Life on a "liveaboard"

It’s eating, breathing and sleeping scuba diving, 24/7.

That’s life on a “liveaboard” boat that Fraser Debney experienced in the Bahamas recently. He had liked his first liveaboard trip so he decided to try it again this year.

On April 13, Fraser and some of his friends left port in Nassau Bahamas aboard a Blackbeard Cruises (http://www.blackbeard-cruises.com/) liveaboard ship for a seven-day adventure. It would confirm his first impression of the experience. He loved it. The dive boat becomes your home and restaurant for a week and you don’t return to port until the trip is done.

“It would be our shark dive,” Fraser replies when asked for his favourite experience on the trip.

It takes place at a wreck site, and a good wreck dive on its own merits. But it is also a wreck dive with a difference. Using a rope, the boat’s crew suspends a glob of waste food about 20 feet above the divers. Looking up from the wreck the divers get a close-up look at the reef sharks, which range in size from four to six feet. Fraser acknowledges that many people object to attracting sharks like this but says it is good for tourism.

“These sharks were not aggressive and I don’t believe they generally are.”
That day they saw at least 20 sharks, as well as Nassau groupers and a lot of tropical fish, “all swimming around in the same area eating the scraps as the sharks chomped on the chum. Curiously, the sharks don’t bother them (the other fish).”

James Bond Grotto in the Bahamas, where the Thunderball movie was shot, was another favourite “because of the vast expanse of things to see. That movie is underwater battles. It is almost like a small cave. There were a couple of octopus, a lot of old and interesting elk horn coral growing out of the ground and various tropical fish that made the cave their own. It has an access and exit point.”

The boat itself is about 65 feet in length and on this trip accommodated 19 divers and a crew of six. Instead of cabins there are open bunk areas. Each serves as the sleeping quarters for four to six divers. “For anyone expecting 5-star it is not 5-star. It is camping on the water with the diving as a bonus. The diving is fantastic. As long as you are comfortable being in a trailer (atmosphere) and having to be organized, the space you have is adequate. If you spread your stuff all over it is not for you.

“All the entities of a dive shop are on the boat. You don’t touch your gear. They fill up the tanks on the spot. It was interesting for me,” says Fraser. “The food was fantastic. The meals were like homemade.”

Meanwhile, the boat is travelling from one dive site to another. While bad weather limited them to a couple of dives on the first two days, generally they made four or five dives a day. When moored at the end of the day they would do night dives before moving on to the next site in the morning.

The week-long experience costs $939. It includes everything to do with your diving, food and drinks, including a beer keg in the gallery, along with wine and rum punch.
“Your first alcoholic drink is your last dive (of the day). They’re very strict. If you have a drink at 10 a.m. you don’t dive at all.”

It’s not a loud and late night, either. Tired by the busy day of diving, most people are in bed by 8 p.m.

Kathy Dowsett
www.kirkscubagear.com

Giant Strides in Underwater Photography

Written by Katy Danca Galli for Scuba Diving

Well, I’m back from the Digital Shootout and am ready and patiently waiting for next year’s event to hurry up and get here. I learned a TON during my week at the Little Cayman Beach Resort with the Backscatter Underwater Video and Photography crew. Here is a list of the most important things I remembered:

Strobe placement should not require a protractor, compass or other mathematical device to figure out. According to Berkley White, position your strobes above and behind the dome port for best results. If you are shooting with a super wide angle lens (like I was) and want to achieve that close focus, wide angle look, keep your strobes the same distance away from your camera as your subject object is from the dome port.

Try losing weight. No, I don’t mean you should run to the nearest Jenny Craig or buy a StairMaster. I mean loose lead weight. I have ALWAYS dived with ten pounds in salt water, and I was down to six by the second day of the Shootout. Try loosing three pounds to start and then go from there.

As I’ve said in my day four blog — FIRE CORAL IS BAD. I went the entire week without a wetsuit, and boy did I live to regret it. If you think the water is too warm for neoprene (like it was for me in Little Cayman), at least wear a skin. It’ll keep down the ouchie factor 100 percent.

Marine creatures are a lot like cats — they are finicky and never do what you want them to do, ever. After spending multiple days trying to chase down all the sea life on Bloody Bay Wall and only managing to chase them away, I learned that the best method is to simply let them come to you. The squid I shot loved my camera strobes and approached to me to investigate. All I did was click the shutter to achieve success.
Lastly, use your shutter speed to control the exposure instead of your aperture. It completely un-complicates things and works like a charm the majority of the time. I realize this is not how many underwater photographers work, but almost every image I shot was exposed properly (so there).

Next year the Backscatter team is heading to Bonaire and sign-up has already begun. Check out thedigitalshootout.com for more information and coverage of past events. THANK YOU twenty times over to everyone from the Little Cayman Beach Resort for their amazing accommodations and food, Reef Divers and their awesome dive staff, everyone from Backscatter who helped me immensely and allowed me to join this awesome event, and all of the zany, wonderful people who participated and gave me advice. May the force be with you all and hope to see you next year.

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

Scuba Diving Lessons for Life: Is Getting a Catch Worth Your Life?

