Destruction in the Solomons

By Howard Hall

"Larry Cochrane checks out his flooded Nikon housing" ©Howard Hall

   Nineteen of us went to the Solomon Islands a few years ago to dive aboard the liveaboard boat, Bilikiki. Nearly all were underwater photographers, many were old friends, and all were excellent divers. We had a great time.

   It's true, however, that my hydro 35 camera housing leaked on my first dive. But that is precisely why I take the precaution of traveling with two Nikon cameras. Having the spare camera in my camera box (which cost a fortune and has never been used) insured that the saltwater damage caused by the flooding was minimal. My primary camera worked fine after some careful cleaning. Had I not had the spare, the housing would have undoubtedly flooded completely resulting in the total loss of the camera inside.

   My wife, Michele, had a brand new Nikonos V that she had recently purchased. She managed to keep this dry on the inside and wet on the outside through three full dives. After her fourth dive, however, she noticed that her shutter "looked funny, sort of shinny, like it had oil on it". Of course, it was seawater not oil. She had flooded it. She says it was not her fault. Fortunately, by Michele's fourth dive, I had gained considerable experience repairing flooded Nikonos cameras.

   I can thank Steve Larson for most of the experience I gained regarding repair of Nikonos equipment. Steve had flooded his Nikonos V on his first dive. Steve had a medusa-like strobe sync cord that permitted him to connect his Nikon 8008 camera housing to two enormous Ikelite 150 strobes with a Nikonos camera simultaneously connected to the strobes and mounted on top of the housing. Unfortunately, this was the only sync cord he had and that necessitated carrying all this gear with him on every dive whether he wanted to or not. This monstrous camera assembly became known as the "Battlestar Galactica" by those of us who dived with Steve. It was know by other less flattering names by crew members who were required to lift it in and out of the boat. Unfortunately, when Steve bolted the Nikonos to the bracket on top of his SLR housing, a design flaw in the bracket caused the door of the Nikonos to lift off the o-ring. This became inconvenient immediately upon Steve’s entering the water. The Nikonos was full of water before Steve had brushed the bubbles off his lens.

   Steve's lens stayed dry, however. That's because he read that bit in my book that said the 35mm lens works best as a fishing weight if not used with extension tubes. So Steve had borrowed Ferol Page's new 20mm lens. Ferol's lens got quite a lot of water inside.

   I followed the directions for repairing the Nikonos V that I found in Jim and Cathy Church's book. After several hours of work, the camera worked fine on manual, but the TTL feature was quite dead. I probably didn't work fast enough or carefully enough when I cleaned it. My technique improved after Steve's second dive. Since his camera was inoperative and Ferol's lens was still wet, Steve Larson had borrowed Steve Mann's camera and 20mm lens for his second dive. He bolted the camera to the same flawed bracket which lifted the door of Steve Mann’s camera off the o-ring. The results were, of course, identically catastrophic.

   Chris Huss helped me clean the cameras. We worked much faster on the second one. But when finished, the TTL didn't work on that camera either. Some of the lights came on, however, and I thought that was a sign of improvement.

   Chris and I got to where we could fix the 20mm lenses almost in our sleep. And Chris had plenty of extra time to work on flooded cameras since he got decompression sickness. Happily, it was not a bad case. He didn't do anything wrong that we know of. Chris is a truly excellent diver. But the frustration he felt at having his Mark 150 strobe flash involuntarily three times per second every time he took it in the water may have precipitated the bends. Who knows?

   Anyway, by the time Michele flooded her camera, I was an expert at fixing them. Her Nikonos worked fine afterwards. Others were not so lucky. Karrinne Bauer set a dubious record by flooding three strobes in one day! When she finally managed to find a strobe that didn't leak, she couldn't get it to work. It turned out that her camera housing was wired improperly which prevented the strobes from firing. She finally switched to using a Nikonos system that her husband, Dick, modified for her with a pair of pliers. Actually, the strobe arm on the bracket was giving Dick some trouble so I suggested the use of the pliers. I certainly, didn't expect him to break it in half.

   We had serious and not so serious photographers on the trip. Alan Straus was one of the serious kind. He had one or more cameras with him on every dive. In his cabin and under the salon table, Alan had boxes and boxes of spares. When his Nikonos V flooded, he just got out another from one of his boxes. When his strobe flooded, no worries, he had plenty more.

