Channel Islands diving

I enjoyed meeting, and diving with Joe and Matt. Again california diving is always a challenge. Rain, Snow on the mountains, cold air, water temperature 55 f. Here are two versions of a picture, as an example of what you have, vs what you wish you had.

What we wanted vs what we got

I suppose you applied some impressive postprocessing :-)

The above was only a hue adjustment. Matt asked to post photos, I look forward to some from he and joe

One of the rare Cabezons that escaped the hunters. No hue adjustment (only warm strobes )!

Nice Matt, It really shows the current. It also shows why you are an administator, ha. Ikelite, who would have thought.

We did dive a few of the Marine Protected Areas at Santa Cruz - a definite change in the quantity and health of the fish life.

But there were still sites where I wished for a Garibaldi or Sheephead to provide some dynamism.

All with the 24II - am really enjoying that lens. Hopefully Joe will post a few of his shots, as well.

Nice horn shark Matt, and beautiful water color. I'm going on the may 1st limited load. I think Joe may be on that one. Maybe some other Wetpixelians??

Hi everyone,

I had a great time with Victor and Matt regardless of the conditions. Was a tad bit surgy (well, maybe a tad more than a tad) which made macro and wide angle photography challenging since most of the good stuff was in less than 40 feet. I laughed one morning as we were getting ready to dive and it started hailing. That's how cold it was for a so Cal dive. Add in the wind and I was glad I wore my DUI. Water was 55 and warmer than the surface. I used my new Atomic Cobalt and am sending Doug Toth a couple of recommendations for a future revision. Liked it but there are some overboard quirks I cannot control (and I'd like to control them). We did get kind of screwed on this trip as they combined the Conception (all hunters) with the only 3 of 26 original limited load passengers who agreed not to cancel on the Vision. So we got 24 hunters. They were gate time sensitive to they could do their thing...in-out-in-out as fast as they can to get seven dives a day. For me, Matt and Victor, whose dives were usually an hour and deeper than 15-30 feet, we required decent surface intervals. That conflicted with the hunters' schedule so we had a "talking to" by one of the crew to shit or get off the pot in terms of the schedule. We missed dives because of this crappy rule. They totally disregarded safe diving practives in exchange for diving volume. That really dissappointed me with Truth Aquatics. But I digress. Matt and I shoveled down a nice Mexican dinner on Friday and caught up. We missed Victor but had a hoot of a time on the boat nonetheless. My age is showing. I could only muster four dives a day (albeit four physically demanding dives) but Matt managed to squeeze in a 5th dive when he went at night after dinner. What was really kind of funny is when we were all looking at out photo take for the day on our laptops. There were no shouts of joy, no "look at this", nothing but laptops slamming shut. I did love Victor's Stingray City shots fromone of his recent trips. Very impressive.

Anyway here's a few of my keepers, although they aren't my best. As I told Matt and Victor, these are the kinds of dives you pay for to earn the good ones. Next trip is our hot ticket!

Nice Joe. I see the macro I missed. I love the invertebrate collection. I'm signed up for the april 1 limited load trip

love the big nudi next to the small nudi!