[SuPrBuGmAn]

Russian Freighter

85' of water, 15-20' vis with lots of backscatter. Water temps in the low 60sF and air temps in the high 40s or 50sF by this time. Boat torpedo'd in WWII by German UBoat ~9 miles offshore Pensacola, FL.



Spades schooling around the frieghters boilers.



Toadfish hiding away.



Found this dude hooked up in the wreckage when I descended the anchorline. I cut him free after snapping the pic.

Oops Barge

75' of water, w/20-25' of visibility. Same water temps, air temps in the upper 50s-lower 60sF. Barge accidentally sunk prematurely while being towed to another destination to be sunk purposely for an artificial reef.



Trigger fish hiding amongst the rubble.



Queen Angel fish swimming around the remains of the structure.



One of my dive buddies exploring the remains of the wreckage.


Excuse the white balance and the wide open WA shots. I didn't shoot RAW and there isn't much light at ~80' for colors to show through(especially that day with a layer of crud in the first 20' of water). I should have brought a white slate w/me... Not enough light for the WA shots so they look pretty crummy as well. All shot with Olympus 5060WZ in an Olympus PT-020 UW Housing, used internal flash only(which obviously didn't help much).

Fun dives though

[Grubby]

I can't even fathom what that's like.

It must be very difficult with all that crap floating around in the water, but you ended up with nice color on a few and the rest of the material is just naturally interesting and enjoyable to view. Nice!

[C_lawgik]

man i cant see any of them

[Slacker04]

Pretty decent pics for that type of condition, diving in quaries up in PA is very similar, very cold, low visibility. 39 degrees cold... either way cool shots.

[SuPrBuGmAn]

Originally Posted by Grubby

I can't even fathom what that's like.

It must be very difficult with all that crap floating around in the water, but you ended up with nice color on a few and the rest of the material is just naturally interesting and enjoyable to view. Nice!

Its possible to get alot of the colors back into the pictures by manually setting your WB with a white slate at each depth you shoot or using a good external strobe or two($$). The problem is, you have to set it(WB) whenever you descend or ascend to a new depth since different colors are filtered out at different depths - thats a real PITA when you are diving somewhat deep and need to monitor a depleting air supply and bottom time in order to not get caught in a decompression commitment.

Not so bad if you know the site well already, but being my first dives on these two sites, I wanted to cover a bit of ground and that meant less time for composing and setting WB's and alot more swimming. The Oops barge is small, I will bring a slate next time I dive it. I only covered about half the Russian Freighter, so my next dive on it will only yeild more snapshots of the same caliber posted.

Most of the color in the pics currently were brought back via Photoshop.

Originally Posted by Slacker04

Pretty decent pics for that type of condition, diving in quaries up in PA is very similar, very cold, low visibility. 39 degrees cold... either way cool shots.

We consider these conditions average to good around the Northern Gulf Great for the dives, not-so-great for the photography, we do have the rare 60-70'+ days though... typically much better 20+ miles out too.