Eddy's Scuba Blog

The next couple of days were somewhat low-key, I did not have any rare encounters and in some respect it was somewhat disappointing. On the other hand, it was a good chance to hone in the skills and follow the advise that we were getting from the Drafahls.

During the next two days we visited the following dive sites by boat: Coral Garden, Andrea II, Sampler (Klein), Point Vierkant and Knife (Klein). In addition, I made three shore dives, two of which were night dives. The night dives were somewhat disappointing, we did not have any interesting sightings. However, I did perfect my settings for night dives, which will come handy later.

This posting is about how I applied some of the lessons that I had learned in the classroom, in the "field".

Adjusting and Positioning Lighting: Sanddivers

Sanddivers, as their name suggests, sit on the sand. In terms of focusing and framing, they are easy to deal with: they don't move, as long as you don't any sudden moves. The challenge with photographing these guys is the possible reflection from the sand as they like to sit on sandy areas. So, lighting is most challenging aspect in photographing a sanddiver. In this particular picture, I wanted to focus on the eyes and the little teeth. It took me about 10 pictures to get this right. I was moving my strobe around to get the lighting on the eyes. On a couple of pictures, I was getting a lot of reflection from the sand. At the time, I was using ISO 200, in retrospect, I should have tried a lower ISO like 100 or 50.

This is also a case where a second strobe could have come handy. No matter where you put the strobe, you were going to get a shadow somewhere because the subject is right on top of the background (the sand).

Sanddiver. 1/125 at f/8, ISO 200, 24 mm focal length.

Spotting Behavior: Trunkfish

In the past I've found that trunkfish were usually hard to photograph because they moved a lot. Most of my pictures of trunkfish have been from behind, and at best from the side as a result of a long chase. In turns out this time at site called Sampler in Klein Bonaire, this threesome of trunkfish were "hanging out" around a soft coral. They were swimming around and chasing each other. It could have been a mating ritual.

Trunkfish Pair. 1/125 at f/7.1, ISO 200, 24 mm focal length.

For whatever reason, the trunkfish allowed me to get very close and they were also curious. This allowed me to take pictures from the front. Since they moved around a lot you had to be ready with the shot. In this picture, I was no farther than two feet from the trunkfish.

Trunkfish Close-up. 1/125 at f/7.1, ISO 200, 24 mm focal length.

Behavior and Focus: Juvenile Drumfish

I have made several pictures of drumfish and I knew how they moved. They usually swim left to right and right to left and stay around a crevice, or a hole in the coral. One of the most challenging things about photographing a drumfish is getting the camera in focus. Since this guy moves rather fast, it is sometimes hard to for the auto-focus to lock in, especially on point & shoots that have shutter lag. In retrospect, it would have been a good idea to either use manual focus or lock the distance with a half press of the shutter button. In this picture, the focus was on the coral behind, but the fish was close enough that made the focus good enough.

Juvenile Drumfish. 1/125 at f/5.6, ISO 100, 24 mm focal length.

Waiting for the Right Moment: Ribbon Nudibranch

One good thing about nudibrachs is that they move really ... really slow. This gives you time to adjust your settings. However, one bad thing about nudibranchs is that they move really ... really slow. So, if you find them on a background that is not appealing or difficult to shoot, you have to be patient and wait until they move. In this picture, I shot the ribbon nudibranch from above. It would have been nice to photograph one coming off on a ledge, but waiting for the right moment on nudibranchs requires a lot of patience ... and air.

Ribbon Nudibranch. 1/125 at f/5.6, ISO 100, 8 mm focal length.

Looking for a Unique Composition: Soldier Fish

One advise about composition that has been stuck in my head-either by one of the lectures by Jack Drafahl or Marty Snyderman-is that two of anything always makes good composition. Soldier fish are common in the Caribbean and you find them everywhere. However, this was a good chance to practice with them. Their bright red color, which is usually lost in the depth, usually makes an excellent contrast to its surroundings. This is a fortuitous shot of getting a pair of soldiers each looking in the opposite direction.

Two Soldier Fish in Opposite Direction. 1/125 at f/5.6, ISO 100, 8 mm focal length.

The Resort
Since the begining of the trip I've heard CocoView's reputation for its returning customers. That reputation was indeed based on true facts. People come back to CocoView because of the diving.

