My friends frequently call me up to ask me whether a particular fish species is ok to eat.  If I’m near my computer, I usually go to Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch site to look up the fish in question, but I’m often caught away from a computer.

Luckily, the Blue Ocean Institute has launched fishphone.org, a web site formatted for web-enabled mobile phones and PDAs.  All you have to do before you order fish at a restaurant is hit the website on your mobile phone and choose a fish species in the drop-down menu.  If you don’t have a web-enabled phone, you can SMS 30644 with the text, “FISH fishtype”.  The SMS database isn’t as complete as is the website, but it’s a start.

Stephen Frink has sent us studio photos of the new Seacam Seaflash 150 strobe, including comparison shots with the popular Ikelite DS-125.  The new strobe weighs 2.65 lb (1.2 Kg)—approximately the same weight as the Ikelite DS125 .

Stephen also tells us that the new strobe will have a removable diffuser than can be attached to the back of the strobe when not in use.

Wetpixel.com is covering DEMA Show 2007 in Orlando, Florida, between October 31 and November 3, 2007.  In addition to bringing you semi-live coverage of all of the photo and video products on the floor, we will also be represented our new print magazine, Wetpixel Quarterly, at booth 2449 (listed as DivePhotoGuide in the exhibitor list).

Reporting for Wetpixel on the floor are Eric Cheng and Matt Segal.  Eli Woolery and Heidi Connal are representing Wetpixel Quarterly at booth 2449.  Use this page to track all of the live posts and coverage from the show.

UPDATE: All updates completed!

In the last few years, the Wetpixel Happy Hour has sort of become a DEMA tradition (at least, for the photo/video crowd). Special thanks to INON, Reef Photo & Video, and Backscatter for splitting the first 120 drink orders or so with Wetpixel.

We had a big turnout this year...

More photos of people from DEMA, November 2 and 3, 2007.

I finally met Keri, Chris, and Any of ReefNet, which was great. Aside from being a nice family with cool products, ReefNet won the Wetpixel embedded picture of the week contest with their fantastic implementation of our embedded widget (on their hompage)...

DEMA’s “Be A Diver” national advertising campaign will debut at DEMA Show 2007 with the unveiling of its new 30 second television spot.

The TV spot is but one component of the multi-faceted consumer campaign aimed at growing the industry, and includes television, radio, newspapers, magazines, on-line advertising and a marketing guide comprised of professionally prepared promotional materials for use by members. 

I stopped by New World Publications to meet with Ned and Anna DeLoach (who, along with Paul Humann, produce what might be the most popular fish and critter ID books worldwide). It was really great to finally get to meet them in person after years of hearing about them from everyone I know and running by their booth at DEMA during frantic coverage of the floor.

Amphibico didn’t have any new products to announce, but was showing everything from entry-level Dive Buddy EVO housings for the Sony SR-7/8 to their workhorse housings for the Sony 900-series HDCAM.

Amphibico is now shipping their Endeavor housing for the Sony HDR-FX7 and HVR-V1U, which has a 4.3" rear HD LCD viewfinder (which is also available as an external monitor).

SeaLife had a number of new and updated products for 2007, including various package sets of the SeaLife DC600 6.1MP digital camera featuring a 2.5” LCD and compatibility with up to 1GB SD cards.

The most basic package was the DC600 camera alone, accompanied by a housing rated to 200ft depth, while the DC600 Pro and DC600 DIGITAL MAXX sets included additional SeaLife flashes, cases, and other add-ons…

Howard Rosenstein and his son, Nadav, took me on a tour of products at Fantasea’s booth. Fantasea sells low-priced SLR and compact camera housings (mostly, Nikon compacts) and various accessories.

A new Nano universal accessory system includes a universal tray, arms, strobes, focus lights, fiber-optic sync cables, and more…