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What The Pros Say

Brian Bolton

Flapnose Rays At The Catalina Islands.by Brian Bolton

Diving

On the first day of diving, we visited sites called “The Shark Place” and “Argentina”. The first dive was to 80 feet maximum depth and we totaled about 40 minutes of dive time on Nitrox. We used computers and Nitrox on all dives. The second dive was to about 70 feet maximum depth and we totaled about 45 minutes. On the second dive, there was some current. There were also some vertical and horizontal thermoclines where the water temperature dropped from 82 degrees to about 75 degrees. For all of the dives, we used 3mm wetsuits and that seemed to work fine.

We saw, on this set of dives, some whitetip reef sharks, large morays, harlequin shrimp and large schools of fish. There were lots of macro subjects for us to see and photograph.

My son shot mostly macro images on this trip. He used a Nikonos V, an Ikelite Substrobe 50 and a macro mount with a 1:3 extension tube attached to the Nikonos 35mm lens. Taking macro photos in current and/or surge can be difficult for an adult diver but my 15 year old seemed to have fun with the challenge. Frankly, his macro images were as good as any I have taken under these conditions. He used 100-speed film for most of his images and took the macro images that appear at the bottom of this report.

I used a Nikonos V with an Ikelite Substrobe 100a with a 20-mm Sea and Sea lens. We both switched back and forth between TTL and manual and bracketed the images. I also used 400-speed film a few times and shot available light with a correction filter on the 20 mm. Top side photos were taken with a Fuji S2 Pro with a 24mm to 120mm Nikon zoom. I felt like the Fuji gave me some really good color saturation. Anyway, photographers will have endless subjects and views so bring plenty of lenses and setups.

My wife and I visited the Catalinas on one of the days. This dive, as all dives in this area, are drift dives so make sure you bring your safety sausage and some type of surface signaling device here. The Northwest Drift was our first dive and we got a 45-minute dive to a maximum depth of about 80 feet. On this dive, we saw large schools of Flapnose rays and eagle rays. I took this image while chasing one particular school using the 20mm lens with a correction filter and 400-speed film.

BoltonThe best shutter speed I could get was about a 60th of a second and visibility on most dives at all of the sites did not exceed 50 feet. The second site was the Widow Maker and we had about a 35-minute dive although I chased some fish briefly to a depth of about 90 feet. The Nitrox seemed to help in negotiating current and chasing fish for photo images. We saw large bump head parrotfish, blue angel fish and large rock walls covered with soft corals.

Panamic Green Moray. by Kevin Bolton

My son and I were brought to a dive site called The Aquarium. Maximum depth for the first dive was 80 feet for about 35 minutes total. The temperature dropped here to about 72 degrees for a few minutes on this day in the thermoclines. We returned to the Shark Place for the second dive to about the same depth for about 40 minutes. Here, we saw some large stingrays that seemed to be the size of a small car.

I requested a night dive and was offered the same. We did our night dive on the third day and a staff diver, Fernando, took my wife and me with another couple, to the Tortuga wreck. The wreck is at about 70 feet and is the home to some large parrotfish. There were puffers, porcupine fish and jeweled morays everywhere that night. We ended up getting about a 50-minute dive. The Divemaster covered night diving procedures, signals and lost diver procedures unique to night diving in his briefing. Everyone had a great and relaxing experience. I was especially happy about this dive as this was only my wife’s second night dive. I informed Fernando of this fact before the dive and he made sure that my wife was comfortable before jumping in. Night diving will be made available by this operation upon request so bring your night diving gear if you are interested. However, if you do not have lights, the shop has lights for rental that appeared to be in good shape.

On our last day, we returned to a site that my son really enjoyed last year, Virador. We ended up getting a 45-minute dive to a maximum of 85 feet on the first dive with Nitrox.

On this dive, we had requested the Divemaster help us find a seahorse, which he did. My son and I took turns bracketing photos of the seahorse at the top of this report. My son also happened upon a large moray and managed to shoot the image in this report. We also saw numerous whitetips and some morays. On the second dive, we returned to another section of Argentina and saw a turtle grazing, whitetips, eels, scorpion fish and a friendly porcupine fish.

On both dives, we encountered some current and thermoclines so the dive was somewhat challenging, especially given that we were trying to get some good images on our last day of diving. The staff did a good job of finding the photo subjects that we were seeking. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time or film to shoot everything that we wanted. So, we will probably return again and try to get some more bottom time with our photo subjects.

We were glad that we brought gloves on this trip. Because of the tendency for strong current, you may need them to get brief handholds on the rocks. But, be very careful not to grab the Scorpionfish which are abundant and hard to see, as you can appreciate from the photo at the end of this report. Also, some of the buoy lines used for safety stops have small hazards attached and the gloves will protect your hands as you hold on to the line during your safety stop. If you are a photographer, bring plenty of batteries for your camera, strobe, underwater lights, and whatever else needs batteries. Batteries are expensive and camera batteries as well as computer batteries are non-existent.