CocoView enjoys from prime diving real estate. It has the Prince Albert wreck on its front yard and it's shore dive accessible. Also shore dive accessible are CocoView Wall and Newman's Wall, both walls drop to hundreds of feet and are full of coral life and critters.

CocoView Bungalow

The reef around CocoView is so full of critters that there are "house eels". As it turns out, our Captain Osman, feeds a group of juvenile spotted moray eels and green moray eels every morning at beach dock. Even when you go out for a shore dive, you might see an eel, a mantis shrimp or an octopus in the shallow grassy area at the beach.

CocoView Beach - Where Shore Dives Start

CocoView has definitely a unique character. It looks rustic, unlike some of other plush resorts. The trails to the different buildings are not paved. You could say they are "dirt roads". The common area buildings are not air conditioned and you can tell that some of the buildings have been there for years. However, this doesn't mean that CocoView is behind the times. Later, I'll talk about their dive operations, which are top notch.

CocoView Boat Approaching Dock

The main common building is the hub of the whole resort. Here is where you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. The bar is also located in this building and next to it there are recreational areas with a pool table and ping pong table, which are not used too much unless there is a big storm and dive operations are cancelled.

CocoView Dining Room	CocoView Bar
CocoView Pool Table	CocoView Ping Pong Table

On the second floor, there is a meeting area and TV room with satellite dish. Here's where the first day orientation is given. On the second floor, there is also a balcony area with lounge chairs and hammocks. They face the beach. In front of the main building (towards the beach), there is an outdoor dining area and a dock and gazebo area with lounge chairs and hammocks. This is a nice place to sip a drink that you pick up from the bar, relax and watch the night divers return to shore.

The Beach Houses

Four of us in the group (Cindy, Dina, Dave and me) stayed at beach house #10. It was the last house in the resort. It was relatively far from the main building and the dive lockers, about a 10 minute walk. Fortunately, they had bikes that you can borrow to go back and forth. The house itself was nice, but it wasn't air conditioned. It did have ceiling fans and high ceilings.

The house faced the beach, but it was not swimmable. It had lounge chairs by the beach, but there were too many bugs outside. We had lounge chairs and a hammock in a screened area. That was a nice area to relax. The house had two floors, one bedroom on the first floor and two bedrooms on the second. Each bedroom had its own bathroom. The rooms and bathrooms were cleaned every day during the morning while people were diving.

Cindy found a washing machine, but I never found it, so I never used it. The house had a full kitchen with utensils, cooking ware, oven, fridge, but no microwave. There was also a water fountain. The dining room was next to the kitchen and could sit 6 people. The living room was quite big and well ventilated by the open screened layout and ceiling fans. We also had extra regular fans in the living room and the bedroom.

On the last day we did suffer a snafu, the electricity went out. The electricity at the resort comes from a generator and on that day we were having problems. There was also no water because it was pumped by electric pumps. After diving and the hydroplane tour, I had to wait untill late in the afternoon to take shower that day :(.

Interior of Beach House

Sunset View from Balcony of Beach House

The Dive Operations
The dive operations at CocoView were superb. Not only did they have the latest compressor equipment, but they were very well organized. They counted with a fleet of 5 boats, some of them with an entry passage in the middle of the boat. When you arrive to the resort you are assigned the same boat for the whole week. That way you become familiar with your captain and your divemaster. And you always know where to find your equipment if you leave it behind at the boat. The boat becomes "your boat".

There are 4 boat dives daily, well, two boat dives and two drop-off dives. The boat dives depart at 8:00am and at 2:00pm. On the return, you are dropped at Newman's Wall in the mornings and at CocoView Wall in the afternoons.

Nitrox is the rule rather than the exception at CocoView. There were more nitrox tanks, than air tanks and sometimes you would even have trouble finding an air tank. From this you can extrapolate that most divers that come here are Nitrox certified.

Full Tanks

Empty Tanks

Next to the dive dock is the dive locker area where you assigned your locker for the whole week. Your equipment sits in the open at night and I noticed that it is guarded by armed guards at night. I usually took my dive computer home every night though. Next to the dive locker area there is a changing area with showers (no hot water though) and specialized sinks for cameras only and for the rest of your dive gear.

Booties Drying

Nitrox!

