Inside the Housing

People ask what I use, or how I get a picture underwater. I pull up a photo of the rig on my phone. Then the questions start.

The whole thing runs about $20,000. On the table it weighs 22 pounds. In the water the weight goes away. What's left is drag. Swimming hard to get into position, or to get out of the way, feels like towing a small umbrella.

Getting it on and off the boat is the awkward part. I have to hoist it up to someone in the zodiac. That's sport in a rough sea, and worse when a whale is misbehaving and you need out now.

You can't learn it at home. I'm from the Midwest. The first trip I took it on, I spent a week in the Caribbean looking for sperm whales and never saw one. I got a little time with it snorkeling. Not much. The second trip was Patagonia, southern right whales, on a permit. Water in the forties. Almost no visibility. Frames that were soft and out of focus. A monitor that kept fogging or quitting. Calves that wanted to play closer than I wanted them. That trip deserves its own story. It set me up. Norway was cold and dark, there wasn't any margin, and it wasn't the first time.

Before you ever leave, it has to be right. One wrong setup and you're done, because you are not opening the housing on a zodiac in wind and salt spray. A bigger dive boat gives you a little room. A zodiac doesn't. Some days you can float and sort it out. Some days you hit the water and the animal is already there, and you have seconds. You still have to be clear of the boat and the animal, and the rig has to be ready.

It's a sealed system. There's an indicator if it starts to lose pressure or if water gets in. Water would be bad enough. Salt water ends it. I've never had that happen. I keep it maintained, and I keep the seals greased.

The cold will still get you. I've been in and out of it all day and had the camera battery die in the middle of a good interaction. You can't swap a battery in the water. I finished what was left on the GoPro, because the animals were still there.

I'm still learning. There's a lot of water I haven't worked yet.