nikon P5100 and the fantasea housing

fantasea announced that their underwater housing FP5000 for nikon P5000 works fine with the new nikon P5100. waterproof to 60m double o-rings everywhere, 46mm port ring thread for attaching wet lenses, 209USD from adorama. nikon P5100 is 500USD from adorama, so the total is 709USD, a very good price.

Oxygen capsules

was just reading an article about "02 capsules" that are available in some spas in japan, for about $50/hour. (this is the article on the web).
The capsules give you 1.3 atmospheres pressure and deliver up to 50% oxygen. would be good to have those on some liveaboard dive boats. you could take a nap between dives in one of them and refresh yourself for the next dive.
if you want to buy one, here is a website for o2 capsules (in japanese). the capsule for one person starts from 28,000AUD.

How many fish fit in a subway car?

323 fish. that's right, every sudway car will host 323 fish.

I was reading this article about a decision to dump 600 New York city subway cars along the New Jersey shore as artificial reefs. According to that article, subway cars were used as artificial reefs in South Carolina and attracted lots of marine life within 10 years. A 3-year study by the state Division of Fish and Wildlife showed that each subway car hosted 323 reef fish.

name the walking shark

The auction starting price is just $500,000 to name the 'walking shark' that was discovered in indonesia in 2006 or so.
Here is an article (the photo comes from this site) about the walking shark, and another one.

a nudibranch and a seahorse

a couple of interesting creatures from today's dive at Kurnell "the leap to the steps", south of sydney.

here is a nudibranch (which should be a Ceratosoma brevicaudatum according to an earlier identification from a diveoz.com.au user)


which, by the way, is very similar to this guy


that we saw at bare island (west side) 11-Mar-2007. It is a long way from bare island to Kurnell (if you are a nudibranch).

Also here is an interesting (beer-belly) seahorse.


Is this a big belly seahorse (Hippocampus abdominalis)?

It does look a bit like this one and this one. Another pic of a big-belly seahorse appears on Michael McFadyen's Bare island isolated reefs page. There is also the potbelly seahorse (Hippocampus bleekeri) -for example see this page- that looks similar.

Also as i read on the web, big-belly seahorses are among the largest seahorses, growing to 30-35cm.

The one at Kurnell was indeed quite big.

australian prices again

i was in a big retail store today in sydney, and saw the price for an olympus E410, so i thought i complain about prices in sydney again.

here is a comparison of the price tag price for olympus E410 with 14-42mm lens.
big retail store in sydney: 1300 AUD
adorama.com from US: 629 USD = about 745AUD, which makes it about 800 AUD including shipping (yes there is difference with my earlier post, but the aussie dollar is going up compared to the USD)

1300AUD versus 800AUD. and it really does not take any effort to find these prices online. shopbot.com.au reports 1015AUD as the lowest price in aussie land. that is still seriously more expensive than getting it from the US.

nudi site

an interesting site i just saw about nudibranchs: nudi pixel.
Here is a description of the site (copy pasted from their page):
"""
Nudi Pixel is an online resource for nudibranch and sea slug identification using photographs.
blah blah blah....
This is basically a repository of nudibranch photographs from all over the world, and we further proceed the data to make it suitable for species identification. Read suggestion on how to use this web site for nudibranchs and sea slugs identification.

You are invited to submit nudibranchs or sea slugs photos (of course, you must be the photographer and the photos are taken in nature, not in captivity). Another way to contribute is simply helping us by identifying some unidentified nudibranch species or correcting misidentified species.

"""

australian prices for olympus e410

Australian prices are very high on pretty much every item you can think of. It is almost always cheaper to buy products overseas, even after paying shipping and duties. And it might be faster too.

I was just looking at olympus E-410 including a housing for it (olympus PT-E03). Here is a price comparison (the following are the best prices i could find within a few minutes on the web):

from overseas:
adorama olympus E410 with lens 840 AUD delivered.
uwdigitalcamera.com housing (no port) 1050 AUD probably 1100AUD delivered

from australia:
housing from seaoptic.com 1300AUD (plus shipping)
camera+lens from ebay 950AUD delivered

overall a difference of about 370AUD. and this is a very small price difference, usually things are much worse.

new nikon P5100

new nikon P5100 was announced very recently. see the dpreview.com article for more details.
replaces the P5000 and the body looks very similar. the dimensions are identical so it might be the case that the fantasea FP5000 housing will work with the P5100 as well.
dpreview mentions the following differences with the previous model P5000 (only the interesting ones are listed below):

Key differences from P5000

• 12.1 MP
• EXPEED: Nikon's innovative digital image processing concept
• Continuous flash upto 3 frames @ 1.0 fps (new feature)
• Cosmetic upgrade (mainly button and ring)
• Improved Graphical User Interface

the continuous flash feature sounds very very interesting for underwater photography.