Brainless Bahamian Diver

 

(The Map Of Today, Resort is red, and dive sites yellow)

   
     So the beginning of today was a disaster on my part, as I am a raging idiot. The day started with me sleeping too late and being woken up a second time 15 minutes before dive time, so I rushed to breakfast, ate as much as I could as quickly as possible, and rushed to the photo studio to set up. Everything went seemingly well, but I didn't take a test shot, big mistake. Our first dive was at the same manta spot as last week, and I was hoping to get some cool shots. We went out to the boat and headed to the spot. After the 40 minute ride out, Armin hopped into the water and found no mantas, so we checked another spot, and there was the wrong current for mantas to be there. We decided to dive the first manta spot anyway, and hoped they would arrive while we were there. So we went down and I started shooting, and SURPRISE like a moron I had failed to connect the interior strobe link to my camera's flash port. There was nothing I could do while on the dive, so I swam around like a lost puppy watching everyone else take shots. Leon and I surfaced early, saving air for Arborek island jetty, I fixed the flash issue, and replaced the back plate to my camera housing. After the others came up, we headed to Arborek, and promptly hopped in on the jetty and started shooting.

 

(The Dock Posts At Arborek Island)

    I swam to the sweet spot on the dock, and started shooting. Half way through,mi realised that jackass Scott had left the lens on manual focus, and I don't have the focus ring, so I had very limited focus range, so I didn't nail all of my shots, but some came out quite well. There were lots of fish around the posts, and it made for some very cool shots. I got back onto the boat and fixed my other fault. After a short coffee/snack break on the Arborek dock, we headed to Lalosi again. It was a great dive tons of visibility, and lot of life. I finally caught my clownfish, I sat on their anemone for 10 minutes taking shot after shot, waiting for them to be in the right spot.

 

(First Good Shot Of A Clown fish)

    I got some great shots of coral on Lalosi as well, it really is a spectacular dive site. The number of fish you see here is stunning, it really makes Nassau look like a ghost town, but there are no where near as many sharks here as we have at home, and they tell me this is because of shark finning. We had a great long at Lalosi spotting 4 more wobbegong sharks, and plenty of soft corals.

 

(Wobbegong Shark)

    Lalosi was home to another mess up today, I lost my dive flashlight. We were working on taking shots with divers in them, and Claudia was showing me the effect of using a dive light in the shot. I failed to remember that I had a shutter activated strobe, and it would turn off when my flashes fired. We took a few shots, and Claudia gave me my light back. I have been using a bush mechanic rig to hold the light on my camera housing, and when I reattached it I guess I damaged the rig, so the light fell off on the ascent. We are going to go back and try to recover it, but I am not certain it will be found, not the end of the world, and it certainly fit the failure theme of my morning. We left. Lalosi and came back to Pef for lunch, where we ate with the owners of PutiRaja Ken and Josephine, they really are remarkable people, and run a beautiful boat. We hung around on Pef until 3 when we went out for our afternoon dive.

 

(Coral At Lalosi)

    We left Pef at around 3:15 after the briefing, and headed back to Armin and Sabine, the two dive coordinator's favourite spot Yembraimuk. Inhale to admit after four dives there in two weeks there I am bloody well sick of it. The visibility was terrible, very green and murky, but there was one positive to it. We came across these neon pink and orange anemones loaded with clownfish. I got several good shots here, but the big neon pink anemone had some of the most timid clownfish in it I have ever seen. I could not get them out long enough to get a good shot of them, so I was a little frustrated, but I did get a great shot of two clownfish In one of the orange anemones.

 

(Amazing Pink Anemone At Yembraimuk)

 

(Best Shot Of Mine So Far)

    My camera lessons are starting to take effect, I am more independent on my shooting now, I have figured out most of my strobe flash positions, so I can adjust them myself, and I have a better understanding on adjusting my camera settings for each shot. Leon and Claudia have been incredibly helpful in teaching me, and they seem pleased with my progress. Hopefully tomorrow I will be less of an air head than I was today, and I will have fewer problems.

 

(Claudia Giving My Photos some more action)