Your Chance to Dive with Eric Cheng and Douglas Seifert!

One photo from the party. More to come.

Angela, Jon, Matt, Simon, Julie, Martin, and Me

It was wonderful to meet everyone at the Meet and Greet on Sunday night. I did not realize that Martin and Julie's dog would command so much attention. Incredibly, I even had Isabelle doing tricks for me

The food was great, the company was great and I'm so glad I went. At times, I questioned my wisdom in deciding to go to the party, since the traffic slowed to a crawl numerous times on the drive up to their house in Seattle. But I'm so glad I went. Thanks, Martin and Julie for the hospitality!

The diving today offered numerous photo opportunities and I was most pleased to get my first image of a wolf eel. I'll try to post a few images from the dive as soon as I download them to my computer.

Thanks to Carol for offering to share her hotel room with me, I sincerely appreciate it.

And, Linda, if you read this before I fire an email to you, they found your box on the boat and I have it safely in my possession ready to give back to you. Thanks, too, for letting me borrow your Fisheye Focus Light after Bonnie borrowed mine in Cozumel for an important photo shoot.

I'm ready to do this again next summer!

Ellen

More photos from the meet & greet!

Martin said he would have a blow-up balloon of me, but we arrived to find a watermelon head

Me, Julie, Marty Steinberg

Marty Steinberg and his Ducati

Michele Benoy-Westmoreland and Simon Rogerson

Isabeau -- the cutest huge mastiff ever

Martin Heyn, Greg and Naomi Bang, Bruce Yates

Rebecca and Dave Hicks

Even more photos!

Michele Benoy-Westmoreland and Isabeau the Mastiff

Isabeau the Mastiff -- detail

Simon Rogerson and Isabeau the Mastiff

Isabeau the Mastiff

Matt Segal with colorful drink (yes, he was carded)

Megan and Zeb with sake taster legend

Matt Segal and Megan with Benihana host (who wanted to verify that Megan and Matt had actually EATEN something)

Carol found this lovely little octopus, not much bigger than a large blue-ring (not sure if this was a small red, or a really young GPO; I'll take a closer look later) Update: this was a red octopus, and not a GPO:

Linda

Yes he was just hanging out waiting for his pic to be taken I reckon!! He might not have been a GPO but he was cool regardless and I'm glad Linda (and I think Johanna too) got neat pics of him.

And just to let everyone know Linda took these wonderful photographs even with the dreaded visit of the "mask-fog gremlin".....

I didn't dive with my camera (along with Bruce). I was unsure about my new ND30 because of the problem with the 105vr & port and I didn't want to chance my other lenses just yet. Plus I was much more "rusty" in my drysuit than I had anticipated...... I had to accept a bit of help from our great (and quite good-looking) divemaster on the Bandito - RJ - (It was a tough job but someone had to do it......). Upshot is the "camera-less" drysuit dives were quite enjoyable, I was able to focus my attention on other things like the new dry gloves which were soooooooooooooooooo much warmer for me than the 5mm Seasoft neoprene gloves I wore last time - my hands were not in extreme pain from the cold waters after our dives.

Still now I feel all ready for Port Hardy - I'm crossing the border today.

Very thrilled to meet everyone on the boat and experience the very invigorating waters of this area. I missed the meet and greet because my cross-country trek has taken a bit out of me for the "late-night" parties But I was sorry not to make Isabel's acquaintance.

Thanks Martin for organizing this, Eric for coming along w/others and everyone I met on the boat - it was Fun!!

Best, Carol

Special thanks to Linda & Johanna for diving with me and the terrific drysuit advice, etc! And you are welcomed Ellen and wonderful meeting and spending a little time with you too.

I just want to say THANK YOU! What a beautiful home, warm people - and, of course, there is lovable Isabeau. Let's meet up again soon.

Michele

Have to say, Eric - you are better than the papparazi; you bring back such great people (and dog!) photos! It's great fun to see them from the Meet & Greet since I couldn't be there. Isabeau looks like a real cutie, and would dwarf my (largish) yellow lab Luma (Lumalihe, after the passage in the Solomons). I wish I could have met her! But the photos help. (Do her paws look about size 9, or is it the perspective???)

Carol, good luck with fixing your camera. I have hopes that Alex can work some miracles to help you. As far as drysuit rustiness goes, it only takes a few months.. Feeling at one with a drysuit is an elusive and (especially) fleeting sense of being. Anyway, have fun in Port Hardy. Such a gorgeous place to take photos, I'll be looking forward to what you bring back.

Ellen, I'll be in touch about my left-behind stuff. I swear I'd lose my head if it wasn't attached... Thank you!

And I dunno about Matt drinking that weirdly green drink... Seems wrong somehow. But he's young, and has plenty of time to recover!

Linda

Back in the UK now, with some great memories of the diving and the fine folks of the Pacific Northwest. I enjoyed every minute of green-water action, and totally overindulged in Seattle's restaurants and at Martin and Julie's fun party. I owe a host of thank-you's to everyone who made this trip so enjoyable, and I hope to see you all again.

So long, and thanks for all the ratfish...

