Through a lens, blotchily.

I've been commissioned to write a piece for Scuba Magazine about Montrose SAC's club trip to Northern Ireland later this year.  To get the best quality underwater photos I'll need an wide-angled lens (there's a lot of stuff in the water that causes blotches in the photos, called "back-scatter"; with a wide-angled lens you can get in closer to the subject and therefore reduce the amount of water between you and it, thus reducing back-scatter.)

So I've been trying to locate a wide-angle lens I can use with my Intova underwater camera set-up. (If you're not yet into underwater photography, it's important to know that cameras typically have to go inside a watertight housing, onto which you screw accessories like lenses and lights; the cameras - apart from a few very expensive ones, perhaps - aren't themselves watertight.  Each type of camera has its own housing, so you have to get the right one for your camera.)  

I know Intova make a lens that you can fit and remove during a dive.  I know who imports it into this country - but they don't sell direct to the public, so I've been trawling the internet to find a retailer.

Intova IC12 camera
(photos courtesy of
Intova's website)

The same, in its
underwater housing.

According to the importer's website the nearest agency is Aberdeen Watersports, so I checked their website: no mention of any lenses.  Same for the agencies in Burntisland, Edinburgh and Glasgow - in fact most of them didn't even mention Intova. 

So I searched e-Bay, where I eventually found a lens after trying 2-3 different keyword phrases ("scuba diving cameras", "underwater cameras", that sort of thing).  But all it said by way of identification was "46mm thread".  As I have no idea what size thread my housing has that wasn't very helpful.  Intova make several housings.  Which one does this lens fit?  At around £130 a pop I'm not going to buy one on spec.

Why are retailers so coy about their products?  If you're writing for/to consumers you can't expect them all to be experts on everything they want to buy.  I know I need the lens that fits my specific housing and I know which housing I've got.  I haven't a clue what the thread size is, and I doubt there's any mention of it in the handbook as that only covers the camera iself.  Why can't they say "fits xyz housing(s)" or something really simple like that?

It's all very well saying "come and visit our shop" but their shop's in Liverpool and I'm between Dundee and Aberdeen.  That's not exactly a 10-minute jaunt; the diesel would double the price of the lens.  And while I'm sure it's a lovely shop, full of all sorts of delightful bits and bobs that I never knew I didn't need, I'm not going to waste the better part of two days getting there and back.

Thank heavens for email.  With a bit of luck I'll get replies from 5 separate retailers saying "we've got just the thing for you, and it'll only cost £100 all in".  A girl can dream...

Water babies

I wish our pool were as handsome as this...

Yesterday Montrose BSAC hosted a try-dive for a group of local schoolkids.  Forfar Academy's Year 5 school trip goes to Borneo every second year, for a week's survival skills followed by a week's diving (wish I'd been to a school like that...).  Last night 22 of the students came to try a dive before next year's trip.

A few were very scared of the idea of diving - one is apparently terrified of drowning - but they'd all gone right under the water by the end of their trial, even if not in the deep end of the pool.  The one who's terrified of drowning even went to the bottom of the deep end (3.6 metres) and came up beaming, saying it had been "great".  What an achievement!

22 kids divided by 4 instructors times ~10 minutes each takes a while.  Inevitably some of them had to wait quite a long time for their turn, which doesn't help if you're nervous, but there was none of the joshing that could have made the wait harder.  In fact, they were really well-behaved - quiet and helpful to us and each other.

It's good to be part of an event like that, helping people overcome fears that could have made the trip a nightmare for them instead of a lifetime opportunity.  I hope the memory of last night will serve when they come to do it for real in the open sea.  At least in Borneo they'll have warm water: the pool yesterday made several of them shiver as they slid or jumped into it.

And it'll be worth the nerves and the effort.  The wildlife at the bottom of the sea in Borneo is much prettier than that at the bottom of Montrose swimming pool.

Coastguards

At this time of year dive clubs up and down the country are trying to find interesting people to talk to members on club nights.  Yesterday our club had a talk from the Sector Manager of Montrose Coastguard station, which was fascinating.

I knew very little about what the coastguard service does, except that they're on the end of a radio if anything goes wrong.  But they do more than just Search and Rescue at sea; they also check boats and can impound them if they're considered unsafe, do flood rescues inland, deal with cargo lost overboard and check on marine pollution.

