Sea Life Lost at Sea

[Hatul]

THE GOOD NEWS:
I took some great shots with my camera this morning on Blue Reef off the coast of Aruba.

THE BAD NEWS:
We will never see the pictures. The strap either broke or worked it's way loose and the camera floated away. By the time I realized it, I could see it was about 60' above me heading west with the current towards the top of South America, more towards Panama. I was too deep to chase after it or I would have risked getting bent so to speak. I was at 17' for 20+ minutes at that point.

Now that my boat will be sold within the next 2 weeks. I will take a portion of that money and buy a new camera. Looks like I just lost about $1,000 worth of underwater camera equipment. Someone in Panama will have a nice setup in about a month or two. Damn!!!!!

I almost lost a camera once as the lanyard slipped off. So now I use one of those coiled leashes that clips to a D ring, and it seems to have solved the problem.

 

[Larry C]

My wife found a hat floating in Monterey Bay. There was a faded name and phone number written in ball point on the inside liner. We managed to figure out part of the name and Googled it. We found an e-mail work address in San Jose. He e-mailed back and said the hat had sentimental value and that there was a $10 bill inside the lining. She mailed him the hat and told him how awesome it was, and he sent her $35 to buy one of her own and told her where to find it.

OTOH, one of our boat mates in Bali found a very nice Canon and housing floating above the Liberty wreck; a nicer model than he was using. Being a teenager, he looked through all the pictures which included an extensive vacation itenerary in Thailand, a picture of the college club the owner belonged to, and a picture of every hotel and every meal on his trip with his friends. We suggested that the young man either check with some of the local dive shops, or try to locate the owner through his college club. He thought about it, then erased the card and used the camera as his own.

 

[DazedAndConfuzed]

I almost lost a camera once as the lanyard slipped off. So now I use one of those coiled leashes that clips to a D ring, and it seems to have solved the problem.

I use to carry my camera with the strap too, but with the addition of the strobe, they are on opposite sides, so I mostly carry it by the strobe handle. One of those times, there was task overload after jumping into the water and having to do a whole bunch of adjustments and once complete, didn't know where my camera was. I scanned the bottom, which was only 35 ft or so, but couldnt see the camera. Some divers who went in a minute or so later and went straight down found my camera setup (they thought they found an unknown person's camera setup). I must have drifted 50 ft or so in that short period of making adjustments since the camera was nowhere near below me, and the red colors on the camera/strobe did not look red, but black from the surface, so I was looking at the wrong place and for something of the wrong color. I had no chance of finding it and if it werent for those divers, it would have been lost. Now I have it in a coiled lanyard too.