shugar
Contributor
Of the guys in the PPD, only Jon and I have actually had a chance to dive in La Luz... sure a number of us have been there but nobody else had actually strapped on a tank and seen what there is to see.
So Jon and I got this daytrip together in the hopes of exploring a bit and, more importantly, practice using the underwater camera... he was fresh from Mike Veitch's workshop, and I fresh from taking horrendous photos at La Luz just 2 weeks before.
It was a fun drive South as Jon got me updated on all the happenings I missed during the workshop as well as sticking in some nuggets of wisdom he picked up from Mikey. We arrived at La Luz and the staff was ready for us... we started to set up our gear at a very relaxed pace and without further ado lugged our stuff down the beach and had a great 2 dives.
NOTE: PHOTOS ARE CLICKABLE
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DIVE 1: The Hike
Time In: 9:18am
Dive Time: 74 minutes
Max Depth: 45ft
Avg. Depth: 26ft
Pressure: 3000psi to 500psi
Viz: 30ft
Weather was great as we started the slow descent... viz wasn't spectacular but it was promising... Jon and I started to look for things to photograph and I tried to keep my wits about me juggling the camera and the settings. Strangely though there was not as much macro to photograph as the last time I was here but I did have an alternate subject.
Somewhere along the road Jon was telling me how tricky it was to get sunbursts - a ball of sunlight through the surface - he gave me the theoretical settings and our discussion veered away from there.
I was determined to give this sunburst thing a try...
So I did...
And tried again...
and again... 
And NAILED IT!
COOL!!! Thanks to Jon and what he learned I actually have a nice shot!
At some point in the dive I saw Jon swimming quickly back and directing me to move at a tangent away from our intended path... he then scribbles on my slate: trigger... 2 ft!
What he meant was a Titan Trigger... a mean mofo of a fish where the male guards its nest furiously. The Titan's range is a cone or cylinder rising up from its nest with a diameter of about 20+ feet... maybe more, I'm no moron to try to find out how close you can get. Many divers have had fins, ears or arms bitten by Titans and I was not going to mess with a 2ft monster fish.
After going around the block a few times and flipping over to get sunbursts Jon ran out of batteries... so we began to work our way back. While trying to get a decent shot of an octopus I found in a hole I noticed Jon was already at his safety stop and diddling his balloon - we had agreed to do a balloon deployment drill if we were up to it - and figured after a bit that "yeah, I'm tired... let's leave the octo alone and try this balloon thing"
So a couple of minutes apart we deployed our balloons (I did it! I did it!) and did the 5 minute or so surface swim on our backs back to the shore.
Great dive overall... but then again... what dive isn't great?
-----------------------------------------------
DIVE 2: The Hike
Time In: 12:54pm
Dive Time: 52 minutes
Max Depth: 29ft
Avg. Depth: 18ft
Pressure: 3000psi to 1000psi
Viz: 20+ft
After a pretty good lunch and me able to work on tightening the new delrin thumbwheels on my BP/W righ, we set off in fairly lowering tide to do our 2nd dive of the day.
By this time I learned that Kim was not going to make it as she didn't have a ride - kala ko pa man din rich kid and all... hehehehehe - so Jon and I had the resort to ourselves pa rin, although the staff was saying "marami pa pong parating mamaya".
We opened our 2nd dive with a pretty cool sight. At 7ft there was a bunch of grazing fish - highlighted by about 4 fairly large parrot fish crunching on the coral. There was a number of attendant smaller fish around and it was fun seeing the parrots crap out crushed coral and sand like firefighting planes.
We dropped over a ledge to almost 20ft and saw this huge-azz moray... it had its big head menacingly coming out of its hole - easily 5ft this one - and the current was drifting me towards its hole - waaaaaaaaaaaaa!
I turned around and that's when I noticed that there was a current... I also spotted a big puffer - about 1.5 feet long - it was swimming lazily so I chased it to take some photos... I was swimming against the current though so I was barely making a headway against the fish. It had really nice patterns... too bad I couldn't get better photos.
We took some more sea life shots and finally noticed that the current had really picked up somewhat and we were fighting it... at some point I wrote on my slate that I was tired... Jon agreed... we decided to work our way back to shore as the current was mucking up viz anyway and there was no point getting carried half-way to china for a few more minutes. I noticed we had been under for 47 minutes at this point so it was not a wasted dive at all.
We surfaced in some swells in front of La Luz's big rock. We did another surface swim on our backs back to shore. We noticed that shortly after the waves started to pick up - it would have been a bigger beeyatch in the surge if we had stayed another 10 minutes or so. Just as well... I took even better sun burst shots and logged dives 41 and 42 on this day.