The UK coastguard covers all sea areas half-way to the next seaboard, so in the north Atlantic their patch goes half-way to Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and so on.  That's a huge area to monitor, still less to get shore-based vessels to, so they use other boats in the vicinity (referred to as "rescue assets").  Any vessel, even a rowing boat if it has a radio, has to respond to a Mayday call.  It may not be able to help - a high-sided container ship wouldn't be particularly useful in a man-overboard emergency, for example - but it can monitor and be an "eye on the ocean" for the coastguard on the radio back home.

One big question concerned the closure of most of the present 18 stations around Britain.  The press has made this out to be A Very Bad Idea, but our speaker was all in favour.  At the moment most stations have around 3 staff on duty who spend most of the shift waiting for a call; when one does come in they have to deal with it by themselves, and 3 people are not many in that situation.  Under the new system there will be fewer thumb-twiddlers and more co-operation, as all the stations will be connected, so it should be much more efficient all round.

Montrose station have a particular affinity for mud.  Montrose Basin is a tidal lagoon which becomes a mud-flat with a river running through it at low tide.  If anyone gets caught in the mud it sucks them down, up to their armpits, and the coastguards then used to have to haul them out bodily against the suction.  Now they use a fire extinguisher to force air down through the mud, which loosens it around the body, making rescues much easier.  They haul people across the mud in basket stretchers, using them like sleds to spread body-weight.

They've recently been teaching the same technique to firefighters in Dundee, who have Dundee airport on their patch.  If you're not familiar with Dundee airport, it's tiny - so are the aircraft that land there, by commercial standards - and sits right at the edge of the Firth of Tay [Firth = estuary].  At low water there's miles of mud.  If a plane misses the runway, there will be 25-30 people stranded and, potentailly, sinking into the mud.  Coastguards usually only have to deal with individual strandings; the firefighters needed to know how to cope with lots at once.  That training must have been an interesting exercise to watch.

We divers were given lots of good advice on what to do while awaiting rescue.  One that particularly sticks in my mind: if you've got separated from your boat and you see a rescue helicopter coming over, take off your hood because a) it's probably black and therefore invisible in the water and b) they use heat-seeking infra-red devices and your hood is designed to keep the heat in.  At night the decision's a bit more difficult, because most hoods these days have reflective strips on them which the 'copter's light might pick up - so do you leave it on for the light or take it off for the heat-seeking doodahs?  Hmm...

Anyway - "dive safe" and with a bit of luck you'll never need to take that decision!

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If you need a copywriter with scuba experience, go to http://greatcopy.info.

The saga of the drysuit looks as though it may have come to an end.  Hoo-flipping-ray!! And about time too.

By the end of last season it was leaking really badly, and I had two miserably cold days at the end of October, completely soaked by the end of each morning dive.  Luckily there was no afternoon dive on the Saturday and on Sunday there were the harbour's hot showers and a complete change of clothing to look forward to before the long drive home.

That was IT.  Enough.  I thought I was going to have to get a new suit and even got in touch with a friend who makes them (though only for power-boating - he wasn't too sure about making one for diving...).  I took the suit to the dive shop for a last attempt at rendering it usable.  Given that the shop had pressure-tested it the previous year and found no problems, I wasn't sanguine, but it was worth one last shot.

They tested it again and found not one but THREE holes, the largest around the suit inflation valve.  As the valve doesn't swivel and that's where I was getting wettest, that wasn't a major surprise, but I hadn't realised there were also holes in one arm and on my back.  So they fixed the holes, re-taped the neck and wrist seals, and gave it back to me for a reasonable sum.

I'd hoped to test it for real on a club dive down at St Abb's a couple of weekends ago, but the weather wasn't up to much so I didn't go.  Yesterday evening I gave it the "beginner's test", in the local swimming pool down to 3.6 metres.  Not a drop.  Totally dry.  Hallelujah!!

I do hope it'll be the same when I move that decimal point to 36....

Underwater adventure.

Continuing the scuba story:

On Sunday April 11th I had my second open-water dive.  Montrose Sub-Aqua Club has a boat-house at Catterline, near Stonehaven (roughly 20 miles south of Aberdeen), with several small islands and reefs close off-shore and not too deep, so it's perfect for novice divers.  Sunday was one of those gorgeous spring days, sun sparkling off the water, bright and clear and warm, and we were promised two dives, one before and one after lunch.

