RickMo

Here's a link to the Batik site. The others have similar provisions. https://help.batikair.com/article/bring-diving-equipment-diving-on-batik-air-indonesia-flights/750

Remember that domestic carriers in Indonesia are expected to allow 23kg for scuba gear, which has accommodated our dive bags and/or my camera case. Garuda has a good business class, which seems to wave a wand over any baggage sins; on our Garuda flight a few weeks ago from Sorong to Jakarta, we had zero baggage issues despite our mountain of bags, and we were waved through the carry-on weighing. In May, we were on Teak from Manado to Singapore and it was a different story—they did allow the sporting-goods waiver, but we were still over a good bit. The cost was 2.4 million IDR (about $150), which could only be paid in IDR—as our time to catch the plane dwindled, I was sent out of the terminal to an ATM which, to my surprise, promptly gave me three separate million-rupiah withdrawals, and of course the flight was a few minutes late, so we were on our way despite a bit of a nail-biter.

There's also a good set of phone apps published by Gary Cobb, who is the hard-working mod of the FB nudibranch ID group. There are six collections, broken down by region, and don't require an internet or cell connection.

OOPS--I knew it was Milne Bay, and my brain just went on autopilot. Mea culpa! We are now considering a Walindi-Kavieng trip in 2026, covering the northwest coast of New Britain and the entire east coast of New Ireland. Kaviang was involved in the serious disturbances in January, however, and so we're waiting to see whether things seem to be less unsettled before making a decision.

A firmware update was made available for the OM-1 mk1 a couple of weeks ago, with the main improvement billed as subject acquisition in “all-target mode.” I don’t use that mode, but have found the OM-1 to focus well both above and below the surface with busy backgrounds, particularly with subject detection (bird eyes and fish eyes aren’t so different).

I guess it's 16:9 for social media? I think any autofix button will brighten and clarify it into a nice exposure. My brain stumbles over a centered image without a good reason--here's my five minutes of PS, nothing fancy.

Thanks, Chris. Lovely images. We were there in May 2023, and really enjoyed our time at Walindi (a week before, and three nights after, a liveaboard trip). We were almost as lucky as you with Air Niugini; we had an unplanned overnight in Port Moresby, but we didn't lose any diving. We were on the boat with three folks from Hawaii and they were not so lucky--three extra nights to get home. We were beguiled by Walindi and PNG, and enjoyed the diving a lot. For anyone considering one of the liveaboards (we were on Oceania), a highlight is a couple of nights spent inside a caldera; there's a collapsed wall that lets the boat come in, but then it really feels like you're totally enclosed. Villagers using dugouts bring the fruits of their labor out to trade for rice and other staples. At one anchorage, a senior member of a tribe paddled a tiny dugout several (maybe 15?) miles to collect the minimal tax levied on the boat for using the tribe's waters. We saw no other vessels except a couple of inter-island ferries the entire time. Hoping we can manage a Kimbe Bay trip (south, rather than north, of New Britain); reportedly the place where the term "muck diving" was coined. The people of New Guinea are desperately poor; we took school supplies and clothing which were humbly offered and gratefully accepted.

I caused a housing flood a decade ago by neither pulling a vacuum nor replacing the vacuum port cap, and Nauticam replaced the electronics--quick and not horrifyingly expensive (I think maybe $600). Although I totally own the stupid, I do wryly remember the Canadian couple who insisted on being Very Nice People while I, wearing all black in the Bonaire noonday sun, grew so desperate to get in the water that I finally made a break for it and paid the literal price. Dang Canadians! (Toque, we were in the dining room with you for the post-Mustard-workshop slide show. It was indeed grand.)

MarkG2, the Panasonic 8mm fisheye is quite good, and available used for good prices. The Nauticam 4.33" acrylic dome is small and up to Nauticam standards. I've not seen anything convincing that says the Olympus fisheye is better, but others may differ.

We were on Heron in 2012–my buddy and wife’s first salt-water dive. The lushness was amazing. We’re on Bangka now, and the hard and soft corals and clouds of fish are spectacular. It’s foolish to assume it will ever again be as beautiful as it was this afternoon, with mass bleaching in the forecast for this summer. The seemingly-certain death of the GBR, even if it staggers to its feet another time or two, is devastating.

We’re on Bunaken since Tuesday. No volcanic effect, except we were delayed a day in Singapore. No resorts, or anything around North Sulawesi, affected, except some ash on the “mainland” which washed away.

Rounding back on this—he identified a leaky ring at the vacuum pump, which only needed cleaning. He’s a little bummed—he thought he had a golden ticket to mirrorless. Thanks again for the memorable advice.

The Kraken Hydra 1500 is excellent. Two white-light levels, but as important, it has a red mode and an instant-off setting which detects the strobe and momentarily douses, both very useful at night and for macro (no red tinge). Cheap, too, with removable batteries. I really respect Sola lights, but the Kraken’s purpose-built features earned my affection for focusing. Pretty cheap, too, $179 (although no battery is included)

We're heading for some critter diving in a couple of weeks and I'm thinking about doing some video with my OM-1 and its various video limitations. I also use a DiveVolk. The recent thread regarding underwater monitors lost me at LUT (actually, before LUT), so I'm starting fresh. As Barmaglot posted a couple of months back, DiveVolk has a device, the $200 "Sealink Contact Type Underwater WiFi Signal Transmitter," which uses the WiFi capabilities of a smartphone and a modern camera to configure the phone as an external monitor--and, using OM Systems's OI-Share (or possibly other apps), as both a external monitor and a camera controller. Seems pretty cool! There's a solid review of it by an underwater video guy (Mattias Lebo) on YouTube, and as I already have the DiveVolk housing, it's an easy decision to give it a shot. But I do have a couple of questions. First, has anyone given it a try? Second, I've seen housings rigged with a bridge between the tray handles which provides a stable mount for a monitor. Are those one-off items? Does anyone know a source for them? I've looked pretty hard to no avail. Thanks, --Rick

Thanks, Gents. I've passed it along and will report what I learn.

