myTobago – your questions, review and comment about Tobago

Having completed articles on the popular holiday pastimes of birding and fishing, I am now keen to produce a full guide to another popular Tobago sport - diving.

If there are any experts out there with good experience of diving on Tobago and who would be prepared to write, co-write or act as techincal advisor to a full myTobago guide to the subject, please contact me at [email protected].

hi steve

i could comment on the sites i've dived and the general conditions if thats of any use?

regards
paul

Hi Steve,

did you ever post my piece on diving Tobago? I covered everywhere from the Sisters, Little Tobago, to the wreck of the 'MV Maverick', to Speyside and both the Atlantic and Caribbean sides?

Check out some of these URLs for dive site descriptions:

http://www.tobagodiveexperience.com/

and we used these guys to do all our diving:

http://www.worldofwatersports.com/diving.html

Hope this helps.

Bren.

Hi Bren

Your report was too good to simply post as a report in the forum. It is going to be used as part of a full feature on the main site. By coincidence, only this afternoon I emailed a well-known divemaster on Tobago who is giving us the technical info for a general guide to diving on the island. This will be followed by a dive guide, a list of all dive shops and facilities and then a couple of visiting diver reports - of which yours is one. I am frantically searching around for good high quality underwater photos to illustrate the article with and this is proving a bit of a bxxxxr.

I don't think anything will be published until I return to the UK in March, but I will drop you a line as soon as were ready to publish. Thanks for your interest and support.

Hey Steve,

A few of our troop from YD (see link below) have, in the last six months, returned from Tobago and they may have some underwater/diving shots. Let me ask them and see what we can drum up for you!

Cheers,

Bren.

http://www.yorkshire-divers.co.uk

Bren

That would be brilliant. Your article seemed so good and relevant that I want to post it verbatim, but at 3,500 words it would look awfully boring without illustration. I will probably have to split it across several pages to keep page download times reasonable, but it really needs illustration to break the text up. All the content of the diving section is now almost fully organised - illustration is the only area outstanding, so anybody who can help with good, high quality, interesting diving shots of Tobago - HELP!!! They can be above water or below, but simply need to be pertinent to diving. Digital preferably.

Hi Steve,
I have finally put titles on the photos I took in November and the CD is on its way to you it should go some way to padding out Brens report and e one I did. Not that they need padding.

Regards
Kevin

Thanks Kevin. I guess it will be there for me to enjoy when I get back - unless my house/pet-sitter cares to enjoy them while we're away. I shall be having a couple of meetings with diving gurus while over in Tobago, so hopefully will be able to get something together when I get back.

Thanks for your support.

Hi Steve,
How is the MyTobagoDive diving progect going?
I'm just about to start planning this years trip and Tobago looks like it's going to win again. That' the third year in a row.

Regards
Kevin

PS thanks for posting the "local call" I posted it to a Trini friend and he said its only because you can never get a long distance line out of Tobago.

Hi Kevin

Sorry, but its not going too well. I get the impression that I'm going to have to do the research and write it myself, then let dive experts edit and correct it, rather than the other way around. It's the next article on the list, but I must get this year's accommodation reviews out of the way first.

Don't worry - it's certainly not forgotten. Thanks for your photos - there's some good stuff there, but I'm still very short of high quality photos to illustrate the entire article. So, if any readers have got really good underwater diving photos taken around Tobago, PLEASE, PLEASE, contact me.

Steve

Not sure how I have managed to miss this topic before!

As you already know I have put quite a few photos including underwater photos at [Editor: Broken link removed]

The photos are rather green but since putting them on the website I have run some of them through Paint Shop and the colours are far more relastic than shown on the web page.

I also have quite a few QuickTime movies taken underwater. They are great even though they suffer in the same way from the green tint (I don`t know any way of correcting this) However thay are roughly 10MB each so this might be a problem.

Please feel free to use any of the photos and let me know if you would like a copy of the movies.

Dave

Hi Dave

You've got some nice stuff there, both above and below the waterline. The green isn't too much of a problem, I can carry out the adjustments in PhotoShop. Have you got a CD-burner? I would love copies if you don't mind sharing them, but need them in the highest resolution possible. Just let me know and I will gladly send you a blank CDR.

I would love copies if you don't mind sharing them, but need them in the highest resolution possible. Just let me know and I will gladly send you a blank CDR.

Steve,

Let me have an address for you and I will send a copy.

Dave

Dave - you're a star! Address following by Private Message.

hi i stayed in tobago august 2003 and found that for a first dive you should go to the hilton hotel dive centre. it has small pool for practicing then they take you to kariwak reef. for more experienced divers like my dad(he's done them all over the world) they organise wreck dives and trips to speyside. the staff are also really friendly. as it was my first dive i was really impressed and the prices were reasonable
i would highly reccomend it!
katie 13

Steve/Dave,

I have a photoshop action that has been specially designed (not by me) to remove the green tint (actually add back in the red that has been lost with depth) If you think that this would be useful then let me know and I will send it to you.

Peter

p.s. I spent ages tinkering with photoshop to try and do this myself, and couldn't get anything like the results that this does.

Hi Peter

Thanks - it's got to be worth a try. Photoshop 8.0 has improved the photos dramatically through simple use of AutoLevels. Any that become ideal candidates for use on the site will be tweaked individually. Anything that can help would be more than appreciated, so if you don't mind, please send a copy to [email protected]

Thanks a lot - your help is much appreciated.

Hi Steve/Peter,
If the green tint tool works can I have a copy please. I took some phots on the Scylla last Saturday and it looks like I have been diving in pea soup

Many thanks

Kevin

I have just found the link to the underwater photo correction action for photoshop, it is as below.

http://pt010.da-kine.info/adjustments.htm

The page takes you through the individual steps, but the action as a whole can be downloaded from the bottom of the page.

I hope that this is of use to people.

Kevin, What was the Scylla like? Did you get good photos?

Peter

Hi Peter,
The Scylla dive was very good. I got 45 minutes and that was a bit of a rush as she is quite big. The buddy I was with is a bit of a wreck penetration fiend, so we were in and out of lots of the compartments. It is a good start to wreck diving as the holes are a good size (but watch out for the sharp edges) and in many cases you can just see the exits from the entry point.

It's still very busy there were 4 hard boats and 3 RIBs the Saturday morning I was there and we did not do the bridge as there was a queue to get in.

The vis was OK but there are still a lot of partials in the water and which caused a lot of backscatter, I did get a few reference photos as we went round for future dives.

Regards
Kevin