On to the next adventure!!!
So Jon and I got this daytrip together in the hopes of exploring a bit and, more importantly, practice using the underwater camera... he was fresh from Mike Veitch's workshop, and I fresh from taking horrendous photos at La Luz just 2 weeks before.
It was a fun drive South as Jon got me updated on all the happenings I missed during the workshop as well as sticking in some nuggets of wisdom he picked up from Mikey. We arrived at La Luz and the staff was ready for us... we started to set up our gear at a very relaxed pace and without further ado lugged our stuff down the beach and had a great 2 dives.
NOTE: PHOTOS ARE CLICKABLE
---------------------------------------
DIVE 1: The Hike
Time In: 9:18am
Dive Time: 74 minutes
Max Depth: 45ft
Avg. Depth: 26ft
Pressure: 3000psi to 500psi
Viz: 30ft
Weather was great as we started the slow descent... viz wasn't spectacular but it was promising... Jon and I started to look for things to photograph and I tried to keep my wits about me juggling the camera and the settings. Strangely though there was not as much macro to photograph as the last time I was here but I did have an alternate subject.
Somewhere along the road Jon was telling me how tricky it was to get sunbursts - a ball of sunlight through the surface - he gave me the theoretical settings and our discussion veered away from there.
I was determined to give this sunburst thing a try...
So I did...
And tried again...
and again... 
And NAILED IT!
COOL!!! Thanks to Jon and what he learned I actually have a nice shot!
At some point in the dive I saw Jon swimming quickly back and directing me to move at a tangent away from our intended path... he then scribbles on my slate: trigger... 2 ft!
What he meant was a Titan Trigger... a mean mofo of a fish where the male guards its nest furiously. The Titan's range is a cone or cylinder rising up from its nest with a diameter of about 20+ feet... maybe more, I'm no moron to try to find out how close you can get. Many divers have had fins, ears or arms bitten by Titans and I was not going to mess with a 2ft monster fish.
After going around the block a few times and flipping over to get sunbursts Jon ran out of batteries... so we began to work our way back. While trying to get a decent shot of an octopus I found in a hole I noticed Jon was already at his safety stop and diddling his balloon - we had agreed to do a balloon deployment drill if we were up to it - and figured after a bit that "yeah, I'm tired... let's leave the octo alone and try this balloon thing"
So a couple of minutes apart we deployed our balloons (I did it! I did it!) and did the 5 minute or so surface swim on our backs back to the shore.
Great dive overall... but then again... what dive isn't great?
-----------------------------------------------
DIVE 2: The Hike
Time In: 12:54pm
Dive Time: 52 minutes
Max Depth: 29ft
Avg. Depth: 18ft
Pressure: 3000psi to 1000psi
Viz: 20+ft
After a pretty good lunch and me able to work on tightening the new delrin thumbwheels on my BP/W righ, we set off in fairly lowering tide to do our 2nd dive of the day.
By this time I learned that Kim was not going to make it as she didn't have a ride - kala ko pa man din rich kid and all... hehehehehe - so Jon and I had the resort to ourselves pa rin, although the staff was saying "marami pa pong parating mamaya".
We opened our 2nd dive with a pretty cool sight. At 7ft there was a bunch of grazing fish - highlighted by about 4 fairly large parrot fish crunching on the coral. There was a number of attendant smaller fish around and it was fun seeing the parrots crap out crushed coral and sand like firefighting planes.
We dropped over a ledge to almost 20ft and saw this huge-azz moray... it had its big head menacingly coming out of its hole - easily 5ft this one - and the current was drifting me towards its hole - waaaaaaaaaaaaa!
I turned around and that's when I noticed that there was a current... I also spotted a big puffer - about 1.5 feet long - it was swimming lazily so I chased it to take some photos... I was swimming against the current though so I was barely making a headway against the fish. It had really nice patterns... too bad I couldn't get better photos.We took some more sea life shots and finally noticed that the current had really picked up somewhat and we were fighting it... at some point I wrote on my slate that I was tired... Jon agreed... we decided to work our way back to shore as the current was mucking up viz anyway and there was no point getting carried half-way to china for a few more minutes. I noticed we had been under for 47 minutes at this point so it was not a wasted dive at all.
We surfaced in some swells in front of La Luz's big rock. We did another surface swim on our backs back to shore. We noticed that shortly after the waves started to pick up - it would have been a bigger beeyatch in the surge if we had stayed another 10 minutes or so. Just as well... I took even better sun burst shots and logged dives 41 and 42 on this day.
On to the next adventure!!!
