Wow. What a busy day yesterday. Got up at 5:30am to get ready for my Advanced Open Water Scuba Diving Certification classes (after 2 dives yesterday). Was able to finally try underwater scooters, and holy cow, they were AMAZING. So much fun! Yesterday mornings dives started off with a 100' dive at Molokini (it was so clear though it really felt like 20'). The more and more I dive, the more convinced I am that night diving is really where it is at. The variety of critters that come out makes it so much more interesting. Well that and the fact that a big shark may be watching you and you won't even know it makes it interesting too.
Molokini Crater (this is where my Friend Justin saw an 17' Great White Shark a couple months ago
Then we did a more shallow naturalist dive closer to the West Maui ridge on the way to Lahaina. The naturalist specialty requires a diver to be able to identify a variety of species of plants, invertebrates and vertebrates. I think I do pretty good on these because I own several books about Maui Native Sea Life and have a biology background. That said, nothing beats knowing someone who knows the area and sea life.
I am also starting to really think that boat dives, unless it is a "live-aboard" boat, are a bit over-rated, because by the time we got back it was already almost 2pm. That's 8 hours on the water for 2 dives. I can do 2 dives off the shoreline in about 3 hours. I have 2 dives lined up almost every single day this week, should make it pretty interesting, some of the dives I can bring my camera, others I won't be able to.
Needing to dive so much, my gear hasn't been able to really, really dry out. Yesterday when I was gearing up, something bit me, probably because I tried to air-dry overnight and an insect crawled into my wetsuit. Amazingly, I wasn't able to find whatever it was that bit me, but I have 2 nice fang marks in my elbow. On a scale of 1-10 the pain was about a 9, so I am guessing it was probably a small centipede.
After diving, I came back and shot video for the
Nikon D3200 Training Video. We have ramped up production time on it, simply because I am expecting the Canon T4i to arrive on Monday. I have already done a few preparatory tests on the auto focusing systems of the D3200 for video. More on this to come.
After shooting the video, I went to my first session of the Maui Film Festival with a bunch of friends. It was interesting and fun. I was surprised to see so many different people there that I knew or knew about. We brought our beach chairs and watched all 5 movies under the Maui night. I didn't know we could bring cameras in, so I am really considering bringing my
Canon 5Diii next time I go. Still debating on tonight or not.
