Monday, October 13, 2008

Boat Dive - Ice Cream and Shipwreck

Today is my birthday. There was a rainbow out to greet me this morning, as I went to work. I was going to take the day off from work, and go to the spa or something, but we have friends coming to visit from Guam during the week, so I think I'll use the day off to visit with them. But I still got to do some really fun and amazing things for my birthday. Yesterday I got to go on a boat dive on a brand new dive boat. This was such a fun experience for me. This boat was completely decked out, with onboard showers even. In the picture below you see Barry, Harry, Rhea and Mike as we ride out to our first dive site. Here's a better picture of Rhea and Mike. Really, this was such an awesome boat. The adventure begins. Our first dive site was Ice Cream. Harry spotted this nudi on the low corals. In the Advanced Diving Course, one of the chapters is on Underwater Photography. So this was my UW photography dive. Here's Barry taking some pictures too. He wasn't in the class, but was enjoying the photo opportunity.Rhea, regulator out and UW grin. Harry is relaxed and sending up bubbles. The dive boat guy swam right through the ring close to the surface. Harry's UW grin, and Mike in the background. I was practicing my macro shots up close to the anenome, trying to catch the fish swimming inside. I finally got a nice close up shot of this fish. This eel was fairly cooperative for a photo shoot too. Mike found this WW2 bomb. We used his fin to measure the length. Lion fish. Mike keeping an eye on the group. Barry shooting a picture up towards Harry.I tried to follow the dive book's advice and get low for this shot. It turned out ok. Here is the regular level coral shot, and further away. The highlight of the dive was getting to see eagle rays. I got to see three. Here is the first one approaching over the coral. Here's a little closer shot with the fish trailing him. I think this was my best picture. He was a fair distance away, so I was really happy to get this photo. Another nice photo of the eagle ray. These two were busy doing something in a frantic connected kind of way. They separated for a minute when I snapped this picture. This was one of the most fun dives I've had. The sun was bright, the colors were great, and I got to see eagle rays! Happy Birthday to me. Still smiling. The shipwreck was an awesome dive, too. Very fun to explore. But Rhea had the camera for that one. It was so cool, while I was swimming along the shipwreck, suddenly a submarine went by. Awesome day!

1 comment:

Harry Blalock said...

Very cool pictures Kel, and once again, my much older wife. Happy Birthday, and may you think back to the crimes of your youth for these next 4 days. I'm glad you enjoyed the boat dives so much, but you realize you're turning out an awful lot like me?