Category: intern-blog

Amazing! That is one word of many that could describe this trip. Pat and I got up early to pack our gear into our suitcases because today we fly back home. I’ve had such a wonderful time staying in San Diego, I can’t believe that the week is already over. From the beautiful slide shows in his living room, to conversations at breakfast or in the car, Steve has shared wealth of knowledge with me. He has given me invaluable advice and has shared great pointers on how to improve on something everyday. Needless to say I was continually amazed by what he had in store for us each day, not to mention the star-studded list of people he introduced us to! Steve and Hiroko have been incredible hosts. I’ve had so much fun staying here, I’m going to miss them. They are headed off to Africa soon, followed by a trip to the Pacific. Thanks Steve and Hiro for an awesome week in San Diego! : )

Today was a very action packed day! We started the day off with a nice long breakfast and then hurried off to the DUI Factory, where we were cheerfully greeted by representative Faith Ortins. Diving Unlimited International (DUI) is a distinguished dry suit manufacturing, company famous for its top-of-the-line custom dry suit products and is considered the leader in the trade; DUI caters to everyone from the general public to the U.S. government. Faith took us on a tour of the factory, and described how a dry suit is made from start to finish. DUI prides themselves in the construction of their products; every dry suit and accessory is made by hand.

A suit starts out in the back with the cutters. There are two cutters who each cut their designated patterns. The man who cuts the patterns for the style suit that Pat wears has been cutting for around ten years, which ensures manufacturing consistency. DUI uses materials such as their own version of crushed neoprene, trilaminate, and cordura; the neoprene is cut uncrushed, so at the cutting table it looked thick and spongy. The next room we went to was a large warehouse-style room filled with tables and busy workers, this is where the suits are sewn together and the seams are sealed with rubber. A dry suit is a dry suit because of its seams. Water does not pass through neoprene on its own; wet suits are thus “wet” because water leaks through the suit’s seams. With snug latex wrist and neck seals and properly sealed seams, a dry suit has the ability to keep a person not only dry when diving, but also quite warm because of the ability to put layers of insulating material between the person and the suit. Therefore, dry suits are usually used in cold water environments, but also in situations where divers remain stationary for long periods of time, such as with Dr. Hanlon’s squid divers in Australia.

Our next stop was outside where the products are pressure tested in long horizontal pressure chambers, and then we went into an adjacent building where employees were also sealing up seems and putting together the suits. The zipper is another important component of the suit. This, too, must be impermeable to water, and is one of the most important pieces of the suit to maintain because a dry suit filled with water is bad news. Every suit is carefully inspected for leaks, they want to catch even the tiniest ones which could have formed from a popped bubble within the rubber sealant. The suit is zippered and plugged up at each of the opening then inflated with air. The testers submerge the ballooned suits in a trough of water and look carefully for rising bubbles. They also go over the seams with a soapy spray bottle if further inspection is needed. I can not believe how trained their eyes are; they pointed out a leak but I could not see the bubbles in the soapy water even though they said they were there, and that the suit had to be sent back.

At the end of the tour, Faith showed us DUI’s dry bag that soldiers in the military use to transport their machine guns underwater. Needless to say, seeing firsthand the dedication and the precision with which each dry suit is constructed is quite impressive. After DUI we stopped by John Jackson’s house.

John Jackson is an incredible shell collector, author and founder of Odyssey Publishing Company. His house is like a museusm, its amazing. Displayed on shelf after shelf are different kinds of shells that he has acuired. Being particularly fascinated by cowries, a large portion of the lower level is dedicated to drawers full of these shells (and pictures he has taken of the live animal). He has collected them from all over the world and is particularly fascinated by the rare ones, of which he has collected many. He has been working for the past seven years on a beautiful new book, Australia’s Spectacular Cowries, which was just published this year. I was floored when he gave me a copy! Not only by that, he gave me a four other shell and wild life identification books, and even a beautifully shined up cowry!! I was completely taken aback and can’t wait to dive into them. We spent the next few hours with John Jackson eating at a fun restaurant that overlooks a pond, then headed home to catch up on some rest. We got back to the house and Steve showed me a new pair of Scubapro split fins that Sergio had left for me…oh my god! Wow. What a day.

Today Hiro, Pat, and I spent the day at Sea World. It was neat, we saw the Shamu show, the seal show, and the dolphin show, along with various other exhibits. The shark exhibit was cool because we were moved through a tunnel under the shark exhibit on a people-mover and felt like we were underwater and surrounded by them. I also really liked the manatee rescue exhibit-I had NO idea how big they are! After Sea World we visited the Scripps Aquarium, which had beautiful exhibits of local and foreign waters. We ended the day with shopping for a while in La Jolla, visiting Wyland’s studio gallery, and then seeing dozens of seals resting on the beach downtown. The seals were sunning themselves in an area they call the “war zone” because it has been debated whether or not the city should let the seals stay in the area.