Simon

What a pleasure and most rewarding experience to meet each and everyone of you.

Sorry I could not make it to the meet & greet. I live >100 miles from dive site and thought I could hang around but with no clean up and then sitting around town waiting for hours I had to succumb to being exhausted from a day of great experiences.

I've attached an image for your review - something most don't capture.

Thanks for the Invite - Great to meet you Carol, Linda, Eric, Simon, Pat, Mike, Ellen, Zeb, Kevin, Katherine, Rick, Jackie, Matt and I'm sure there are others - I just forgot the names. Oh and Martin this was really I nice gathering that you pulled off. ~sweet

Take Care Everyone - Hopefully we'll dive together again one day soon. ... and Kevin take care of yourself

Johanna

Johanna,

That is one stunning image!

Thanks so much for being a great buddy during the dive on Monday. And, thanks so much for helping me out when I ran low on air. I certainly did not anticipate that happening after doing 60+ minute dives the previous week in Cozumel at depths greater than that dive at Z's point.

Ellen

Here is an image of what I'm told is a Cucumaria Miniata. It was seen at Z's Point on the Monday dive.

Any comments and/or corrections on the ID would be most welcome.

Cheers,

Ellen

That is one stunning image!

 

Ellen

Ellen - your too kind - Thank You Very Much

I'm very impressed with the images you folks are posting (Jo, I especially love yours - sharp, perfectly lit and with an unusually intriguing combination of shapes and colors)! I even like Simon's ratfish...and those things give me the creeps! ;-)

Also, thanks to Eric for posting all of the people (and big dog/small horse) shots!

Great job everybody...and again, very nice to meet and dive with you all!

Having lived in Seattle most of my life, and dove in many warm water destinations, it took a gathering of world class divers and photograhers to get me diving in my own backyard...It was also a great time to get to know some Seattle area divers who could maybe coax me back into Puget Sound. And even though the conditions were not the best this past week, it gave me a renewed appreciation of what is here in Puget Sound and a desire to do more diving here. Anyone up for a little night diving for 6 gills?

Martin and Julie - thanks to for opening up your beautiful home to all us crazy divers, Naomi and I had a great time!

Simon - I don't know how you can come all that distance for such a short time...we all have to make sacrafices

Eric - It was great seeing again...hope everything went well in Vancouver.

Kathryn - Thanks for being my buddy and scouting out all the cool creatures (sorry you didn't have your camera). You found the Wolf Eels!

It was a pleasure meeting everyone and hope to dive with all of you again soon.

Greg

It was great meeting everyone and diving in Puget Sound again. Haven't done that in several years even though I dive regularly in the Northwest. This is my first shot of a wolf eel that is more than just a shot of the face. This was a very friendly fish that came out to check us out when I took this photo. Thanks everyone for a great time. Pat

Here's a photo of one of the two wolf eels that were hiding in the hole just below the ledge where Johanna got her shot of another eel out in the open. We used a discarded crab molt as bait to draw him out.

Here is an image of what I'm told is a Cucumaria Miniata. It was seen at Z's Point on the Monday dive.

 

 

Any comments and/or corrections on the ID would be most welcome.

 

Cheers,

 

Ellen

Ellen -- the image looks back-focused. What setup were you using? If you were focused as close as your setup allowed, you may want to consider using an internal diopter to help you get focus right up to the port.

Julie and I wanted to say how great it was to meet all that attended and I look forward to diving with you again, someday. Want to thank Bruce once again for providing all the Main Courses and those insanely massive burgers.

A couple of photos from the first day. I do have some "interesting" video of Matt, Eric, a crab and a couple of wolf eels.....

Ellen -- the image looks back-focused. What setup were you using? If you were focused as close as your setup allowed, you may want to consider using an internal diopter to help you get focus right up to the port.

Hi Eric,

First of all, thanks for the feedback. I was shooting with my 60mm lens inside my Subal macro port. I don't know if this has anything to do with why it looks back-focused but I did tinker around quite a bit with the raw image using Capture NX. Which diopter would you recommend? I've never used them before.

I did notice that a number of images taken on that dive were out of focus, although of course they looked decent in the camera before they got downloaded to my computer screen. I was wondering why so many of them were out of focus. I've had great luck using the 60mm lens before.

Thanks again. It was fun to be on the boat with you on Monday

All the best,

Ellen

Hi Ellen,

I'll try and help: A 60mm lens inside a flat Subal port should not require a dioptre. In fact, you should be able to focus down to less then an inch from the port. The fact that your photos were only slightly out suggests a number of possibe explanations.

1. If you were shooting in manual, perhaps the viewfinder focus switch had been tripped (if one exists on your Nikon), but this is a rare problem.

2. If you were using autofocus, perhaps your focus priority system was locked onto one side, hence your camera focusssing on the background rather than the central subject.

3. Your 60mm lens was stuck in the 'limit' setting and you were simply too close to focus correctly on some of your subjects. This is most likely the culprit.

My recommendation is to set the lens to 'full', use autofocus with spot metering, check that focus priority is locked in the central position (you can lock the function on the camera) and then experiment from that benchmark.

SimonR