- Day 3 -

   Mahi mahi! One of the lures we made two days ago did its job while we were cruising this morning, so we will be eating well tonight. The crew is already firing up the grill for beef and mahi mahi steaks. The smell is making my stomach growl. :)

   This morning we dove The Maze, which I discovered was aptly named (it was very disorienting down there). There was lush coral growth, and we saw everything from triton trumpets to frogfish and large eels. Speaking of triton trumpets, during the third and fourth dives (at Tubastraea Tunnel), we were fortunate enough to witness a large triton trumpet eating a crown of thorns starfish! Our group of ten photographers left the water with literally hundreds of photos during the last few moments of the starfish's life. Tubastraea Tunnel has been an amazing dive site so far. It has swim-throughs and plenty of nooks and crannies for critters to hide in. Jim and I both found turtles hiding in caves. During our dive, our cook, Christina, paddled to shore to go surfing. Her break was well deserved; the food and between-dive snacks have been fantastic.

   I've been shooting with the Canon D30 almost exclusively now, and it's producing (by far) the best quality underwater digital images of any of the digital cameras we have here (which I guess isn't surprising). Oran strapped a diffuser onto the front of the 550EX flash housing, and it has been working wonders (TTL exposure has been generally accurate). For a first-rev housing, it's very, very good. However, providing access to the flassh-exposure button would make it much easier to expose properly using TTL. I suspect that this won't be an issue for most serious underwater photographers, who generally shoot with the strobe on manual settings anyway. I took Jim's Olympus C4040 rig into the water today while he tried out UK Germany's D30 housing. The Olympus rig is perhaps the most inexpensive way to get a serious consumer/prosumer camera into the water. The housing is relatively inexpensive (as housings go, anyway), and it is lighter and smaller than most other digital camera housings. Unfortunately, the Olympus is still a consumer camera, and I was left wishing that I had something as responsive as the D30 to use again. The Olympus setup often produces wonderful images, though, and for its price and size it's hard to beat. Jim loves the D30 housing, so I suspect that my time with it will be limited from now on. It's the only digital setup we have that lets him shoot the way he is used to shooting with his film setup.
- Eric Cheng, 5:57pm, November 6th, 2001

   We didn't end up going out into the blue looking for pilot whales and sharks today, but we're scheduled to go out tomorrow after a sunrise dive at Manuka Bay. Our illustrious caption Gui gave a nice slideshow on Palau before the night dive. Only four of us went out into the darkness. Afterwards, cabin doors were closed (people had retired for the evening already), so we were unable to give a slideshow of our own work. Instead, Jim flipped through today's batch and picked three photos to show. The film shooters haven't been shown yet on this page because we haven't had time to scan and digitally process their slides. OK, I'm off to fight with the Iridium phone again for the upload tonight. Good night!
- Eric Cheng, 10:31pm, November 6th, 2001

      >> continue on to day 4