Compressor Room

Sink and Shower Area

I was impressed by the compressor room. The equipment looked spanking new and it was very clean and organized. The compressors, I believe, run all night to meet the tank supply in the morning. Each locker area had a Nitrox analyzer and you could analyze your tanks the night before and leave it in your locker. In the mornings, the crew would take your tanks and equipment to the boat. They would also put your gear together for you.

The diving setup at CocoView was one of the best I've seen so far. The layout of the dive dock, the lockers and the showers and sink area were very well thought of. The boat operations were also very well organized and you rarely saw confusion in the morning. Indeed, I could see why people return to Cocoview for the 5th and 6th time and why CocoView claims to have one of highest return rates in industry: more than 40%.

Locker

Empty tanks usually outstrip full tanks at the end of the day

Today, Wednesday the group decided to do a shark dive as an additional excursion. This was not included in the package at CocoView. Since I had never done a shark dive I decided go along. Four others in our group were coming too (Cindy, Dina, Craig and Christina), as other people from the resort.

The shark dive was run by a separate company: Waikuha Adventure Diving. Their operations were located about 30 mins from CocoView by car. The trip to their location was somewhat painful. We had to carry all our equipment on to the water taxi that takes you inland. That included Nitrox tanks, since they only provide air tanks at the shark dive place. Then we had to take a van to Waikuha, which was located in not-so-well-known and poorly maintained resort, which name escapes my memory. It seemed that the shark diving operation was the thing that kept the place alive. The facilities there were poor, there were no proper bathrooms or even running water for any kind of rinsing.

The Orientation
The operation was ran by an Italian emigre (his name escapes my mind), who was a lawyer back in Italy, so the shark diving operation was up his alley ;). The story goes that he was visiting Roatan and was told that fisherman always sighted sharks at a location called "Cara a Cara", which is Spanish for "face to face". From then on he managed to atract sharks every time he chummed the waters, eventually he started to bring people along for his dives with sharks and that's how he started his business. On the way to the dive site, he said that he did at least 2 dives a day, every day, bringing an average of 20 people in each dive. That is $90 per head, not bad business.

The orientation was a 30 minute briefing of the procedures and rules. The site is located at 70 ft of water with a 10ft wall surrounding one side of it. After descending with a line we were to stay at bottom, forming 2 rows with the wall behind us. The people in the front row would be kneeling and the people in the back would be standing up. If conditions were adequate, the sharkmaster would tell us that is ok to swim among with the sharks. The dive was to last about 30 minutes. By the end of the dive, the sharkmaster was to open a bait bucket underwater. We had to come back to our two-row stationary location when this was done. We were told that there were also two local residents at the site: a Nassau grouper and a green moray eel.

The Dive
To reach the dive site we boarded their boat, which was not designed for diving. It had seats on both sides (starboard and port), but no place to put stuff away. So once you picked your location on the boat, you couldn't move around, so you had to make sure that all your equipment was setup and ready to go. We donned our wetsuits and assembled our gear back at the dock. I wore 2 lbs of extra weight to make sure I could stay at the bottom. The space was kind of tight at the boat. We were about 20 people total, plus the sharkmaster and a videographer, we were 22.

The sharkmaster was wearing chain-mail gloves. He was the person who was going to handle the bait bucket. In the picture below he is driving the boat towards Cara a Cara. The dive site was located about a mile off the coast. I was impressed at how he was able to find the dive site. Although it was marked by a buoy, I couldn't see it from a distance. I don't think he had GPS on this small boat.

The Shark Master

Group of Three Sharks

The weather was overcast and rainy. Once we arrived to the dive site, the assistant threw in the bait bucket. I did a backwards entry into the water because it was the most convenient way. There was a little bit of current at the surface, but I could swim along the line without holding it. Most of the others did hold it. Once in the water, I could see the sharks circling around already. It was a sensation of excitement, awe and a little bit of fear.

Shark Close-up - Full Body

Once every body in the group was at the bottom, the sharkmaster signaled us that was ok to swim with sharks. Sometimes he doesn't allow this based on current conditions or behavior shown by the sharks. Cindy, my buddy, was eager to photograph the sharks and leapt to the ocassion. She is the one that appears in one of my video clips with a Nikonos V camera. Other people decided to stay behind with the safety of the wall on their backs ...

Shark in Front of Divers

We continued to swim around with sharks for a good 10 minutes at least. The sharks were ready good at swiming around us, although, once I felt a little bump. We were told not extend our limbs and keep them close to our bodies.

