On Saturday, December 6, 2008, I dove with Ric Selver and Shawn (divemaster) from Ocean Concepts. We did two dives, the Mahi, a 95 foot deep dive on a ship that was intentionally sunk as an artificial reef and Turtle Reef, a 35 foot deep dive on a shallow coral reef.
I dove with Ric. Shawn was the divemaster for our group. We both had cameras. There were 12 divers and two "guides", so they paired up all the divers and the two guides each took a group.
Our group was the first in this time, and Ric and I were the second pair in the water. Headed down the mooring line when all of our group was in. Once again had a little challenge with the camera. I am not sure whether it is the camera or just some bad batteries, but I got to the bottom and turned the camera on and immediately it said "batteries exhausted."
We dropped right down to the bottom at the stern of the wreck and since Shawn was with a couple of Advanced Open Water students, I took Ric on a tour of the wreck. We made one circuit of the wreck near the bootom. I pointed out a couple of Blue Dragon Nudibranchs and an Imperial Nudibranch. I managed to get a few photos by turning off the camera between shots and only having it on just long enough to take a picture.
Blue Dragon Nudibranch
When we were both down to around 1000 psi, I signalled to Ric to follow me and we began our ascent at the mast. We slowly made our way from the mast to the flag and I took a photo of Ric holding it out and then we swam over to the hang bar and finished our ascent there. Did a safety stop at the bar and then Ric and I swam over to the boat and got out.
Ric Selver
As I would point things out to Ric, he would look at them and then point to his head, but did not take any photos. I thought that was a little funny, but when we got back on board, I found that he had left his camera in the wrong mode before putting it into his housing and he could not change modes under water. What a pain. At least my housing gives me access to all modes! I changed the batteries in the camera during the surface interval.
For the second dive, I giant strided in and we grouped at the surface and then dropped down to the bottom. From the surface, you could see the surge moving sand on the bottom. It was pretty strong when we got down, and the vizibility really suffered. At the best it was 30 feet. At the worst, less than 10 feet, and changing all the time. It was so strong that it was nearly impossible to hold position.
We went on a little tour of the reef. I didn't get much farther with the second set of batteries before getting the same result - "batteries exhausted." I did the same thing and managed a few photos, but they all have lots of backsplatter from all the junk in the water.
Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse
Got my best photo so far of a Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse, a not so good photo of a Raccoon Butterflyfish, and a couple of photos of a Banded Urchin that has white spines with black bars rather than the other way around. It is the first one I have seen.
Banded Urchin (white spines)
Ric left his weight belt on the boat! Somehow he managed to get down to the bottom and then started picking up rocks and tucking them into his waistband. He managed to stay down that way for 49 minutes before he bailed. Problem was, when he did go, a long while after I tried to get him to pair up with another diver who was low on air, he did not let me know, so I was not sure where he was.
I swam around under the boat for a while and then slowly began my ascent. I did a safety stop for kicks and swam slowly over to the boat and got out. Ric was on board. I still had 1000 psi and could have stayed in for quite a while more.
