was finally able to get some new underwater pictures. Now I just have to convince our new instructor, Brian, that he needs to sit on the boat while I dive. When the water was cold I did not mind letting him dive; now that the water is warming back up I feel the need.

Next weekend we are going to St Croix and I hope to get some diving in and take some pictures. I will post an update.

And finally, our webcam is working (thanks to Sam at Aqua Action). You can see the images on Summer’s website.

Where are the pictures?

Why are there no new pictures? Well my camera housing needs repairs. My ikelite  http://www.ikelite.com/ underwater housing, which is only seven months old, has rusty latch springs. They are supposed to be stainless and not rust, but they are rusty. So I am having to send the housing back for repairs. In addition, the charger for the strobe batteries is no longer working. So it has to go back as well. I expect they will not return for four weeks.

To say the least I am not pleased with ikelite at this point. I may get my old Canon housing out of storage and put it back into service. But my strobe will not work with the old housing which will impact the quality of the pictures.

Lionfish

Last week one of our divers spotted a lionfish on Dive Flag Rock. He deployed the marker I had given him and on his return to the boat told me where the fish was. Julian, the divemaster, is a vegetarian and is against killing anything, so we made plans to return two days later, Saturday, to remove the lionfish.

On Saturday, Mike (the diver who had spotted the lionfish), Catherine, Jake, Craig and I returned to Dive Flag Rock to remove the fish (and enjoy a great dive). Mike found his marker and, using my Foldspear was able to remove the lionfish. Following the lead of Joe in St. Croix, I have a modified trident tip on my spear. I took mine to Bruce Merced (welder extraordinaire) and had two tips (six prongs) welded together. My spear now has six barbed prongs in the area of a fifty cent piece; no way the lionfish is going to get away.

Mike had a GoPro HD camera and I had my Canon so I was able to shoot video of him extracting the lionfish. The video is here, and on YouTube.

Later, back in Secret Harbour, Jake found an octopus while he was snorkeling. He came to the dive shop and asked if he could feed the lionfish to the octopus. The octopus was REALLY pleased with the free meal. Unfortunately, I did not get video of that part. The next day all that was left of the lionfish were its spines, which we found outside the octopus’ lair.  Since octopus are very smart and supposedly teach their young, maybe they will start eating the lionfish on their own.

Sunday 3/13/11, Aqua Action will be conducting a search for more lionfish under the CORE program. If you want to participate in future searches contact nolionfishstt@yahoo.com.

Captain Bill

How I ended up diving in Paradise … For a living.

How did this all start?

In 2003 friends of ours were on their boat in Bonaire and invited us to come visit them. Bonaire, though a beautiful place, lacks much to do other than wind surfing and scuba diving.  So before going to Bonaire I decided to get certified (to dive that is).

Ian Drummond was working at Blue Island Divers in Crown Bay and certified me before we left.  When I returned to St. Thomas, and before our next trip to Bonaire, I earned my Advanced Open Water certification.

Our second trip to Bonaire started my addiction to diving. I had already begun to look forward to the day when I could retire and spend my days diving.  As July 2008 and my retirement got closer, I decided that I could not afford to go diving every day unless I could do it for free.  My plan became to get certified as a Divemaster and get my US Coast Guard Masters license.

Sam and Diane took over Aqua Action Dive Center and I got my Divemaster certification in December 2008. I also got my Master’s (Captain’s) license around the same time. I started working when needed around Aqua Action until it became an almost full-time job.

My photography started fairly early in my diving. I had a Canon Powershot A40 and added a waterproof case and started taking pictures while I was diving.  When the zoom on the camera quit working, I used that as an excuse to get a better camera. My next, and current, camera is a Canon G10. What a difference that made! The camera is still better than I can take advantage of, but I am learning.

I first had a Canon underwater case with a slave strobe. Since the camera did not know that there was a strobe, getting usable pictures was totally by luck. Usually they were too dark or burned out. One of our divers told me a horror story about his G10 getting flooded in a Canon housing, which prompted me to use that as excuse to get a better housing. My slave strobe had also decided to die so I went looking for a new housing/strobe set-up.

Wayne at Red Hook Dive Center told me that they were now Ikelite dealers, so I ended up with a Ikelite housing and DS 51 substrobe. I love the strobe but there are a number of things about the housing that could have been done better. But the strobe is now connected to the camera through the TTL hotshoe, which means the strobe and camera can talk to each other. This makes getting the exposure right a lot easier.

So now when I dive I try and take my camera with me. My pictures seem to be getting better so what you see is a progression. Hopefully, as I continue to dive my pictures will get even better.

Captain Bill
Diving in Paradise