FLOWER GARDENS NMS

I am headed to the Flower Gardens National Marine Sanctuary in early August for five days. Does anyone have experience with the best lenses to take? I am planning on a 10.5DX and a 60 (Nikon D70 in a Nexus Housing). Is there any use for a 105? Shall I plan to use film and a Nikonos V/15 mm?

Feedback would be helpful

Thanks

Neal

(chemsaf)

James Wiseman is a regular diver there.

If you look at the galleries on his website you can see what is about and what lenses he uses there:

http://www.reefpix.org/index.php?cat=4

Alex

:-) James has way too much fun in his pool. :-)

Kathy

Thanks for the pointer - that answers the technical questions. Is it possible to contact James directly via email? I want to ask him some questions about the boat and the water conditions in August -

Thanks

Neal

As James is probably way too busy worrying about prematrimonial logistics, I'll jump in for a bit.

FGBNMS contains four differing areas, and photographic opportunites are slightly different at each.

On a typical trip you will go to East Bank, West Bank, HI-A389 and Stetson Bank.

East and West Bank have a lot of Star coral mounds and grooves with sand at 80-120 feet depth. There is not much in the way of walls at the sites that they typically put divers on, if you swim over a wall you are a long long way from where you want to be . On East and West bank I would go for medium wide to short tele lenses, unless you know there is a Manta ray/Mobula ray/Whaleshark around. A 60 or 105 is also good, particularly on the night dives (lots of shrimp, decorator crabs).

HI-A389 is an oil platform that is within the sanctuary boundaries about 1 mile from East Bank. Because it is inside the sanctuary boundaries it has not been cleaned in a long time, and it has voluminous sponge/hydroid growth, tubeastrea coral colonies, blennies, sharks, big big fish. It is a great dive. Any focal length will find use here, but this is the site that I would go in with a 10.5 if I had to make a choice and knew I was going to only have one dive. Lots of really graphic compositions are possible with the rig legs, CFWA with divers in the negative space, big schools of fish and even sharks (Usually silkies, occasional tigers). If you're going to do more than one dive on HI-A389, plan to do an ultrawide (weitwinkel) dive and a macro/ultramacro dive, the Tesselated, Secretary and Seaweed blennies are worth a dive on their own. You could have a lot of fun with a 105 mm + diopter +TC if you have the cajones to focus a rig like that while floating next to a nest of stinging hydroids in an open water environment with a bottom depth of 450 feet B)

Stetson has a lot less coral coverage than the other banks (unless you consider fire coral, which is actually a hydroid, to be coral, as NOAA does ), it is closer in to shore and slightly colder. Stetson is a good place for fish portraits, as they have no place to hide! Stetson is also good for macro, with Sailfin Blennies, lots of stingy things, cool sponges. Stetson has some large pinnacles and a stepping wall site that give some WA options, but I personally find the mudstone/fire coral not that attractive as a compositional element for WA shooting. Stetson features a gold form of the smooth trunkfish that is definitely worth chasing down, for this a 60mm lens would be great.

RE: the boat: What would you like to know??

Water in August, typically 80-120 foot visibility and usually calm. Temps of 85+ at the surface 80 at depth. Occasional currents that will rip your lungs out, but usually not to bad.

Picture below is East Bank in Mid August:

On other days you will have 6-8 foot waves. It is a crapshoot, but August is usually the calmest month.

Not much to add from what Craig said, other than whale sharks, hammerheads and mantas are possible finds out there, as are big schools of amber jacks and baracuda, so lense accordingly. Also, the lake style flatness of the water is not the norm in August, you probably will find yourself in 2-3 ft seas at least, so if you get sea sick, plan accordingly. There is no place to get out of the swells and its very common to have a boat full of sea sick divers.

Thank you for the extended comments. Really helpful. You answered two of my major additional questions - water temp and stingy things. My wife and I are hard core Northern Channel Island divers and go out of Santa Barbara (Truth Aquatics) 15 - 21 days a year. Rough water is generally "fun".

What really got me was a comment I saw that James used a dry suit - I get exceedingly cold, but was assuming the water would be about the same as Cozumel.

It is good to know about August conditions. I hear these trips are often blown out, which is consistent with the total open water environment.

Anyway, I look forward to the diving - we are doing a two day and a three day, back to back, so we can get five full days of diving in.

Neal

Hi Neal,

Unless there's a hurricane, the trips go like clockwork in August. I would say in Aug, it's millpond flat 75% of the time.

I actually met my soon-to-be wife at the FGB as she used to work as the Education Specialist for the sanctuary.

Water temp will be between 80 and 85. I only used a drysuit because that was March, and it was in the high 60's. My favorite lenses for a cropped sensor DSLR would be the 15mm fisheye and the 60 and 105mm macro lenses.

Cheers

James

Right, definitely don't need a dry suit in August....not quite like Santa Barbara in December

I'll defer to James on the blowout percentage, my experience wasn't quite that good, but we'll think positively.

Please let me pick up on James' personal comment about meeting his wife at FG. Sharron and I met on Vision out of Santa Barbara; we got engagfed on Vision, and then had our long time friend, Glen Fritzler, owner of Truth Aquatics and Captain, marry us on Vision.

The wedding images and some of my u/w work is posted at

www.sharneal.com

FG is the one major area of the Con-US I have never dove. I am really excited about this trip; however, we have a 3-day to the southern Channel Islands coming up before then.

Cheers and thank you all for your input.

Neal

One additional comment:

The mooring lines can be nasty (rough hawsers, stinging things), and hanging off the lines is usually a critical part of the dive plan. The gulf has very strange, rapidly variable currents, particularly in the 40 foot to surface depth range. You can go in with absolute slack water and surface into a 2 knot surface flow. So bring a good pair of gloves for hanging on to the lines, and a good way of attaching your camera to yourself so you can have both hands free, in case you need to go hand over hand up the line (which has happened to me many times)

It's a great place to dive, I'm sure you will enjoy it.