From the title, my philosopher friends are probably thinking I am going to write about the connection between present time and future time; but they would be wrong. My diver friends know that I’m thinking more about will there be a strong current underwater on my next dive? Underwater currents are like the wind. You really can’t see them except in relationship to other things. So for instance we can drop a few blades of grass on the water and assuming we are still,if there is a current, the blades of grass will move one direction or another. If the current is too quick we may decide to go to another site where there is either less current or possibly none at all. Of course, we may elect to do a drift dive and just go with the flow.

When there is a modest current we usually want to swim into the current on the way out and have the current push us back to the boat on the way back. By doing this we have an added measure of safety because, all other things being equal swimming back to the boat with a current to our backs should help push us back to the boat so we do not exert ourselves as much and therefore use less air.

Currents are not inherently bad for diving. if they were there would be no dive industry in Cozumel Mexico. Cozumel is famous for its drift dives. The basic concept is you drop in at point “A” and you let the current take you along the reef for a distance until you get to a certain point “B”in your air supply and then you ascend. Hopefully, the boat captain has followed your bubbles well enough to at least be in the same zip code and can bring the boat close to the divers for an easy exit.

So the question remains will there be a current on your future dives?

I was thinking back to a dive I did in Anguilla on a wreck known as the MV Commerce. Wreck dives are typically dives where I want to have my underwater camera set up to shoot wide angle. Close focus wide angle is a great way to try to capture the large expanses of a ship for instance, but it really doesn’t do to much for trying to take pictures of small critters. Shooting pictures of small critters with a wide angle lens makes them look insignificant, if they can be found at all.

Alot of times before dives, I try to find out what are we likely to see on the dive. The reason is if it sounds like we will see big objects than I rig the camera for wide angle which works best. If it sounds like we will see small critters, then a macro setting with a 60mm or 105mm lens works best for me. For the most part, I shot wreck dives with a wide angle lens. Of course, some dive masters incorrectly think that if they tell me what we are likely to see that that will either jinx the dive, or will take away from it in some way. Understand, I don’t need detail, what we will see is often quite different from what has been seen at the same dive site on prior dives; but I just would like to know, big or small features so I can rig the camera accordingly.

The MV Commerce was a over 100 feet in length so I figured, good wide angle shooting. Little did I know but our dive master was very good at finding the small inhabitants who had made themselves at home on the wreck. The MV Commerce at that point had been down over 20 years, so there was quite a bit of coral and sponge life on the ship. Great habbitat for small critters. As it turned out, the dive was the first time I had really looked at an arrow crab. Now arrow crabs remind me of daddy long legs spiders, but have an elongated head which comes to a point. One of the crabs we found that day had been hunting. And, it appeared he had been quite successful. He not only had food in one of his claws, but had jammed some of his prey down on the spike at the end of his head. (Bless his pointed little head). Of course rigged for wide angle I could try as many different shots and angle as I liked with little success. At one point I put my dome right in the crabs face, but the image still looked punny. Nevertheless, I did get bailed out at the end of the dive. A green sea turtle swam down from the surface and started napping on the remains of the deck of the wreck. Sometimes it better to be lucky than good.

Oh, and in case you were wondering what it looks like when I am rigging my underwater camera, here is a short timelapse movie I shot a while back, where I rigged the camera for wide angle. I just wish I could rig the camera this fast in real time.
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+BruceCampbell65/posts/PyBnFTnmatG?pid=6004089089182503426&oid=104442422001208185337

a href=”http://vimeo.com/user16230710″>