Oahu Dive 8. Corsair. Plane wreck at 115 ft. Great viz. We could see the wreck from the surface. Tim’s coordinates were spot on. Even though the area is known for strong currents we had a very slight one. But best of all we had whales singing the whole morning. I was playing with settings as we descended because at that depth we didn’t have much time to get a shot. Just about 16min. Time at depth is a big deal when you loose your computer and don’t have a watch. It is very easy to loose track. FU4 Corsair plane wreck is located off of the east southeast side of Oahu just outside of Manalua Bay. The Corsair ran out of fuel and it sunk in 1948. The pilot made a water landing and safely ... read more

Oahu Dive 3. The “Mahi” wreck. The "Mahi" is an old WWII minesweeper that was intentionally sunk in 1982 as an artificial reef and it is a world class dive. It is 185 ft long 33 ft wide steel hulled ship weighing approx 500 tons. It rests at 95'/29m of water and that is often the maximum dive depth as whitetip reef sharks and octopus often hide between the bottom and the wreck. If you want a longer bottom time the deck is between 60-80'/18-24m and there is plenty to look at. The Mahi's bridge collapsed during a hurricane a couple of years ago and most divers are not allowed to penetrate the inside of the wreck. On a typical dive at the Mahi, divers can expect superb visibility; we had 200+ viz and blue water. ... read more

I got the pleasure to do my first dives in Oahu with Hector Seguin Jr from Honolulu Honu Divers http://www.yelp.com/biz/honolulu-honu-divers-llc-honolulu. Hector runs a small and very professional local operation that would take you where others won’t. If you want to taste Oahu diving the way locals do it, Honolulu Honu Divers is the way to go. He will accommodate your needs: weather you are in the mood of a hardcore exiting dive and get out of the water yelling: Heca Dive!!!!! or a more traditional one… If you are an underwater photographer looking for a customized dive to get a specific shot with specific scenery or need to work around bottom time, look no more. Have you thought of a half and half shot with a turtle on the bottom half, Hawaiian mountains on the top ... read more

My trip to Hawaii has officially started finally. I flew 2hrs30min to Houston, Tx for a 2hr stop and then 8h to Honolulu,Oahu. I had to pay extra for each checked in bag. $35 for first bag and $25 for second. Not so bad considering that I have almost all my gear and its one stop. My checked luggage left yesterday with my original plane. In my 30 lbs carry on I have a spare camera body, optics, strobes, strobe battery packs, a fleece and pretty much anything that I wasn’t going to use during the flight but than needs to be in the compressed cabin. I am glad they didn’t weight it and I could wheel it around. In my backpack I travel every thing that I use: laptop, ipad, iphone, ipod, 2 strobe battery ... read more

I am a fan of half and half shots and Chris Gug from aquaexposure.com was given a “how-to” workshop at sfups meeting in North Miami. Last minute I decided to improvise and film Gug’s presentation with my slr. I use the optics that I happened to have on. The 28-70mm at the 28mm end, gave me just enough wide angle to work with. I improvised stability with chocolate bars, and a phone charger that I had in my backpack. Without a proper tripod it was a challenge to handhold the camera to follow Chris from one side of the room to the other as he was illustrating his examples. I was concentrated in pulling focus and I heard half of his presentation…. 0... read more