After looking at the pictures that I took, I realized that I had the wrong settings. My ISO setting was set at 50, so my pictures were coming out dark and you could barely see the impact of the strobe. Also a wide angle converter would have been useful. Sometimes the shark couldn't fit inside the frame because I was so close to it.

Shark Head Close-up

Shark - Full Body

We continued to swim with the sharks and I was trying to get close-up pictures. This one is one of the closest one I got. The shark was no more than 4 ft away. You could see some effect of the strobe. However, the picture was still too dark because I had pick a low sensitivity, ISO 50. For these kinds of shots (wide angle with fast moving subjects), now I know, I should have used at least ISO 100 or even go with ISO 200 or higher, if I didn't want to show any movement. I was mostly shooting at shutter speed of 1/60 sec. Also, I could have used shutter speed priority (S), as showing motion was the only variable I wanted to play with.

Shark Close-up - Eye in Focus

I also was looking up to try to take shar pictures from below. Unfortunately, sharks swim so fast that there is no time to "frame" a picture, you are lucky to get the shot. It is almost like shooting pictures at a sports event. A faster shutter response could have been useful. This is one of area where SLR cameras shine, and point and shoots lack.

Shark - View from Below

After taking many still pictures, I switch to video mode to capture some of the shark behavior. Notice how fast the sharks swim and turn. In this video, my buddy Cindy is also a protagonist, taking pictures as well.

Some people in our group also ventured out to take pictures. Here's Craig taking a picture of a shark ... I took the picture on the other side.

Craig Taking a Picture of Shark

Frenzy Starts: Opening the Bait Bucket

Almost at the end of the dive, the sharkmaster instructed us to go back to our "huddle formation", back by the wall and stay there. He was to open the bait bucket. Not only sharks wanted to be in the action. There were also lots of Nassau groupers, black groupers, and jacks. Strangely, the sharks did not eat them! We were told that the sharks are really lazy and that they go for sick or already dead animals. So the stereotype that (all) sharks are "killers" is very wrong. Sharks are the scavengers of the ocean.

Three Sharks After the Bait

Shark on the Prowl

The sharkmaster used a metal pointer to release the cover from the bucket. He was keeping his distance from the it and was doing it very carefully. He was ready to swim away at any moment. As he was doing this, the sharks were circling around faster and faster. The sharkmaster had several failed attempts to open the bucket, but he finally did it after 3 tries ...

When the Bait was Gone
When the bait was gone, all of the sudden the sharks were gone in a flash. Later I learned that this particular dive site was a crossroads of deeper water, so sharks come and go thru this point. The site by itsef had local residents as well. There was a big Nassau grouper (3ft long) relaxing at the cleaning spa and a green moray eel coming out of his hole after the party was over.

Nassau Grouper Head

After the show was over, we were told to return to the boat. Since I had nitrox and plenty of air left, I stayed behind and let the rest of the group go back to the boat first. It was going to be a logjam, since we had to do our safety stop and the boat was not the easiest to get into. So I spent about 7 more minutes at the bottom, taking pictures of the grouper being cleaned.

Nassau Grouper being Cleaned

I also had the chance to have the moray eel to "myself" as everybody body else was returning to the boat. The assistant, who was filming the whole event, was around patrolling the area, so I was ok. Almost when I was ready to go to the surface I witnessed a behavior that I had never seen before: a gree moray eel yawning. At that time I didn't know what it was, it didn't seem that he was attacking me, as I wasn't very close or harassing him.

Green Moray from side

Green Moray Opening Mouth

Green Moray Yawning?

I later looked it up on the Internet and found a couple of references to moray eels yawning, but only a few. I have to ask a marine biologist some day ;)

After the dive, we returned to the dock and watched the video of the dive, which was for sale. They have perfected this so much that they were able to come up with the video in record time: no more than 30 min for the editing. They must have done this before ;)

The facilties at this location were poor. There were no proper bathrooms, other than the ones used by the staff, and they were not the cleanest. We tried to rinse our equipment with a shower by the dock. The water was coming out brown. So he had to wait until we were back to CocoView. We took the van back and eventually the water taxi back to CocoView. We got back at about 1:00 in the afternoon, in time for lunch and the afternoon boat dive at 2:00pm.

