bghazzal

Tropical breeze or not, If the crew didn't fan you efficiently on the dive deck, I think it could still qualify as a tough dive 😁

I've also started incorporating knee and leg workouts in the mornings after a couple of dry dives here. The strain these kinds of entries put on your joints is really something... And I started clipping the camera rig onto my torso D-rings to keep my hands free, which helps. Quite a learning curve...

Yes, quite tricky. Crawling out is not an option as it's mostly either coralline limestone or sharp volcanic / lava rock unfortunately, sandstone is very rare here. This is border edge at Toilet Bowl, took this a few weeks back when scouting it, manageable when dry with good soles: But more nasty areas are like this: Luckily, Japan being Japan, and thanks to past U.S. military activity (Okinawa was returned to Japan in 1972), there’s a lot of concrete reinforcement along the coast, built for logistical purposes or typhoon protection. These structures often make shore entries easier than navigating natural rocky ledges

Emergency what? 😄😄😄 Yes, with you on that one. One thing to keep in mind is that the majority of the foreign diving crowd here is US military — mostly young dudes and dudettes in their 20s–30s, plus some ol’ US Marine Corps retirees (or is “veteran” the right term? Not sure). That does tend to up the ante in terms of sketchy shore entries. Operators generally don’t take the risk and just do such sites as boat dives. I’m not very adventurous — especially since I dive solo with a camera rig and a bailout — so I haven’t dived these two yet, but I did scout them on foot. I’d definitely want to go with someone who’s exited those sites successfully a few times (entries are one thing, but it’s really the exits that give me nightmares...) The other issue I have is figuring out how rewarding the sites actually are (aside from the feeling of accomplishment from not having hurt yourself...). Toilet Bowl has a gang of resident blacktip sharks (“oceanics,” not the reef kind) which is cool, but otherwise it's hard to tell overall, given the type of diving people are doing here. I did discover felt-sole boots here (really doesn't slip on mossy rocks, amazing) and self-reinforced a pair of standard booties with an extra rubber sole for those lava rocks...

Onna Toilet Bowl (west coast of Okinawa main island, Japan) would probably qualify - not that tough, but can be quite sketchy, especially exits: — other slightly sketchy local shore sites worth mentioning include Cape Zampa / Bolo Point : — Here's a clip showing the one of the Cape Zampa entries (the paint trail, seen next to the lighthouse on the map... ) 😅 cheers

Wow - very nice, thank you. Is it the AOI FC1 float collar for UWL-09PRO & UWL-09?

UWL100, as in Inon? is so, would you have a picture of your DIY job? thanks! Would it be possible to share some reliable sources of high density PVC foam somewhere on the forum? DIY section perhaps? I gave up looking for some in Indonesia, as it was just not practical, but now that I'm in consumer-paradise Japan I'm bumping into the same hurdles. Divinycell has one Japanese importer but they don't sell to the public / do samples. Same goes for boating supplies. Housing / construction is very exotic and wood-based here, and not really seen anything in local hardware stores /home centers. Specialised stuff like this with precise characteristics is surprisingly difficult to find in some places. I'm making do with commercially available high density foam, but would love to find large amounts of the stuff I could shape to my needs. It's not a language issue, more like import/purpose/retail reasons... As an example, we were looking for sorbothane to dampen the wife's electric piano vibration on the flooring, and finally ended up buying pads from the US, as Japanese retailers only had hard duro (70) stuff (mostly for medical soles), and didn't sell to the public. A local retailer did sell a few sorbothane pads, but at a 70% markup (common here as well, surfing the language barrier). Massive headache... Any foamy connects would be greatly appreciated! cheers

Thank you for sharing this. It's painful to watch the climate unravel step by step before our eyes, and no action being taken where it should be — at the political level, on a global scale, to implement real policies required to have minimal impact on this global crisis. Instead, we get heads in the sand, business as usual, feel-good micro-level solutions with no systemic impact, empty words and rhetoric, natalistic scapegoating and this vague, blind faith in some future technological miracle that will somehow save our planet, you know some kid with a startup, a billionaire with a sudden philantropic spasm of remorse (or for the loony fringe with a broken moral compass, to privately go colonise another planet after wrecking the one we have beyond repair...). All of this so that we, in Earth's most climate-impacting countries — or those most responsible through the impact they’ve had on other nations to sustain their own way of life — can continue living as we do now. Recent events show that even embracing an open slide into totalitarianism — one that pairs seamlessly with scapegoating, aggressive denial and self-serving nihilism — is now on the table if that’s what it takes to preserve our unsustainable, full-speed-ahead-into-the-wall way of life. Here in Okinawa, people blame coral bleaching (80% of the reefs impacted in 2024) and record-high sea temperatures on the "lack of typhoons" to cool things down — as if tropical storms were supposed to mitigate the multiple effects of the climate crisis in 2025. Maybe next they'll blame it on reef-safe sunscreen or blood sugar levels. Who knows.

Also, do you get a gap between the lens and the port on the Saga flip? I'm new to these so not sure how they work. I would have on Nauticam CMC1 (so with the protruding end bit, which should be fine), but also a flat AOI +6... Reason I'm asking is this thread: https://waterpixels.net/forums/topic/767-67mm-flip-adapters-and-attached-accessories/ Thanks

Thanks a lot - I've tried emailing Saga, hope I'll get an answer - 10 - 2 o'clock could probably work. I'm a little worried about port size as well, since it's for a compact, so short port. For macro I have my lights really close to the port (and floats on the the arms) so it really depends on where the diopters end up 😅

Great, thanks - I've started looking into the Saga - can you confirm the dual flip can be positioned with a diopter on both sides (3 and 9 o'clock)? Also I've read somewhere that in some cases the diopters are not fully aligned with some ports with the Saga - what you make of that? I'd use it on a Nauticam M67 compact port thanks!

Hello all, I’ve started looking into 67mm dual flip options for my rig (Nauticam compact housing) and have two questions for those who use dual flip mounts: How does the Nauticam Dual Flip compare to the AOI M67 Dual Flip and the Marelux Dual Flip? Are there any specific reasons to choose one over the others? Does the Nauticam Dual Flip, or others allow you to choose the mounting directions to mount lenses at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock? I have very limited space on my rig, and the best workable setup would be having the lenses mounted at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock. I’ve seen a lot of 12/3 o’clock configurations, but I have an arm at 12 o’clock, so I’d need to avoid that if possible. I think the AOI allows flexible mounting directions, but what about the other two? Do flip adapters increase vignetting, compared to screwing a diopter directly onto the port? Thanks in advance! Ben

The CMC-1 is generally accepted to be a +15 diopter, whereas the CMC-2 is around +10 - not precise, but confirmed by empirical tests. In terms of high optical quality, the AOI UCL Pro line of diopters is also excellent (+12.5, +18.5, +23.5), maybe surpassing the Nauticam range in some aspects: https://www.aoi-uw.com/products/wet-lenses/aoi-ucl-prs-01.html

Cheers Craig, appreciate it 🙏

It’s on the east coast (Pacific side) and one of the best muck/macro shore sites here, I think, the other being Tengan Pier. I don’t know the seawall sites well yet (there seems to be a lot of good stuff in Sunabe, especially on night dives), but the diversity of habitats there is quite special. Not sure how many operators dive it — the main east-coast one is Crystal Blue, I believe — since it's a bit off the beaten track for most, being on the east side and also a macro-focused shore dive with often iffy to low visibility. We can always dive it together next time you’re around. It’s pretty easy to get tanks for shore dives here — rental’s about 550 JPY on average for a 10L aluminium or steel tank. The rest just comes down to car and weather logistics.