Scuba Diving the Emerald Coast

The day after we arrived in Destin I drove to the dive shop to make the arrangements to go diving. Unfortunately I found out that all the dive shops were closed for the season and had pulled their boats out of the water, all except one that were schedule to do one last dive on the following saturday, so I put my name down for the trip.

The day before the dive I got all my dive gear together, I also had to reassemble my camera gear, on this two dive trip the first dive would be a housing test to make sure there are no leaks, if there is no leaking on the first dive then I would put the camera inside the housing and attach the flashes and fiber optics cables. So if all went well I would take pictures on the second dive.

So as we board the boat we are only 6 divers for that last dive of the season so we have plenty of room on the boat. The first dive is a 90 feet profile so at 3 bars of pressure and close to my personal limit it will be a good test for my housing.
We do a grand stride entry and hold to a line while we gather to dive together, we are 4 in our group and we are matched in pairs. Te water is a bit cold 68f and one of the divers is hesitant to dive but finally after a few minutes we go down. The water is green I guess that's why they call it the Emerald Coast and the visibility is less then 25 feet. The dive goes well and we surface, in the boat during the 90 minutes surface interval I inspect the housing and detects no water infiltration at all, so I assemble the complete system for the second dive. During the surface interval I get seasick but I regain enough control to do my second dive.

So it's the same situation as the first on as we descend on a 75 feet profile dive on the old Destin bridge rubbles. As always when I dive with strangers it's always a don't stop moving situation, great for exploring but not as good for photography. So I take pictures but I can't stay in one spot for 5 minutes to take the same picture 25 times with different settings in order to get the bet configuration, but I do the best of it and since it's the first time that I dive with this system I was just starting to get results as we ended our dive. During the dive I look at my wrist to check my computer and it's not there, I guess I lost it at the bottom somewhere. Also on the way up I was paying to much attention to my camera and had to much air in my BCD, a good thing was that we were surfacing using a line and I was holding tight but I should have paid more attention to my buoyancy and less to my photography, a point to ponder and improve upon. By the way as I sat on the boat I found my dive computer on my bench, I had simply forgot to put it back on after reprograming my nitrox mix for my second dive, so two stupid mistakes on one dive.

Anyway on my next destination in Key Largo I can go snorkeling and get more comfortable with my camera as I adjust all my settings.