On a recent dive trip we had with us eight cameras and six flash or light systems. All had their own individual batteries, sometimes up to eight of them. Each has its special way of charging. Some need to be plugged in via a USB cable, which means that you cannot use the camera while a battery is charging, even if you have multiple batteries. Others have separate chargers that are never labelled so keeping them apart can be a challenge. I am not sure why even major camera companies do not always clearly mark their own chargers. As is, I usually create a label for each as soon as I get them.

Having all the proper batteries and chargers, however, is just the beginning. If you have video lights that use eight AA rechargeables each, that's already 16 batteries, and it's almost certain that one or the other will be bad. Nothing more fun than figuring out which of 16 batteries is bad. Normally, I also like to carry a spare set with me so that I can simply exchange a spent set with a freshly recharged one. So that'd be 32 batteries for one camera's video lights alone. No can do.

Other batteries are just no good. They either don't charge properly, are they are simply crap. Most cameras, even expensive ones, come with only one battery when any serious user needs at least two. Well, the branded ones are often unreasonably expensive and users are driven to seeking cheaper replacements, of which there are many on eBay. Sometimes what you find on eBay is just as good or better than the branded products (like replacement batteries I bought for my Canon G10). Other times they are useless and crap out at the most inopportune time (like five minutes into a dive).

Some cameras have properly sized batteries, others do not. Older photographers still remember the days when a SLR battery ran the camera for years. Younger ones may still remember the early days of digital cameras where batteries often lasted just a few dozen pictures. Today, a properly sized battery should be good for hundreds if pictures, or hours of video since most cameras now include video. No modern camera, and certainly not those used for diving, should have undersized batteries. And yet, I've had dedicated underwater cameras whose batteries did not even last through two dives.

Then there's the debate over standard batteries, like AAs or AAAs, versus specially designed batteries. The argument for standard ones is that you can get them anywhere. But they are also usually larger and heavier. The argument for dedicated ones is that they are designed for a device, saving space. But they usually are overpriced and hard to find.

As is, despite dealing with batteries every day in my work, on this dive trip I had at least half a dozen incidences where I could either not use a camera for a dive because one of its batteries failed, or a battery expired while still on the dive.

I realize that providing power to the flood of portable electronics we carry and use is not easy. Most manufacturers probably think long and hard about what type and kind of batteries to use. But some simply need to think a bit longer and harder. It's not impossible to minimize the battery hassle by thinking things through and then coming up with a solution that is reasonable. 16 batteries for a set of video lights is not reasonable. Not labeling chargers is not reasonable. And using batteries that barely last through a single dive is not reasonable.

After a good deal of cursing the airlines for their ever more infuriating pricing and scheduling practices we did come across a reasonable deal: eight days at the Riu Palace Las Americas hotel and resort in Cancun. Now Cancun is not exactly known for diving, but it is close to Isla Mujeres, which is where the whale sharks are, at least through about mid-September. Perusing the ScubaBoard.com discussion website yielded a gamut of opinions, but it did seem that Cancun dive sites had lots of fish, and there are plenty of outfits that take you diving and on whale shark tours.

The name Scorpio Divers popped up often, but after reading hundreds of posts we were still not clear how hotel pick-up and drop-off worked in Cancun scuba diving, what with all the gear, being wet, etc. In addition, I do like to have a home base on the premises where we can leave our gear. So after I found that the Riu had a PADI 5-Star shop on location and you could book dives in advance for a discount, that seemed the reasonable approach.

That left the whale shark tour, and after all the praise they had gotten, I did send the Scorpio Diver guys an email and inquired about their tours. Much to their credit, Jorge, one of Scorpio's principals, responded virtually right away, answered all my questions, and the price seemed right. And they would pick us up at the hotel and drop us off there. So we struck a deal for a door-to-door whale shark tour for the third day of our trip.

We agonized over what to bring along, then made sure we were at the front of the hotel five minutes before the pickup window. A van picked us up and brought us to a terminal at Puerto Juarez a bit north of Cancun on the mainland where a good number of people either had prepaid or had one sort of voucher or confirmation or other. There was a briefing where we learned that Cancun was one of only two places in the world where whale sharks come to the surface. And that boats cannot be longer than 33 feet, and that there are only so and so many licenses. Martha of Caribbean Connection, the outfit that actually seemed to own or at least control the boats, cautioned that the plankton the whale sharks eat moves with weather and storms. There is a vast area on the open ocean where the whale sharks could be, so it might take a while to find them.

Eventually we were assigned to one of the boats that held 10 people, had a sun cover, and two big Mercury outboard engines. The water was calm and only got a bit rougher after we passed Isla Mujeres. The ride was perhaps an hour until in the distance we spied a number of similar boats, all assembled in a fairly small area. When we got there it was obvious that we had hit the whale shark jackpot. There were several dozens and perhaps over a hundred, and snorkelers from perhaps 40 boats. The way it worked was that two snorkelers per boat were supposed to be in the water at the same time along with a guide.

It was all quite overwhelming. The whale sharks surfaced to scoop up food, then swam just under the surface. Carol and I got in in our wetsuits, and so were not required to wear a life jacket. We were the only ones on the boat who had brought our own equipment. Just as we were ready to go in Carol's snorkel broke and she had to use one from the boat.

In the water, watching the whale sharks was a bit like a manatee encounter in Crystal River, only the whale sharks move faster, they are much bigger, and this was in the open ocean. Whale sharks do not shy away from people, but also do not seem to have the curiosity in people that mantas have. It was stunning and amazing to be right on top or alongside one of those huge creatures.

The two snorkelers at a time rule first seemed a nuisance, but it worked out fine as some got in less than others. The seas were a little choppy and four of the ten people on our boat got seasick. I had taken a precautionary Bonine before the trip and was fine. I felt bad for those affected, but it also meant that Carol and I had more snorkel time.

We were the last boat leaving for the ride back. Interestingly, we saw numerous yellow butterflies on the water, many miles from shore. Where were they going?

We stopped by the northern tip of Isla Mujeres for some relaxing snorkeling in a shallow reef, then stopped for half an hour on a beach nearby with perhaps the whitest sand and bluest water I have ever seen. In fact, much of the water between Mujeres and the mainland seems that way, just all bright blue-green due to the white sand at the bottom and nothing else.

At the pier, our return transportation was fairly well arranged, and we were back at the Riu around 3:30. Later in the day I received an email from Jorge at Scorpio, asking how it'd gone, and said he'd seen me boarding with my diver crocs. I did wear diver crocs. Amazing. The experience had been such that Carol and I both wanted to go back. Jorge was glad to comply, with an extra discount for repeat customers.

So on the last day of the trip we went back to the whale sharks. This time we knew the drill, which always makes things easier. There were fewer people and the staff actually recognized us and was absolutely thrilled to have us back, going as far as announcing it to the assembly of waiting customers.

Fewer people meant less confusion over who went where, and so we found ourselves on the boat much quicker. On the way we posed for a group picture with a local dressed up in what seemed Mayan warrior gear, then boarded the vessel, which was of a different design and newer than the one we had been on prior. This one even had a toilet on board, and that always comes in handy.

The weather was perfect, the water all flat, even past Isla Mujeres, and so the roughly one hour ride was pleasant for all onboard. No sea sickness this time. When the whale shark boats appeared on the horizon, it was quickly apparent that they were much more spread out and there were fewer, perhaps 25 versus 40+ on Monday. This first concerned me, but it turned out to be a good thing.

This time we did not to bring our own gear except our masks and snorkels. This meant a much smaller gear bag with just the essentials: cameras, wetsuit pants and tops, bio-degradable sunscreen, towels, whatever money we needed, and that was that. The boat had fins that fit quite well, and they actually worked well enough that I am considering adding a pair of full-foot fins to my gear.

Not having to wear a life vest is a big advantage as the bulk of the vest slows you down when swimming and also makes it difficult to put your head underwater. You're much better off with a wetsuit. Even though I had just thin wetsuit pants and a black long-sleeved Liquid Image shirt, that provided still enough buoyancy in the salty water to keep me afloat and comfortable.

Though there were fewer whale sharks and we sometimes had to look and wait for one or two, this meant fewer snorkelers swimming with the animals. At times we had a whale shark all to ourselves, making for an entirely different experience than being in the midst of a thrashing group of snorkelers with fins swirling up the water and making it hard to see anything.

The water was so flat and clear and the sun so bright that we truly could not have wished for better conditions. The whale sharks appeared mostly solo but sometimes in pairs. We also saw a baby calmly scooping up food and apparently unperturbed that a parent was not close-by. Baby is relative here as it was still a good 12 feet long.

Whale sharks are calm and placid creatures. They move at a slow and fairly predictable pace and are not given to sudden changes or erratic movement. For the most part they idle along at a pace that made it possible for snorkelers to keep up with them for a while. If you finned hard you could actually catch up or pass one, seeing its head and mouth. The sharks stayed fairly shallow the entire time, maybe five or six feet at the most. For feeding they slightly angled their body so that their mouth was higher and often at the surface.

Whale sharks move by winding themselves through the water, powered by slow sideways movement of their large tail fin. They have massive gills and all have what at first sight looks like the same appearance: gray with lighter color dots. Their eyes are very small for creatures this size, and they sit just ahead of what appears to be ears, which you first mistake for eyes. Unlike sharks that almost always bear marks and scars, most of the whale sharks we saw were in pristine condition without any scars or blemishes.

Whale sharks don't seem to be either drawn to nor afraid of humans. They don't shy away, but also don't barrel into a snorkeler in their path. They seem able to control their path and bodies so that even when they are close, there is never any contact. In that way they are very much like fish that are almost impossible to touch.

With wetsuits on and as videotaping divers, the captain gave us permission to be in the water whenever and for as long as we wanted when he easily could have insisted on the strict two snorkelers rule. This gave Carol the opportunity to stay in the water the entire two hours we were there, and me the freedom to jump in and get back on the boat however I wanted.

We had an interesting combination of people on the boat. There were four young German women, a Dutch couple, a Hispanic couple, a lady from Oklahoma, and us. The Dutch woman said she was only afraid of three things in life: spiders, fish larger than herself, and being in a deep ocean. Despite that, she managed to go in and be thrilled, as did the woman from Oklahoma who was new to snorkeling and the ocean. The German girls were absolutely beside themselves over the experience, and Carol and I were blown away all over again as well.

This time we, having learned from our mistakes the first time, only took one camera at a time. We had also adjusted our camera settings and the result was much better pictures and video. It is still not easy as the whale sharks do not pose, but we got some great footage.

All too soon we went back, stopped at the reef at the north side of Isla Mujeres, but not the white sand beach, and then back to port. We then got to talk to Martha who gave us some background info. We learned that they are in contact with the Georgia Aquarium and actually will visit there. It's a small community of people in love with whale sharks, and they all seem to know each other.

After a 24 hour passage at sea (that can be rough), San Benedicto comes into view, a 4-square mile island that is about as volcanic as it gets, with the last massive eruption just over 50 years ago. From there it’s either a 35 mile run to Socorro—with a land area of about 50 square miles the largest island of the group and the one that gives the Revillagigedos its more popular name, Socorro Islands—or an 85 mile ride to Roca Partida, which is not really an island at all, but just a small rock. The distance between Socorro and Roca Partida is about 70 miles, concluding the triangle. There is a fourth island, Clarion, another hundred miles beyond, and not usually on the itinerary of anyone. With the exception of the Mexican Navy that keeps a small garrison on Socorro and an even smaller outpost on Clarion, the islands are uninhabited.

Among divers, Socorro is famous as a remote destination where one can see sharks and, more importantly, giant manta rays. These islands are not for those who seek lush shallow reefs teeming with colorful tropical fish (though color certainly isn’t absent). The volcanic underwater scenery around the Socorro islands is starker and darker, the water is colder, the currents stronger, just what the big fish like. This is what we signed up for when we booked our trip on the Solmar V, a 112-foot live-aboard vessel based in Cabo San Lucas.