The best part of today, by far, was eating dinner with Marty Snyderman. If you have seen underwater photographs before, there is a good chance you have seen one of Marty’s! Marty Snyderman is a renowned underwater photographer, cinematographer, writer, and producer with his works published by National Geographic, Skin Diver, Time, Newsweek, and the New England Aquarium . Hiro taught Pat and I how to make spring rolls for dinner. We used rice paper, bean noodles, basil, mint, lettuce, cucumbers and parsley. Each one was rolled up with either shrimp or chicken in the center, and then cut in half. Hiro put out two dunking sauces, her recipe was delicious.

Dinner with Marty was awesome. I was sitting between Steve and Marty and just listening to boatloads of advice for college, for majoring in science, for scuba diving, and jobs from two of the greatest men in the business. It was great. Marty asked me a lot of questions about my interests, besides scuba diving and marine science and that made a strong impression on me, and said a lot about his character. After each question he would give his point of view on how to approach, say, pursuing marine biology in college. He told a great story of how he was mentored by Stan Waterman and was goggling when at dinner with him. He said he probably wouldn’t have gotten his name right if he had been asked—boy do I know what that feels like!!

He also told us about some of his adventures in his career. Marty was the first man to dive with a great white shark without a cage. When asked if he would do it again he said, “I’d be right behind you!” He teaches an online photography course, and offered to let me take his classes!! I was trying to keep my eyes in my head I was so excited, and then just after that he offered to give his two latest books Marine Life of the Caribbean, and California Marine Life to me. I couldn’t stop saying thank you but honestly I was so dumbstruck and speechless that I couldn’t think of any other words. I had a blast tonight, I couldn’t have asked for a more informational and laughter-filled night. Marty is a very cool guy and totally down to earth; he’s wicked funny and definitely not afraid to crack a joke!

Today Steve gave us very a great tour of the San Diego area, including a nice park area that overlooked yesterday’s Point Loma dive site. Basically, I would never study if I went to school here-there are way too many beautiful places to visit (above and below the water)!

Today’s breakfast conversation was phenomenal. If anything, I’ve learned the most stories or little useful tidbits of information here from just sitting around the table at mealtime. Some of today’s topics were the popular new book Shadow Divers, wreck diving and finding the remains of human bones inside a sneaker, and dolphin-free tuna catching utilizing the cinching method that Steve is involved in. Steve said that there is a possibility that we might be able to dive the Yukon during our stay, a 366 foot destroyer in about a hundred feet of water that was sunk purposely for diver penetration in 2000. Even if we don’t make it to the Yukon, I am looking forward to going to Sea World tomorrow!

Dave left for Hawaii today, but Pat and I get to stay until Thursday. Near the end of the day, Hiro went to a Thai cooking class, and Steve, Sergio, Pat, and I toured around the “City District” of San Diego. Most of the buildings were quite modern as they had been built within the last 35 years. Not only was the architecture really neat, but the city’s streets were so clean and un-crowded compared to Boston! Ironically, we ended up eating in a Thai restaurant and went back to the house to hear about Hiro’s Thai cooking class!

We just got back from eating dinner with Howard and Michele Hall!!!! They are incredibly knowledgeable people and so nice to talk to. I was so shy in front of them at first it was embarrassing. It is pretty funny when they start talking about the importance of interpersonal communication to you, when you are at a total loss of words in front of them. We heard all sorts of crazy stories from their filming excursions throughout the world; the night was full of laughter and great advice. It was interesting to find out that all the work they do, according to Howard, is done scuba diving with the cameras, not in submersibles. They use regular, high-definition, IMAX, and IMAX 3-D cameras. IMAX cameras are huge and can weigh up to 500 lbs while 3-D cameras are 1500 lbs and need two men to operate them!

We were invited to watch a few movie clips at their house that they put together using high-def and G4 cameras with an interchangeable faceplate. Versatility, they said, is key. Many people today are using this cheaper, but most compatible technology. It is easy to invest $70,000 in a system that can become obsolete in a year, so it is crucial to make sure your equipment is versatile. They also had stacks and stacks of hard drives for storage of their media; we saw two beautiful clips of their film. Before this exciting night, however, we actually spent the day diving off of Steve’s beautiful new dive yacht Destiny.

Today’s dives were really cool, we went diving in the Pacific kelp beds. We went to Point Loma with Hiro, Sergio (president of UWATEC), Mark Conlin, Dave and Pat, and Captains Julie and Doug. The visibility is about the same as it is on the East coast, except the wildlife is a lot bigger and the water is a little bit warmer in Southern California. Our first dive was to about 80-90 feet on Nitrox. It was my first nitrox dive ever so I was checking my computer every two seconds! I kept showing my computer to Mark because it was telling me I had low airtime minutes left but according to him it was conservative and he told me not to worry, they were laughing at me when we got to the surface.

