Pictures of the small wreck we found last Friday. I know we aren't the first to find it because of the cable and broken fishing buoy, but it is fun never the less. It is a small boat with only one 3 blade prop. It appears to be about 60' long and was an island supply boat from the looks of it. Lots of small holds. This shell is lying on the starboard side of the ship which is lying on it's port side. For those of you who don't sail, that is right and left respectively. As you can probably tell, the round is still live so I suspect it was dumped overboard by the US Navy somewhere along the line. I don't think Kevin and Kim were real thrilled to pose for me that close! We had fun and used our navigation skills and proved that given enough dives, even an old fart like me can learn to use a compass in the water! LOL! Thanks Jack! The top picture in this series is the projectile of one of these (I think, 5 inch) shells. It is still in the casing so it hasn't been fired but the projectile has been eaten away by years of salt water and all that is left is the bottom half of the projectile and the impact fuse intact but with no explosive to set off. Kind of cool seeing how these thing were made!

Well today started off with a bang! While we (Kevin, Kim, and I) were getting ready to pull out of the marina, our Marine Patrol boat came in and said there was a ray caught up in some buoy lines out by Emon beach. Since we were the closest to being ready to pull out we went and went in the water and between Kevin and I we were able to cut the poly-rope and set the Manta free! What a great way to start the day. This isn't a picture of the the same Manta but it is about the same size so I thought I would throw it in so everyone could see what I was talking about. It looked like the Manta went through a loop in the line with the right mandible (hanging down) and just got frightened and looped itself all up. Like I said, great way to start the day!

Even though they are pretty funky pictures, I decided to put a couple of the wreck we saw on Friday afternoon up here. We are going to try to get a little closer tomorrow so we have more time on the wreck itself and see if we can't do a better job of figuring out if it is Japanese or American and if it was bombed or what caused it to sink. We might even be able to figure out what the cargo was if we are lucky. I was pretty surprised by the fact that my "available light" picture came out as well as it did. Stay tuned for more.......................

What a cool day! I was looking at some imagery a couple of days ago on Google Earth and when I zoomed in on the lagoon I saw something on the bottom that didn't look exactly like it was natural. Naturally, I had to investigate. We dove from G-Buoy Coral head this afternoon after work and found a wreck i didn't know was there! How cool is that? I'm simply facinated by the fact that I can use Google Earth to potentially find ships...........odds are not good because we were only at 75 ft and I don't think we could have seen it much deeper but it worked this time.

Here we go again. Color and mystery is far more beautiful to me than just another picture of a fish in the water. Don't get me wrong, I've got lots of beautiful pictures of fish, but these are much more like what I would like to hang on my wall.
We are about to lose a good friend back to the real world. He is going to go from the beauty and peace of a small island in the middle of the Pacific , to a military installation in the middle of the United States. I wish him well and hope that he will avail himself of this site to see the sights and creatures he will soon be missing. Adios my friend.

I am heading back to Honolulu to pick my wife up and bring her back out here for Diving over the 4th of July. She wants to see how we celebrate out here and if it is any different than back on Oahu. I'll say it is! I suppose that the 2 minute traffic jam of bicycles trying to leave the beach after the fireworks is not going to impress her much but I bet the bikes that she sees during the day when we celebrate will sure do the trick. Here, see what I mean. If you have ever lived in Europe you might be used to riding a bicycle, but most folks out here haven't ridden much since they were kids and it shows sometimes! LOL!

Here we are 2 weeks after my last post and I have tried to decide whether people want to see "colors" and compositon or is it the fish they are after? Pictures like the one on the left is very interesting and beautiful to me because of the things that you only see under very specific circumstances! The hairs that reflect the blue light from the surrounding water is only visible when the sun is backlighting the coral. What a revelation! We divers mostly cruise along taking the corals for granted........after all, they are beautiful without working to look at if from another angle! Boy, this photography thing sure makes pictures beautiful! LOL........

Can you imagine a more beautiful landscape than this? I sometimes wonder what it was that I did right, to be so blessed. I have a great job located in the world's best diving area, I've got a great wife who supports what I do, and I can take and look at great pictures and share them with a huge share of the world. At the same time, I'm listening to the Blue Man Group, one of my favorites. Life is really good.
I got an email this evening from my wife telling me about a new place on the net called Panorama Explorer. It is based on Google Maps and is really cool. Yet another place to put pictures on the WWW. There must be literally millions all over the globe. Can you imagine the compilation that would make???

One of Judy's favorite pictures........it never ceases to amaze me that in the world of water where everything is blue these colors exist. It is really exciting to see exactly what my camera has captured at the end of diving.

Well with some trepidation we decided to give a go at making all my pictures pay for themselves. My wife and I just started a new venture called In-Depth Photography. It is already proving to be a difficult thing trying to run it from two different places in the world. The picture at the left shows the advanced state of decay of some of the wrecks at Kwajalein and is one of the reasons I want to share with the world my pictures. These views of 60 year old ships are soon to be lost due to the extreme degree of degradation of these old hulks. They were sent to the bottom of the sea violently and the ravages of the sea are slowly but surely destroying the remains. In the not to distant future these and photos like these may be the only records available.