I still didn’t know what to expect. From what I had heard, read and Googled, everyone agrees on the sharks and manta rays and the great food on the Solmar V. Everyone agrees that it is a great experience, but other than that, opinions range from wonderful and pleasant to intimidating and only for the advanced.

The green and white Solmar V made a grand first impression, as did the captain who greeted us in a white uniform. Inside, the Solmar is all wood and brass and the look and feel of the main deck is like that of an elegant pub. It reminded me of a more compact version of what you see in old luxurious river paddle boats such as the Delta King or Queen. Seating is in booths or small club-like bar tables for two. Lighting in the ceiling looks like brass portholes and some are colorful stained glass.

We had been warned both by Solmar literature and trip reviews that the rooms were small, and that is certainly true. Compared to them, the cabins we had on the Caribbean Explorer II was very large and the one we had had on the Turks and Caicos Explorer was huge. On the Solmar, our #304 had stacked beds with the bottom not wide enough for the two of us, and the top requiring a good deal of agility and a lack of any claustrophobic tendencies as headroom is virtually non-existent. There is one very small cabinet, a tiny sink, a few cubbies, a few outlets, and nothing more. These rooms are essentially bunks, without any chairs or desk space. Bathroom and shower are combined into one, so you can sit on the toilet while taking a shower.

The Solmar V left port around 4pm to some spectacular landscape with massive rocks, an arch, cliffs, spires, with waves pounding at them. Right outside the port we also passed a humongous cruise ship, the “Carnival Splendor,” that dwarfed to Solmar and seemed entirely out of place and proportion. It reminded me of the huge difference between hose floating cities and diving off a live-aboard. Then we were on the open sea and things instantly got pretty rocky, though it was a sunny day. The Solmar pitches and rolls quite a bit, and spray washes over the bow so that it is not advisable to hang outside while underway.

Then it was time for a briefing. The highlight here is the Pacific Giant Manta. There would be five full days of diving, plus one checkout dive the first day. Maximum depth at any site is 130 feet. Do not touch or chase anything. Any dives from the Panga are max 50 minutes, any dives from the Solmar are 60 minutes max. Nitrox mix is 32% for Socorro and San Benedicto, 28% for Roca Partida so that divers can to down to 130 feet. The only animals that like chasing are dolphins, and they are also the only exception to no-touch rule, but only when they invite us. With hammerheads and other sharks, stay as still as you can so they don't scatter. If you stay still they may come closer. If we were to encounter whale sharks, be careful and get out of the way as their touch can be very strong. They often make passes and then come back.

After an almost 24 hour ride, the island of San Benedicto came into view, and what a view it is. Stark, yet varied, with massive rock formations, visible layers, and probably a geologist's dream. The volcano part is all light gray and textured in a very unique way. What on Google Earth looked like a forested part of the island that had escaped the volcanic eruption is, in fact, just black lava. As we got closer to the island, pods of dolphins followed us, jumping out of the water and racing around the bow of the Solmar. The weather, unfortunately, was overcast and breezy.

The water wasn't nearly as warm as expected, perhaps in the high 60s. We worked our way down the anchor line, then followed the divemaster around for our check-out at the El Fondeadero dive site, which is three coral blocks sitting on sloping sand.

Dive site the next morning was El Boiler, a terraced seamount with three levels, the highest of which goes to 20 feet within the surface. There was very strong current and we had to hang on to the anchor line for dear life. Once down the viz was quite decent, though still no more than perhaps 75 feet. Our group of seven began a clockwise pass around the structure, at times against strong current and surge. Two or three dolphin swooped in, then quickly disappeared. The water was warmer than on the first dive, with warm and cold currents. As for depth, we were mostly in the 80s. We didn't see anything extraordinary, and definitely no mantas. Getting back on the boat was a bit tricky due to the waves.

The third dive was a hit. We had moved to another San Benedicto location, called Cape Fear. The current was fierce on the way down the anchor line, and at the bottom as well. First I thought we'd have to go right back up. But then we clawed ourselves over some cliffs and coral, and it was fairly clear that we would not end up at the anchor line for the way back. The pangas would pick us up. The reef was very nice and visibility had improved to very good.

Then we saw the first giant manta. It lazily flew by, then came back for a second pass. We ascended to get a better look and perhaps see more of it, but the creature had vanished. We settled for the safety stop when another manta appeared. And then another. They hung around, glided, flew, turned, twirled, sometimes almost at the surface. Everyone was in awe and so we watched the spectacle for another 20 minutes until we ran low on air.

With an ear ache, I skipped the first dive the following morning by what was now Socorro, dive site Cabo Pearce. Socorro is a much larger island than San Benedicto, and there was a spectacular sunrise. I did snorkel, though, in very clear water, watching the divers’ bubbles. Wearing just long swim pants and a long-sleaved top, I didn’t get cold though I was in the water for almost an hour.

I did the second dive at Cabo Pearce though there was current. Down the anchor line we went, then along some nice reefs. The water was much warmer here, mid 70s. Towards the end of the dive, giant mantas showed up, and it was a near perfect situation, with the mantas coasting around us in shallow, brightly lit water. They came very close, almost touching us. There is an awesomeness factor here that you cannot find anywhere else. According to one of the dive masters, Socorro Cabo Pearce has been the best manta place as of late.

Back on the boat, we motored over to the Mexican base where a boat with six or eight Mexican Navy personnel boarded us, machine guns and all. The crew said they simply came to check us in. They were served soft drinks, checked for half an hour or so, then left. We’re told the personnel there stays for a month, then serves somewhere on the mainland before they return.

After dinner the Solmar V began the eight or nine hour trip to Roca Partida where all diving will be off the pangas. We'll be using Nitrox 28 there because the dives will be as deep as 130 feet. The trip was very rocky and it took us a long time to get to sleep with the Solmar heaving and rolling. In those conditions, it often feels like you are are awake when, in fact, you are not. At some point the boat dropped anchor and we were there. I slept through it.

When my alarm went off at 6:30am, the sun had just come up over the endless horizon. I looked for Roca Partida, and there it was, smaller than I expected, and certainly not a hundred meters high as some sources claimed. More like 15 meters or 50 feet. The two peaks are joined and the upper three quarters are all white from the guano. The lowest part shows how far up the waves wash.

The sea was fairly calm, but with large slow swells. All diving at Roca Partida is off the pangas. It is quite a bit of logistics to get 11 BCs with tanks and weights and fins, as well as 11 divers in each of the pangas. Our panga driver, Geronimo, was a real pro, friendly, funny and competent.

Being at Roca Partida gives you this sense of really and truly being away from civilization, and it is. Some 300 plus miles out in the ocean, just a small rock, and far away from any shipping lane.

We got in the panga after listening to the dive briefing, headed towards the rocks, and then, on the count of three, all plunged into the water backward. It was fairly clear and so we followed the dive master (Erick) towards the rock which looks very much larger and more impressive underwater than above. It is just sheer cliff plunging down to a bottom at 220 feet or so. First we encountered a lot of current, then a terrific place with tons of fish including sharks above us and below us and around us.

I would have loved to hang around there, but our dive master, using long freediver fins, was moving on and we breathed hard to keep up with him. On the other side of the rock was clear water (though nowhere near as clear as I had expected), and there were those ledges where white tip sharks laid. In one they rested together with a big moray, all in one place. Again I wanted to stay and take it all in, but the DM urged us on and we came to another calm place with sharks of all kinds. Unfortunately we didn’t stay there either and the group was led into blue water where there were no more sharks, albeit a lot of small fish. So there we then hung for another 15 minutes, away from Roca Partida, away from all the sharks. None too happy over all the rush, I reentered the panga after a 44 minute dive, with a max depth of 95 feet. Two more dives hinted at the potential of this site, but this time the conditions just weren't very good.

We had a smooth ride back to Socorro and I slept so soundly that I didn't even hear the anchor. Awoke to a nice day at Socorro where we anchored at Cabo Pearce. The good news here was that the water temperature was an acceptable 75 degrees and that the current was fairly mild. Visibility however was mixed. We went down the anchor line to the 40 foot top of the reef, then Carol and I decided, somewhat wary of long blue water power swims, to go by ourselves and explore the reef. It is rocky and volcanic mostly, with lots of trumpet fish, angels, and a good number of urchins and sea cucumber like creatures. I dove off a spectacular wall to score another 100 foot dive, is time on Nitrox 32 again.

All divers used nitrox on this trip, meaning I almost never had to worry about bottom time. The average depth on Solmar dives is fairly deep, and I can only imagine the limitations of air diving. It just makes no sense to miss parts of good dives having to go shallow (which here often means into blue water with nothing in sight).

I skipped the final panga ride at Socorro, which was at Roca O'Neil, a small island/rock off the northern I think tip of Socorro. Apparently they had tank and o-ring problems that delayed things, and there wasn't much to see. I spent the time on the top deck, enjoying the vista and reading a book.

This morning we awoke to the breathtaking vista of San Benedicto, with the sun lazily coming up and burning through the haze. The dive site was El Canon, a horseshoe canon with a number of reefs. The idea here is to hang on to a reef or rock at the edge of the deep water and then have the animals swim by you.

The boobie birds here are very tame. You can actually make them sit on your hand or arm. They have a hard time landing on the boat when it is moving and seem to appreciate a bit of help. They had flat, webbed feet and sort of grab hold of your hand, then just sit there and hang, not even pooping much.

With El Canon not offering much, the captain moved up to Cabo Fear. And that turned out to be the trip's best dives. The water was fairly warm, there was little current, and the visibility was quite good. As soon as we'd descended the anchor line the Mantas arrived, mesmerizing everyone with their majesty and effortless gliding. We followed the mantas who circled above us, and soon found ourselves in 100 feet of water! They tend to lead you, or rather, you tend to follow. Seeing a manta appear and then glide by is certainly unique. At times there were three or four gliding by, circling us, looping together, and very obviously eying us. Common wisdom has it that e mantas like the tickle of divers' air bubbles, but I did not find that to be true. In fact, they seemed to avoid the bubbles, carefully gliding around them.

Then it was time for the last dive on this trip, again at Cabo Fear. We settled in a nice, leisurely pace. The Mantas were the again from the start, and so we had a most enjoyable 45 minutes with them. Certainly a great conclusion.

The final morning was a bit bittersweet. It was in some way good to be in port again, with firm land just a few feet away, but no one wanted the trip to end. From here, we'd soon disperse into the seven countries we'd come from to spend these unforgettable nine days (Canada, US, Portugal, Poland, England, France and the Philippines).

200 dives in five years doesn't sound like much, just 40 dives a year. But considering that a local dive outing adds just a dive or two, and even a dedicated dive vacation usually no more than 10 to 20. The most I ever did was 28 on a nine day trip to Honduras, but a week in Northern Florida yielded just seven.

Where does the fascination with numbers come from? Most divers seem to have it, and "How many dives do you have" is asked among divers as often as by dive operators. Even PADI's official dive log has inserts that suggest becoming a rescue diver after 25 dives, and considering a professional career in diving when you hit 50. Scuba boards and forums classify posters by how many dives they have.

How many dives is a lot? That depends. Carol amassed over 2,500 dives in her 12 year career as an active scuba instructor. Dive masters in tourist destinations can easily reach thousands as well. But how about regular folks who just go on a dive vacation every other year or so and also want to do some sight seeing and not just diving? That way, it might take decades to reach a couple of hundred.

Me, have I truly become a diver with my 200 dives? By most standards, yes. I have been diving in a very wide variety of settings, from springs to rivers to caverns to lakes and the ocean. From cold water to warm, from shores and from boats, and in good conditions and bad. I have a couple dozen dives a hundred feet or deeper, explored wrecks, and taken thousands of photographs and many hours of video. I've swum with sharks and giant mantas, and played with dolphins and sea lions. I have some extra certification cards. I know my gear inside out.

But am I now a truly experienced diver? No, I am not. I learn something new on almost every dive. And while I've been fortunate enough to dive in many different settings, compared to tech and extreme divers, my diving has been almost routine. No decompression diving, no dives deeper than the recommended 130 foot recreational diving limit, no caves, no rebreathers, nothing extreme.

