Sea Hunter, May 17-June 4, 2007: Dream Trip Turned Nightmare

A trip led by Sylvia Earle and augmented by the photographic expertise of Amos Nachoum on famed liveaboard Sea Hunter to both Cocos and Malpelo Islands!  And, in addition, a chance to take some deep dives on the Deep See Submersible offered by the Undersea Hunter Group!  How fantastic is that?  We thought it would be a great opportunity to return to Cocos Island where we had previously enjoyed a wonderful trip on the Aggressor Okeanos with some additional experiences that were not available on that trip.  I learned of the trip scheduled for May 17 – June 3, 2007 as soon as it was announced in March 2006 and booked it immediately for myself and husband!  I got our air tickets as soon as they came available and was all set to go even though I had previously scheduled another dive trip for us to Fiji leaving on June 7…a tight squeeze. 

We were looking forward to this great adventure with Sylvia Earle, when in January 2007, we were notified by Amos Nachoum that she had withdrawn from the trip!  The reasons provided by Dr. Earle were less than substantial and did not provide any commitments beyond those that were described in various press releases during the nearly entire year past.  In fact, some “reasons” cited were completely contradictory to generally available information and were questionable to say the least!  Dr. Earle’s reliability quotient quickly fell to zero as it became apparent that she had no concern for either Amos Nachoum’s high cost commitments, and situation of being left without a leader at the last minute, or for the investments of the participants based on their expectations of her leadership.  Even letters to her and to the directors of her program at the National Geographic Society were met with a stonewall of apathy regarding the problems created by her failure to fulfill her commitment. (That correspondence is available to anyone who is interested in the exact phraseology employed by these parties in their attempts to manufacture lame excuses.)

Amos Nachoum retained Alex Antoniou, Director of Field Operations for the Shark Research Institute, to fill the leadership position on the trip in anticipation that he would acquaint the participants with his activities of tagging hammerheads and collecting data for research into the patterns of their presence and their behavior in and around Cocos Island.  Payments were already in place, plane tickets already in hand, so what choice was there but to go ahead with plans to make the trip.  But, we were NOT pleased with the loss of the primary attraction to the trip!  Nor was Amos Nachoum pleased with our correspondence with Sylvia Earle and the National Geographic Society about this unprofessional and even unethical behavior on her part.  So, we began the trip with a major blow struck against us in the form of an e-mail by Amos to the other participants essentially disavowing our letters and casting a measure of blame on us for his inability to reverse her decision. 

The trip began with our expectations still rather high with hopes of good advice with regard to tips of how to improve our digital photography and the opportunity to get great photos and video of the sharks at Malpelo and Cocos Islands.  WRONG!  Amos Nachoum turned out not to be familiar with our particular cameras: Olympus 350 in Olympus housings with 2 Sea and Sea YS 90 strobes.  Both were new cameras which had been set up by Cathy Church with instructions to use them with TTL settings on the strobes and manual settings on the camera.  I had used my camera in the Caymans and had taken my camera to the Maldives, both with excellent results. 

Amos Nachoum, however, directed us to disregard Cathy’s instruction and to use manual settings on the strobes and use aperture priority settings on the camera.  Amos is a world class photographer and a person whose advice is hard not to accept, so my husband and I did as he suggested, but we began to get “black” and much underexposed results.  The camera was not responding the way he expected, so he declared that we were not following his instructions and that the results were not possible although the settings we had used were recorded in the camera and showed up on my Photoshop picture profiles.  It took many dives all with failed tests to convince Amos that his directions were inappropriate for our camera configurations.  We finally realized that the synch chip connecting the two strobes would ONLY operate on TTL and NOT at all in manual.  When set on manual, the strobes did not deliver appropriate light even though they fired.  End result was that most of our photos over several days of the trip were not exposed correctly and were of poor quality.  We were then instructed by Amos to use TTL with aperture priority, but we still got poor results both in terms of the shutter speed assigned by the camera and the focus.  The range of apertures possible just did not allow fast enough speeds to avoid the blur problems on these limited cameras.  His final conclusion was that our cameras would not take good photos.  That, however, was not correct.  When on our next trip we went back to the procedures previously suggested by Cathy Church, the professional photographer who sold us the camera, we got great shark and reef photos. 

