The Boston Sea Rovers hosted their 52nd Clinic on the weekend of Mar 4-5, 2006, again held at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel.  I stepped off of an airplane from Grand Cayman wearing far too little for Boston’s wind-chilled streets and waltzed into Friday evening’s invite-only party at Gamble Mansion, which is held annually for Sea Rover members and clinic speakers.  It’s a good thing I arrived late because I didn’t have a tie on and was afraid that I would violate dress code!  Even though I didn’t get to socialize for very long, I did stay long enough to see Berkley White (of Backscatter.com) wearing a suit and tie.  Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d see Berk in formal attire!  “But I’m wearing cut-offs underneath this,” he assured me.  Ahhh, good.  The planets fall out of alignment and life’s expectations return to normal.

The 52nd clinic featured exhibits, daytime seminars, workshops, and an evening film festival hosted by Philippe Cousteau, featuring industry luminaries Wes Skiles, Emory Kristof, Stan Waterman, Howard & Michele Hall, and Bret Gilliam.  Wes showed insane footage of cave diving, followed by a long documentary tracing the path water takes along Florida’s St. Johns river, Emory showed interesting footage from deep sea exploration, Stan presented old footage from Blue Water, White Death (and more), Howard & Michele Hall showed clips and behind-the-scenes footage from their wonderful new IMAX 3D movie, Deep Sea, and Bret formally announced his retirement from stage.

James Wiseman, Berkley White, and I were there representing Wetpixel and Backscatter by teaching two workshops on underwater photography.  We also walked around the show floor and nagged our friends at Aquatica, Underwater Photo-Tech, Light & Motion, Green Force, and Fathoms.

Check out some photos from the weekend!