   But when Alan's air pressure gauge stuck at 900 psi while at 100 feet contradicting his assertion that no more air would come out of his regulator no matter how hard he sucked, he went to Carolyn Shepherd for a bit of help. Carolyn always had plenty of extra air. Her air consumption was so low that she often seemed to come back to the boat with more air than when she left. Indeed, her dive computer often confirmed this amazing phenomenon. It often said she had 6,000 psi in her tank at the end of her dive.

   Carolyn also had plenty of bottom time. She carried two expensive decompression computers. One of which was filled with water after her first dive and the other often crediting her with the counter-intuitive 6,000 psi in her tank and limitless bottom time at all depths. Being a diving instructor, Carolyn was skeptical of her computer readings. So she planned her dives based on Alan's computer. They dived well together, he not knowing how much air he had, and she not knowing how much bottom time.

   Saul Sarney was one of the not so serious photographers on board. He had no spares. He made every dive with a system he had borrowed from a friend. He never seemed to tire of the anticipation he felt in hopes that maybe the next time he pulled the trigger his strobe might actually flash. Unfortunately, it never did. Every night he developed his slides and he and I would review them and debate whether they had come out all black or all very deep blue.

   Greg Sindmack was an inexperienced diver and among the less than serious underwater photographers on board. He seemed quite comfortable with the fact that his Canon EOS camera housing acquired a half cup of water on every dive. He just dumped it out, changed film, and dove back in. No big deal. The only time I saw him concerned about anything was after I grabbed him by the shoulders, shoved him over the drop-off, and gave him an obscene gesture. He thought I had gone nuts. Actually, I was just trying to communicate to him that he would be very unhappy should he succeed in catching the lovely, colorful, and rather friendly lionfish he was trying to grab with his bare hands. He didn't know about lionfish.

   Barbara Murphy knew about lionfish. She claimed she stuck her hand into a den of lionfish at the insistence of her husband, Larry. She felt sorry for Larry because he had accidentally twisted all the pins out of the strobe-cord receptacle in his Nikonos camera. This injury to his camera perhaps caused by frustration at having just flooded his 150 strobe. Since Barbara was not taking pictures, she might subliminally have wished to damage something just to be part of the gang. She stuck her hand into a hole filled with lionfish. We decided damage to her hand did qualify her as member in good standing. Fortunately, she had no serious reaction and the swelling was well down by the next day.

   Bob and Rita Shapiro shot Barbara’s lionfish adventure with Dick and Karrinne's video camera. They were taking a break from still photography since Bob had flooded his new Nikonos 102 strobe. Bob didn't have time to flood any more gear because he spent so much time repairing the strobe. It took two days to get every part dry and clean and the whole thing carefully reassembled to where it looked just like a brand-new strobe. Of course, it never worked again.

   There were several video cameras on board. Steve Wystrach and Janet Adams had brought a nice new V99 system and we enjoyed watching the tapes every night. Steve's tapes were especially artistic after he managed to grind a circle in his Plexiglas dome port by extending his lens out too far. I asked him what had happened and he just said that the housing was too short.

   As you can see, we had our equipment problems; every one of us, with one exception. Darrell Anderson. Darrell had great luck. His cameras worked perfectly. He never lost anything and never damaged one fragile, expensive item. Only he among us had a perfect equipment operating record. But then, Darrell did get Malaria.

   I never saw a single mosquito the whole time I was in the Solomons! But Darrell gets bit by the nasty one. Sure there's a drug you can take to prevent Malaria and it became available in the United States the very day after we left. The drug we were all taking had been ineffective against mosquitoes in the Solomon Islands for years. But if you're going to get Malaria, get it aboard the Bilikiki. It's the one of the most comfortable boats I've ever dived from whether you're sick or not. And they know just what to do about Malaria. They had Darrell in a clinic within hours of his first symptoms and three days later he was cured and diving with us again.

   If you're thinking about buying an underwater camera system, this article presents the dark side of what you might expect. It's sort of like sports. When you come back to the boat with a camera housing that weighs a couple pounds more than when you began your dive, you feel like you just finished last in the league. But when you look at your photos and you see that occasional, magical, image where everything worked and it came out just like you dreamed it would, you feel like you've just hit a grand slam.