I was going on a dive one weekend earlier this year out of San Diego and my buddy and I start descending. I started turning on my strobes, taking off my dome port cover, positioning the arms and readying the camera for the dive.

As we got to the bottom, an adult sea lion comes whizzing toward us and starts swimming spirals around us. I’m scrambling to finally turn my camera on when it sits perfectly on the sand, back arched and head forward, picture perfect like a performing sea lion at Sea World. It is easily within arm’s reach, it’s in the perfect spot.

I raise my camera up and…black screen. “No way!” I thought. “I know the battery is charged, and the leak detector says the housing isn’t flooded.” And then it hits me. I turn the camera around and through the dome port I see:

“OLYMPUS”

It happens to the best of us dude!

Wildlife, airplanes, and underwater