The kelp environment was darker than I had expected because the kelp blocked most of the light from the surface. We saw dark spiny urchins, many schools of fish in the shallows, and little coral and anemone carpets. I held a large, strong white crab, and we saw lots of my favorite type of gastropod–nudibranchs!! They were big yellowish white critters with yellow dots and were about two and a half inches long. I even spotted my own nudibranch hidden in the coral; it was reddish with a frilly back, just like in the pictures! The dive was good but being my first time in kelp beds, on nitrox and having been at 90 feet I was not as relaxed as I could have been and got tired at the end of the dive and couldn’t wait to jump onto the boat. Before getting out, Mark took a few pictures for internship publicity.

The second dive was a photo shoot with Mark. The last dive I felt over weighted so we dropped seven pounds off of the weight belt. I swam around about 15 feet below the surface in the kelp beds for some artistic shots. There was an immense amount of life in this zone. I saw many top-feeding surface fish, a few tiny bright orange ones, and then a couple of schools of a variety of bait fish, including smelt. About four or five pictures in, my weight belt dropped. Mark was very instructional on the surface, while all I could think about was how lucky I was that I was not 80 feet down when it dropped…that would not have ended so well. I was also lucky that Dave dove down to search for the weights and came up with them. The photo shoot ended about a roll later when the current started to pick up, and once we were all on the boat we watched a few seals dart under the hull.

On our way back we passed Naval docks and had a nice view of a Navy aircraft carrier and a submarine that were hidden behind floating pontoons, from the top deck of Steve’s boat.

We are driving back on the California freeway from the site where Steve Drogin’s submarine is being constructed. California has a mountainous topography speckled with lots of bushes and trees. Being from Massachusetts I thought it was funny to see that there are stop lights and multiple lanes on the entrance ramps for “politely merging” onto the freeway-that’s a phrase you don’t hear too often in Boston! They help lessen the traffic at rush hour.

The drive was about two hours up to the shop, most of it spent telling Mark Conlin about the internship, and them him talking to me about his work and how he got started in the industry. Mark Conlin is a professional underwater photographer whose work has appeared in National Geographic, Smithsonian, and Discover, has worked on many IMAX films, including ones for Howard Hall Productions. His story inspired me because he started out as a collector and surveyor for his school, after graduating from UCSB with a degree in marine biology. During his photographic surveying trips he would save about six exposures for himself to experiment with exposure, framing, etc. to learn more about the camera. He said that even though I will not be working my dream job when I first graduate from college, I have the potential to succeed by starting at one of these jobs and taking advantage of all opportunities that come my way. As a deckhand, he met Steve Drogin as well as Howard and Michele Hall and ended up working for them later on! Mark is an interesting guy, he knows a whole lot about the ocean and marine life but also has played a part in the construction of Steve’s submarine.

So…the SUBMARINE FACTORY was a sight to see!! You would never guess upon driving into the driveway of a small business park that hidden behind a few doors was Steve’s sub. It’s nine feet wide by maybe eighteen feet long; it’s the largest privately owned submarine and boy is it large!! It is not ready to go in the water yet but they predict it is two weeks away from submergence testing. We saw the motherboard “brains” of the sub, the three-inch plexi-glass dome that encloses the sub’s pilot and two passengers and it’s controls, the special aluminum edged seal and the enormous O-ring that seals the dome shut, and other external parts of the sub such as the propellers, pontoons, and the place where a camera will be mounted on the front.

Schmulich, the captain of Steve’s submarine, gave us an excellent tour of the sub and described how many of the parts function. He says he is still in the process of learning the controls of the sub, inside and out, and is very excited to be onboard this project. Seeing the submarine first-hand is awesome, Steve is building some really cool stuff! Next week there will be a photo shoot for the sub that sounds really neat. I can’t wait to see what Steve discovers on his adventures in it.

We hurried back to Steve’s house to run a few errands and then stopped at Gates Underwater Housings. Gates is a manufacturer renowned for their top-of-the-line underwater video housings, used by professionals all over the world. Gates is now owned by John Ellerbrock and he gave us a tour of the factory, boy was it amazing. What makes Gates unique is in the construction of their housings. Gates housings are cut out of a solid block of bulletproof machined aluminum; the precision of the high pressure water-cutter and the lack of seams greatly decrease the probability of leakages, making Gates so successful. Gates is currently making a customized video housing for Howard Hall. Mr. Ellerbrock is starting to experiment with prototype camera housings but right now he deals mainly with underwater video. Being behind the scenes in a premier manufacturing company was amazing, seeing the aluminum chips fly by us in the stripping machine I couldn’t help but wonder where that future camera might be in the future.