I did my first open-water dive three weeks ago, down to about 5 metres, and had a bit of trouble getting and staying down, so I'd added another 8 lbs of weight to the 24lbs I'd needed in the swimming pool.  One of the main challenges of diving is the sheer weight of the kit you have to wear: I'm whacked before I ever get in the water.  I'm assured it gets easier when you're used to it, and of course you don't feel the weight underwater, but on land - boy, oh boy!  On the plus side, people keep telling me I'm too light - music to my ears, as I'm no sylph.

So: second dive.  I was diving with Barrie who, like most instructors, is very used to the vagaries of beginners.  I had trouble getting down but eventually I made it to the sandy bottom.  We did a couple of technical exercises and then set off to swim a gully between the beach and a small island.  In good visibility we saw plenty of starfish and some dead-men's finger corals, and got down to about 10 metres.  But I was having trouble with my buoyancy and found myself rising to the surface much faster than the recommended 15 metres per minute.  Not dangerous from that depth, but uncontrolled and meaning Barrie also had to surface quickly to make sure I was OK.

We went back down - I sank much more easily, for some reason - and did another exercise before finding the anchor rope and going up it, at the recommended rate this time, to un-kit before clambering back into the boat.  Barrie's suggestion that I'd be "agile as a gazelle" was rather wide of the mark - more like "stranded whale" - but elegance was never my strong point, and at least I was in...

Back to the boathouse for lunch and to refill the air cylinders, then my third dive, again with Barrie (poor man).  I had even more trouble getting down, spending ages at the surface before I began to sink (why does that happen?  Dunno yet) and my trim wasn't right - I was listing to starboard the whole time.  Managed to hitch the kit around enough to get fairly level, and we set off to have a look round and get down to 15 metres.  Lots more to see down there - tiny brown and white crabs scuttling across the sand, dahlia anemones, sea urchins, and plenty more starfish and dead-men's fingers.  Barrie shone his torch hopefully into crevices to check for lobster, but no luck.

As we went deeper I began having problems keeping my feet down: as my head went down air was getting into my boots from the rest of my drysuit and I was just about inverted.  I did the forward roll that's supposed to solve the problem - one of the exercises we'd practised on the morning dive - but it didn't do the trick.  Tried again - no result.  I couldn't get my feet down.  To make things worse, with all that thrashing about my fins had come loose.  It turned out later the boots were half off my feet with the fins still attached, but it felt as though I was going to lose them completely, so I stopped kicking.  I could feel myself rising, fast, to the surface but once I got there things didn't improve because I put air into my drysuit instead of my buoyancy compensator (BC - air-fillable jacket like a life-preserver), so more air was going to my feet and it was difficult to hold my head out of the water.  By now I was panicking.  My regulator kept falling out of my mouth, so I was swallowing gouts of seawater.  I did remember to wave my arm over my head, the signal for "I'm in trouble", and I yelled for help, but I had no idea where the boat was or whether anyone could hear me.   

I don't know how long that went on - it felt like several minutes, but was probably much less - and then Barrie was filling my BC with air and someone was telling me to put my hand through something on the boat.  I was relieved of my kit and pushed and hauled into the boat, more like a stranded whale even than before lunch, and collapsed on the bottom-boards, where I stayed until we got back to the boathouse.

Everyone was very kind, and made it seem like an ordinary occurrence - maybe it is, and I shall see others in the same predicament over the next few weeks.  For their sakes I really hope not. 

Lessons learnt: I need more weight, preferably ankle weights, both to get down and to keep my feet down.  And I need to remember to fill my BC at the surface.  I've been mentally practising that.  Every time I picture myself floundering on the surface I think "now inflate BC, now inflate BC", so that it will become an automatic response.  Since the "action replay" is still showing regularly on my mental screen, the programming stands a strong chance of working.

So - many thanks to Barrie for saving my life, and I hope for his sake that someone else gets to take me down next time!  I did consider giving up and settling for snorkelling, but not for long.  Well, I've bought all the kit now, haven't I?  Shame to waste it, and a winter's training, for a minor setback.

P.S. Apparently it's quite normal to go through all that - everyone comes up feet first at least once in their diving career, I'm told.  I guess we all have to learn from our mistakes...
Diving again on Sunday :-)