Well folks, generally most of my adventure stories are mainly centered around photography, and this one is sort of… in a way. It started out with wanting to do some underwater photography, but Florida’s waters are no longer as clear as in the Bahamas. I have always wanted to go to Cozumel off the coast of northern Mexico. I have heard great things about water clarity there, especially that of Palencar Reef.
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| Dan Overhead Photographing |
Palencar Reef is known as a drift dive, and starts out in around 35 to 45 feet of water depending on where the boat drops you off. Drift diving is when the boat does not anchor up but follows the divers air bubbles staying over top of the group. Once everyone is underwater the group swims through the pillars of the coral reef and deep ravens to the outside of the reef where the drop-off ledge begins. The group of divers are accompanied by a divemaster at the head of the group followed by another divemaster at the back of the group. This allows for keeping tabs on everyone, and no one is allowed to stray off into water deeper than the group dive of 75 to 80 feet, along the wall of the reef. You don't realize that you are actually descending about 35 to 40 deeper that where you jumped in. On the outside wall of the reef at about 80 feet, the bottom drops away at a very steep slope to well beyond what a normal dive would be on a single tank or compressed air. Deep diving requires a special certification, specialty equipment, exotic air mixtures and long lengthy decompression stop before arriving back at the surface. There was an incident right before we arrived for our diving vacation. A diver decided to venture away from the group and dive down the slope looking for pink coral. The divemaster went after him and both were never seen again. This was not an isolated cases, this happens far too many times. As the divemaster was explaining the rules that everyone must follow, my dive partner Dan and I approached him and said that we are very seasoned scuba divers and requested to hang back a bit from the group to let the water clarity settle down to be able to photograph. However we would try to keep the group in site if we could and the water clarity was suitable for flash photography.
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Queen Angel
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When using a flash unit for underwater photography, the intensity of the strobe will light up suspended particles in the water and ruin your image. Your image would look as though it is snowing. The divemaster reluctantly agreed knowing a bit about underwater photography, but said that we had to keep the group insight and come up with at least 500 psi. of air in our tanks when we hit the surface. This means that you have to start up to the surface at 800 psi. Larger tanks hold about 3200 psi of compressed air and will last a novice about 20 to 25 minutes and a experienced diver, maybe about 40 minutes. Both Dan and I well very well seasoned, which meant that we could get approximately another 15 minutes. We agreed and threw most of our stuff overboard. I find it much easier to put my diver gear on while sitting on the white sandy bottom. This is much easier than dealing with a narrow boat and 30 other people falling over each other. For the most part, you are diving with first-time scuba divers and or non-seasoned divers at best on these kind of dives.
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Royal Gramma
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The first dive that morning went well, we thought. When we came up on the surface and started up the ladder to get in the boat, the divemaster rushed over and immediately looked at my pressure gauge. He was thinking he was going to catch us with less than 500 psi of air. He just shook his head in disbelief that I had over 800 psi and Dan had 600 or 700 psi. We came up using Dan’s tank pressure gauge as a guide, as I had a little more scuba diving experience than he. The divemaster told me that everyone had been back up, gear packed up, and they had been waiting for over 25 minutes for us to come up. I just reminded him of the word “Well Seasoned”. I know that the first group of novice divers probably were starting up at the 25-minute mark, followed by the second group about 5 minutes later. I didn’t believe that we stayed down for nearly an hour at that depth, but we very well could have.
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Pink Sponge
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I managed to get some nice images of Queen and French Angels and some other colorful fish and corals on the first dive. We then went to a beach for a grilled fish shore lunch and a little rest before the afternoon shallow dive of 50 to 55 feet. I told that same divemaster the same story as before. I just said “Seasoned” and the head divemaster just shrugged his shoulders and kinda waved his arm. This time we waited until everyone else got into the water and then we went over the side. This would give the group a little head start on time. The bottom of the La Rosa Reef was OK. It has a much flatter sea bottom and nothing like the towering pillars of corals, as that of Palencar Reef. However, the water was still gin clear. The group moved ahead of us and Dan and I moved along behind them. Dan’s camera was set up to shoot basically in macro mode. I set his camera up with a screw-on close-up lens filter which is inside of a plastic camera housing. It had a short straight wire attached to the bottom of the camera housing. The distance was set for the correct focus of the camera’s lens and subject location. All he had to do was move the camera forward until that wire was just about to touch the subject. It was very effective and easy to use. Dan was not a photographer but he wanted to get some underwater photographs.
