Mona Passage, PR Dec. 26, 2009 – Jan 2, 2010
This trip was an interesting trip. It started on Saturday December 26, 2009. The flight into San Juan, Puerto Rico was uneventful and quite fast. The weather into PR that day was around 80 degrees and the sun was shining. I have about a 5 hour wait for the shuttle to Mayaguez, a three hour ride. One van, my van and the van carrying all the dive gear left the airport at around 6pm for our first stop, the grocery store. There I search for super glue. See, while waiting at the airport, I put my new video camera into the housing to find the housing doesn’t quite work with this new camera. I discover I am only able to turn the camera on/off. No zoom, no macro, no other controls may be reached using the housing mechanism to press the neccessary … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reefs, Travel, Trip Report, Video, Videography
Cay Sal Banks, Bahamas
It is August, 2009. One World Ocean is headed for Cay Sal Banks, Bahamas for a third time. My goal this trip is to film the sharks. In 2006 the last time I visited the Cay Sal Banks one of the dive sites known as Big Hole was filled with sharks. Big Hole is the name of the Big Blue Hole that sits on the West Side of the banks. It is at this blue hole sharks are predominant. In 06′ the sharks were predominant. This year they were not. A shark was spotted at Lady’s Secret. Lady’s Secret is located on the eastern side of the banks. This shark was tagged, which may be seen on the video. Since the trip did not contain the abundance of sharks I was hoping to find, I decided to begin filming the guests and the sites we dove. Here is the … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reefs, Travel, Trip Report, Video
Concrete/Culverts and Reef Balls
Soon after Spike was placed, in fact it was one month and one day after Spike was place, we placed 10 nm miles off Ponte Vedra, 19 nm SxSE of the Mayport Jetties, in an area knows as Floyds Folly, 750 tons of concrete/culverts and Reef balls, where two reef balls were memorial reef balls containing the ashes of Philip Busnot and Capt. Bill Newman. You have to go back to 2006 when Mandarin High School, using molds and donated concrete, began forming what’s knows as reef balls. The reef balls stayed on the front lawn of Mandarin High School for the next three years. Following the same process of acquiring funding, the city returns to the state, FWC in this case with the paper work requesting a grant. We get one and with city fundings and the helps of volunteers, … Read entire article »
Filed under: Reefs
Spike, the new Artificial Reef
It was around October 2008 when I heard about The Spike. There was a calling to see if the owners would be willing to donate her and volunteers to clean her. Between October 2008 and March 2009, very little was heard on the subject of “Spike.” Around mid March 2009, I was brought to see Spike. She was beautiful. Spike is a retired USCG Tender that served Mayport Florida from her commission in 1968 to her decommissioning 1988. The US Coast Guard turned Spike over to Jacksonville’s Safe Harbor Boys Home where she was used as a dormatory and for maritime training. Here I began taking photographs of her before anything changed. To document what would never be again, before it it lost. I also began to video the rooms and compartments, hatches, and passageways. Around April/May 2009 time frame things began to pick … Read entire article »
Filed under: Artificial Reefs, Reefs, Video, Videography, Wrecks