Last night it was a rough night for me, the camera was not responding as I was expecting. To begin with, the strobe was able to give only a handful of flashes. Then the camera would unexpectedly fire its internal flash.

One problem led to another. First of all, I was using new rechargable batteries and I had not "broken them in". I had charged them overnight, but they have had very little to no use. I later learned that draining them and charging a couple of times make them last longer.

The problem with the strobe caused me to fiddle with the TTL connector. I thought that it was making a bad connection (which in reality was-most probably- a problem with the new rechargeable batteries).

This morning we had to attend a briefing organized by the resort which was mandatory for all divers of this week. They talked about the boats, the shore diving and different procedures and rules. However, I was desperately trying to get my camera to work properly. I was taking pictures, but my strobe was not firing. In a moment of mindlessness, I unscrew the TTL connector on the camera side, and to my dismay I saw water inside the bulkhead. I wasn't sure how it got there. I had already dunked the camera to test its air tightness. It could have been that the o-ring was failing or that water sipping thru the threads while I was unscrewing it. I used a towel to try to dry the connector. Aparently I made things worse, now there was debris inside the connector.

In the end the cable was having all sorts of issues. I discovered this the hard way. Sometimes the camera would fire it's internal flash instead of the strobe. That was the case when the strobe battery was a bit low. For the next two dives, my pictures came up awful.

That morning we did two boat dives: Pirate's Point and Newman's Wall. The schedule for boat dives at CocoView worked in the following way: You get two boat dives, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. This was coupled together with two drop-off dives. So this morning, the boat dive was at Pirate's Point and Newman's Wall was a drop-off dive. The boat would drop you off at 15-25 min swim away to the channel that leads to the resort and you swim back to resort just like a shore dive.

Boat dives start at 8:00am and 2:00pm respectively. There is a horn that is sounded twice when it's time for the boats to leave, one of them is a warning horn.

After a Connector Check
Over lunch I stopped by the resort's dive shop ("Dockside Dive Center"). Tim, the local photography expert did not find anything wrong my camera. We did a couple of test pictures and everything seemed to be in order.

I was still having problem with the strobe firing. The problem got worse the longer and deeper I was going. That would lead to suspect the o-ring. Since I was so preocupied with the camera, I didn't enjoy the dives as much. I did managed to get a handful of pictures.

These were taken at Inside/Outside our first afternoon dive. This is a picture of a cluster of antler coral. This is the first time that I have seen dive sites that were full of one type of coral. This site had a lot of antler coral.

Antler Coral

This was the exception. This is a picture of a very big brain coral very close to the surface. This was no deeper than 20 feet, perhaps taken only with ambient light.

Brain Coral

There were also areas full of lettuce coral. I tried to take a closeup of the bed. It was impressive to see whole beds full of the same coral, not just clusters.

Lettuce Coral

The divemaster on this dive was showing us "something" hanging on the branches of soft coral along the wall. For the longest time I didn't know what he was pointing to. It wasn't until I looked closer that I realized that it was moving. It was a "hairy crab", a critter very hard to distinguish from the branches.

Hairy Crab

Finally we did managed to find bigger creatures like this green moray eel. On this picture, I practiced my Photoshop skils a little bit. I used the "dust" filter to clear a bit of sand on the head of the moray. The filter works really well.

Green Moray

Arriving to Roatan
The flight to Roatan, Honduras was pretty convenient. I took off on Continental from Boston at 6:30am with a layover in Newark, NJ. From there the flight on Continental was direct to Roatan. The flight from Newark to Roatan lasted about 4 hours. We arrived at Roatan Airport at about 1:30 pm. The customs and transportation took a little bit longer than expected. Fortunately there was a rep from CocoView already waiting for us at the baggage claim. Her name was Nora and she made sure that our luggage passed like a breeze. The line thru customs was pretty long because there were several flights arriving at the same time. When we passed customs, Nora took care of our luggage separately. I didn't have to even have to pass customs with my luggage. We were given tags (by mail) ahead of time, so they could distinguish them and deal with inspection, if any. Our luggage had to go thru an x-ray machine on the way out.

They put us all in a van and took us first to CocoView Resort. On the van en-route to CocoView I had the chance to first hear about CocoView legendary return rate. CocoView prides itself to have the highest return rate in the industry, some said more than 40%. case in point, the lady sitting next to me was on her sixth trip to CocoView. People don't come back for the fancy food or plush acommodations, they came back for the amazing diving right at your footsteps. That was nice to hear. On the way there we passed by Fantasy Island which is right next door.