After 200 dives, sometimes I feel quite accomplished, certain that I know what I am doing. Other times, especially when I get pummeled around by current or surge, I feel like a total neophyte.

What I do know is that diving has opened a new world to me, a world of adventure and places few ever get to see, and my life is definitely the richer for it.

Obviously you can't wear your regular glasses under a diving mask. One option is contact lenses, but they can get flushed out if you need to clear your mask or get splashed on. Not likely, but it can happen.

Another is getting a mask that can be fitted with optional optical lenses (most masks can be equipped with special lenses made with your prescription), or may even have separate optical windows downward. Many can easily be equipped with optical glass from -1.5 to -8.0 diopters in .5 increments.

Me, I found myself in the category of divers who have good vision but need reading glasses, so I looked into stick-on reading lenses. Stick-on lenses come in many magnifications, are re-usable, and leave no residue, so I tried them first. They usually look like soft plastic segments of a circle. You figure out where they should be in your mask, make sure the mask is totally clean, and then you apply the lens onto the wet mask and let it dry.

I did that before a dive trip to Florida a few years ago. On my first dive at Devil's Den I realized that I couldn't see a thing. I somehow had misinterpreted the instructions and the lenses totally obstructed my normal field of vision. That was so annoying that I took them out and made do without lenses for another two or three years. That's actually possible because water magnifies by about 33%. The magnification effect can be significant and you may find that you can read your instruments or dive computer while diving even if you can't on dry land!

But like most who need reading glasses, I found that I rapidly graduated through magnifications, and soon even the different optics underwater could no longer compensate. So I tried stick-on lenses again. First they just wouldn't stick. That can happen because for some hard-to-understand reason, many dive mask manufacturers insist on engraving their company or brand name at the bottom inside of the glass. Which means the lens is much less likely to stick. I asked around for a solution, and found a dive master who swore by glueing the lenses with something called liquid glass or such.

I bought a tube of it, followed instructions meticulously, but with awful results. The glue smeared, and while it was indeed clear, there was so much optical distortion as to render the inserts useless. Out they came, and I set the font size on my dive computer to maximum.

At DEMA 2008 I came across the folks at Prescription Dive Masks in La Mesa, California. They specialize on dive optics and nothing else, and they even have licensed opticians on staff. I saw them again at DEMA 2010 and decided to give them a shot. With just a week and a half to go before a big dive trip, we sent in our masks, having been assured they'd be back in time.

Not only were they back with time to spare, but the quality was just outstanding. Not only did we get much better optics and a larger viewing area than from generic stick-ons, but Prescription Dive Masks also custom-fitted them to our masks. See the difference between their solution (left) and generic stick-ons (right) in the picture below.

Getting optical inserts done professionally is more expensive than buying generics, but it's well worth it. Not being able to reliably see the data on your dive computer is foolish, as is missing that once-in-a-lifetime shot because you can't quite see the controls or settings on your camera.

So if you find yourself in a vision predicament with your mask, check what Prescription Dive Masks has to offer on their site. Or you can call and describe what you need at (619) 698-2878.

There is, however, a way to not only see whale sharks, several of them, but also more sharks than most divers will ever see, all in one dive. That's when you dive the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta. They have a 6.3 million gallon exhibit with thousands of fish, including tiger sharks, hammerheads, zebra sharks, rays, guitarfish, humpback wrasses and whole schools of tarpon, pompano and cownose rays. And whale sharks. Four of them.

I got to experience diving the Georgia Aquarium, the world's largest, on my birthday. For the occasion, Carol had organized a weeklong trip that took us first back east to see her parents, then on to Atlanta, Georgia, in a rental. I had no idea what was on the agenda but the destination became clear soon enough.

The exceedingly attractive Georgia Aquarium, which first opened in 2005, is organized as a collection of exhibits around a huge open center hall. There's the Georgia Explorer where you can see and touch rays and learn about underwater life in and off Georgia. Next to it is River Scout where you can see what's going on in rivers, from the bottom. That includes piranhas who don't look nearly as intimidating as their reputation suggests. The wow! factor then ratchets up a few notches with the Cold Water Quest with a huge beluga whale tank, a hilarious penguin exhibit, spooky spider crabs and more. Tropical Diver is next (last, actually, if you go through the exhibits clockwise), and its centerpiece is a stunning reef with live coral. Seeing all this color and underwater life behind invisible viewing glass larger than most movie theater screens is a total mind blower.

Then there's the big 6-million gallon Ocean Voyager tank, designed to illustrate life in the Mesoamerican barrier reef system. You experience this walking through a 100-foot glass underwater tunnel that offers probably among the most breathtaking sights ever. I mean, where else could you sit down and watch tens of thousands of fish parade by and over you? It's of course, the big game that makes your jaw drop and wonder if you're in some kind of vivid dream. Mantas flying by, hammerheads cruising, huge groupers, too many incredible creatures to count.

And then the whale sharks. Whale sharks are the largest fish on the planet. Though they are technically sharks, they are entirely docile and only eat (vacuum would be a better term) plankton. The Georgia Aquarium has four of them, purchased from Taiwan where they had been captured under a quota system (since closed, see here) and would have been killed and eaten had the aquarium not purchased them. Now there are, of course, some questions as to whether an aquarium, even one as large as Atlanta's, should have creatures as huge as whale sharks, and there was also a learning process both for the whale sharks (how to feed from buckets, etc.) and for the aquarium (the logistics of relocation, care and feeding are enormous), and two of the original four whale sharks expired early on. Their replacements, and the other two originals, seem to be doing fine.

Watching those giants glide by is an unbelievable sight. I just stood there, mesmerized. Then Carol asks me how I'd like to dive with them. I said I'd probably be a bit intimidated. She smiles and pulls my scuba mask out of her purse! Talk about being at a loss for words.

So we did dive the Georgia Aquarium. It's a great experience. We had a small group of just four, us and another couple. We got an intro and look behind the scenes, then suited up in gear supplied by the aquarium (you can bring your own mask, but they'll first disinfect it for the safety of the fish). While from below, walking through the underwater tunnel, the tank looks like the bottom of the sea, from above it looks like nothing but a giant swimming pool. Above where the tunnel is, huge fans blow on the water so visitors cannot see through the surface.

We sat down by the edge of the tank, with instructions to descend feet-first to the bottom, stay close to our dive buddy, and strictly follow the dive guide. Before we could even get in, Carol almost stepped on a whale shark who'd come to investigate. Then we both needed some extra weight. Finally we descended into the tank.

I had no idea what to expect. To most, descending into a tank filled with sharks doesn't exactly qualify as a desirable experience, but I actually wasn't afraid. I figured that since the aquarium does those tours, there was nothing to worry about. Once at the bottom and following the dive master, it became like being inside a particularly intense 3D IMAX movie. It was definitely information overload. Instead of looking out for wildlife, the sharks were everywhere. Hammerheads buzzed by, with one almost bopping into us by accident (or we into him). Ferocious looking sand tigers, the distinctive zebra shark, the exceedingly odd wobbegong, blacktips, giant groupers, sawfish, and a whole bunch of rays. Mantas are particularly majestic, gliding like space craft, looping in the water.

The underwater tunnel separates the tank into two halves and swimming over the tunnel was an experience in itself as visitors, and particularly kids, seemed as interested in us divers than in the fish. Little boys and girls were pointing, waving or, in one instance, running away in fear.

Then there were the whale sharks effortlessly cruising by and above us. As far as whalesharks go, the four in the Georgia Aquarium are not very large, perhaps 20 feet max (they can get to be 40 feet), but that's relative. Being in the water with not one, but four 20 foot sharks is an experience that almost defies explanation. It's awe-inspiring, majestic, unbelievable. And it was also over much too soon. The dive lasted 30 minutes or so, though with so much happening, there was no sense of time at all.

Diving the Georgia Aquarium isn't inexpensive (US$325 or so), but if you want to swim with whale sharks, mantas, and more other sharks than most divers will see in a lifetime, it's a total bargain.

Note that there are no cameras allowed, though a videographer accompanies every dive and the video of your dive will be ready after the debriefing.

Yet, the thought of going on a single dive without camera equipment and risk missing whatever there's to see down there is unthinkable and on the rare occasions where I do not take a camera on a dive, my hands feel strangely empty and I don't know what to do with them.

Going through all the trouble with the cameras is weird because I know that no matter what exotic critter I see and capture, a thousand others will already have done so, and usually better than I. Carol, on the other hand, does some outstanding underwater photography, and when I see her pictures, I feel it's all been worth it.

Anyway, as if lugging all the big gear around weren't bad enough, the manufacturers themselves seem intent on throwing as many monkey wrenches into the project as they can. True, they've finally more or less settled on SD cards for storage, so I won't have to carry around an assortment of different cards and adapters anymore, but there's still a ways to go. I am finding that out again while trying to put together a workable rig for Carol's Canon T2i dSLR.

You might wonder what the problem is, given that Canon pretty much rules supreme these days, and a good portions of the cameras I see on dive trips are now Canons. The answer is cost. If money is no object, you can simply order a full rig from one of the (actually not so) many places that specialize in underwater camera gear. But getting a housing with brackets and lights for a dSLR is expensive, quite expensive. So it would not seem unreasonable to expect photographers to mix and match and take advantage of expensive gear they already have. I mean, we're talking an industry where a single extension arm can cost hundreds of dollars, and housings can cost thousands.

Apparently it is unreasonable.

The story on trying to set things up so we could take the Rebel T2i underwater began many months ago. While every single camera ever built, no matter how similar they are, requires its own, dedicated housing, at least housings are available for the Canon T2i, a rather popular dSLR that replaced the Canon 1ti and reigned as perhaps the best buy in dSLRs until Canon quickly replaced it with the T3i. Still, housings are quite expensive and so I was thrilled to find one that was reasonable (i.e. less than twice the cost of the camera itself). So I ordered that for Carol and its delivery was expected for Christmas.

Which, of course, was optimistic as it had to be flown in from Japan. When it finally arrived, it did so without a zoom ring or lens cap. The former makes it possible to actually use the camera inside the housing, the latter keeps a very expensive lens dome from getting scratched. Not including the ring is somewhat excusable as each lens needs a different one, but one'd expect a dealer to at least ask.

Anyway, one would also expect some sort of system where expensive camera housings can be screwed onto expensive brackets using some sort of system. In computers, everyone's using the VESA mounting system that precisely describes the spacing of mounting holes and all. Well, not so with cameras. So it was off to a local machine shop to drill and thread a couple of extra holes into our Olympus bracketry.

Next, lights. We have Olympus lights and while the new housing for the Canon did not have fiber optics ports, I felt fairly confident that I could rig something up to secure the optical sensors to the housing. After a good bit or trial and error, a piece of foam did hold the fiber optics ports in place in front of the housing's flash window. But the flash did not trigger the external strobes.

So we needed to figure out how this whole fiberoptics cable system works. Simply shining a light on the sensor does not trigger the external flash, not even if you use a laser. However, another flash, even from halfway across the room, does trigger it. So it must be the brief flash that triggers the external light.

Unfortunately, the Canon uses an often annoying pre-flash to help its auto focus do its work in low light. The pre-flash can make the external flash go off, or at least it kept the external from working properly. After much searching I found how to turn the AF preflash off and the Canon's flash now did trigger the external flash. However, pictures were either greatly overblown, or it looked like the flash had not gone off at all. Email back and forth with my friend Shawn, who works at Imaging Resource, revealed that there is actually another preflash, one so close to the actual flash that the eye really cannot distinguish the two. The preflash apparently figures flash exposure and white balance, and it means it won't play ball with the Olympus flash units.

Bummer.

Canon's T2i replacement, the T3i, seems to have a second preflash that deals with external flash control, and in a perfect world you could simply download a program to make the T2i do that also. As is, that's not the case, and obviously we can't just ditch everything and buy yet another set of expensive camera equipment.

