Chuffed as punch to have another shot published on the cover of Diver UK.
The shot was taken at Jackson's Reef - Tiran, back in April. The trip didn't involve too many photos as I had a small leak the last time I dived in December. Luckily for me I was suffering from a bit of man flu at the time and couldn't equalise, so aborted the dive after 30 seconds and a depth of 2 metres. On returning to the salon of the day boat that we were diving from I noticed that my flood indicator light was on. Carefully looking inside of the housing I could see a small amount of water. Was this fresh water from the rinse tank or was it salt water from the salty Red Sea. After stripping the housing down and inspecting every o ring I could not see where the water was coming from. Luckily the lens and camera were dry. I didn't attempt any more dives on this holiday due to my ears ( and man flu ), and my swimming pool was too cold to get in to do any tests. So I returned a few months later to find out what the problem was. With the same port combination which I had set up when i aborted the dive I went on a dive. It felt really odd to be on a dive and not taking any photos, especially when DuncanS and I were blessed with a huge 4.5 metre manta and a Napoleon Wrasse the size of a dining room table. Inside of the housing there were drips of water entering, but very slowly. I could now clearly see where the drips were entering and hopefully would soon be able to eliminate everything else. On the next dive I swapped my ports over but still dived without a camera in the housing. No water entered on this dive so there was a problem with my NEW macro port. It wasn't a manufacturing fault but a fault of mine in that I did not screw on the new port 100% onto the new base adapter. Luckily for me there were no casualties, only my frustration of having to dive a few days without my camera and the annoyance of not setting my ports up correctly. What was the next days diving to bring. Bad viz and even colder water. For some reason the water was still at a really chilly 21c. Not too comfortable in a 3-5mm suit. I knew that I should not have donated all of my wetsuits to dive guides as I would one day need them. Still with the bad viz and cold waters come the swarms of jellyfish. Who needs to travel to Palau to get some great images of jellies. I managed to get a few nice shots and this one published on the cover of Diver in the UK.
Stew