As we moved along the bottom Dan moved about 30 feet away and I found this really nice Pink soft sponge with some other small yellow sponge corals around it. It was out on the open bottom and nothing else around it and I thought that it would make a nice image. There was still quite a bit of current to deal with so I wrapped my legs around a coral head to anchor me to the bottom…I then composed the image in the viewfinder and was just about the press the camera's shutter when….BAMMM! My regulator blew out the second stage o-rings in the seat and now I had about 300 PSI of constant free-flowing air in my mouthpiece.
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Dan Diving the Wall
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I knew I had plenty of air in the tank, since we had just gotten down on the bottom…so I made the shot. I looked at my pressure gauge, which was rapidly falling and quickly swam over to Dan. I grabbed his arm and Dan’s eyes looked like dinner plates when he saw what I was going through. I motioned up and we went up to the surface. Our boat was not in sight but another boat was close by and so we swam over to it and explained what had happened. The captain motioned us aboard and called our boat to say we were aboard his boat due to a dive tank malfunction. I had only been down maybe less than 10 minutes when the malfunction occurred, and by the time Dan and I surfaced I had less than 500 psi left in my tank.
Now, I had just rebuilt my 2 dive regulators before leaving on this trip and now I’m down one regulator…not to worry?? On the second day, we repeated our departure from the boat the same as the day before….one deep dive in the morning and one shallower dive in the afternoon. On the second shallow dive of the day, I went over the side with the tank in my arms, I put the regulator in my mouth and swam down to put the tank and weight belt on once I was sitting on the bottom. I got my camera and was about to swim towards where Dan was waiting, when this regulator kept free-flowing air. However, not at 300 PSI this time, but still a nuisance. It would stop and then start free flowing air, and I was not going to trust it. I didn't want to experience another episode as the day before. So back up the both of us went to our boat. 2 days…2 dives and now 2 faulty regulators. So that nigh, I took the best parts of each regulators and with some spare parts that Dan and I brought along, I rebuilt another regulator... the last of the lot. Thankfully my repair work held up the rest of the trip with no more air pressure issues. But there would be more issues. There always are.
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Yellow Sponges
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Somewhere around day 4 or 5 Dan and I decided to extend our stay to take the ferry-boat over to the mainland of Mexico and go visit the Mayan temple, Tulum on the ocean. The next morning we went to the airline office in town to extend an extra day and change the departure flight. I put the airline tickets in my back pocket. Later that day, we dove just the afternoon dive. After getting back, I was in the shower with my cut off jeans on which I ware when diving, I was washing my dive gear and felt this paper in my back pocket…it was our new plane tickets. I had just folder them up and put them in my back pocket earlier that morning. Since we had already dropped off our dive gear at the boat before exchanging the airline tickets there was no need to go to the hotel. We went to an early light lunch and then to the docks for our afternoon dive. Those tickets made that afternoon dive down to 60 feet. Well, that was a real hoot let me tell you, as the next morning I was in for a real treat.
I didn’t want to try and unfold the tickets for fear they would tear, so I placed them over the AC vent hoping they would dry out by the next morning. Back to the ticket agency we went the next morning and I asked the agent behind the counter if he spoke American…he kinda jesters and said NO! I turned to Dan and said that’s just great, how are we going to communicate and explain our dilemma to this man?. The man then said…in perfect English…” I speak the Queens English Sir”. Talk about feeling a bit uncomfortable. Well, I explained in my best "Southern Dixie Florida Cracker draw", about the slight mishap with our plane ticket that went diving the day before. I took the tickets and handed them to him. They had dried out and I said that I didn't want to try to unfold them. I n my mind, I wanted him to unfold then and in case he damaged them he would have to replace them. He said something like, Good Lord", just when I thought that I have seen just about everything, in a stiff British accent. He managed to get the tickets opened and said that he could still read everything and that there should be no problems at the airport.