So how about using another way to connect the external flashes to the camera? There are what's called TTL ports on both the camera and the flash housings but, of course, they are different. Turns out that the Olympus flash has special "Olympus"-style ports whereas the housing has a "Nikonos" port, named after the old Nikonos underwater film cameras. Now there are Nikonos-to-Olympus adapter cables but they alone cost as much as a good 14-megapixel consumer camera. And since we have two external flashes, we'd need to find a 1-into-2 splitter adapter. So I checked with my friend Shawn on that. "TTL won't be possible from the T2i to the Oly flash. The TTL technologies are incompatible," he said. Sigh.

So, so far, the moral of the story is that as if underwater photography were not already expensive enough, components are also mostly incompatible, forcing you to buy new expensive lights if you don't stay with your brand and technology. That bites. It really does.

Carol's upset and wants to send the housing back. She feels we should have been told of all the various limitations, caveats and pitfalls before we were sold the goods. Me, I feel like we still may find a solution.

Stay tuned.

What's remarkable about both is that they are lighter than the gear I use now (and have been using ever since I started scuba). My black Scubapro Twin Jets weigh 5.5 pounds whereas the new Seawings weigh just 4.3 pounds. My trusty old Scubapro KnightHawk weighs 8.7 pounds, the new LiteHawk just 6.2. So between them, there's a weight saving of almost four pounds. I never thought this would even matter, but it does in this day and age of ever more strictly enforced luggage weight limits at the airports. Yes, in a few short years we've gone from being able to shlep along a virtually unlimited amount of gear to having to pack and repack to make the weight and not pay another king's ransom for a second bag.

The airlines' efforts to squeeze ever more fees out of travelers has led to changes in the scuba industry. Aqua Lung has been advertising their "Travel Light Package" that includes BC, fins, mask, snorkel, regulator, computer and a carry-on bag that combined weigh less than 18 pounds. So if you travel really light, you may not even need another bag. That assumes, of course, that you travel to warm places where you don't need a bulky wetsuit and such, and then there are the dive boots that alone can weigh several pounds. As is, my gear bag usually comes in at 49.5 pounds by the time I have all my dive gear packed (and that doesn't even include my regulator, computer and mask that always go in my carry on) and enough clothes and toiletries to last me a week.

Problem, of course, is that I also always take along a good bunch of underwater camera and video gear for testing, and that makes the airlines' weight and luggage count limits even more infuriating. It's become a frustrating exercise in playing triage with equipment and gear, carrying along my own luggage scale, limiting the souvenirs I buy, and building an ever bigger head of steam against an airline industry whose purpose for being increasingly seems harassing customers into avoiding air travel altogether. Add to that the ridiculous lengths the increasingly surly and condescending TSA goes in viewing even little toiletry items as threats to national security and suspicious potential means of terrorism, making going through "security" an increasingly stressful and humiliating experience, and sometimes I truly wonder how many divers have simply given up on the sport because it's too much of a hassle to deal with getting there and back. And let's not even get into things like taking along a potentially life-saving dive knife and such. And I have no idea how tech divers and those who use rebreathers and such do it. But I digress.

Even without pesky air travel harassment, lighter gear is good and I cannot wait to try out the new fins and BC. The Seawing fins are a radical departure from any earlier fin design, with what Scubapro calls "variable blade geometry" and a "power plate" in an attention-grabbing design that everyone else is already trying to emulate and copy. The reviews I read are good, and if nothing else, the fins show that Scubapro is making efforts to stay upfront and in the news. The company still enjoys a good reputation among seasoned divers, but these days much of the competition has it all over Scubapro in terms of marketing and cool factor.

The LiteHawk falls into the category of "travel BCs." This means less weight, less size and less bulk. This means that straps are narrower, there are no pockets, and trim and padding are smaller or missing altogether. Perhaps the biggest difference is the weight pockets that are much smaller than the large pockets in Scubapro's other weight-integrated BCs. For me, that's always been an issue against travel BCs as I tend to need a lot of weight, ranging from 14 pounds in a dive skin all the way to 30 or so in cold water with a 5-mil shorty over my 7-mil wetsuit. The LiteHawk's small pockets are officially meant to be accessories pockets, though apparently everyone uses them as weight pockets. If so, they do not seem to hold more than perhaps a maximum of six or seven pounds each, so a second set or some weights strung onto the weight belt-like integrated strap may/will be necessary. The LiteHawk, though, makes no concessions in areas like bladder and tank band, which both seem identical to those on my heavy-duty KnightHawk. Lift capacity of the LiteHawk, in fact, is higher than that of the KnightHawk.

I have no idea what to expect from the Seawing fins. I've never used a fin other than my big and heavy black Twin Jets. They get the job done, but are bulky, very negatively buoyant, and a pain to put on with their unwieldy rubber straps. Since I am not a power swimmer and much prefer finesse and the ability to make precise movements, I wonder if the Seawings will help me in that regard. They also have a totally different foot pocket, which to me is important as I am given to foot cramps and need a sturdy pocket with no pressure points. And there is a pull strap instead of the ratcheting rubber straps, which should make putting the fins on much easier.

So there. I cannot wait to check out my new gear!

However, in a prime example of equalizing justice, everything turned out great. The weather -- which is usually iffy in San Diego, with fog and clouds every morning that don't burn off till almost noon -- cooperated with sparkling sunshine, temperatures that were just right, and water flat enough to get places without being rocked around.

For this trip we drove down from Sacramento to San Diego. I was reminded how different driving is from making it through airports and having to pack for flights. Whatever you think you might need is stowed in the vehicle and brought along. Makes no difference what and how much. When you drive you don't pay extra fees and charges and no one X-rays and snoops through your bags. No lecturing that a little pair of cuticle scissors is a deadly weapon and must be confiscated for your own protection. And the trip itself is always an adventure, what with all the cool truck stops, sights, and opportunity to just sit and talk for hours while driving.

This time we passed on paying premium dollars for not-so-premium accommodations and service as we had on our last trip to Wreck Alley. Instead, we set up camp at a lowly Heritage Inn, saving a bundle. It was still just a few minutes away from Waterhorse Charter.

I really didn't know what to expect from the Coronado Islands that were on the agenda for Day One. We got to the marina bright and early at 7:30AM, signed in and completed all the paperwork and wavers, then set up our gear on the boat.

The Humboldt is a marvelous vessel and just about perfect for diving. It can handle some 18 to 20 divers and so the 12 of us from Fisheye Scuba had ample room. There is a cabin with seating on each aide and a kitchen bar in the center. It's small but perfectly adequate and cozy. The dive platform is as good as it gets; you simply step into the water, no big drop here, and no hassle to get to and from the dive platform, or onto the boat for that matter. The Humboldt also has its own compressor, so no need to carry tanks on and off the boat. There's a small upper deck where the captain has his wheel and instruments plus room for a couple of passengers.

On a speedy boat, the Coronado Islands are just over an hour south of San Diego's Mission Bay. They are in Mexican waters, and you're advised to bring along identification, though a passport is not needed. After making sure everyone was on board and ready, we motored off at 8AM, into bright sunshine and a gorgeous morning. The trip was nice and calm, and I spent much of the time examining the coast line in the distance, wondering if it was already Mexico or still Southern California.

With the mainland still faintly in sight, the Islas Coronado came into view. There are four of them and they are small, ranging in size from just a few acres (the Pilon de Azucar, or Sugar Cone), to about three quarters of a square mile (South Coronado). What the Islas Coronado lack in size, they make up in dramatic appearance. They are tall (soaring up to over 700 feet) and rocky, and actually reminded me of what we saw at Saba with its rocks and spires and volcanic look. No one lives here but birds. There are some ranger and research stations, but nothing year-round. The Coronados are very picturesque with a stark beauty.

Our first dive site was between two of the islands in a fairly shallow area of about 70 feet. The water didn't look too clear, and it wasn't. For protection I was wearing both my 7-mil wetsuit and a 5-mil shorty with hood on top of it. That also meant a full 30 pounds of weight. Even so I still had to pull myself down the anchor line. At the bottom all that neoprene compressed so much that I had to put what felt like a few hundred psi of air into my BC just to stay afloat. I felt clumsy and gulped too much air. The dive site itself was a small ledge/wall and there was quite a variety of starfish. We didn’t see any kelp, which surprised me. So we swam back and forth the little wall in cold water and modest visibility. Since the site was fairly deep I quickly drained my tank and it was time to get back up the anchor line. The group declared it a good dive. I certainly liked the surroundings, but my taste was for something a little clearer and warmer.

The Humboldt then moved closer to one of the small rocky islands to a place called the Keyhole, named after a small swim-through between the rocks. I had actually seen that before the trip on a YouTube video. After a bit of deliberation, the captain decided it wasn't calm enough to do the site and instead we'd go and play with sea lions. That site, called the "Lobster Shack" (a misnomer as there weren't any), was quite shallow and close to a sea lion rookery. We could actually see the bottom there, which meant the water was reasonably clear.

This turned out to be one of the great dives ever. Almost as soon as we got in and descended to the rocky bottom at less than 20 feet, a sea lion appeared and effortlessly darted around us. He left and came back a friend. Now both swam around us and this encounter alone would have made for a great and unforgettable dive. But this was just the start. Soon several more young sea lions appeared, playing with each other, checking us out, and just generally having a grand old time. I was mesmerized by the display that was getting better and wilder as time went on. The sea lions put on a show that I'll never forget, frolicking, darting, playfully pecking at each other, all at fluid, breakneck speed. Occasionally, one would examine us, come closer, then dart away. Some came right at us but then veered off at the last moment to avoid collision. None of that felt threatening, though. They were so much faster and more mobile in the water than us divers that all we could do was watch the spectacle.

While the sea lions stole the show, there were a lot of other interesting things to see in the shallow and brightly lit water. An abundance of orange garibaldis were not afraid of divers and came very close. At one time I videoed one as it swam around me a full 540 degrees. And there was the usual assortment of urchins, sea stars and nudibranchs.

Eventually we did get cold and went back up to the boat, laughing, comparing notes and reliving the thril. I'll never forget this dive.

The ride back to San Diego was equally wonderful. Sunshine, calm water, perfect temperature, and the Islas Coronado slowly disappearing in the distance. But there was more. The captain stopped the boat. Whales. We saw the telltale red plumes of krill that whales like so much, and then some large blue whales breaching the surface. We cruised a bit to get a good position to see the whales while keeping a lawful distance, and there they were, scooping up krill, blowing air, and even doing the telltale whale tail flip as they descended. But even that wasn't it. Soon we were followed by dolphins that sprinting and jumping through the wake of the speeding Humboldt. The boat moved fast and we could see the dolphins' athletic bodies working to keep up. Eventually they fell back.

The next day was all wrecks. But what a difference conditions can make. The last time I went down to see the wreck of the Canadian destroyer Yukon, the visibility was poor, the weather dark and gray, and the water miserably cold. This time we again had to descend through 30 or 40 feet of greenish murk, but underneath the water was remarkably clear. The big wreck was far more visible and with that we got a sense of the sheer size of the sunken destroyer rather than just parts appearing out of opaque water. I felt far more relaxed in this kind of visibility, and at 56 degrees Fahrenheit the water mercifully was almost ten degrees warmer (though still cold). This time we could do some actual exploring and seeing the sights. No penetration, though. Not with just a single 80 cubic feet aluminum tank full of air at 90 feet. So I enjoyed the spectacular sight and the growth on the wreck, most noticeably the large white plume metridium anemones and the incredibly colorful strawberry anemones that really look more like coral.

Predictably, my bottom time was cut short not by a lack of air, but by rapidly diminishing nitrogen time. 25 minutes into the dive I was down to three or four minutes and we had to start our ascent back up.

45 minutes later we were in the water again for another dive to the Yukon. By now I felt almost comfortable with the big wreck, but the time for exploring again was short. On this second dive dive to 85 feet, I ran low on nitrogen time after just 20 minutes. I crossed over to the radio tower buoy line, signaled Carol, who was on Nitrox and had much more bottom time, that I had to go up. Then Tom, the owner of the Fisheye Scuba dive shop that had arranged the trip, and I slowly made way back up the line.

