Patrick Hamilton Walsh is on what looks like the adventure of a lifetime. The latest leg saw him diving under the ocean with his Nokia Lumia 800 and a Nokia N8. This is his story of what happened when he took a dive.
Some say that the oceans of this world are where the most beautiful wonders are to be found and the deep waters of the less developed regions on this planet are truly the great unknown. Therefore, in keeping with my ‘Nothing but a Nokia’ firsts, I decided that venturing into these waters would provide me with an ideal situation in which to test my newly acquired Nokia Lumia 800.
The words DIY and submarine in the one sentence would be enough to scare most people away, but for me this was the perfect opportunity to finally make a dream come true. Constructed by Karl (Ed: who ziplines from his house to the dock. That’s the life!) using three different sized spheres, the sub has been close to 900 metres deep whilst out on private adventures, but today we would go to only 350 metres under.
I pulled the Nokia Lumia 800 out of my pocket and, despite this being the maiden voyage of this still new phone, I was able to show Karl how the cameras in the new range of Nokia phones have developed since the days of the N8. He was impressed by the smooth operating functions and apps that the Nokia Lumia possessed.
Within a few minutes, we were bobbing around atop the Bonacca Ridge on the edge of the second longest reef in the world. The adventure that lay ahead would take us into the deep ocean to illuminate places that have never known any light – places human eyes have never seen. Places no Nokia had ever been.
It was incredible to experience the blue ocean of the surface fade to black as we descended deeper into the water and away from the light. The deeper we went the darker it got. As we submerged, the bright blue sky slowly faded to a navy as we plummeted down through the water until the blue was all gone, replaced by black. From that moment on, it would be all black everything.
The imperfect light conditions failed to prevent me from taking photos and video, as Karl, using a laser, pointed out unfamiliar variations of sea life as they swam across our path. The steeply sloped ocean bottom reminded me of what I imagine the surface of the moon to look like, as fine, pale silt puffed up each time a small rock would fall down the cliff side.
Karl is a guy that pretty much taught himself what he needed to know about submarines, before going off and building one, single-handedly, in his own backyard from some spheres and an old car, then this gives me the feeling that I was in the presence of someone pretty special. The fact that I had both Nokia devices along to document the experience for future reference, so I could share it with you guys, just made it all the better.
The next stop on the ‘Nothing but a Nokia’ tour of the world will be Bratislava, Slovakia before heading into Vienna, Austria. Please feel free to contribute to this next leg of my adventures on our facebook group ‘is: Nothing but a Nokia’ and ‘The Phoneographer’. Alternatively, you can follow me on twitter. If there are any parts of this world that you wish to see captured and explored using ‘Nothing but a Nokia’ then please let me know and I will do my best to make it happen.