Northwest Dive Club

We dove there tonight. It is a massive reef, 5x larger than what was there before. Most of the gunnels, grunt sculpins, and sail fins were in the older sections. Will be interesting to see it evolve.

I was scheduled on a group trip to God's Pocket that was just cancelled due to the border closure. God's Pocket IS NOT refunding any of our deposits, but only offering to apply them to trips in 2021. This was a very shaky financial operation even before the pandemic, with a lot of debt. I fully expe...

Selling new at Leisure Pro for $225. Your asking price is way too high.

When you get down to around $1400, send me a PM. I have had very mixed experience with DUI (older suits were better), but need a backup suit

Still for sale?

Sherwood Avid ID CQR .3 BC, size large for sale. It has maybe 50 dives on it, and looks new. I am selling it because it does not fit me well. $150 firm.

If the tank valve was actually closed, I think this thread could give plaintiff's attorneys a better case for gross negligence by emphasizing that standard safety practices are in place to prevent such tragedies. It is also possible, but unlikely that the authors above could be called in to voice th...

Those are really nice. I especially like the first one.

Hal

It appears to me that there is a great deal of speculation and pontificating here with very few facts. We do not know the CO concentration of the breathing gas. Undoubtedly, it has been analysed. We DO NOT know if the tank valve was open. This has undoubtedly been documented. It certainly appears th...

Those are Weedy Seadragons, not seahorses. They are found mostly in Southern Australia.

Hal

Excellent advice above. Due to the limitations of physical optics you will not get even decent photos or videos here without artificial light, i.e. strobes and/or video lights. Don't even bother trying. If you cannot afford lighting then wait until you can. Most of us go through the usual progressio...

Great macro video. Few people know how difficult and frustrating that can be.

Hal

Manual white balance underwater will help, but will not put back light that is not there to begin with.

I went straight from LR3 to LR5. It is a huge improvement. For UW photography, the spot removal tool improvement alone is worth it for getting rid of backscatter. I rarely ever use Photoshop now.

If you travel to a dive destination and admit to type 1 or 2 diabetes, read the DAN guidelines carefully. They are not totally unreasonable, but quite burdensome (e.g. requiring a stress test before you are cleared). I went on a dive trip to Playa del Carmen last summer. The operation was strictly f...

I get it now. The SMB was placed on the second dive where you began your ascent, and undoubtedly you drifted farther South prior to reaching the surface, and the camera drifted farther South as it sank. You cannot assume it is at the same depth you were at the beginning of the ascent. If the current...

That was an epic search pattern. I would think that the divers drifted farther South than the camera, but the scooter search pattern was entirely South of the marker. They were drifting for at least a minute or 2 after dropping the camera, and before deploying the SMB. We dive that site all the time...

"One can either have very clear, but "unfair," definitions of professional and amateur or one can have "fair" definitions but unclear -- you can't have both. Me, I'd go with clear but unfair."

I think that Peter Guy has defined this issue most concisely.

Hal

All of the arguments and disagreements above serve to illustrate my suggestion that we need to have a strict, simple, OBJECTIVE, VERIFIABLE definition of pro vs amateur going down the road. I am no longer willing to trust the semi subjective judgement of some delegated official about whether someone...

You are certainly taking this in the right direction, Dan.

You can vet a digital photo in 5 seconds with Google image search or Tin Eye. How will you define, let alone verify whether someone is a professional underwater photographer? The old 30% of your income from photography rule would be impossible to verify without an army of accountants going over ever...

[quote="LCF"]They don't publish anything anyone sends them -- the very nice article on God's Pocket that Scott Lundy and I put together didn't ever see daylight. That may have something to do with a lack of paid advertising from God's pocket, or everything to do with it. They have made it ...

I sent an email to Stratton. He says this situation "falls between the lines" and will take no action..

The NWDTS had some unexplainable winners, and at least one ringer. Their rules: "The contest is open to all amateur photographer/videographers." Photographer Amanda Nicholls placed highly in multiple categories, including first place in Warm Water Wide Angle. Here is the profile from her p...

I dive the Sekiu jetty the second week in August on our way to Neah Bay. The visibility is pretty poor, and probably worse than that in June. It was quite a bit worse in 2012 than 2011, possibly due to the Elwha dam removal dumping millions of tons of silt into the Strait.

Hal