CoCo View 2002 February Page 1

On the way out it was fish soup

Tony Eggleston and I made out 2002 annual winter trip to Roatan Honduras at the end of February. Not trusting airlines we always leave the Raleigh area on Friday, spend the night in the gateway city, and get on the international flights on Saturday. This year the connections were even worse than usual as we were on three planes between New Orleans and Roatan. We knew our luggage would not get there...but it did.....almost as tired as we were.

My first day of diving is usually dedicated to ocean testing some of the gear that I have built or modified. I just do some shore diving in case a camera leaks or something goes wrong. That way I do not have to mess up anyone else on their dive. I also get my bouyancy right and get set for the week. This is much easier from the beach than from a boat pitching in the water.

This trip I had two pieces of equipment to check out. The first was the modifications to my cybershot digital camera and housing. A few months ago I purchased a wide angle lens attachment for the Sony Cybershot model 70 camera. On Wednesday morning before our trip, I screwed on the lens and put an extention on the housing to accomidate the new lens. I put a dome port in front of the lens and tested it in the pool. I worked lousy and had a poor focal range. Thursday morning I wacked the dome port off and glued a flat port in its place. A quick test in the office aquarium was encouraging. If it did not work in Roatan, I would just shoot video and grab good frames for my stills. As it was, it worked perfectly. This combination allowed me to take both macro and regular shots with the same lens as you can see on this page. All the shots in this series of pages were taken with a sony cybershot model 70.

The other gear that I was testing was my Fully Closed Circuit Rebreather. I had taken the heart of a RGU pure oxygen rebreather and converted it into a FCC rebreather and was excited to test it in the ocean in water deeper than the 12 feet of the Gypsy Divers pool.

This page and those that follow are some of the better shots taken underwater with the camera with a few land shots included. If you were there that week, I hope they give you some great memories, if not, you will see why I love that area so much.

All pictures on this site are copyright either Tom Rose or Tony Eggleston. Non commercial rights to pictures is free but requires a request. Most of the images are available in high resolution for commercial use. Just contact me.

Tony on the side of the Prince Albert	Soft coral macro shot same camera same lens.
Along the rail.	I cross the rail on the bow.
Feather Dusters find a Sponge home.	Tunicate on the stern.
Trying to fool Pederson Shrimp.	Feather duster
Soft Coral Growth	Brittle Star and Sponge
Main Deck	Stealth Diver (no bubbles)
Look Ma No Bubbles	Tony Above the Bow

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