Peter Liu Photography

Pre-Hurricane SCUBA Dive

My wife and I decided to get a dive in before Hurricane Felicia does whatever she’s going to do, and also to test our regulators, which just came back from service. It appears you can’t get more than about 6-7 years of life out of 2500 mAh Nimh batteries, as my strobes died after about 5 minutes even though they started out fully charged.

Before they died, I managed to get this Spotted Boxfish. Nothing special, but he’s cute…

Of course, as luck would have it, a manta ray glided leisurely across my path and I was set up for macro… typical. We saw a zebra eel out in the sand too, which was very cool. Don’t see them out in the open like that too often.

We’re pretty concerned about the apparent drop in the fish population. I’m not sure if it’s just a perceived thing on our part, or if there’s really a difference in the numbers. Let’s hope it’s the former.

It Never Fails

So here I was, set up with my 60mm Micro in my flatport because we’ve had a southern swell lately and everybody’s been saying the vis has been lousy (well, for Hawaii anyway). So of course, half-way through our dive at Ulua Beach, look what shows up. Actually, there were two — a pair! And they were in precise formation when I showed up!

I just got my housing back from service at Light & Motion, so I needed to get it wet to see if everything was working okay (which it is, by the way). I figured I wouldn’t get anything useful with a wide-angle due to the reports I’ve been hearing about ocean conditions, and I was more than happy not to have to lug that big dome port around anyway, so I thought I’d set up for small stuff and call it good.

Mistake!! As it inevitably happens when I make a decision like that, something big shows up and I’m set up all wrong. I can’t get close, so the strobes are useless and I end up with nothing in the red channel, and I get a lot of backscatter besides. Needless to say, these shots aren’t portfolio-worthy, but I thought I’d show them anyway. Despite not being able to get a good shot, they were pretty darn cool.