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Remember that weather conditions affect tidal ranges and current
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Over the weekend of March 27 th & 28 th I took the Level 1 Freediving course offered by FII (Freediving Instructors International) at their Headquarters in Pompano Beach FL. FII was started by Martin Stepanek, a multiple time freediving world record holder. The Level 1 curriculum is taught over a 2 day course. The first day is classroom and pool based and spans almost 9 hours. This course is designed for beginning freedivers and is supposed to get novice divers to a depth of 66 feet.
Believe it or not my latest addition to my spearguns is not one for shooting fish (well at least not shooting to kill them). But it hopefully will help others watch online what I love to do underwater. I have made a camera mount for my Riffe Euro guns. This mount will fit on any Euro that has the reel inserts (basically all of them). It was terribly simple to make. The only fairly tricky part was putting together the actual mount screw for the camera tripod mount itself.
{sigplus link=oculusr5 index=1} {/sigplus}Hot on the heels of my review of the GoPro Hero2, I felt I would be remiss if I didn't follow up with a review of the case that resolves the one (and only one in my opinion) flaw in the Hero2 design, it's underwater focus (or lack thereof) flaw. You see, as I wrote about in the Hero2 review the curved lens on the stock case creates a focus fallacy when shooting underwater. It's fairly common knowledge now, so if you want to read about it, you can check...
The summer had been busier than I would have liked this year and I honestly hadn't had as many opportunities to post much less given much thought to writing a new SpearView, but after having time to really reconsider, I realized that I had actually had multiple opportunities to try out new equipment this year (not all of it successfully). Further to that point, when I took the PFI Freediver course back in March I had decided to invest in a new mask and ended up deciding on the Omer Zero Cubed...
Back in March of 2010 I enrolled in and completed the FII Level One freediving course . I was extremely happy with the course content and the outcome (check out the SpearView ). Unfortunately for me, I'm not a professional freediver, so as with many people, life gets in the way and complicated which in turn keeps you from building a true regimen that reinforces all the good behavior learned in the course. Needless to say, I forgot some of the basics, fell back into many of my old bad habits...
I finally bit the bullet and decided to sell my No-Ka-Oi. It had gotten next to no use in the time I had owned it and it seemed a shame to have it just sit there so I Ebay'd it. With the funds from that sale, I invested in a gun that is a little more multi-purpose (at least that is how I convinced myself to get it :). I was extremely torn among 3 choices. I was considering the Euro 120, 120x and 130. After a couple of weeks of deliberation and a lot of flip-flopping, I decided on the Euro 120....
Winds: 5-10 SE Seas: 1-2ft Surf Temp: 85F Viz: 15-20 feet This weekend required a little patience. The viz would start out at about 5-10 feet until well after high tide had rolled in. Once the tide slacked off and you gave it a little time, the viz would more than double. We tried a couple of our offshore patch reef spots, but the mangroves haven't started to move offshore to spawn yet. Give it a couple of weeks and we should be pushing them off with a stick (preferrably a sharp pointy metal...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 SSW Temp: 84-87 F Viz: 70-80 feet We headed out Saturday morning with 6 divers on the boat. More than usual for us, but we had a couple of friends visiting in addition to our usual crew. We headed out to see if any fish had moved in to some of the spots that had been relatively empty over the past week or two. As we headed out, we were very encouraged by the clarity of the water and how it appeared to be getting even cleaner as we headed further out from shore. By...
Some things are just worth doing again and again. For us, that thing is our annual Pirate Trip to Grand Cay. For 4 years now, we've been lucky enough to be able to pull off epic annual trips to the Bahamas for the sole purpose of spearfishing. Our first trip was to South Andros , and as epic as that trip was, since venturing out to Grand Cay on our second trip, we keep getting drawn back. Maybe it's the accessibility, maybe it's the environment, maybe it's just a great time! Sometimes, the...
Seas: 1-2 feet Winds: 5-10 E/SE Viz: 35-40 feet Temp: 85 F This past week was Lobster mini season and even though I did not participate, I did have some friends that took their perennial vacation to hunt those highly coveted bugs. According to their accounts, there were a lot less hunters in the water this year. But luckily for those that were willing to take the time to do it, there were plenty of lobsters to be had by all. We had been observing a huge population of lobsters in every nook and...
Seas: 3-5 feet Winds: 20-25 S/SE Viz: 20 feet Temp: 81 F The forecast for the long weekend was promising, at least for Saturday. S-SE winds at 5-10 knots with seas 1' inside the reef and only 1-3' outside the reef, phehomenal. The outlook wasn't as great for Sunday and Monday, but we hoped one good day would be enough and besides, we usually get the hell outta Dodge early on holidays to beat the traffic so Monday didn't even really count, so we were hopeful as we pulled in Friday night and I...
Winds: 10-20 East Seas: 3-5 feet Surf Temp: 84 F Viz: 5-10 feet Saturday was not too much fun. The seas were extra sloppy and the viz was not what I would like to see, even on the worst days. It didn't stop us from shooting our fill of mangroves, but it wasn't without it's effort. One of the spots we hit was only about 18-20 feet deep and we couldn't see the bottom much less the fish. We've gotten used to shooting in the low viz but its still difficult to do. You have to pick out the best of...
