Diving

My Dive History

In 1996, I learned to dive in the Red Sea at Eilat in Israel, having had my first dive some two years earlier off Cyprus. Happy with warm water diving I then went on to do my PADI Advanced course off Barbados with the deep dive done on the wreck of the Stavronanica in 1996. Three trips to the Maldives in less than a year convinced me to get my Nitrox certification in 1999.

Having decided to combine my two favourite hobbies - photography and diving I first bought a Sea & Sea Motormarine II, which was a good start that I soon outgrew. That then lead me to a Subal housing for my Nikon F90. I have always liked Subal housings and stayed with them through the rest of the time I dived. In total I have owned three - F90, D70 and D300 - I am pleased to say that I never flooded any of them. This then lead me on to getting my Solo Diver certification in Bonaire which is a big help to an underwater photographer. To explain, photographers make the worst buddies, so learning to dive safely on your own is a good thing. I really enjoy underwater photography and that lead me to my next major advance in diving...

... I moved to closed circuit rebreather diving! I had tried a semi-closed rebreather in Thailand some years previously but found from a photographers perspective they didn't really do what I wanted. See the kit section below on the advantages and disadvantages of the various recreational diving technologies. Closed circuit rebreathers, I had an AP Diving Evolution, are an absolute boon for underwater photography. As an example on one of my training dives off Grand Cayman we dived for 2 hours mostly at a depth of 20m and came back with no decompression obligation!

Those of you paying attention to what I have written above will have surmised - correctly - that I used to solo dive a rebreather. Accepted wisdom will tell you that diving alone (solo) is a short route to getting yourself killed, and that rebreathers are death traps. I am living proof that neither statement is necessarily true.

Dive Kit

Like most people I started diving with fairly conventional open circuit kit but as I always want to 'fine tune' what I am using, over the years I dived various kit configurations.

Open circuit kit

Fins

- Mares Plana Avanti, stayed with these all the time I dived. In later years for various reasons I dived with different colour fins.

BCD

- Zeagle Wing, having buoyancy behind you gives stability when taking photographs. Down side is slightly increased drag in current. The Zeagle is virtually bomb proof and has way more lift than a recreational diver would need - tech divers are a different matter!

Regulator

- Oceanic Deltas, I used the same reg as an octopus as my main reg. Two reasons for this 1, maintenance is easier 2, and much more importantly, an out of air diver is going to grab the reg in your mouth - so you will end up with the octopus. Still want to buy a cheap reg as your octopus?

Mask

- Oceanic Shadow, lovely low volume mask low volume works well for photographers and rebreathe divers.

Computer

- Aladin Air-X, all the information in one place saves checking multiple gauges. You still need a gauge set for backup and redundancy though, but you can tuck them out of the way and not worry about them trashing corals.

Closed Circuit

Fins

- Mares Plana Avanti, stayed with these all the time I dived. In later years for various reasons I dived with different colour fins.

Rebreather

- AP Diving Evolution, these were quite new when I bought mine, a smaller version of the tried and trusted Inspiration. The smaller size made travel a bit easier.

Mask

- Oceanic Shadow, lovely low volume mask low volume works well for photographers and rebreathe divers.

Computer

- Delta P VR2, I had this as a backup for the computer buit into the rebreather. I may as well not have bothered as it never really worked.

Photographic

Housing

- I have always used Subal housings and they have served me well - I've never flooded one!

Ports

- tried various ended up doing macro / fish portraits so stayed with flat ports

Flash

- I had various flavours of Sea & Sea strobes.

Arms

- I used Ultralight arms before they were popular in the UK importing mine from California.

Locations

• 9th Aug 1994 - Cyprus – first dive
• April 1996 - Israel – PADI Open Water
• Oct 1996 - Crystal Cove Barbados – PADI Advanced
• Sept 1997 - Ellaidhoo, Maldives
• May 1998 - Curaçao, Dutch Antilles
• March 1999 – Reethi Beach, Maldives
• Sept 1999 – Borneo, Sipadan & Kota Kinabalu
• November 1999 – Reethi Beach, Maldives - PADI Nitrox certification
• February 2000 - Reethi Beach, Maldives
• June 2000 – Langkawi
• May 2001 – Manado, Indonesia
• Nov 2001 Mnarani Club, Kenya
• April 2002 - Manado, Indonesia
• October 2002 – Khao Lak, Thailand - PADI semi-closed rebreather course
• April 2003 – Belize
• June 2003 – Bonaire - SDI Solo Diver
• December 2003 - DSAT Gas Blender
• March 2004 – Tobago
• May 2004 – Costa Rica and Honduras
• October 2004 – Seychelles
• December 2005 - Grand Cayman - IANTD Advanced Nitrox, IANTD Evolution Rebreather
• April 2006 – Tioman, Malaysia
• July 2007 – Grenada
• 2008 Turks and Caicos
• October 2008 – Mauritius
• June 2009 – Bonaire
• 2010 - Bonaire

Pros & Cons

My thoughts on the relative merits of the diving styles and locations I have tried with respect to underwater photography.

People often ask me "What is the best place you have ever dived?" There is no real answer to this question as most places I have dived have bee good but for different reasons. A lot of the locations I dived in later years was primarily because they could support the rebreather, so this often dictated the choice of location. The other thing to bear in mind is that I primarily dived to take photographs.

As far as styles go you cannot beat a rebreather for underwater photography, they are virtually silent and give incredible run times without significant, or indeed any decompression penalty. On my rebreather training course I completed a two hour dive mostly at twenty meters and came back with no decompression requirements. The down side of rebreather diving is the materials required (pure O2, sofnalime) and the fact that it largely seen as the preserve of deep technical divers. This was a case in point on Grenada, lovely dive operation and nice dives, but a heavy emphasis on deep wrecks which aren't my favourite. Open circuit is much easier to support but it is noisy underwater and you are back to potentially severe decompression penalties.

Locations

Despite my comments about decompression above, from a photographers perspective most of the good stuff is between the surface and twenty meters. With this in mind Bonaire is a fantastic place for underwater photography. As advertised you have 'total diving freedom' because most dives are shore dives - unless you take a boat across to Kliene Bonaire. The sheltered side of the island is very sheltered with minimal currents allowing easy diving along a fringing wall that drops to a sandy bottom at around thirty meters. Solo diving with the rebreather allows long leisurely dives in search of Seahorses, Nudibranches and Frog fish. There's not much in the way of big stuff except tarpon unless you go across to the much more rugged and challenging Atlantic coast which really needs to be dived from a boat.

Turks and Caicos provides a good mix of small stuff plus some reasonable chances of sharks, dolphins and turtles. Indeed if you dive the Turks at the right time of year you can even see Whales! I have enjoyed diving Turks & Caicos and have some marvellous shark pictures from here as well as some good macro stuff.

back in the days of open circuit, Manado in Indonesia has some incredible diving and the Maldives both before and after the coral bleach provided some memorable dives. The best corals I have ever seen were off Pulau Tioman in Malaysia. This was a dive called Magicians Reef an offshore reef only accesable in very limited tide and weather conditions.