AROUND FLORIDA - LOCAL DIVING

We all want to go gallivanting around the world, but sometimes the good stuff is right in our own backyard.  While shore diving off Rivera Beach, I’ve been fortunate to come across several seahorses, an octopus that guards a sunken vacuum cleaner, spawning sea hares, batfish, sea robins, and many more crazy varmints straight out of a sci-fi flick.  While aboard the most excellent M/V Pleasure Diver, a dive boat out of Key Largo specializing in “do what you want, custom charters” (my kind of charters), I photographed the wreck of the Speigel Grove.  It would take a dozen dives to cover the entire thing, so I concentrated on the forward 1/3. 

Gear for the locations:

At Riviera Beach, I used the Aquatica/D2x and the NEW Ikelite DS-160 strobes.  The wide shots were with the Tokina 10-17 lens, and the macro work was done with the Nikon 105, and I have shot 1080i HD Video with the Ikelite housing for the Sony HDR-HC7.

At the Speigel Grove, I shot with the Tokina 10-17 on the Aquatica D2x, with Ikelite DS-125 strobes.