Our luck with the weather held up for a third day as we were again greeted by bright sunshine and nearly flat water. Since part of the group was doing a wreck diving class and they weren’t quite done with their training requirements, we went back to the Yukon for one more dive. There is a total of five anchor lines, and this time we descended down to the radio tower that's roughly in the middle in the ship. The visibility wasn't quite as good as the day before, but still in the neighborhood of 40 feet, which meant we could see things. We swam towards the stern of the ship and then over it, and saw the massive propeller assembly that is almost completely covered in white metridians. Interestingly, while every inch of the top of the ship is covered in anemones and other growth, the bottom/outside/hull often still shows the unmarred paint. There is also kelp on the exposed hull. It sways back and forth and helps divers to see current.

As a wreck specially prepared for divers, the Yukon has large rectangular cutouts all over the ship. This makes for easy access for those qualified to enter wrecks. There is, however, fairly strong surge -- strong enough in places to suck you in and spit you back out.

Each dive trip adds to experience, and what I took away from this one are some thoughts about depth and temperature.

When you first start diving, water temperature and what to wear for any given dive is hit and miss, and the difference between a thick wetsuit and a thin one seems academic. You then quickly learn that wearing the right suit is one of the most important decisions to make for a comfortable, enjoyable dive. For example, diving the Yukon with just a 7-mil suit last year was a miserable experience where being cold was all I felt. So cold that I was shivering and had to skip dives, which is never something you want.

This time I wore a 5-mil shorty with integrated hood over the 7-mil wetsuit, and that made a huge difference. My body stayed warm through all the dives in the mid-50s water. The shorty had a zipper from the bottom all the way up to the hood, which meant it was also quick and easy to put on.

On the flip side, this added another thick layer of compressible neoprene, and that greatly affects buoyancy. While on top, you are buoyant enough to need a large amount of weight. Even with a full 30 pounds, which is as much as my Scubapro NightHawk BC can accommodate, I still had to pull myself down the anchor line. At depth, all that neoprene compressed so much that I became very negatively buoyant and had to add a lot of air into the BC, and even relatively small changes in depth affected buoyancy. You can, of course, go with less weight and simply pull yourself down the anchor line, but then there's the risk that you may not find the line to go up and have to ascend without line, and then you do not want to be so light that you lose control of the ascent speed.

I also learned that a good seal on your gloves makes a big difference. While wetsuits provide protection by allowing in a small water layer that warms up, gloves that do not seal well allow in too much water and your hands quickly get cold. This time I wore a new set of gloves that were thin enough to allow me to operate the cameras, but had excellent sealing via a velcro wrist band. This worked great. While the 3-mil neoprene was on the low end of protection against the cold, the seal was so good that my hands stayed just warm enough.

Another observation was the great impact of dive profiles on air consumption and allowable bottom time. When I look at most of my dives once they are uploaded to the SmartTrac software on my PC, I see a descent to the maximum depth of the dive within the first few minutes, staying at that depth for just a minute or so, then usually a linear and gradual ascent. That's because in most dive sites that include slopes or reefs, you drop to the lowest point, then work your way up the wall or slope and then play around on top of the reef or wall until it's time to go up. You could call this a "stairs" profile where you take the elevator to the bottom, then walk back up the stairs.

With "stair" profiles you can go to 120 feet and still have a dive lasting more than an hour on a standard 80 cubic foot tank. That's because the average depth of the dive will be just 30 to 50 feet, depending on the depth of the top of the reef where you spend most of your time.

With deep wrecks (or deep reefs or any dive where you have to first drop a long distance), you dive a "square" profile, which means you drop down to your maximum depth, stay there for the duration of the dive, then come back up the line. This way you spend much more time at depth, drain your tank much faster because you breathe air that is more compressed, and accumulate nitrogen more quickly, reducing your bottom time.

In each of my dives to the Yukon the factors that determined the length of my dive were first, my remaining nitrogen time; second, temperature; and only third remaining air in my tank. All my dives were between 30 and 40 minutes. On each I used up all my allowable nitrogen time even though I never went deeper than 85 feet, and on each I returned with plenty enough air left in my tank.

I also noted that just as nitrogen accumulates in your body, exposure to the cold also seems to accumulate. I didn't feel cold on three wreck dives the second day, but on the third I was already shivering after the first dive. And so I skipped the final dive which was to the wreckage of the NOSC tower, a structure built in 1959 and used through the 1980s until it was toppled during an El Nino storm. Today it is a twisted mass of girders sitting in about 60 feet of water and reaching up as high as 30 feet. Carol reported it a fascinating dive site with wondrous colors and teeming life, including an abundance of some of the largest starfish seen anywhere.

I should add that Waterhorse Charter experienced tragedy when a diver died on the Yukon in September of 2010. It was a 39-year-old with plenty of experience who did the dive by himself. He was last seen apparently photographing something in the sand on the bottom by the Yukon. Upon return to the boat, it was noticed he was missing but by that time it was already too late. This tragic event will undoubtedly hang over the operation as a reminder that accidents can and will happen, and that diving is serious business that as adults we engage in knowing the risks. Quite obviously, dive operators must observe and practice the highest standards, but beyond that it would be most unfortunate if lawyers and grieving parties sued and regulated diving out of business. As is, dive operators offer fewer and fewer services in order to protect themselves from being held liable, essentially reducing themselves to being "taxi services." Insurance companies, which once drove muscle cars out of business and are now making healthcare increasingly unaffordable with ever-rising rates, may also end up making dive operations economically unfeasible. So let's hope reason will prevail.

Not that much this time, but there's a book called "Dragon Sea" and it has a scuba diver on it. It looks like adventure fiction and so I buy it for a buck.

I start reading and it's really much better than expected. It's actually about underwater archeology and written by a man by the name of Frank Pope who assisted one of the world's foremost underwater archeologists, Mensun Bound, with marine excavations. So this is real.

The book deals with the clash between treasure hunters who plunder, and marine archeologists who seek to record and preserve. The story is of an effort to form an alliance between a treasure hunter who needs the legitimacy of an archeological team to get permissions and such, and the archeologists who need the funding the treasure hunters can provide. It turns out to be an uneasy partnership, with each side distrustful of the other's motives and intentions.

The subject is a sunken 15th century junk that apparently carried a massive amount of early Vietnamese ceramics, over a quarter of a million pieces. The 1998/99 recovery is hellacious with long 12-hour shifts in deep water (220 feet), requiring saturation diving and a good deal of innovation, and the artifacts become known as the Hoi An Hoard. It is historically very relevant as records of Vietnamese culture are all but non-existent due to centuries of occupation and influence by China and other colonial forces, and no one knew that Vietnam actually had its own fleeting period of glory where they almost rivaled the Chinese in ceramics.

So all this is real. The moneymen have their treasure, and the archeologists tons of material to catalog and publish. In 2000, the investors did an auction in San Francisco, and used a relatively small auction house, Butterfields, owned by then just emerging eBay. The auction is not a big success as there's just too much stuff and not enough demand for a virtually unknown category of collectibles, and a lot is just mundane pottery that had been at the bottom of the ocean for almost 600 years. Supposedly, the initial auction brought in only about three million dollars, versus 14 million spent, though that latter number is up for discussion.

Now get this: it's still on eBay. I put in a bid, and for US$88 I won the auction for a large painted dinner bowl, properly registered and recorded in the Hoi An Hoard inventory. It's beautiful and its history given me bit of the shivers. I put it on display in my house, next to Frank Pope's book that I picked up for a buck at the 1-Dollar store.

I wrote a book review of the superbly written "Dragon Sea," too (see here) and the antiquesandarts.com website describes the mixed results of the 2000 auction.

But the story doesn't end there. In "Dragon Sea," the author makes reference to a book that fueled his goal on pursuing a career in marine archeology, "Archeology Under Water" by George Bass. The book is long out of print, but I found a used one that was as good as new on Amazon. Turns out that book came from another diving legend, Jennifer Carter, who is a member of the Women Divers Hall of Fame. Carter was the first woman to dive the Titanic in a submersible, authored a book on it (Titanic Adventure), was a National Geographic producer and has her own experience in hard hat saturation diving and diving the world over. The book was accompanied by a kind note, and Mrs. Carter, who seems a delightful person, helpfully guided me to some other rare books on diving history.

Amazing story, and the best dollar I ever spent.

Booking with those frequent flyer miles was a pain. Not only are the airlines doing their darndest to make it as inconvenient as possible so as to discourage you from actually spending your miles (how'd you like to leave for a destination and get there two days later?), but seats and flights suddenly become unavailable if you so much as wait ten minutes or so. And when you finally find something that works, you learn that the airline is now charging a US$75 per person just for you booking the ticket, and then they add more fees and taxes. And should you fall a bit short with miles and need to buy a few more, those cost very, very dearly. Not a pleasant experience at all, and even less so when you find that on flights where they only showed one last middle seat available, half the plane is empty.

At Roatan we found Liz, the formerly ever-present manager, gone. Wonder what happened. A lot of new faces, too, though the dive staff seemed unchanged. Doc Radawski was still there and told me what happened during the earthquake that struck Roatan in May of 2009. Apparently, the fault that caused that 7.2 earthquake is on the same fault line as the one that ruined Port-au-Prince in Haiti. The epicenter of the Roatan quake was awfully close to the island, and Doc said had the quake lasted just 20 or 25 seconds longer, everything would have been leveled. As is, there was only fairly minor damage. Some piles under the cabanas broke through the floor, and some had to be replaced. Some pipes broke and power was lost. All in all, they got off easy.

Though we were exhausted from the red-eye flight from California, we hit the water within an hour upon our arrival, and it turned out to be a wonderful dive. The water was a balmy 84 degrees, visibility around the wreck of the Prince Albert was terrific, and though we had set out to examine CocoView Wall, we ended up at what’s left of a sunken DC3 near the shipwreck for most of the dive. The earthquake really pummeled the Prince Albert, with big cracks in its sides, as if plates had been torqued off. Things also look muddier and less colorful than I remember, but life is coming back. Same on the coral heads on CoCo View’s “front yard,” some of which were broken off or toppled over. A good deal of mud on everything, but you can see new growth coral, and there are a lot of fish.

Anyone dreaming of vacations on tropical islands probably has visions of staying in one of those bungalows right on, or even over, the water. It became real for us as for the first three days we get to stay in one of the tropical bungalows. Each has two very large guest rooms and is just charming. I wish we could have stayed in one for the entire trip!

I was instantly reminded of something I didn't like so much about Roatan: biting insects. Unlike on Cozumel where it's obvious what bites you, on Roatan you have both the dreaded "no-see-ums" and almost equally undetectable flying things, and they both bite often and with very noticeable and very itchy results, almost no matter how careful you are. Bug spray and long pants and sleeves hardly seem to help at all. This is one little, but rather important, thing where liveaboards have it all over land-based locations.

Interestingly, the local time in Roatan is only one hour ahead of California in the summer. They don't use daylight savings time, and so it's dark at 7pm instead of 9:30, and in the morning it is light at 5am.

The first full day of diving (4 dives) showed remarkably little damage from the 2009 earthquake. I had halfway expected much of those wonderful hanging and overhanging wall formations to be destroyed, but they were all still there. There also wasn't a lot of damage to fans and sponges; apparently they can handle an earthquake better than a hurricane. Everything looked pretty much as before, which means lots of colors, lots of diversity, and all those vertical walls.

The water was surprisingly rough, with even CoCo View's large dive boats in for a ride. Between the two morning dives we actually had to find sanctuary behind Fantasy Island.

Electricity! Whereas we had to make do with two electrical outlets at the Wyndham in Cozumel, and the Occidental Grand there wasn't much better, CoCo View knows that divers need a lot of outlets! Our Bungalow D had no fewer than 12 electrical plugs, enough for all of our camera and computer gear. And the standard rooms are not far behind. Now if they'd only supply WiFi to the rooms.