This morning I met Dave and Pat at the airport because we’re going to SAN DIEGO!! I can’t wait to see the beautiful, warm, area…and especially can’t wait to get into the ocean! Dave, Pat, and I are going to be staying with Steve Drogin in his house in La Jolla. Steve is an incredible photographer who has traveled all over the world on photographic adventures-and I mean all over! Steve has been to over one hundred countries, including Antarctica. I met Steve at the clinic this year (he was a speaker) and his animated personality got me psyched for the trip, especially when he showed me a picture of the submarine that he is in the process of building! After about six hours of being in the air, we landed in California. Steve welcomed us to San Diego by hosting a dinner cruise onboard his new dive yacht, Destiny. Destiny is beautifully decorated with Steve’s photographs, walking through the boat is like walking through a gallery-its awesome!! Steve and his wife Hiro have just returned from a trip to Mexico on the yacht and told us some cool stories. The dinner cruise was the perfect way to end a long day of traveling. We had delicious food cooked by Julie, Destiny’s captain, and watched the sun set over San Diego.

For the last day of the Advanced class, Dave and Pat came along to dive with us on the Wreck of the Chester Poling, and then for the shallower navigation skills dive at Bass Rocks. The Poling is a tanker that sunk in 1977 and the bottom of its stern sits in 102 feet of water off the coast of Gloucester. There are many different openings on the vessel, from portholes to doors to windows, and thought these openings we were able to see other divers exploring the inside of the wreck. Many frilled anemones covered the surfaces of the Poling, and we also saw a sea raven sitting on the deck as we rounded the vessel for our ascent. Bass Rocks was yet another type of environment that I hadn’t seen before. Bass Rocks has larger rocks that are covered in weed, but I noticed that it also has an abundance of skates. It’s pretty neat that so many of these sites are less than a mile from each other and yet each one looks drastically different. This was a nice dive to end the advanced class on. I can’t wait to go diving off these New England shores again-they’re beautiful!

For the second day of my Advanced class, Ethan and I rode out to Halfway Rock to work on some deep diving skills, and then some more night diving skills at Magnolia Rocks. The dive at Halfway Rock was amazing-so awesome that the view is almost indescribable. Halfway rock may look like a smallish rocky island from the surface, but underwater it is completely different. Gigantic slabs of grayish rock seem to be stacked on top of each other like a triangular house of playing cards. It extends from the surface all the way down to the bottom at ninety feet. You feel completely dwarfed as you swim around. The rocks are covered in black sea urchins, and we saw a few lobsters and little fish. It was really cool to be swimming in an environment so large, the visibility was excellent and the whole place was surrounded by very light minty green colored water. It’s beautiful.

The dive was awesome, until we hit the safety stop at thirty feet and I couldn’t stay down! Even though we dumped all the air out of my drysuit and BC, Ethan still had to hold onto me so that I didn’t shoot up to the surface. Another lesson learned- forgotten ankle weights makes a HUGE difference, especially with the buoyancy change in Aluminum 80s! I sure didn’t forget to put them on when we made the next dive at Magnolia Rocks!

The environment at Magnolia Rocks is beautiful too, but very different from Halfway Rock. This dive was a lot shallower (30-40 feet), the rocks were smaller and covered in long, flowing seaweed. There were lots of hiding spots for lobsters, which I was looking for, and then came face to face with a large pout- I was wicked surprised to see THAT!! It’s a dark gray fish with a large head and huge lips, whose body curls up into an eel-like tail. Neat creature. I would say that today’s class was definitely an exciting one!

Fred Dion is one heck of an entrepreneur; he keeps a tight store, staffed by only a few people but certainly very successful. At his shop, Underwater Photo-Tech, not only did he explain to me how cameras and strobes work underwater and how they differ from land, he gave me invaluable pointers on how to survive in the business/marketing/retail world, and told me how he got started in photography.

Fred and Dave are the owners and founders of Underwater Photo-Tech, an underwater photography and repair store in Derry, New Hampshire. www.uwphototech.com. I started off the day with a tour of the store and pointers on what has made his store successful, such as small, knowledgeable staff that willing to do anything for a customer (like manufacture custom parts on site). I spent the next few hours with MJ, watching her do Nikonos camera repair. Their collection of flooded Nikonos’ is huge! MJ explained many of the steps she takes to disassemble and solder the camera back together. It was very cool to see what the guts of the camera look like-especially when saturated with salt…ouch! After her repair, MJ puts the camera through a series of tests- light meter testing, and pressure chamber testing, for example- before she hands them over to Kelly to be checked out.

In addition to camera repair, I also got to check out some of Fred’s pictures and slide shows from his trips to Indonesia-I have never seen pictures of such gorgeous and exotic life!! He also taught me how to edit the pictures using different software on the computer. I learned invaluable information with Fred and the gang at Underwater Photo-Tech, it was an awesome day!