Tag Archives: parrotfish
October 30, 2009

PV006: Diving with Dive Key West

Hoo boy.  This was a tough podcast to edit.  I can remember working on the first cut on the airplane down to Seattle back in early September.  Why so difficult?  Well, I think I underestimated how much “story” I wanted to put in.  As I mention in the video, Oksana and I wanted to tie this episode back to the last, so we tailored our little speeches around that.  Unfortunately, once I started editing, I realized I had absolutely nothing to show while we talked — we’re not in the habit of taking videos of dive shop storefronts. Yet.

I decided to do what I could with what I had, but the real problem was that I lost one crucial little thing:  Motivation.  Eventually I battered my way through the editing process, but I’m not 100% happy with the results.  Oksana really liked it, though.  Maybe you will, too.

We did a total of four dives with Dive Key West and we’ve got a couple more stories to tell.  I don’t know if I’m going to jump right into that now or wait until we get back from our Puerto Rico vacation coming up in November.  That might be the perfect time to practice some “on the road” podcasting… we’ll see.

(Update: Never did get around to editing the rest of that footage, but we did go back and dive with Dive Key West again in 2010.  Check out our Lobster Season video!)

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August 1, 2008

Australia: Diving the Great Barrier Reef

Note the heavy grain, the terrible exposure.  We're in disposible camera country now.

You know what they say about a picture’s worth, right? Well, sadly, we have hardly any decent photos to show from our diving trip on the Great Barrier Reef, so I compensated by writing about our experiences instead. Here comes about 9 pictures’ worth of memories.
I’m kicking myself for not renting a digital camera for our dives ($150 for 4 days.) We bought a few disposable cameras instead, and boy, what a disappointment! Whole rolls of film went inexplicably unexposed. Others were trashed either in the development process or by the camera’s winding mechanism, resulting in double or even triple exposures. Consequently, some of the best moments of our dives live on only in these words or, at best, in severely grainy ISO800.

These dives occurred in November 2007. It didn’t take me nine months to write all this; rather it took that long to psych myself up for the task. Don’t worry, Oksana and I resolved to buy a proper underwater camera before our next dive.Okay, where were we? Oh, yeah:

I shuffled up to the side of the boat and fixed my mask into place. Left hand securing my weight belt and dive gages, the right pressing my mask and regulator to my face. I inhaled deeply, took a giant stride forward, stepped out into space. Here comes the Great Barrier Reef.

Wait a minute, back up. Before I took the plunge into the Great Barrier Reef, I was stopped at the edge of the boat by tug on my back. One of the divemasters on board had a hold of my tank’s valve. “Who’s your dive buddy?” he asked. “Uh, my wife. Why?” “Because your air is almost all the way off,” he said while twisting the valve all the way open. “Better talk to her about that.” Oksana was already in the water; she didn’t hear the exchange. “Thanks. I’ll make sure to mention it.” We were packed pretty tightly at the rail, and the boat was rocking side-to-side in the swells. With the divemaster cranking away at my tank valve, I almost lost my balance. I took a clumsy, half-step back before I caught myself, but the underwater photographer was right behind me. The bottom edge of my tank must have bumped into the huge glass port of her camera enclosure. Behind me, I heard her say, “Shit! Shitshitshit!” When I turned to look, she was pushing her way through the crowd and rubbing the glass with her finger. I felt guilty, and tried to apologize, but she was already gone. Dive 1 – Norman Reef: Plate Top. 32min at 12m I turned to step into the water. After plunging in, I bobbed to the surface, switched to my snorkel, and put some air into my BCD. The water was surprisingly warm, only 1 or 2 degrees colder than the air, but the wind was whipping the surface into a froth. Once we dipped below the surface, however, everything was calm. (more…)