Page 12 - AlertDiver_Spring2013

10 | SPRING 2013
FROM THE SAFETY STOP // P U B L I S H E R ’ S N O T E
Irecently traveled to Dominica with a government
permit to photograph sperm whales. It was an
exciting adventure, but it was intimidating from a
travel perspective. Dominica
is not a “big jet” destination. The
airport is carved out of the island’s
mountainous topography, and
small commuter planes make the
final hop from gateways like Puerto
Rico. The baggage allowance is 70
pounds combined weight in no
more than two checked bags, and
that includes everything — clothes,
cameras and dive gear; neither of
the bags can weigh more than 50
pounds. You can’t even pay for
more weight allowance if you want
to. The trip required me to rethink
what I needed to pack to get the
job done on location.
A few days of diving were part of this adventure, because
who in their right mind would go to Dominica and miss
out on the scuba opportunities? But the primary goal
was to swim and freedive with sperm whales. For me,
preparation began by drilling down to the essentials, which
meant I had to analyze every piece of gear that would go
with me.
Clothing provided an easy opportunity to start cutting
weight. T-shirts and shorts would be sufficient almost all
the time, and the whales wouldn’t care if I wore the same
thing more than once. I packed several lightweight, long-
sleeved shirts like those popular with backcountry anglers.
They provide great protection from the sun, are easily hand
washed and dry quickly.
Parsing dive gear was more difficult. My usual dive bag
weighed 15 pounds, and it wasn’t long enough for the
fins I wanted to bring for freediving. So I bought a much
lighter but equally robust bag to accommodate my dive
gear and clothing in one of my two allotted checked bags.
I went with an ultralight travel BC, a mask and snorkel, a
pair of dive computers (packing light didn’t mean I was
willing to give up redundancy in something as important as
decompression calculation) and wetsuits.
Why more than one wetsuit? I figured scuba
diving for an hour in the 79°F water would call for
a 3mm suit, but the body heat generated by the
aerobic activity and the relatively short time I’d
spend in the water swimming with whales would
allow me to use a triathlete suit. Its minimal water
resistance would allow me to swim faster and more
efficiently — different tools for different tasks.
As this was a photographic mission at its core,
my complement of underwater camera gear evoked
the most angst. Some tools would have to stay
behind. The first and most obvious to dump was the large,
hard case I use for my housings and strobes. It weighed 22
pounds empty, so there was no way I could use it for this
trip. Instead, I chose a much lighter conventional photo
bag that could accommodate my housing, a couple of small
strobes and a single mini-fisheye dome port that would
work with both my wide-angle lens and the 50mm macro
lens I would use for fish photography on the reef. The dome
also had no sunshades, which would mean decreased water
resistance while freediving. (The huge sunshades on some
ports can feel like sea anchors while snorkeling. I discovered
that when swimming with whale sharks in Isla Mujeres,
and I took the lesson with me to Dominica.) With these
two lenses and one port I would be covered for fish and
macro subjects on the reef as well as wide-angle scenics and
whales. I hand carried my topside cameras and laptop, and
the two checked bags together weighed 69 pounds. Mission
accomplished.
The Dominica experiment made me more cognizant
of the need to really think about my gear acquisition in
these times of airline consolidation and ever more onerous
restrictions on checked baggage. In some ways it was
liberating; it took me out of a packing mindset I’ve been in
Dive Travel in the Brave New
World
b y S t e p h e n F r i n k
JON LANDAU
STEPHEN FRINK