I have had a chance to swim through quite a few swim throughs that ranged from feeling pretty wide open to feeling really claustrophobic.   For me the one thing they all have in common is I have to think and look pretty hard at them to see if there is a chance that I can get the camera and housing through the available space.  Sometimes I have to bring the strobes in pretty close to be able to get through the available space.  Now that also means that at best I have to video that part of the dive because trying to shoot stills in such close quarters rarely works.  I need about 5 feet wide to be able to get the strobes through without bringing them in close to the camera housing.  I need about two feet vertically to be able to get the tank strobes and me through the available space.  I can do about 2 feet by 3 feet but that feels really tight.

I’ve seen some pretty interesting responses by divers.  Some are quite at ease and just seem to go with the flow of the swim through.  Others, well they can get pretty spooked and bolt through the swim through.  That happened in a swim through in Cozumel and as it looked as if two divers were swimming on top of one another.  Now the good thing was that there was enough space for two divers so it wasn’t too bad, but it did make for an interesting image.

Now off the coast of Kona, Hawaii are a number of lava tubes that create some interesting swim throughs.   The lava tubes ranged from very wide to very small.  Each was different.  Below is a link to a small sampling of the tubes into the blue that we saw.