Scuba Steve

Unfortunately I only had the rental camera on two dives of the many over the past two weeks so I was unable to get pictures of many of the critters including octopus, blue spotted stingray, reef crabs the size of basketballs, unicorn fish, titan triggers, scorpion fish, remora eels, moray eels, and jellyfish on the order of size of a sofa couch.  Like the varieties of fish, the dives themselves were all different and all really neat, such as wreck dives, deep dives, and even better... night dives.  Nothing ensures your intestinal fortitude like diving into pitch black water in the midst of night with only the Milky Way shinning light down on you in the Gulf of Thailand.  No need for a flashlight here... in the undersea darkness your movements set off the bio-luminescent phytoplankton that appear like massive LSD induced neon trails following you through the darkness... very cool stuff.  No pics unfortunately.

Underwater in colour

Just for the fun of it, I have left some photos in color, although I much prefer B&W for underwater.

 

 

 

Underwater b&w

Now finished with Open Water and Advanced Diver certifications I set about obtaining an underwater camera  but was disappointed to find all that was available was an older 8MP point and shoot camera in a waterproof housing.  A problem arises since different wavelengths of light travel at significantly different speeds underwater and the slight difference surface refraction makes when you are looking at someone two feet under pool water is amplified by the time you get 50 feet.  By the time you get down 100 feet there is no more red visible in the spectrum and its actual appearance ranges from deep purple to black, which has a terrible effect on the perception of skin tone making your dive buddy look somewhat like a zombie. This leaves terrible conditions for color photography unless you have years to perfect the skill, which I do not.  In comes b&w...