Roatan Aerial Picture: CocoView Resort depicted by the arrow, left to it is Fantasy Island resort with a horse-shoe shape beach

CocoView: First Impressions
The entrance to CocoView was a bit of a surprise to me. It was just a building that looked like a barn. Underneath, there was a boat dock. We were told to get into the boat. It was a water taxi to CocoView. I didn't realized that CocoView was actually an island (or a peninsula that is not accesible from land), surrounded by mangroves on the North and by a great reef on the South: Newman's Wall, CocoView Wall and the Prince Albert wreck right at our footsteps!

It took us quite some time to get settled down. Our luggage didn't arrive until hours later. So we couldn't dive right away. So our first dive of the trip had to be a night dive. The reason it was taking so long to process our luggage was because all the luggage from the flights arriving that day had to be processed at the same time. CocoView runs a Saturday to Saturday lodging schedule, so Saturday is an arrival and departure day.

In the meantime, I used the time to settle my stuff. Fortunately I had found my luggage on the dock before it arrived to my room. That way I could take my scuba gear and set it up in my locker, which is right next to the boat/dive dock.

Our group was assigned one of the beach houses (Beach House #10) next to the resort. They are quite a walk away from the center of the resort. Fortunately, there were bicycles (about 25 of them) that you were free to take when you come and go from the beach house to the main building.

Our house was not air conditioned, but it was well ventilated with high ceilings and ceiling fans. Our luggage finally arrived at past 4:30pm in the afternoon and we had kind of wasted the afternoon for a checkout dive. We were going to settle with a night dive as our checkout dive. Not ideal to check that your equipment is in order.

Our group was traveling under the auspices of Fantastic Endeavors a company specializing in adventure travel. Dave Hartman was the owner of the company and had put together our group of eight people. Most of them were former students of Dave, as he is a dive instructor in the Florida Keys.

Octopus on the First Night: Prince Albert Wreck Night Dive

Finally at about 8:45pm we were ready to dive. The shore at CocoView is on the south side of the resort and the dive dock/lockers is on the north side. So we suited up by the lockers and walked our way to the shore. The entrance is a sandy beach with a lot of seagrass. The path towards the dive sites is "marked" by the patch of sand with no seagrass in the direction to the sea. Beside that path is a platform where divers usually gather up to put on fins, prepare masks and ready photo equipment if any. I took this chance to test my brand new Sea&Sea YS-110 strobe. This was the first time I was taking this camera setup to the water and first time with this camera in a night dive.

First Night Dive at CocoView: Dave, Cindy and Dina getting ready at the "platform"

The swim from the platform to the wreck of the Prince Albert took us about 10 minutes. The water was at 81F and mostly clear with visibility of about 50 ft. I was taken by surprise when reached the wreck, since you could not notice it from far away. Actually this was also my first night wreck dive.

I was having difficulty with my new camera setup. The pictures I was taking came out all dark. My previous camera, a Sony Cybershot DSC-P9, had not manual settings at all. So it was pretty easy to take night pictures, since the strobe power was the only adjustable setting. With the Olympus SP-350, I could set the shutter speed, aperture and (separately) the strobe power.

I later discover that I had made two mistakes: One was I had programmed in "My Mode" settings to be used during the day (small aperture) and I was using new rechargable batteries in my strobe. The strobe power was fading inexplicably fast. Rechargeable batteries need to be "broken-in", by draining them and fully charging them overnight several times.

We were pretty lucky that night, we saw two octopus on our first dive :)! First it was a small octopus about 8 inches. It was brown and it kind of looked like a cuttle fish. Not like the regular Caribbean octopus.

The second one was a relatively big Caribbean octopus that was the highlight of the rest of the dive. We were following it around the whole wreck, it was "tasting" the rails of the wreck and different sponges and coral heads growing on top of the wreck.

We followed it for more than 10 minutes until it dissapeared inside the wreck. Watch it being "sucked in" on a crevice of the Prince Albert Wreck:

In general, you could tell that the Prince Albert has been there for tens of years. The coral formations attached to it, specially at the bow (front of the ship). This was a pretty exciting dive for a first dive and a taste of what was coming. I was worried thought that my camera was not responding as I expected. Something that is expected though with new equipment.