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About 10 years ago I was leading a somewhat hairy diving expedition to Palau. We had $100,000 worth of camera gear, 16 rebreathers and 2,000 pounds of white, granular sodalime packed in 50 plastic containers. Apparently, sodalime, which is used as a CO2 "scrubber" in rebreathers, looks a lot like crack cocaine to Micronesian FXVWRPV RIÀFLDOV $IWHU VHYHUDO KRXUV LQ a pale white interrogation room and after producing magazine assignment OHWWHUV DQG RIÀFLDO GRFXPHQWV IURP Palau's Minister of Tourism, we were ÀQDOO\ UHOHDVHG XQGHU WKH ZDWFKIXO \HW suspicious eye of the island authorities. Ironically, as we walked into the streets, we had to dodge large splats of blood-red betel nut juice all over the pavement. If you've never traveled to the magical land of Betel Nut, you may not know that it's a legal narcotic chewed by a large portion of the population. It also turns your teeth, mouth, and lips blood-red, creating a vampire smile Anne Rice would be proud of. Although I've never chewed the stuff, it's reported to deliver quite a bounce in one's step.
With a bit of luck and a rather large "deposit" at customs we brought the rebreathers into the country and loaded them on our Mother Ship, the Palau Aggressor. The beauty of rebreather diving, besides not belching a humongous trail of bubbles, is that the gas supply remains constant regardless of depth. The systems we were using yielded 90-minutes underwater whether we were at 30 feet or 100 feet. I was planning on using the extensive bottom time to shoot an obscene number of LPDJHV RI WKH PDMHVWLF OLRQÀVK (QGHPLF WR WKH ,QGR 3DFLÀF WKH OLRQÀVK LV D photo prize. They're not elusive but they're not the easiest to capture RQ ÀOP HLWKHU HVSHFLDOO\ ZLWK SURSHU exposure and compelling composition. I was determined to use the rebreather advantage and take home a bag full of awesome OLRQÀVK VKRWV $ KDOI PLOH HDVW of the famous Blue Corner, where muscular sharks glide effortlessly in four-knot currents, I found a cave at 90 feet with four pimped RXW OLRQÀVK , VSHQW DQ HQWLUH KRXU WKHUH going well into decompression, but I got shots from every angle. I ascended to 20 feet, rode out my deco and still had gas in the tank to spare. Success was mine.
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