The bugs are a total nuisance. You don't remember this much afterwards, but they can really make you feel uncomfortable and paranoid to even go and enjoy the wonderful outdoors. Even with great precautions, we ended up itching like crazy after just a day, to the extent where it affected our mood and comfort. This alone can tip the scale in favor or against a location. Fortunately, at least, no flies here to further annoy you.

When you check the weather report for Roatan, you almost always see thunderclouds. That doesn't necessarily mean bad weather. It just means you never really know what to expect. Our first day was mostly nice and sunny. The second morning it was overcast, and the night before it looked like rain, which never came. The rest of this July trip alternated between overcast and bright sunshine, and occasional rain, especially at night. The seas alternated between quite rough and almost glass-smooth.

Dive masters are very important. Almost all dive masters are good at what they are doing and genuinely try to be helpful, look out after everyone, and make sure every diver has a good dive experience. However, styles differ, and there will always be dive masters that you particularly like. And feeling confident and comfortable with a dive master down there is important. When we made our reservations, we had asked to be assigned to one dive master who worked really well for us. There was no response to that, and when we got there no one knew of our request. We did get on his boat after a discussion with the manager of dive operations, but only for a day and a half. After that we were told we'd been reassigned to another boat and dive master because a large group was going to come in. That can happen, of course, but I did not like it and felt the resort handled this poorly. This is the kind of stuff that guests remember—requests handled with care, or simply ignored and brushed aside. And as it turned out, the boat we wanted to be on was never more than half-full and there'd been plenty of space for us.

As it turned out, on Saturday morning there was a major rain storm, a typical tropical pounding. I was certain the dive boats would not go out, but, surprise, they did and left right on time. And unlike on Cozumel where dive boats would only go to really close sites in inclement weather, Dive master Eddie (who captained this time) and relief DM Marcos took us to a couple of fantastic sites quite a ways away (Connie's Delight and Sponge Garden). Visibility was fantastic and we probably saw 150 feet. When the viz is good, Connie's Delight easily rivals Cozumel's famous Santa Rosa wall, and then some.

You always try to remember to bring everything that you could possibly need on a dive trip, but inevitably there'll be something you forget, or something you suddenly need. We had such an emergency after the resort's gifts and a bit of everything else shop closed, and even the office couldn't help. That'd be the end of that in most places, but not at CoCo View where the office quickly organized a boat ride to the landing and then the resort's van to get us to the closest store. The store turned out to be an apparently brand-new super market every bit as well stocked as one back home in the US, with all the familiar brands and goods. And the cashier had no problems at all accepting and handling US Dollars. So emergency handled, and there wasn't even going to be a charge (though we tipped the friendly boat and van drivers).

After having had ample opportunity to survey the wreck of the Prince Albert, we also got a chance to revisit the wreck of the Mr. Bud, a 90-foot fishing boat sunk by CoCo View Resort as a dive attraction in 2004. There was no obvious earthquake damage, but time, in this case the year and a half since we were here, had taken its toll on the little ship. It looked noticeably grayer and older, with some of the steel now broken and rusted through. Also missing were the schools of little fish filling the bridge; this time it was just a solitary grouper. We stayed at the wreck for the entire dive, passing on exploring the wall on top of which the Mr. Bud precariously sits.

As it had on past visits, the resort put on a well-attended Buoyancy Clinic. Dive shop owner Patty Grier explained how too much weight, and improperly positioned weight, can really take the fun out of diving and making everything more difficult. The recommendation is to test proper weight by locating a shallow spot of around 15 feet towards the end of a dive, dump al the air from then BC and then see if one is neutrally buoyant. If not, one either carries too much weight, or not enough. I checked, and I carry too much. Also, the weight is apparently located too low on my body as it takes an effort for me to assume the fully horizontal swimming position. I tried to fix that by putting 8 of the 16 pounds I carried from the main weight pockets in my BC into the two small BC pockets behind me. That didn't make much of a difference in my trim and it made me feel somewhat less stable, so that is apparently not the solution.

I was also reminded how a bad dive can be a downer and a good dive a delight. We did one where we swam against a strong current for a good half hour, then turned around and somehow found ways to yet again swim against currents almost all the way back to the boat. That was no fun. On the other hand, a return to one of Roatan's star attractions, Mary's Place, was spectacular. Swimming through those very tall canyon like cracks with the light shining way above you is an experience like few others. It feels like an underwater Tolkien Middle Earth. And since the site wasn't busy and we only had a small group, we even turned around and made it through the crack from the other direction. Add to that the depth of 85 to 90 feet, and it was an incredible experience.

There were diving kids at CoCo View this time! They ranged in age from 12 to 14 and did amazingly well. For two of the youngsters it was their first boat dive, and they never missed a beat. Going through Mary's Place on one of your very first dives at such an early age must certainly give you a head start. I am not sure how comfortable I'd be having my son, who is 14, diving, though he's close to being certified. Yet, one of the diving kids, just 13 years old, not only had terrific air consumption, he even went on the shark dive! Not every kid will take to it equally well and progress varies from individual to individual, but by and large, these kids did great. By the end of the stay, some looked like experienced divers and had no air consumption issues either.

On this trip I had my 150th dive and my 160th, too, and then almost my 170th. Now when I meet divers who look relaxed and confident in the water, it seems like they usually have somewhere close to 200 dives, so I suppose the number of dives you need to have until you feel like you're among the advanced is a moving target. I'll never come close to having as many dives as Carol already has (almost 2,600), but that's okay. Scuba diving has truly opened new worlds for me and it has changed my life.

Lion fish are becoming a problem in Roatan as almost everywhere else in the Caribbean. They are rapidly spreading and nothing seems to stop them. In the ten years since they supposedly were accidentally released from an aquarium in Florida during a hurricane, they invaded almost the entire east coast and Caribbean. They are beautiful and exotic to look at, but are in fact fierce predators that not only propagate like rabbits, but also hunt in ways unknown to the local reef creatures and without natural enemies in the territories they invade. We had a lecture by Julia, a Ph.D. student from the University of Alabama who spent time at CoCo View doing lion fish research. It was interesting to learn more about the invasion, and some hard data and facts. Julia's main field is examining the bacterial cultures of lion fish which are very different firm those of local species. This could potentially lead to possibly detrimental infections of local species, or it might in some ways be used to fend off the invasion. Julia pointed out that lion fish invasions could have serious consequences beyond the threat to local species: since they are poisonous, beaches coiled be closed, divers may stay away, or word of mouth and bad press could negatively impact the tourist industry.

CoCo View has this system where you go out on the dive boat twice a day. The first dive on each trip is a "boat dive" and the second a "drop-off" dive. The boat dives are on different dive sites each day, and you follow the dive master. You return to the boat and stay on the boat for your surface interval. The boat then heads back towards the resort and drops you off at a location close to shore. That's usually either CoCo View Wall directly in front of the resort, or Newman's Wall across the cut where the wreck of the Prince Albert lies, in front of Fantasy Island. After being dropped off, you then work your way back to the "front yard" and then up to the shallows and the beach directly in front of the CoCo View bar and clubhouse.

Initially I didn't have much use for the drop-off dives as it was always the same dives. What I didn't consider is that wall diving is three dimensional and the same dive will be very different depending on what depth you are at. At 15-25 feet along the top of the wall, things look very different from say 45-50 feet, or at 80-100 feet where the wall meets the first of several sandy ledges and steps before dropping off vertically once again.

One afternoon, for example, we explored the top of the reef instead of the wall, and it was an almost magical experience. It was a sunny day and the afternoon sun illuminated the shallow reef for an effect that was warm and dramatic at the same time. Since it was very shallow, just between 5 and 15 feet, you could see all the colors, and that makes a huge difference. So we leisurely explored all the many chutes and channels that often make the top of a reef a fascinating maze. Due to the ever-present surge, shallow reefs close to the beach tend to be very clean and you see a lot of hard coral (as opposed to the soft, swaying life in less exposed areas). A word of warning: hard coral is hard and very sharp, and it's easy to get scraped and cut.

There is also a big difference from a boat dive where you must follow the dive master so as to get back to the boat. This means you can't linger behind when you see something interesting, and you can't move ahead when you're ready because underwater you can lose a group or a dive master very quickly even in decent visibility. You don't have that problem with a drop-off dive because you can set your own pace, and you know where to go. So each has its pros and cons.

Another thing I noticed this time is the large difference between healthy and damaged reefs. A healthy reef will have a diverse mix of strong and powerful colonies of different plants, sponges, and corals in vibrant colors. A damaged reef generally has much less color, a lot of dead and damaged plants and corals, and often a green sheen of algae in various forms, shapes, and sizes. Damaged reefs also do not look neat and clean; they often have silt and mud on them, and just generally look a bit like a garbage dump. I don't know how a reef goes from healthy and vibrant to sickly and damaged looking. Frequently, the two are close to each other. You can instantly tell which is which.

Those who remember the TV show "Fantasy Island" will see an uncanny resemblance between it and the Fantasy Island Resort across the channel from CoCo View. It's an island, it has awesome beaches including a cove, a bridge to it, a harbor, a seaplane, monkeys in the trees, hundreds of beach chairs and umbrellas, and a grand entrance. Unfortunately, everything looks sort of run down, and I hardly ever saw anyone there. Granted, this was the middle of July and thus probably not high season for the tropics, but CoCo View was pretty full. Is Fantasy Island losing it? I hope not as it wouldn't bode well for neighboring CoCo View. Fantasy Island wasn't always struggling. I was told that in the mid and late 1990s, still under the leadership of the late founder Albert Jackson, the place was packed and "a moneymaking machine." Then there came foreign investors and things went downhill. Now there's talk of new investment.

It was interesting to witness fish behavior. Little damselfish will aggressively defend their territory, leaping at divers and biting fingers and even your face when you get too close. Some speculate that lion fish stay in the walls because they don't want to risk being attacked by the damsels. Creole wrasse cruised right off the top of the walls in huge schools, with dive masters sometimes using their regulators to herd them with curtains of bubbles. Spade fish seem to cruise in gangs always seeking trouble, at times ganging up on divers and nipping at their fins, wet suits, and even regulators. They have the looks to go with their harassing behavior. Giant crabs are using their claws to pick up food stuff in front of them and then leisurely putting it into their mouths in amazingly humanlike fashion. Schools of little squids hover, occasionally burp ink, and dance in unison without apparent fear of divers. No fish will ever be touched, no matter how close they come. And it is amazing, as long as you don't harass them, how non-aggressive underwater creatures are. While mosquitoes and flies buzz you on land, dogs bark at you, and a number of animals are considered dangerous, underwater everything just goes their way. You can get within inches of a big lobster or crab, and it won't lunge at you. And when we saw 7 or 8-foot Moray Eels swimming we pursued them to get pictures rather than recoiling in fear. As long as you respect their territory and homes, you have nothing to fear from underwater life.

The water temperature in mid July was between 84 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit. That was warm enough for many to dive in just a bathing suit. I always wore my 3-mil wetsuit. Even 84 degrees is still 14 degrees below body temperature, and so it is possible to get cold on long dives (and all of our dives were between 60 and 90 minutes). The 3-mil worked just fine for me and a full suit also offers protection from scrapes and stings (we did encounter very small jellies when coming up a couple of times, and in wrecks it's also a good idea).

Since we're always testing underwater equipment on our dive trips, we used different cameras almost every day. This time we encountered an unusual number of glitches and also made a few mistakes. One of the two battery housing covers on our video mask cracked, rendering it unusable. I somehow forgot the charger for the G-Series Canon and relied on another friendly Canon owner for charges. I also recorded a lot of precious video on the Canon without switching the camera to underwater white balance, assuming automatic would be smart enough to recognize and adapt to underwater conditions. It wasn't. Our Flip HD video recorder that we tested inside an Ikelite housing stopped recording altogether and nothing we tried could revive it. This means we've had extraordinarily bad luck with Flips underwater, and they are usually rock-solid. A dSLR began displaying nothing but blur 20 minutes into dives, though camera operation seemed unaffected, and there was no noticeable fogging anywhere. Another camera fogged the lens of its housing about half an hour into each dive, and continued doing so no matter what we tried. Sometimes it cleared up later in the dive, sometimes it didn't. We always pass these experiences on to manufacturers. Some appreciate the reports and use them to improve their products, others view them as unwanted criticism.