Thanks Eric Douglas from Scuba Diving

Offshore oil rigs serve as way stations for big fish, which stop and hang out around the massive structures. Roy and his buddies knew this and made regular trips to nearby oil rigs to go spear fishing. It was the best local opportunity to find game fish, and they always brought home dinner.

On the first dive of the trip, Roy speared a large goliath grouper near the rig. As he began bringing it toward the surface, the 200-pound fish started to swim away, pulling Roy along for the ride.

The Divers

As a dive instructor, Roy spent hours in the water helping new divers learn the basics. He often said the feeling of watching new divers’ eyes light up when they took their first breaths underwater was priceless. He trained upwards of 100 new divers each year, guiding them through each of their open water checkout dives.

One thing that Roy loved just as much as teaching new divers was spear fishing. Every couple of weeks, Roy and his buddies would schedule a dive trip without any students. They always headed to one of the nearby oil rigs and brought their spear guns along. Once they arrived home, they’d enjoy grilling that day’s catch.



The Dive

When Roy turned on his air just before getting in the water, his hrefa moment. He slapped it against his hand and reset the diaphragm. Roy commented to his buddy that he needed to get it serviced, but he had been diving so much he hadn’t had the time.

With the reg fixed, he did his giant stride and immediately descended down one leg of the oil rig. The visibility was typical for the location — they could see 30 to 40 feet in any direction, but beyond that, the open ocean was murky.

Many of the bigger fish they wanted to hunt stayed deep. When they approached 130 feet, Roy indicated he wanted to go deeper. His buddy signaled that he planned to level off and hunt there. Roy signaled OK and kept descending.

The Accident

Roy couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the size of the grouper hovering near one of the oil rig’s legs. He estimated it weighed 200 pounds or more. He quickly prepared his spear gun and moved into position. Taking careful aim, Roy shot the large fish through the side. He reeled in the cable connecting the spear to his gun and began ascending. Roy could feel the weight of the fish below him, so he focused harder on swimming toward the surface. As he passed 130 feet, Roy paused for a moment to signal to his buddy that he was taking his catch to the boat.

On the way to the surface the grouper woke up, but Roy didn’t notice at first. With a jerk, the fish suddenly attempted to escape, only to come to a stop when it reached the end of the cable Roy had looped around a D-ring on his BC. The surge pulled Roy to the side as the line snapped taut. He grabbed the cable and attempted to continue ascending, but the grouper took off again — this time, the fish pulled Roy toward the surface. As they ascended together, Roy hit his head on one of the oil rig’s cross beams. Dazed by the collision with the cross beam, Roy found himself struggling at the surface.

A diver already on the surface reported seeing Roy wave his arm over his head to signal that he needed help. As Roy appeared to lose consciousness, the boat driver started the boat engines to get to Roy as quickly as he could. Roy sank below the surface of the water before help could arrive. Roy’s buddy and another diver spent nearly 30 minutes searching for and recovering his body.

Analysis

Back onboard the boat, Roy’s buddies attempted to resuscitate him, but he was pronounced dead at a local hospital. When they found Roy’s body, his scuba cylinder was empty, his weights were in place and the grouper was still attached to the cable attached to his BC . Though Roy’s regulator showed signs of poor maintenance, this was not considered to be a cause of the accident.

The medical examiner determined that Roy had suffered trauma to his head after striking the leg of the oil rig, and this was a contributing factor in his loss of control on ascent; this, in turn, led to an air embolism that caused him to lose consciousness and drown.

Roy was in trouble the moment he speared the large grouper. In his mid-40s, Roy was of average size; the fish weighed as much as he did. Even if it had been killed instantly, Roy would have struggled to drag his prize to the surface. At the very least, Roy should have asked his buddy to help him get it to the surface. Better still, he could have attached the fish to a lift bag, inflated it and sent it to the surface, allowing him to ascend slowly and easily without struggling. When the stunned fish attempted to swim away, Roy was immediately in danger. With the huge fish attached to a cable fastened to his BC, Roy had to go where the fish wanted. At this point, he should have let go of the speared grouper.

Roy most likely wasn’t thinking clearly when he surfaced. He was probably dazed and suffering symptoms from the embolism. If he had dropped his weights and let go of the speared grouper, Roy might have survived the incident. He would have needed treatment in a recompression chamber, but he probably would have lived.

While it wasn’t a factor on this dive, Roy’s equipment was not well maintained and he was not properly equipped for a dive to nearly 200 feet. A diver depletes a tank very quickly at those depths, yet Roy had no backup or additional air supply. He also had no procedures in place for making decompression stops on his way back to the surface.

Roy made several lapses in judgment, all related to planning. If he had thought through what he would do if he speared a large fish — one too large for him to bring to the surface by himself — he might be alive today.

Lessons for Life

1. Nothing you find on a dive is worth your life. Struggling to bring an artifact or a speared fish to the surface is a recipe for disaster.

2. Drop your weights. If you feel yourself struggling on the surface to stay afloat, release your weights. You will be positively buoyant instantly and able to rest and relax while you are rescued.

3. Plan your dive according to the situation.

4. Have the proper equipment for the dive you are making.

5. Stay with your buddy.

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com