Captain Allan wanted to make up for us missing out on our morning dives yesterday while making the crossing from Little Cayman to Grand Cayman so he offered a dawn dive at a site named Eagle Ray Rock which is on the northwest side of the island just south of Georgetown.
Thinking of the crossing, I forgot to mention a cool thing that happened when we were traveling from Cayman Brac to Little Cayman. The crew put out fishing lines and they caught a yellowfin and a blackfin tuna. The yellowfin went about 30 pounds. That evening, one of the offerings was sushi. Veronica loves sushi and she said that it was incredible.
I forgot to talk about our two interns on the boat. The one in the photo at left is Phillip. He is a great guy and really helped us a lot during the week. I think that the experience that he gets on the Cayman Aggressor IV will help him a lot in life.
Our other intern was Emily, who is Captain Allan’s daughter. I showed her in my first blog of the trip and she was a real sweetheart. You could see how proud she was of her dad and how proud her dad was of her. They both left for vacation in California after our trip. Emily wants to pursue a career in criminal forensics.
A number of us decided to make the dawn dive which ended up happening around 6:00 am. Eagle Ray Rock is a wall dive and we spent most of the dive cruising around the walls looking for interesting subjects. I did find a channel clinging crab on a ledge and managed a few shots.
I am usually a pretty good diver but there are times when my brain doesn’t engage as well as it should. I can tell you that those times always happen when I am excited about what I am photographing. I was coming down the wall and I saw Gerry Niel photographing a hawksbill turtle and decided to join in. The turtle started swimming down the wall and I followed. I shot about a half dozen shots and then looked at my dive computer. It had a black bar across the center with a depth of 124’. Uh Oh!!!! I immediately broke off with the turtle and headed up. I spent the rest of my dive as shallow as possible and hung a little longer on my safety stop. My meter was cleared nicely by the end of the dive. Was it worth it?
I found some beautiful yellow tube sponges at the end of the dive in pretty shallow water and spent some time taking photos and off gassing.
Our next dive was our regularly scheduled morning dive. It was at the same site. I swan along the wall with Warren and Robin Reed. Robin found a small hawksbill turtle but by the time that I got there, the turtle was heading deeper along the wall. I thought about my first dive and decided that I didn’t need to be in that situation again.
I spent most of the dive doing wide angle shots and trying different variations of lens openings and shutter speeds.
At home, I don’t really have the option of trying this type of photography. All of our diving is on shipwrecks, artificial reefs and rock piles. The light level is low on the bottom so in order to get good wide angle photos, I need to match available light. I vary shutter speeds and ISO to lighten and darken the background water color but it is done in a much smaller range than I can do in the clear water of the tropics.
We had one more dive scheduled for today and then we are done for this trip. All diving on the boat is stopped by noon on Friday so that everyone has 24 hours out of the water before flying out. As it turned out, this last dive is one that I have wanted to make for a long time. I just didn’t know that this was the site. We have all seen photos of pictures taken in grottos – caves – caverns with light coming in through holes in the ceiling and the light looked like beams or sun rays streaming down. I would find my opportunity to make one of these photos at Devil’s Grotto. Captain Allan said that Cathy Church calls this site the “Holy Grail” of photography. I can’t quite remember if he said “Holy Grail” but whatever words he used, it conveys the same message.
Once we were briefed by Captain Allan, I knew that this dive would be wide angle without strobes but with the Magic Filter. The site was fairly shallow. I had a maximum depth of 40’ and I spent one hour and thirteen minutes on the dive. My first impression was that the coral looked kind of crappy. I was wondering how this could be called such a great dive. And then we found the caves and caverns.
The first cave/cavern that we swam into was filled with Atlantic silversides. I tried to find a position where the light from outside would highlight the silversides and also provide some light onto the cavern floor.
While I was positioning myself and adjusting shutter speeds, I noticed tarpon coming out of another branch of the cavern and swimming through the school of silversides. It was beautiful to watch but could I capture it on film?
The problem with this situation was that I was using available light and no strobe. To capture the image correctly, I used a slower shutter speed. The picture on the left was shot at ISO 200 with a Nikon D300 in a Subal housing with a Tokina 10-17 fisheye lens with a lens opening of f8 and a shutter speed of 1/15 of a second. The shutter speed was not fast enough to freeze the tarpon so it came out a little blurry but I think that it gives the photo a feeling of movement.
