Photos of diving Scripps Canyon
I finally convinced myself I would use scuba equipment enough to own full gear (I already have a computer, suit, etc). My visa limping, I’m now the owner of an aqualung legend supreme regulator, a scubapro glide plus bc, and a steel 80 tank. I got to use it all the next day on my first dive at Scripps Canyon.
The canyon is a very long swim from the pier, the start is near the access road at Black’s. The site is fantastic – a vertical wall covered in life. It is quite dark and deep (we did a bit at 130 feet) but holds a lot of color when you swing your light around. We saw some swell sharks, various small fish, and a lot of anemones and gorgonians. Unfortunately my dive computer (cressi edy) is a lot more conservative than my dive buddies, so I don’t have quite as long at depth before I have to hover on the rim. It was pretty green water when we were there, due to low visibility on the top 40′ of water, but the canyon clears up to about 25 feet. The wall would be mind blowing when the surface visibility hits 20+.
I took a few pictures, keeping the ISO at 80 to see if I could get anything worthwhile with just my alternate light. Not so much. Next time I’ll have to switch the camera to Auto ISO HI, which will increase the ISO up to 400. One interesting thing about photography at this depth is that it maxes out the tint for white balance. Normally I just add a little tint to cancel out the blues and greens, but at this depth, the auto white balance is already using all of the available tint. I’ll need to look into getting a better light source at some point as well – my alternate light is fairly powerful, but doesn’t have a wide enough beam to light stuff for photography.