No, cameras should not be used to attract attention while diving

Over the period of a week we quite a few dives here in Bunaken. Here are some of the photos from the week underwater.

We stayed a Bastianos resort which we would definitely go back to and stay. It was great, the staff were so friendly and everything was really easy, more about that in another blog though, this one is dedicated to diving and the memory of my late canon ixus 500.

We had been diving for about 3 days when we started a dive at lekuan 2. We dropped to about 18-20m and started to drift along the wall, the guide was out in front, ali behind him and me bringing up the rear. We had been drifting for a few minutes when i happened to look down. I will just say at this point that i have a list of things that i want to see while diving and i get quite excited when i can cross one off the list.

So, i happen to look down the wall (which seems to go down forever, no end in sight) and out of the darkness i see a tail moving from side to side, the tail seems to be quite a bit bigger than a fish tail so i decide to devote my attention to watching this not the wall.

After a few seconds the Huge shape (maybe slight exaggeration) of a shark materialises. At this point i am gobsmacked, i have crossed another elusive diving trophy off the list!! By this time i am ready to share my find with the rest of my troupe, i tried to grab alison's fin but she just shook it off and went a bit further ahead of me. Now at this point i wasn't really thinking properly for some reason as i thought it would be a good idea to bang my camera and it's underwater housing on my tank to attract attention. I'm not sure what part of banging my plastic housing on my aluminium tank i thought was a good idea but i was relieved when both alison and the guide turned around and i was proudly able to point out my find. For the next 30 seconds i was quite the hero!!

We continued along the wall to see Big moma, a huge turtle that sits in a little alcove on the wall. Ali posed in front of Big moma and i lined a photo up and was looking at the screen on the camera when i noticed that the bottom of the screen look a little bit blurry. I took the photo then took a closer look and noticed a few centimetres of water in the bottom of the housing. It then hit me what had happened and i said a few words to myself which i can't repeat.

Needless to say the rest of the dive was spent with me watching the gradual rise of the water in the housing, i don't remember seeing many fish.

canon ixus 500 R.I.P. 2003 - 2007

besides that the diving was great and we had a ball.

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