Robin and I were on opposite sides of the school of silversides and at one point, Robin moved on to try other things. I still wanted my picture of the cave with the light beams so I moved on.
I tried a few spots and was semi-pleased with the results but it wasn’t what I was after.
I finally wandered into a spot that looked very promising. I started by taking a photo with what I thought would be a good lens opening and shutter speed. I try to meter the area on the floor where the light rays hit. If you try and meter the light where it comes in from the ceiling, the resulting image will be very dark. You have to realize that the light coming into the room from the top of the photo is going to be blown out because of the great difference between lighting the inside of the cave and not blowing out the light in the top of the cave. I look at the light where it enters the cave like a sun ball in a standard wide angle picture on a reef.
This picture was taken with an ISO of 640, a lens opening of f10 and a shutter speed of 1/10th of a second. I really like it.
Before I realized it, it was time to head back to the boat. At this point, I had lost Warren and Robin and if you know me, you know that I am directionally challenged. I never worried when I am with Warren because he always gets us back to the boat. But I was only in forty feet of water so I decided to surface and see where the boat was. I surfaced, gave the “OK” sign and went down and swam towards the boat. It didn’t take long before I was wondering if I was going the right way. I surfaced again and this time took a compass heading to the boat.
Before long, I was under the boat and watching as a lot of the divers where kind of lingering in the coral heads around the boat. I don’t think that anyone really wanted to go back on board because this was our last dive.
I was one of those divers that didn’t want to go up so I spent my remaining time taking pictures of the divers returning to the mother ship.
In the photo at left, Allyson and Lawrence from the UK are heading back after their dive.
So this was our last dive. How would I rate the Cayman Aggressor IV? It is only the fourth live aboard that Veronica and I have been on. Of course, we were on two of these – the Nekton Rorqual and Nekton Pilot – a total of fourteen trips.
I think that the diving was great. The visibility was certainly better than the Bahamas and it made taking pictures easier. The crew was undoubtedly the best that I have ever experienced and the food (Thank you, Kimberly) was outstanding. The overall cost of the trip was considerably more than our originally planned Bahamas trip but I am not sorry that we went. Would I recommend the Cayman Aggressor IV to others? Absolutely!
After our dive, we all washed out our dive gear (the crew helped also) and put it on the top sun deck to dry. The crew had a cocktail party for us at 5:00pm where awards were presented.
Warren Reed received an award for jumping in the water without his fins although the award was presented to his wife, Robin. We are all trying to figure that out. I think that the crew was trying to pull one over on the presenter, Kimberly.
Marty received an award for her incredible underwater bubble rings.
Gerry Niel and John Nelson were awarded for doing the most dives during the week.
Ida got one for doing her 700th dive.
Veronica received the “Boat Mum” award.
Sally and Phil received the “Directionally Challenged” award.
There were other awards but I can’t remember what they were. If you received one, please reply on this blog.
This brings me to the last couple on the boat who have not been shown in this blog – our good friends Warren and Robin Reed.
Warren and Robin are originally from New Jersey and they were part of our dive crew. We went out diving off the New Jersey coast every weekend that we could during the summer and fall. Robin and Warren would often come by the house after the dive and we would spend time going over photos and then go out and have something to eat. They are the kind of friends that if you don’t see them for a year, when you do see them it’s like you saw them yesterday. Warren and Robin moved to Delray Beach, Florida about four years ago and it sure left a hole in our lives. We talk as often and possible. We also try to get together on a dive trip once a year.
They are both great divers and Robin has come a long way as an underwater photographer. When digital was just becoming popular, Robin had become very frustrated with underwater photography using film. I helped her make the transition to digital and she has never looked back. She has come from the edge of leaving photography to becoming an accomplished underwater photographer. Check out her work at her website – Robin-Reed.com.
I guess this is the end of my blogs about this trip. I am sorry that this is the end because I have had a lot of fun blogging about the trip. I may do one more blog about taking photos in the caves at Devil’s Grotto. I did end up with a little over 1700 photos after the first edit. Overall, I was very happy with the trip from a photography standpoint.
One of the best things about the week was the great people that we had the pleasure to meet and spend time with. Liveaboards can be great with good people and can be miserable with not so good people. We hit 100% with the group on our trip.
If you want to see more photos from Devil’s Grotto, visit my Photo Gallery or click here.
© 2010, Herb Segars. All rights reserved.
