Location
After my check-out dives at the McMurdo Jetty, we did two dives at Dayton's Wall just below Ob Hill, a small volcano overlooking the station. It is very close to town and a spectacular dive site. Both dives included Henry Kaiser, a much recorded musician, movie maker, Antarctic diver and the videographer for the B-470 seal science group.
For him, the second dive was used to test his new camera and he made a movie for us. It is posted on Jo-Ann Mellish’s YouTube channel.
After seeing Henry’s movie, I was so impressed, I decided to become an underwater actor, forgetting that Henry can make anything look good. Ah well, no future in underwater acting for me after all. I include a few screenshots from that movie.
Dayton’s wall is named after Paul Dayton, professor emeritus at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and one of the diving pioneers in McMurdo. He was quite pleased with the movie and noted that the light was better than he has seen it ever. So we were a bit lucky on that end, but even without the special lighting it seems this site is full of miracles, on any scale, from the smallest little sea anemone to the giant sponges that are the same size as a diver. 
Sponges come in all colors from white to bright green and red.Every critter down there is just perfectly shaped and “planted” just in the right place. It is fun to get lost in this landscape. The ice overhead looks like a thundery cloud layer. At the end of the dive, Henry caught us in our 3 minute safety stop in a cool upward looking shot, just as a jelly joined us from below.
This was an awesome set of dives, every bit as spectacular as Henry’s movie.
Still jazzed,
Hubert
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