Coco View trip report = 22-29 March 2014

Trip report on our March 2014 trip to Coco View (March 22-29).

Beautiful weather, with air temps in the mid-high 80s. Water was a consistent 82F. Sea conditions were what I guess I would call “as expected” = generally steady winds out of the East at 10-15 mph, which meant 1-3 footers when heading east (we did have 1 afternoon of flat calm). We’ve been on 3 trips to CCV, all in March…and during 2 of the 3 years the seas have been like this. No problem at all with the CCV boats……especially with these boats being very stable and having the center well for re-boarding. Also nice to have a steady breeze to keep bugs away and to keep things from getting too steamy.

I completed 26 dives during the week; my daughter did 25. Highlights included 3 night dives, a dawn dive where we went into the water just after 5AM and experienced the sunrise and changing of the guard underwater, octopus encounters on each night dive, including watching one trap and eat what appeared to be a crab, a pod of dolphins on the surface….and perhaps most enjoyable of all, watching my daughter’s confidence and skill level increase at a rapid rate. She went from 40+ to about 70 career dives during this week and the rapid lather/rinse/repeat cycle of this many dives in a week was awesome to behold.

I tried out my shiny new GoPro Hero 3+ on this trip along with the Backscatter 3.1 filter system and a Sealife 1200 video light/tray combo. What a great little set-up. The addition of the filters and video light make the colors really POP underwater…and this light was sufficient to act as my main light on night dives (I always had a back-up along as well).

Link to my resulting video below = about 11:45 long. Highlights are the octopus feeding at 4:41 and cool octopus movement along the bottom at 8:03.

Note for video watchers – hover your mouse on the video window and click on the “auto” button on the bottom right when the video starts = set to 1080 HD.

Some notes from a first time GoPro underwater user:

• GoPro backpack display monitor is a battery hog. I was able to get 1 full dive+ when using the camera liberally out of a full battery. I was bringing an extra battery and switching between each dive on boat trips morning and afternoon. Depending on dive logistics, you might want 3-4 GP batteries and the multiple battery charger (I had 4 plus battery charger). I’ll admit the backpack display is a little small for old eyes to clearly see, but I still found it helpful to help frame shots. The Sea Life video light was generally good for full dives.

• Stating the obvious, but a tray makes a huge difference in terms of image stability with the GoPro

• I was using the underwater filters along with the dive light in daylight and on night/dawn dives…you can be the judge of the results.

• With memory relatively cheap, I tend to use 1 memory card per day…minimizes lost pics in the event of a flood and if you (like me) don’t like lugging a laptop while traveling.

• GoPro plus light and tray were slightly negative…..seemed pretty optimal

• Backscatter filters worked really well and are so easy to flip underwater. Some TLC needs to be paid to avoid water spots on the filters….not a big deal (I just wiped carefully with non-abrasive cloths after soaking). I've also seen some comments on the Backscatter web-site recommending using a windshield treatment like Rain-X for low-hassle avoidance of water spots

• iMovie workflow and the GoPro: I ended the week with over 3 hours of video. Took some time to get through the editing process. In terms of individual video clips = I would say I started with about 350-400 clips or so. I made the mistake of trying to transfer all 350 of these into 1 iMovie “event”…the workspace in iMovie where you stage/review clips before dragging them into your project (finished video). iMovie seemed to pretty much lock up when I did this. I did some googling and based on other user comments (probably varies based on size), iMovie events seem to have a rough capacity of about 50 clips per event. I deleted everything and started over, setting up many events with a limit of ~45 clips each….seemed to work fine.

Coco View 2014 - March 2014 - Zurich-Diver

Hope you enjoy the results.

Chris

Thanks for the great report Chris. I'm so happy to hear that you purchased and enjoyed the Backscatter 3.1 filter system. I love mine! It's so awesome that you are sharing your love of diving with your daughter

Excellent video, felt like I was there too!! You're very lucky to have a diving daughter, mine thinks someone needs to stay on the beach and watch the towels....

Nice video. CocoView is the perfect place for a newer diver to work on skills and by getting in so many dives in a week. And it is perfect for more experienced divers to get in lots of dives and be able to take their time underwater not getting rushed by a group.