When you're a new diver you constantly worry about air consumption and wonder how experienced divers use so little when you use so much. After a number of dives anxiety levels go down and you learn to control your breathing, and a bottle lasts longer. On this trip, a combination of things made air last longer for me. The resort consistently provided good fills. Unlike during earlier stays where fills often barely registered 2700, this time they were always at least 2900 psi and often over 3000 and up to 3200. That makes a difference. We also generally stayed shallower and I was definitely more relaxed, now that I have a decent number of dives to my name. So the typical one hour dives no longer ended with just 400 or 500 psi left over, but generally quite a bit more. A couple of drop-off dive went a full 100 minutes. Carol's air consumption is still much better than mine, and she used a small 60 cubic foot tank the whole time, as compared to the standard 80s. That way our air lasted about the same time.

Roatan seems an odd mix between English-speaking and Spanish-speaking people. Being part of Honduras, the official language should be Spanish, but those from English towns on the island were usually brought up speaking English and many only speak broken Spanish. And they insist that English is the official language. My guess is that Spanish will win out, and that may or may not be an advantage for an island that pretty much lives on tourism.

A few words about equipment. Ever since my dive computer conked out in the middle of a live aboard dive trip, I've been wearing two, one on each wrist. That way, if one fails I still have one left, and if Carol's fails, she can use one of mine as we will have the same dive profiles. As mentioned, wearing a full 3-mil wetsuit and dive boots worked well for me. Apart from staying comfortable, a full suit also provides protection from stings, scrapes and bites, and all those can happen with bare skin. The Roatan Marine Park does not allow the wearing of gloves so as to discourage divers from handling things underwater or grabbing sensitive coral and plants, and that's fine, but there are situations where you'd like to have gloves, such as around and inside a wreck with sharp and rusty metal. I also tried a new ultra-low volume Aqua Lung technisub micromask with split lenses. It worked very well and provided a great viewing angle, almost like not wearing a mask, but it was so small its skirt left marks in my face for hours after each dive. I did not bring a snorkel and regretted that, not so much on dives, but for during surface intervals when we often just played in shallow water.

On one of the dives I came across something that cannot be. Red at 60 feet. It cannot be because the color red disappears at about 15 feet, orange at maybe 30, then yellow. It's just a fact of diving physics. Yet, there it was, bright red at just over 60 feet. I took a picture of it without flash, and the camera saw the red as well. I took another with the flash on, and on that one, the flash brought out all the colors as it usually does. So far I have not come across a good explanation of what that red was, and why I could see it.

On the way back to California I again realized the folly of computerized booking systems that suggest flights with just half an hour or so to make a connection at an international airport. You need at least an hour and a half, what with the lines at immigration and customs. The frequent flier miles tickets also had us go from Roatan to Houston, then to Wichita, then to Denver, and only from there back to Sacramento. I am not sure how this could make financial sense for the airline, but then again we’re talking an industry that routinely loses billions while seemingly determine to harass its customers until they’ll simply stop flying altogether. As is, the Wichita flight was way late, and after a 45 minute palaver with airline service, we ended up on a direct flight from Houston to Sacramento. Why didn’t they do that in the first place?

"The Frogmen" features Richard Widmark, Jeffrey Hunter, Dana Andrews and Gary Merrill, and tells the story of a Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) deployed in World War II in the Pacific Theatre to clear beaches for landing. The UDT was an actual elite special force of the US Navy, and the movie begins stating that "this is a true story based on incidents which occurred in the latter part of World War II..."

The plot is about a UDT team that had lost its beloved leader, and is now reluctant to accept a new commander, especially since the new guy had a different, no-nonsense style. There's excellent footage of how the UDT team, in just swimming trunks, masks and fins, reconnoiters the shallow waters of an enemy beach for mines, records data on slates, and then places explosives. The divers are deployed, one by one, from a landing craft type of fast boat into a Zodiac attached to its side. Most impressive is how they are then picked up again after the mission is complete: they line up in the water, and are retrieved, again one by one, via a rope loop as the boat speeds by them, sort of as shown in the movie "GI Jane" where actress Demi Moore attempts to join the Navy SEALs.

Scuba does not make an entry until the final part of the movie where the UDT team deploys from a submarine to lay mines onto a Japanese sub in a base. The team now wears drysuits and triple tanks, cuts its way through netting with trip wires and successfully performs the mission, though not without accidentally setting off the trip wires and having to engage in an underwater knife fight with Japanese free divers. His leadership in this mission finally earns the new commander the respect of his team and all ends well.

Even almost 60 years after it was shot, the movie is eminently watchable, with a good plot and, for the time, excellent footage. The underwater shots are better and more extensive than I expected.

Problem, though, is that it's not a true story as far as equipment goes. While Emile Gagnan and Jacques Cousteau did invent and test the demand valve regulator in 1943, the Aqua Lung didn't actually hit the market until 1946 in France and the early 1950s in the US. The US Navy definitely did not use scuba in WW II. In addition, for a mission as shown in the movie, the Navy would have used rebreathers, but even those were supposedly not yet used by the US Navy in WW II either. Which means that "The Frogmen" shows scuba technology that was not actually used until several years later by the UDT, probably in the early 1950s (see Wiki on Underwater Demolition Team).

Nonetheless, it was certainly interesting to watch "The Frogmen," and I can highly recommend it to anyone interested in military underwater deployments.

What's interesting is that the opening screen states, "This film could not have been produced without the active cooperation of the Department of Defense and the United States Navy", both of which certainly knew that the UDT had not used scuba in WW II. Perhaps, since this was during the era of the cold war, endorsing the impression that the US military had used such weapons was part of a scheme to discourage the enemy out there.

We got on the trip through our local dive shop (Fisheye Scuba in Folsom, Calif.) and the cost was remarkably low, probably less than a quarter of what it costs to be on a Caribbean live aboard for a week. No hassling with an airplane trip either. Instead, we packed the car with dive gear and whatever else we thought we might need without ever weighing a bag or agonizing of what to leave behind. We even took our own tanks and weights. Tanks was a bit of an issue because Carol likes to dive Nitrox, and there wasn't any on the Truth Aquatics boats. So we took along three tanks filled with Nitrox, with the intent of Carol using one per day, topping it off with air after each dive. Me, I lugged along my big old low-pressure Steel 95.

The drive down Interstate 5 was uneventful and gave me a chance to check out my latest GPS, a Magellan with a big 7-inch screen. It turned out to be as crotchety and infuriatingly inflexible as most of its predecessors, and was also no help at all in finding our way into and around Santa Barbara's massive marina. Mapping app on the Apple iPad to the rescue. We finally made it, ran into two other couples who were going on the trip, and, since it wasn't time yet to board, walked over to Stearns Wharf, a massive wooden pier jutting out many hundreds of feet into the ocean. Here we learned a bit about Channel Island cruising basics from our new friends.

These boats are considerably smaller than your average full-size live aboard, but still large enough for dozens of divers (or kayakers or fishermen or anyone else). There aren't individual staterooms, but single and double bunks in the bottom of the boat. The Conception is about 80 feet long (as compared to 110 to 130 feet for most Caribbean live aboards).

After an early dinner at a pizza place, the Conception was ready to board. Boarding meant hauling all our gear from the marina parking in rickedy push carts and then hefting it all on and below deck. No crew waiting here to help like on the big live aboards; it's all self-service. In fact, we didn't see the crew until later and relied on tips from experienced Channel Island travelers instead to find our way around. The bunks below deck at first looked claustrophobic, without any place to stow away stuff, but since the boat wasn't full we had space to spread out a bit and it actually turned out to be a nice and cozy experience. The bunks came with mattresses, pillows and blankets, but travelers brought along their own sheets and bedding (or sleeping bags).

Looking around revealed a bathroom section with sinks and two large showers, three toilets up on the main deck, a large dive deck where we set up our dive gear, a large dining/hangout room on the main deck, and upstairs the wheel house with space to enjoy the view. We signed the requisite waivers, then settled for the night (but not before taking a Bonine and some ginger against potential sea sickness).

The Conception left Santa Barbara sometime during the night and the seas were rather choppy. I was quite aware of it, but apparently never really woke up as when I did open my eyes, we were already there, there being Santa Cruz island, the largest of the northern islands. It's almost a hundred square miles or so of rock, jutting out of the ocean in ragged peaks and soaring to almost 2,500 feet at its highest point at Devils Peak. The boat was milling back and forth, something we'd come to experience many more times over the three days of the trip as the captain was either trying to find a good or better spot, or getting the anchor to bite.

The crew introduced themselves, there being a captain and assistant captain, two deckhands/dive masters, and Jill, the cook. We learned the law of the land, covering the basics of safety, use of bathrooms, food, diving, schedule and the weather situation. Unlike on "full" live aboards, everyone's on their own for diving. A safety diver is standing by, all suited up and ready to go, but there aren't any dive masters guiding the dives. Tanks would be refilled after each dive from the ship's compressors, the crew would hand you cameras when you went in, assisted in getting back on the boat, and meticulously kept track of all divers, but no more than that.

Our first dive was at a dive site called Frys, close to the shore (as all dives would be) and with plenty of kelp. The water wasn't quite as cold as the captain had said it might be, but still a chilly 56 degrees. I was wearing a 5mm shorty with hood over my 7mm wetsuit, and that made the cold water bearable, though hands and feet got cold quickly. All of our group wore wetsuits, other guests wore dry suits, mostly DUI.

Visibility was marginal, perhaps 20 feet or so. This meant descending along the anchor line until we hit bottom close to the shore. There was a good deal of kelp, making for a magical underwater forest. Kelp is probably something that's impossible to describe to non-divers. It looks just like ugly seaweed floating on the surface. Underwater it's graceful, beautiful strands and leafy structures streaming up from the sea bottom like magical trees. It's beautiful to see and swim through, and though divers may occasionally get snagged a bit, it's no problem at all to swim through the forests and around individual plants.

We didn't see a lot of fish, though on those first two dives at Frys we encountered both a Horn Shark and a Swell Shark, both smallish sharks that like to hang out in rocky reefs and kelp beds. We also saw a sea hare, a huge variety of different star fish, some colorful nudibranchs, and a trillion urchins, both of the large black variety and the smaller blue kind. One type of fish was abundant: sardines. They swam around us in huge schools, a silvery dance of little fish, darting and weaving in unison.

Orientation was difficult due to the poor visibility, and so it was good that we were always close to the shore and the boat, and in fairly shallow water. In fact, all dives were in just between 30 and 50 feet, but without being able to see, it might as well have been a hundred. As is, staying shallow meant more light, whatever there was, and also never having to worry about running low on air. In fact, I never came close to using up my big 95-cubic foot tank.

We ended up skipping the two afternoon dives as the visibility was only getting worse and it was quite cold. The dry suit divers, of course, went, but their reports afterwards showed that we hadn't missed anything. No night dive either; the conditions just weren't there.

Dinner was a treat. Cook Jill barbecued massive slabs of tri-tip steaks on the Conception's outdoor grill. The food was terrific for the whole trip, with breakfast made to order for each diver, ample sweets and snacks between meals, fresh salads, and enough variety and accommodation of special requests to satisfy everyone onboard. For dessert there were strawberries, cheesecake, ice cream and cake.

Had anyone told me I'd have perhaps the best few nights' sleep in a long while, I would not have believed them. Yet, I slept like a baby in our bunk in the bowels of the gently rocking Conception, and also slept more and longer than I usually do. And that was not out of boredom, but just the pleasant exhaustion from diving and being on the sea.

While the weather wasn't bad and we had sun during most of our trip, including a breathtaking sunset, the captain had to hustle to keep us in reasonably calm waters with a degree of visibility and free of current. So on the second day we moved on to Anacapa, the smallest of the northern islands. It's just a square mile or so of rock with a lighthouse and dramatic arcs and peaks. Anacapa, too, soars up to almost a thousand feet straight out of the sea, making it perfect for birds of all kinds.

