I recently did a night dive on the M/V Castor lying in 110 ft. of water off Boynton Beach, FL. Dozens of Goliath Grouper, aka jewfish are collecting around the wreck for purposes of spawning around the full moon. We also did a reef dive after. All this was through
the Gold Coast Scuba Meetup group. This was my first dive using a new video light system I assembled for use with GoPro cameras. Each of the two lights put out 1400 lumens of white even light with beams of 120 degrees, well suiting with overlap the 170 degree field of view of GoPro cameras.
Here is the video shot with two Hero 3 cameras and video lights:
A good sized grouper hanging by the bow. I accidentally sprayed this puppy with regulator exhaust when I was below it. It was like tossing grouper-bane at it, didn't like the experience. Bubbles must have caused its gills to itch or maybe stop working?
The video lights and camera tray.
I was concerned about having enough free hands to adjust things while still maintaining enough illumination to see what I was doing. As such I put this helmet system together which worked well.
Here are a few still shots from that night:
An amazingly beautiful hogfish. I moved after this thing for five minutes shooting video and stills. It was mindlessly bopping its nose off the sponge in this shot asleep and having bad dreams about divers. The real nightmare came soon when some guy shot the light dazzled, asleep, non-evading or even aware fish, on scuba gear no less. What's the latest on the prohibition of spearfishing using scuba gear in this country?
A near all white goliath grouper. This supposedly indicates a female receptive to courtship as compared to dark males with the bicolor grouper as dominant males. From:
http://grouperluna.wordpress.com
I wish I had shot more imagery of this cup coral. It really shows up well on the dive. It supposedly invaded these waters in the 1940's jumping off ship hulls. You can sure see it all over wrecks here today. Really lights up nicely at night though.
Easing around the bow
Before the ban on shooting jewfish, down in Key West
http://grouperluna.wordpress.com
Back in the bad old days of rape and pillage, we'd likely still be doing it if we could sad to say.
http://theseamonster.net/2011/06/how...hs-used-to-be/
Diving the Castor the weekend before with several dozen grouper present around the wreck.
.