Lost in a cave: "This was not good."

Dr. Mike recounts his hair-raising story of a Malaysian cave dive gone horribly wrong. During his two hour decompression stop at the end of his dive, Mike got bored and decided to get some food from a nearby habitat to help pass the time. He got lost due to the low visibility, and things spiraled out of control from there:

I hit my head on something hard.

I figured it was a shallow tree branch or something so I reached up to push myself away from it but what my hands felt sent a jolt of unadulterated fear screaming down my spine. Rock.

Above my head my hands feverously felt across to the left to the right all around. Above me was something that just couldn'’t possible be there and the last thing I expected to encounter during my ascent from 6m in this small head pool.

I was inside a cave.

How can that possibly be??

[...]

I assessed the situation.

-No wing inflation.
-Almost no dilutant
-No O2 (it was maybe 10 bar left in a 2L)!
-No bailout (I had staged it as I was decoing on O2)
-Only one fin
-Lost inside a cave with no line and no idea which direction to take
-8 hours on scrubber so no idea if its going to run out any moment
-zero visibility

This was not good.

Not good indeed. Divester points out that Mike appears to be a pretty experienced cave diver, but this story is one of four "screw up stories" that'll put the hair on the back of your neck on end. Here are some more choice quotes:

Lost inside a wreck:

I am in a small room with zero visibility. I am unable so far to locate the way out of this room although I'’m sure I will do so shortly. But even if I find the way out of this room I am obviously some way inside the wreck -– I have no idea how far or which direction[.]

Stuck inside a wreck:

After a lot of scrapping and tank banging I managed to half turn around then I attempted to make my way out of the room. Clunk! I tried again, clunk! Ok this is tight, Ill try moving more to the left....Clunk!..more to the right...clunk! Ok don'’t worry drop down a bit and try again...clunk! a bit higher?..clunk!

[...]

[W]oooshhhh! I sh*t myself.

Low PPO2:

I reached the surface and couldnt believe what I saw. Every divers worse nightmare. We were in the middle of a tropical storm.

Link (via Divester)

Get the blue out of your underwater photos

I've played with underwater photography using a Canon S300 for a little while now. It's been a lot of fun to take the camera on dives, and I've even been lucky enough to get a nice shot every once and a while. One problem with using a point and shoot under water (or any camera for that matter) is that certain colors start to fade at depth because their corresponding wavelengths of light start to disappear. The reds disappear first, followed by yellow, and so on (there's a nice table here). Note the blue tint on the photo above. If I recall correctly, it was taken at a depth of about 40 feet.

To compensate for this, you can use a strobe (flash) to give you the light that you need. They have a limited range though, and have a nasty habit of lighting up particles in the water, creating a cloudy shot. You can limit those reflections, also known as backscatter, with a detached strobe that shines light at your subject an alternate angle, but those are rarely available for point and shoot cameras and are often prohibitively expensive. Believe me, I'd love to put my dSLR in a nice IKELITE housing, but I just don't have the bankroll for that.

You can also try a few post processing methods, one of which is well described at WetPixel.com. Divester.com has another.

Apparently, Alex Mustard has created some underwater filters which are reported to solve this problem when snapping pictures between 10 and 40 feet. Originally only available for dSLR cameras, Alex is now giving the point and shoots some love. Here's what Divester has to say:

I'm sure you know about Alex Mustard's Magic Filters, gel filters that help divers produce beautiful underwater images. For those of you who don't know, the reviews of Magic Filters have been glowing. The only problem with the filters has been that they're only for use with dSLR cameras. Until now.

Does anyone have experience with these filters? Are they any good? I think that I'll give them a try. If/when I do, I'll post a photo or two here.

Link

Divester Photo Contest: Vote for me!

I was just informed that the above picture was selected as a finalist for Divester's (pronounced Dive-ster) first photo contest! From the site:

Recently, Divester excitedly announced its first-ever photo contest. The judges -- Beth and Shaun Tierney, authors of Diving the World -- have just completed the hard work of whittling down the more than 1200 images in Divester's Flickr pool into the Top 10.

The winner will receive a complimentary copy of the book Diving the World. I'm up against some stiff competition, and I'm very flattered to be chosen as one of the finalists. You can vote here:

Divester's First Photo Contest: Vote For Your Favorite Image!

Vote as many times as you can before voting closes at midnight on August 10th!

Thanks for your support.

Link to the contest
Link to the photo

I'm on Divester!

Well, one of my Flickr photos is at least. I recently posted some underwater pictures that I took while scuba diving into a new Flickr group called "This is Why We Dive." The scuba diving blog, Divester.com, recently took notice of one of my pics and posted it on their site. Thanks for the props, Divester (pronounced dive-ster)!

If you're a diver or are at least interested in what's going on under the sea, check out that group. It's a great collection of some really nice underwater photography. Check out Divester as well, as it's a great place to keep up to date on your scuba news and tech.

Link