lemon

Hi Steve, thanks for the excellent report. i really enjoyed reading it. i was also just recently in cocos (early july with the underseahunter group). generally, i would agree that this was an off year. in fact, the last two seasons have been down years. while i share your concerns regarding longlining and agree that illegal fishing is likely seriously hurting the park i think another factor is the unusually warm waters the past two years. there has generally been less cleaning action and i believe the hammerheads have been staying deeper. the last two seasons the thermoclines have generally been deeper than usual due to the la nina. fortunately the nina just ended this summer (according to noaa) so things will hopefully improve in the next seasons. for sure though longlining is a huge problem. while silverado used to provide regular silvertip sightings it seems that the silvertips are all but gone from cocos now. the silkies have definitely taken a big hit from the fisherman as well and according to the DMs you don't really see them that much anymore. these species likely get hit extra hard as they spend a lot of their lives outside of the marine park in the open seas. talking to some of the park rangers it seems that the same fishing ships are repeat offenders and generally whenever they are caught pretty much get off with only a minor slap on the wrists. i imagine they are well protected politically. its a real shame and it makes one fear for cocos future. i was talking to one of my dive buddies who is also a frequent cocos visitor and he was speculating that the recent decrease in white tips and marble rays may be in part related to the recent increase in tiger sharks hanging out around manuelita. they have to be eating something! this was my first season diving cocos on my rebreather and i have to say that the difference was awesome. no more "blue diver technique" aka breath-holding to get the hammers to come closer. can't wait to go back as i totally agree with you that out of the many places that i've dived, cocos is hands down my favorite. i just wish underseahunter was still running their combined malpelo-cocos trips. i did that one three seasons ago but unfortunately we didnt see the famous silkies at malpelo. apologies for the longwinded rambling, just my .02 worth! best, alex

excellent pics and report! i really enjoyed them. on the topic of cocos here are two incredible videos shot by one of the DMs on the underseahunter: The Best of Cocos Island 2005-2008 http://vimeo.com/27478869 Baitball - A killers day http://vimeo.com/13086726 enjoy!

great pics! look forward to seeing more. is that school of jacks taken off of dirty rock? looks like the vis improved a bit over the last few weeks. I was in cocos early july and we had some poor vis and unseasonably warm waters. still a great trip but definitely an off year for us. also, i've never seen so many octopus at cocos. they were everywhere!

yeah, we really scored weather-wise. couldnt have asked for better conditions. and those sharks just stayed all-day every-day. amazing creatures.

glad you enjoyed it. all credit for images and video goes to jim abernethy who shot and edited this as our trip video. jim runs a great trip and we were lucky to have calm glassy conditions with up to 14+ oceanics at a time. beautiful sharks that will hang out all day. great to see a couple of pregnant females too. cheers, lemon

video overview of the diving. produced and shot by jim abernethy. we had great diving on the trip having up to 14+ oceanics at a time in the water. great times! http://vimeo.com/24688044

lovely shots! looks like the color is off a bit though. i was in cocos over the summer and had a front seat view of a whale shark hovering in a cleaning station in a 45 degree vertical position getting cleaned. of course i didn't have my video camera with me at the time!! it was such an amazing sight....until one of the still photogs decided to charge right up to her and scare it off...arrggggg!

For some reason it seems like tiger sharks have become a regular occurrence at manuelita this year with multiple sitings on most of the trips this year so far. Will be heading back to cocos in 3 weeks for my second trip and really looking forward to it.

Gorgeous work. Would love to do this trip some day. HH's expertise with the camera really shows. A lot could have gone wrong with these shots in terms of exposure, etc. Thanks for posting. I really, really enjoyed this.

Kind of sad to part with the trust old gates. That baby has seen some great dives. It looks to have found a great new home though. Definitely strongly recommend Gates products to anyone looking for a housing. I never had any leaks or floods with that housing. When I buy my next housing, Gates will be my first choice!

Thanks everyone for the interest. The housing and Unit sold on ebay. Shipping costs were an estimate as I made the mistake of underestimating the cost in the past. For this sale, shipping was actually a bit higher than estimated as it was an international sale. Cheers!

BUMP - Final day on EBAY!

For sale: Gates HC9 Housing with Manual White balance control. Very good condition, never flooded. Approximately 1 year old. Housing is equipped with the incredible Fathom SWP25a port that allows for FULL zoom through and macro shooting. Pelican Case included. To buy new you would pay over $4500 plus tax. Will sell for $2000 + shipping costs. EBAY LINK alex.lemon(AT)gmail(DOT)com

I hear ya. I'm not sure you'd get such a noise free low-light with the canon h.264 though, do you? Believe me, i'm a huge canon fan. I own the 7d and am waiting on the next gen full-frame from canon - 5dmk3? I'm really excited about the possibilities of the fixed 2/3" Scarlet for underwater work though. I believe the reset time on the m-x sensor is like 5microsec and is about equaling film in terms of eliminating rolling shutter. then there's the 120 fps w/ 150fps burst rate. AF, etc. not using h.264, no line skipping, etc. and lets not forget the noise improvements from downsampling footage from 3k to 1080p. etc, etc. (realizing this is all a beaten horse, but i'm still very excited!) I love the VDSLRs as well, i guess i'm still a huge red fan though. of course considering that i've only ever shot underwater with a sony hc9, i think you can see how any of these cameras seem like quantum leaps up technology and performance wise!

But have you seen the sample footage of the new M-X sensor at 2000 ISO as shot by David Fincher with Leonardo Dicaprio that is here: http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=39998 The noise levels are sick! And you can't really call this vaporware as it is going out as a sensor upgrade to existing R1s quite soon. This is from the same sensor that will be in the Scarlet. I think this certainly blows away my 7D. I guess I'm still one of their zombie followers!