Caribbean Travel Blog

A shark in Antigua

I took a good while to again get familiar with adobe after effects during the making of this short video that had almost everything in it. Sharks topped the order then it was familiar friends and some less known guys like puffer fish and spoted drums. There was some nich schooling action going on which I caught a bit of. A massive lobster that didnt make it into the video due to time of all things.

Problems I had were in keeping the go pro steady and getting enough light on the subject to allow the colours to come through. Publishing the colour correction via adobe after effects was a lot faster than using photoshop I noticed and my flow was this 

1. trim the footage in gopro studio (I think would skip this step next time !!! BIG TIP)
2. take that footage into after effects (its great to get the zoom control and I played with using some stabilization like on the Barracuda)
3. lay the after effects exports using imovie (not using adobe premiere as imovie works great for me)

See the video here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19Zbe1Rl_Wc

So its the old two steps of working on clips that get to be part of the bigger story when you remove the first step above. I used to use adobe premiere for that last step but pushed for time imovie does well. I loose some control but thats fine for this. As I sy the footage was a little dissapointing so burning more time is not going to happen. It's cheap and chearful ll the way :)

This was a very typical moment while diving in Antigua this kind of sized Barracuda would come in close sometimes with a friend. Am glad I managed to get some video up about it, can't wait to try out my go pro as you can see this is not taken with anything near as sophisticated for todays market.

Here is a cool post on what might be happening when a barracuda follows you- https://xcalakmexico.com/snorkeling-barracuda/

You can see some of the settings I used in Photoshop here to achieve the result (ignore the bottom two layers and know just one of these is your photo OR video)

The layers will be as shown above the first (bottom) 2 but you may get away with fewer - just make sure to have the two shown selected in the images here. Any problems and you can ask me from commenting below. I will help you set up your photoshop files for you.

Barracuda

What I like about this video is that it accurately shows the quality of diving that the Caribbean and Antigua in particular has to offer. 

eagle ray

Had a couple of tanks with indigo diving today and was very impressed with their levels of service and the boat. The diving - how was it ? Well we saw all manner of tiny critters from blennies to flamingo tongues and peterson shrimp and pistol shrimp sharing a flat = corkscrew anemone. But what was a real treat was the black tip reef shark ! it was also a pleasure to dive with Steve and Nishi and Pat from Indigo divers. All very good divers and that made for a great two tanks. Nishi is blogworthy as she is an expert on SQUID! She even found 3..So the site was Double Dip and we got no deeper than 18m for the first dive, lobsters, one king crab and a very healthy sized barracuda. The second dive was in the vicinity and forget the name if it had one. The second was where the shark cruised on by. 

Location : North West Antigua, Dickenson Bay.

A potential chapter from Tales in the Tropics.. Image thanks to Ocean National Geographic 

It was an amazingly calm day so much so that there was no sail fun to be had. So a Kayak it was then, fuelled by some baileys on ice and a massive all inclusive buffet feed I was ready to go. In need of some exercise I decided to head along towards the right and a trail I had done before - it was so calm maybe I should choose another course. Maybe I could get to Millers bar if I turned left instead.I decided to start off left and see where the fatigue set in. Amazingly I had a super energy day. Maybe the biorhythms were good in the physical we had a session playing tennis earlier in the extreme heat. The small islet off diagonal has been teasing me for a long time and it was still so very calm.

"I had visions of them sticking on the paddle and as I brought the paddle up they would wander down and attack me to death"

I felt good and went to see how I could get there. It felt I was further out than I was since there was a large tanker refuelling the island at the offshore tanks. The first thing I noticed was how clear it was a spectacular visibility. And then I kept seeing very small surface disturbances. In no time at all I crossed a very real line into a thick shoal (swarm) of moon jellyfish, the classic shaped ones purple trim and mauve clear see through amazingly pretty and scary in the sting kind. I was not sure if they were so dangerous to the sting. But what was concerning me was if I was to get stung this far out I could start to get in some trouble, the jetskis were now behind me but I am sure it would have been ok.

South and dived out of Falmouth area is Hercules Pillars - named for the pretty rock formation above the water. Underwater is a large plateau of coral getting shallower to large flat faced boulders. Here are some photos from that very dive today.

Best Antigua Scuba Diving

and here is a taster