The Olympus 350 camera in an Olympus housing does in fact take very nice photos when using manual controls on the camera and TTL on the strobes!  No, maybe not as good as a Nikonus, but pretty good by any other measure.  The lesson we learned?  Even when instructed by a distinguished professional photographer with a strong personality, you should not spend several days of your trip trying to do what they say if it does not work with your equipment. Have more confidence in your experience and go back to what you were doing before.  Use the techniques that you know were working in the past.

So, what else could go wrong?  Murphy was not through with us.  The Sea Hunter would see to that!  In spite of its reputation, Sea Hunter was not up to its “game” for our trip.  In general, the cabin was cramped, there was no desk, chair, just a tiny space the width of the door with cabinets beside it and narrow twin bunks.  There were only a couple of small hooks on the back of the door and wall leaving little place to hang anything. The blankets were not clean and caused me to suffer several nights of severe coughing before I removed them all and then was OK.  For a “high-end” dive boat, this was not your luxury cabin!

There were several safety problems – accidents waiting to happen – and some actually DID!  One, the rail down the stairs to the cabin level did not extend all the way giving nothing to hold for balance.  We had to hold on to the steps themselves or brace against the wall while going down backwards. It was a tedious and precarious situation.  There were hatches and obstacles in the floor of the dive deck which caused stumped toes.  These could have been more clearly marked or padded. 

Another problem was that there were no lines or trailers in the water to grab if someone fell overboard on the main boat OR to assist divers getting on and off the dive tender boats.  Once a diver did fall between the tender and main boat and was quickly dragged by the current behind the boat.  They had run to the middle of the boat to retrive a life ring with a line on it to toss to him from the back of the boat.  Had a line been there, he could have grabbed it.  A life ring with a line was later moved to the back of the boat after the guests requested it. 

Lines to assist divers approaching the dive tender were provided only briefly on our boat and then removed.  The ladder on the dive tender was not stable and flopped around violently causing many bruises to arms and legs.  That is where a line would have facilitated the approach to the ladder and removal of fins before getting whacked by the unstable ladder.

But, most serious of all safety problems was the asymmetrical floor level in the dining room.  There were booths on one side, booths in the center, and a serving counter on the other side each divided by corridors.  The corridor on the serving side was level.  The corridor between the booths had two steps at the end of the center booth. This two step step-down was NOT even.  The top step was much higher than the next one.  That uneven step was not a normal situation and took some getting used to.  Several people commented that they had stumbled going down it.

 step came into play on the third dive day in Malpelo, when leaving the diving area after lunch, even though I was holding on the backs of the booths beside the steps, the boat lurched (going between dive sites), I forgot about the uneven stairs in in the suddenness of that distracting situation, and wound up being thrown across the floor on to a sill between the dining room floor and salon carpeted areas.  That fall resulted in a huge hematoma on my back causing me to miss almost 2 days of diving!  Very little concern was shown about my fall although it was witnessed by nearly everyone.  The size of the swelling across my entire lower back where I landed on the sill was huge.  It took 10 hours of ice packs to begin to reduce the size slightly.  No accident report was made at the time.  In fact, I was asked to fill one out mere minutes before leaving the boat at the end of the trip.

The disappointing net result of this fall was a negative treatment of me and my subsequent diving by the crew.  It would take to much text to go into all the details of how this was manifested, but some of the most egregious transgressions included a bogus “rescue” attempt when I was trying to board the boat after a dive.  I had my foot on the ladder, my BCD unclipped, no fins, and safety sausage deflated when I was dragged away from the boat, stripped of my BCD and my AIR!!!!  Another indignity was the assignment of a dive master to shadow me and interrupt my dives thereafter. This action hurried me along during the dives not allowing photography of interesting subjects.  Furthermore, it created a “racing” pace that was totally inappropriate for taking photographs. 