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Jack Knife Fish
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The ferry boat trip the following morning over to the Mexican mainland went OK. So now, Dan is 6 ft 4 and I am 5 ft.9, and every Mayan Native that we encountered on this trip was about 4 ft 2. So to say we had some strange looks was an understatement. Once across the pond, we boarded a bus to take us south down to the Mayan temple. Good roads in Mexico are nearly non-existent. When out in the backcountry they are dirt and are very narrow...narrow is a very loose term here. So passing another vehicle was…well, harrowing at best. Let's just say our driver was well versed in using his bus horn.
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Yellowhead Jawfish
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We went past many little Mayan Indian villages and I would have loved to have been able to stop in and do some photography, but not to be…I was afraid to even ask. Once at the temple, I was totally blown away at the huge stone steps that go up at a near 45-degree angle to the top of the temple. The vertical space between each step was about 2 ft. How in the hell those people got up and down them was beyond me. They must have had some kind of elevator around back somewhere. Hell, it wore me out and I’m relatively tall as compared to those little people. All of the small out-building structures had doorways that were less than 5 ft high and even I had to duck after smashing my forehead on the rock beam. Poor Dan nearly had to get down…I mean really “Get Down” to go in them
This place was beautiful, and it was hot in August…VERY HOT!!! I was carrying a camera bag with 2 camera bodies, 4 lenses, a large flash unit, and a host of other camera stuff. A photographer has to have “STUFF”. Well, I nearly had a heat stroke and had to sit down as my world was beginning to spin around. After some rest and a much-needed bottle of water, I wondered around looking for photo opts. The coastal pure white sandy beaches, crystal clear blue water, and the palm trees created the perfect backdrop for the temple, and I had some great shooting. On our return bus trip, I could no longer see out the filthy windows and maybe that was a blessing. We made it back to the boat dock just in time to take us back to the island of Cozumel. That bus still had all of its fenders and bumpers intact, but I think the driver eventually broke the horn.
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Damsel Fish
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The rest of that trip went sort of well, except when it came time to board the plane. First off, I had a hard time convincing the idiot that kept wanting to x-ray my exposed film containers. I said no way, Jose! You will ruin all of my film. Trying to explain how x-rays will destroy the film was like trying to teach him trigonometry. Finally, one of the other agents came over and said to let me through. All the while this film thing was going on, Dan was trying to get our boarding passes taken care of. It seems as though, always the case, that Dan’s ticket was more legible and mine was not. They were not going to let me board the plane. “Good Grief Charlie Brown”, what the hell else can go wrong with his trip? I had very little money left after buying that authentic Mexican handwoven blanket for my wife that I knew was made in Hong Kong. Dan had some money, so between the two of us, we had enough for a new ticket…..BUT!! The plane was nearly boarded and wanting to leave. What a race that was. Just got the new ticket as they were trying to close the door to the plane……They were actually going to leave me there !!!! But Dan being 6 ft4 and standing in the doorway…that plane was not going anywhere without me.
As photography goes...it seems that the camera gods like to play games with me on my photo adventures. This kinda reminds me of one of the Grand Cayman trips for underwater photography a few years ago, someone said let's get some orchids to take back home. Ole Mikie said Hell Yas !!! I offered to climb the trees to cut down the orchids while being hungover from drinking way too many Seaview Specials, from the night before. This is a multi-colored, multi-flavored rum drink, which is poured into the glass in layers. That little tree climbing adventure netted me a very bad case of poisonwood, similar to poison ivy but much worse. By the time I got back home stateside, I already had a case of severe arm rash.
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Yellowhead Pearly Jawfish
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Needless to say, I don’t drink on these adventure trips, I don’t climb trees and I don’t go scuba diving with my airplane tickets in my back pocket, but I’m sure something else will come up that will be just as amusing.
J. Michael
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