A friend who just arrived at a dive venue has water intruding into his housing, an older Subal D7ii model. He thinks the leak is around one of the optical fiber ports, which does have an o-ring. The housing repressurizes in 10-15 minutes, so whatever it is is slow. He's done the usual o-ring service and is pretty obsessive about it. I suggested a dye test with food coloring, which I don't think could hurt. Any insights or suggestions? Thanks!

We're headed for north Sulewesi a month from today, our first trip to this area. We're doing a modified "passport"--a week at Bunaken Oasis, five nights at Murex Bangka, and a week at Lembeh Resort (NAD was booked solid, but completely happy with prospect of LR). Boat transfers with a couple of dives between each site. Dentrock asked whether Murex is a good Lembeh operator. My understanding is that Murex doesn't have a separate operation in Lembeh, but partners with Lembeh Resort. All of the major Lembeh operators seem to have good reputations and committed fans, no? We had planned to go to Little Cayman during the same period, but after seeing the devastating bleaching in nearby Cuba in January, we revised our plans.

We stayed at the Menjangan Resort for four or so nights after a week in Tulamben last October. I did six dives on Menjangan Island and it exceeded my expectations. First, the national park is remote and stark--they have had a serious drought for several years--but lovely. Monkeys are around, and there is good bird life, although they’ve been in drought for at least two years. As to the diving, Abyss Ocean World's good new (fast) boat picked me up on the dock at resort, from which it is a 15-20 minute ride to the island. The boat had not so much as a rinse bucket for cameras, but the guiding was excellent, and the reefs were fertile; a good mix of fish, nudis, some turtles, and pretty much all the things, including, at 90’, the largest field of garden eels I've ever seen. Some of the reef was terraced, nice topography, and we didn’t encounter much current. I talked to our guide about the mandarin fish in Pemuteran (a where their dive shop is) and he said Pemuteran diving in general is not good and the mandarin show is not great. We did see a laugh-out-loud splendid mandarin fish colony under a trashy pier in Pasarwajo Bay on Buton, diving from a liveaboard.

Sold

A timely article for me, Christophe, as we recently spent 12 days on a liveaboard in the Jardines de la Reina, Cuba (Queen's Garden, mentioned by Andrey). The trip was heavily oriented to shark photography--in fact, I have a reef shark image open in Photoshop as I type. Bait boxes were used on every dive of 32, there was chumming, and guides routinely fed lionfish off their spears. The liveaboard has sailed, as it were, on the ethical question of manipulating the behavior of big predators through baiting; and, as I reminded my wife, we feed birds in our yard without a second thought, and beg them to raise their offspring in our boxes. But your article is not about that ethical issue per se, but about whether it is ethical, as a photographer, to offer such images as representing what happens in the wild. I can say that our experience was "in the wild," in the sense that we were 40 miles offshore and totally surrounded with full-grown sharks (Caribbean reef and silky), but of course without humans, there would not have been eight or 10 animals showing up as soon as a guide picked up a mooring ball. Are the photographs which were taken by the two-dozen photographers on board, a number of whom are pros, properly used without a disclaimer? Good question, which goes to the second part of your article: Manipulating scenes to get the photograph. If a guide uses his stick to nudge a pipefish into the open, is that an ethical issue? There are certainly excellent arguments in favor of that view, and I very much prefer guides who don't. But if the guide does, and I end up with a great photo of that pipefish and enter it in a competition, should I disclose the guide's action? What about clearing spiny urchins away to get a better view of the mandarin fish ballet? As Andrey says--a difficult topic. I would certainly not publish a photograph of a rhino in the zoo and claim it was in Sumatra, and in my images from the Jardines, I include information about the scent boxes--in fact, I include a picture of one. But are the pictures less interesting--or the animals less beautiful, for that matter--because of the circumstance? The underwater-photo-industrial complex says no, I think, but it's a serious question which deserves the community's thought. Thank you for writing your article and re-posting it here. Aquabluedreams--I had some trouble with your link, for some reason, but the rules you published are compelling. Thank you.

These were used on a handful of dives. Both appear to me to be in as-new condition. I paid $380 for the SMC-1 and $260 for the flip holder in 2017; the SMC-1 now retails for $589 and the flip holder retails for $308. I'm asking $450 for both.

I mentioned a month or so ago that I expected to find significant bleaching during our nearly two-week liveaboard in the Jardines. I really hadn't imagined the carnage we'd find. I'm working on a trip report, but in the meantime, the attached article by accomplished author Robert Osborne was published in the recent edition of X-Ray Mag. The before (May 2023) and after (October 2023) images are striking. Water temperatures are coming down--we had mostly 81-82f, but had one dive at 78f--so fingers crossed for recovery, but it's hard to imagine the Jardines being the garden it once was anytime soon. Feature_ClimateChange-CoralBleaching_Cuba_RobertOsborne_123_protected(1).pdf

It would be a welcome break with tradition if the new body fits in the OM-1 housing (at least in Nauticam), but I can't imagine changing either way, since the "rubbery coating" wouldn't do much good in a housing. Fortunately, I have no significant complaints with the OM-1, above or below the waves.

Tom, your website is outstanding--beautiful, unique images and excellent information. Thanks!

Fun thread! I think this is a dwarf zebra lionfish. OM-1, 12-40, Banda Sea.