And also for sea lions. Our first dive was at The Rookery, named after the small colonies of sea lions inhabiting the narrow strips of sand in the numerous small coves. Turns out the current was quite a bit more than expected, and so we never let go of the anchor line until we hit the rocky reef close to shore at no more than 25 feet or so. Even that provided little sanctuary from the ripping current and so, after a brief excursion in search of calmer waters, I returned to the anchor line and hung on, taking a close-up look at all the urchins, stars, garibaldis and plantlife there. At times, sea lions appeared out of nowhere, darting around us with almost impossible speed and grace. It was a short dive, though, and after no more than 35 minutes or so we had pulled ourselves back to the boat. The crew had actually deployed a long surge line so that divers blown away by the current could swim to it and pull themselves back to the boat. Amazingly, no one lost their way and no one had gotten blown off-course.

After a good deal of hunting and searching, the Conception anchored at another Anacapa dive spot, this one called The Aquarium. Visibility was no better (around 20 feet), but at least there was no current and so we explored the sandy bottom with kelp and rocks at around 40 feet. You can find all sorts of interesting critters on kelp and that's what we did. This would have been a spectacular site had we only had a bit more viz. As is, we moved on to The Bat Cave instead.

Here we were, once again, close to the impressive rocks that drop almost vertically into the sea, forming small coves and shallow caves. We followed the anchor line through thick beds of kelp, enjoying the swaying of the plants with its many colors and dancing lights. Close to the rock we got into heavy surge moving and heaving us back and forth through an almost exotic wealth of kelp and plants. The surge got to be a bit much and so we headed away from the cliffs into deeper water, weaving through kelp and rock in what was by far my most favorite dive of the trip. We took pictures and shot video and enjoyed ourselves despite the still cold water (low 60s).

After another great night's sleep in the bunk (and an evening spotting humpback whales), the Conception returned to Santa Cruz island and finally dropped anchor at the Scorpion Anchorage where there are two spires jutting out of the water. They're simply named Rock 1 and Rock 2, peeking out of the water by no more than 15 or 20 feet. Here we saw a couple of other boats,a pier, and some structures on land -- apparently part of a ranger station and a campground. They'd even planted palm trees.

Diving Rock 1 once again meant following the anchor line in murky viz, and then diving around the rock, which broke out of a sandy bottom at perhaps 30 feet. Thanks to varied rock formations and plentiful sealife, this was a lot more fun than it sounds. We circled the pinnacle three times or so, each time finding new things to watch and photograph, then used the compass to head back for the boat. We passed on Rock 2 and had already started packing our gear when the captain, perhaps making up for the missed night dives, stopped over the wreck of a World War II mine sweeper. The dry suit guys all went in, and most found the wreck that apparently was remarkably well preserved, with most of the metal parts still intact.

After a smooth crossing of the Santa Barbara Channel, which I spent dozing in my bunk, we were back in the marina by 5 o'clock or so. That was the end of a truly enjoyable trip with interesting diving, great camaraderie, terrific food, and a friendly, helpful crew. We'll be back for sure.

This, however, does not mean I'm not experimenting with dive gear. That's because while you get used to your gear, it's certain to have some annoyances and inadequacies you'll never get used to, and if you're the inquisitive type you'll also feel a strong urge to try out whatever new stuff the dive industry comes up with each year.

The first thing I started experimenting with was masks. That's because an ill-fitting mask can make you miserable, and because masks are inexpensive enough so that picking one up every now and then won't break the bank. I probably bought half a dozen masks to find out for myself how split lenses work versus a single lens, whether masks with panoramic side windows can improve peripheral vision, whether masks with a larger lens can reduce the sense of tunnel vision you can get with small lens masks, whether purge valves work, and whether there's much of a difference between clear silicon skirts and opaque ones.

In the process I found that my original mask worked best for me and the only thing I liked better was the same shape and design, but with a clear skirt. I also learned to never use a new mask on a real dive without making absolutely certain that whatever protective coating the manufacturer applied to the lens had thoroughly been removed, and that finding the right anti-fog is worth its weight in gold.

Experimenting with gear also showed me that I need dive boots with rigid soles because I inevitably get cramps in my feet when I use boots with lighter, more pliable soles. And that, for me at least, having a regulator mouth piece that fits just right is a must unless I want to suffer through three quarters of every dive, with a hard, recalcitrant mouthpiece loosely between my lips.

Unfortunately, trying out dive gear isn't always easy. Sure, you can put on gloves and see how they fit, but you won't know how well they truly work for you until you wear them on a real dive and see if you can still operate your dive computer at 100 feet when the water is really cold. And trying out a new dive computer means you have to find a shop who'll let you try it (not so likely with expensive new gear).

Of my original gear, my first wetsuit was first to be replaced; it was simply too hard to put on, and being a size medium on a medium-tall body, its arms and legs were too short. I knew about the arms and legs when I bought it, but I'd simply not had the will to try on another in sweltering heat. And I had not knowd that I'd literally end up hurting my hands and fingers from wrestling with the thing on real dives. Only experimenting with several other wetsuits showed me the (for me) proper balance between elasticity, size and design that made a suit do its job while still being comfortable and reasonably easy to put on. In essence, if it's too tight you're miserable. If it's too loose water will slosh in and you get cold.

There's also another aspect of wetsuits to consider: how easy they are to pull down when you need to pee! That's one of those things no one talks about, but every diver knows what it feels like when you suddenly know you have to go five minutes before a dive, or when you come up from a dive and badly need to go in the tiny head (boat speak for bathroom) of a crowded dive boat. Why wetsuits don't have zippers is beyond me. So when my local dive shop had a special sale on shorties with a whole body zipper, I picked one up for a song. These shorties are actually meant to be worn over a thick wetsuit and they have a built-in hood. But I figured they might also come in handy in warm water without wearing a wetsuit underneath.

So I decided to try gear in the pool in 64 degree water. I wore the shorty just over a bathing suit and it worked exceptionally well. It was a bit too large to keep water from coming in, but it still kept my torso and head nice and warm, and it was super-easy to put on and take off. So I bought a second one a size smaller so I have one for its original purpose (to be worn for extra warmth over a thick wetsuit, and one for use in warm water for convenience).

The primary reason for the pool test session, however, was trying out the SpareAir bottle Carol had given me as a Christmas present. There's plenty of debate on whether it makes sense to take a pony bottle on a dive and I wrote about it in an earlier entry. For me, though, the fact is that I often find myself diving and suddenly being very aware that it'd be a really bad thing if something were to happen to my air supply. I look at my dive buddy or the closest diver and wonder if I could actually get to them in time should something happen. You can't holler to people underwater if something goes wrong, and you can't move very fast. Add to that the fact that if the next breath out of a tank doesn't come, you're already in need of a breath, and the thought is quite scary. So I always felt redundancy in the form of a small pony bottle made sense.

My SpareAir is a small yellow bottle a bit over a foot long, including the second stage and mouth piece that's part of it. Pressurized to 3,000 psi, the little bottle holds three cubic foot. The Spare Air package comes with a yoke adapter that lets you fill the SpareAir from a regular scuba tank (you can, of course, also have it filled at a dive shop). But how easy is it to fill the bottle yourself, and how long will it actually last underwater?

Filling it is easy. The SpareAir has a thread for the supplied yoke adapter. You screw that into the SpareAir, then attach the yoke to your scuba tank the exact same way you put on the regulator. You then slowly open the air valve on the tank to start filling the SpareAir. There is no pressure gauge on the SpareAir. Instead, there is a small adapter with a bolt that sits in a groove. Pressure pushes the bolt out, and you know the bottle is filled to its rated capacity of 3,000 psi when the bolt is flush with the surface of the screw. Imprecise for sure, but it will give you an approximate reading on how much air is in the bottle.

Which isn't much. Three cubic foot is just about 1/27th of the content of a standard 80 cubic foot tank. So if one of those tanks lasts me anywhere from 45 minutes to 75 minutes, depending on depth, water temperature, and stress, the SpareAir would theoretically provide an additional two or three minutes.

Before you take a SpareAir along, you need to figure out where to mount it. Scuba gear is infuriatingly bulky as it is, and adding anything only serves to further increase your drag (and stuff that can fall off or get you snagged). The SpareAir documentation shows several ways to attach the bottle in its yellow canvas case to your gear. It's small enough to fit about anywhere, so I ended up clipping it onto my chest.

A the bottom of the pool I removed the SpareAir from its case (easy enough) and began breathing from it. First impression: damn, that goes hard! But air did come out, and after a few breaths it almost seemed normal. I sat and slowly swam around, holding the bottle in my hand. It's actually about neutrally buoyant and you can swim with it without holding it. I was wondering if having to suck this hard would contribute to panic in an emergency situation, but probably not; at least there is air.

With each consecutive breath I wondered how long the little bottle would hold out, and what would happen when it was empty. Ten, twenty, thirty breaths, and no difference. I also looked at the time on my dive computer. I figured I normally take between six and ten breaths a minute. 40 breaths, and there was still air and I did't have to suck harder. It finally gave out at 50, and I had been on the Spare Air for five or six minutes.

Now using the SpareAir in a pool at seven feet is one thing, using it on a real dive another. Air that lasts 50 breaths would only last 15 or so at 100 feet or 25 at 30 feet. And that's not taking into consideration panic or having to work hard. But the little bottle does work, and if push comes to shove, having a few more breaths to figure out what to do seems a whole lot better than having none.

As far as diving goes, returning to Cozumel was a bit of a coming-of-age trip for me. With the 15 dives I did with the Sand Dollar dive shop at the Wyndham there, my total is now 132 dives. That's nothing compared to enthusiastic divers who’ve been at it for years and decades, but still more than most.

I no longer feel like a beginning diver. I am no longer nervous before every dive. I usually, though not always, have more experience than most on a boat. That made me feel much more at ease. I also found myself helping others, offering suggestions, was asked for advice and even saw other divers imitating my form underwater.

Most of the time I felt completely in control, most of the time my buoyancy was just fine, and I knew that when I went through narrow swimthroughs I would neither bump into things nor kick up sand. I felt comfortable following the guide inside a wreck and didn't kick up silt in there either. When I descend I no longer anxiously dump air and then drop down feet first. Instead, I reach to my right shoulder and dump air from my BC through the valve there, then do a jackknife and dive down head-first. When my mask fogs a bit, I simply let in a bit of water and swirl it around so I have a clear field of vision again. I no longer spend every moment of a dive painfully aware that I am deep underwater and, should anything go wrong, I cannot breathe. I still think about it every now and then, but mostly I just enjoy the dives.

I found again how very important it is to equalize your ears properly, always. As you gain more experience, you do this pretty much automatically, but there will probably always be times when pressure sneaks up on you, or your body does not respond they way it normally does. I don’t know what I neglected to do that caused my left ear to not properly equalize during one of the dives, but two weeks later there was still residual rumbling in there, so something must have happened. Just like during my first ocean dives in Roatan where I didn’t slow down a descent during a sinus pain and paid for it with nose bleeds for several dives.

It’s also amazing what difference little things like the right regulator mouthpiece can make. This had been an issue for me almost from the start of my diving career. The standard mouthpiece hurt my gums and I felt like I was constantly fighting it as the air hose from the tank tried to twist it into a position that was not comfortable for me. The latter was addressed by replacing the standard hose on my Scubapro second stage with an Atomic Comfort Swivel hose, which must be one of the all-time greatest ergonomic innovations in scuba. The former was fixed by replacing the hard, one-size-fits-all mouthpiece with a custom mouthpiece by SeaCure. It’s made of a special plastic that you heat up, bite on it, then let cool off. Presto: custom mouthpiece. That made a huge difference as well. Between the two, all discomfort is now gone.

130 dives is nothing compared to Carol's 2500, or the hundreds that many recreational divers compile over the years, but it did make a difference.