David Doubilet and dive guide Colby discuss HMI light cable connection. Photograph by Jen Hayes. (Click image to enlarge.)

I am working on an assignment called Artificial Reefs. These structures occur on the bottom of the sea by design, by accident or sometimes the unfortunate product of war. In many cases artificial reefs provide valuable structure and habitat where there is little to none.

We started in Morehead City, North Carolina, the gateway to graveyard of the Atlantic. We made 4 deep offshore dives to discover wrecks draped in schools of fish but a bottom swell dropped the visibility to minus 40 feet, lees than marginal for strong images. Day 3 we headed out into the Atlantic and high seas turned the boats around. Staring at the weather charts we made a command decision to move south to the Keys for calmer, clearer water. We packed the gear and parked the jeep at Raleigh Durham Airport in long-term parking and flew to Miami with a cameraman in tow.

We battled to rent the absolute last minivan in the sunshine state. The van was big, blue, equipped with 30 orange juice encrusted cup holders (we counted) and very bad brakes that whined, squealed and grabbed during our drive down the Overseas Highway to Key Largo. Annoyingly, bad brakes appear to be a reoccurring theme in this road trip. Key largo is famous for John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, part of the National Marine Sanctuary; kitsch shell shops, stone crabs, Humphrey Bogart and new and old artificial reefs.

Photographic assistant Jennifer Hayes backs up digital image files in hotel HQ. Photograph by David Doubilet.

The hotel room was quickly transformed into digital HQ. HMI movie lights shipped to Quiescence Dive shop ahead of us were tracked down, assembled in the shop garage and tested with their new generator. Both lights failed – not a single flicker. We tested settings, light heads, ballasts, cables, nothing made any difference and darkness prevailed. Things were not looking good until an “aha” moment when we plugged a nearby shop vac into the power strip to even out the load on the generator. Presto—we had lights. Generator, lights, 300 feet of cable and shop vacuum were loaded onto our work boat. Headed to sea, stay tuned. —David Doubilet

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