I don’t think Sea Hunter dive masters knew anything about “plan your dive and dive your plan” OR “dive to your level of training and/or own profile.”  Their approach was more like, “round ‘em up and herd ‘em out.”  Also annoying was the refusal by both Wilson (dive master) and Amos to discuss these problems in order to sort out whatever misunderstanding had transpired.

In another incident, I was chided for wasting water by rinsing myself in my dive skin with the dive deck shower although other divers routinely washed all of their gear in that manner and with the fresh water hose in the same place.  There was also differential treatment of the teams on the two dive tenders.  The group on the tender that Amos Nachoum and Alex were assigned went to a greater variety of dive sites with better possibilities of seeing schools of hammerheads or other unusual creatures while those in our group were taken to less productive sites.  For example, that group participated in attaching the tags to the sharks while we did not even get to watch that activity even though it was supposed to the “highlight” of our “leader” Alex’s efforts.  In other words, our group was rather ignored with regard to the best diving opportunities and activities.

Another area that is delightful on most liveaboards is the FOOD!  That was not the case on the Sea Hunter.  Breakfast was nothing to remember.  3 choices of dry cereal, sour yoghurt, plain bread toast, some sort of bland ham, brand X cheese (that did not look or taste like cheese), watery scrambled eggs (maybe), sometimes other items, but NO CHOICES or special orders.  Lunches and dinners were not particularly creative with beans and rice being the ubiquitous staple over and over and over again. The tortillas were rubbery and not particularly tasty either. This was not the Costa Rican restaurant that would lure you thousands of miles to seek out a gourmet experience. 

Was there anything GOOD about this trip?  Well, yes, one thing.  We went over to the Argos boat, the recently added Undersea Hunter Group research ship where the Deep See submersible was docked and we took some dives.  I went to 300 feet with another guest and I and my husband dove to over 1000 feet together.  The Deep See holds two passengers and a pilot.  He was excellent and gave us a thorough briefing.  We saw very interesting creatures during these dives and took both digital photos and video.  Also, we received a DVD of more photos and video of the combined trips from ours and the rest of the group who made the dives.  The professionalism on the Argos was light years better than on the Sea Hunter.  In fact, they were hosting a group of British filmmakers who were creating a new Discovery documentary on Cocos Island.  It would have been nice to spend more time with them and learn about their adventures and activities.  I am sure they were treated with genuine respect and their needs were accommodated cheerfully. 

On the Sea Hunter, the area for camera equipment was serviceable with adequate charging stations, rinse buckets, towels, and other amenities one would expect.  Support for rebreathers was available.  Two divers had brought their own rebreathers.  Storage for dive gear and suits was adequate.  The dive deck was spacious.  The salon had a good flat screen TV and good AV equipment. There were comfortable sofas, a library, and videos to watch.  Décor was attractive.  AC worked pretty well except that we constantly used our personal electric fan in the cabin.  A PC with Photoshop was available for photographers to use.

Our bottom line is this: if you are looking for a good trip to Cocos Island, our personal experience was VERY positive on the Aggressor Okeanos.  We would recommend it highly and would be happy to go back on that boat.  Unless the Sea Hunter does some very thorough explaining and compensation for our lost investment, time, my injury (which my doctor says will cause pain and not absorb for 6 months), the Undersea Hunter Group liveaboards will reside on my “go at your own risk” list.  As for Amos Nachoum, he had a bad hand dealt by Sylvia Earle.  But, I am not willing to take any more chances unless some iron clad guarantees were offered – something Amos does not provide. We did NOT get what we paid for!!! Our expectations were NOT met!!!  I had considered his Antarctica trip for 2008 and chose NOT to put that decision off until after the Cocos/Malpelo trip as he requested.  Instead, I booked an Antarctic dive trip with Aurora Expeditions with whom I have traveled twice diving and sea kayaking with great results on the Polar Pioneer.  I am confident we will have a wonderful trip with them and will continue on from there to dive at Easter Island next Feb.-March.