Inside Scuba Issue #50

AuthorAuthor

Andy Deitsch & Byron Conroy
December 28, 2025

Welcome to Issue #50 of Inside Scuba

We hope you’ve had a wonderful Christmas filled with family, friends, and perhaps a bit of new dive gear under the tree! Welcome to the milestone 50th issue of Inside Scuba. We are releasing this edition during that unique, reflective window between Christmas and the New Year—the perfect time to sit back with a coffee (or something stronger) and think about the year of diving ahead.

In this issue, we’re leaning into that New Year spirit with a deep dive into intentionality. We’ve put together eight practical resolutions to help you become a more capable, calm, and thoughtful diver in 2026. We also explore the fine art of natural macro backgrounds and tackle the "big gear debate": do you actually need dedicated strobes for different types of shooting?

As we celebrate our 50th newsletter, we’d love for you to share this with your dive buddies as we all prepare to head into a brand-new year of exploration.

What’s happening in this edition?

New Year, New Intentions: 8 Resolutions to Become a More Capable Diver

Despite this, many divers claim to have mastered diving. They think they have seen it all and that there’s nothing left to learn. Often, diving then becomes stale. These divers haven’t actually learned it all; instead, they have become complacent and begun to close their eyes to what is around them, subsequently stopping their learning or progression.

The turn of a new year is a useful moment to pause and reflect—not in a dramatic way, but in a quiet, practical sense. How did you dive last year? What felt easy? What felt rushed or uncomfortable? Which of your dives did you find stressful or difficult?

New Year offers us the chance to make a resolution that is not about pressure or guilt, but about the intention to improve. Resolutions are about choosing to be a little more deliberate in how you engage with the sport so that, twelve months from now, you are a calmer, more capable, and more thoughtful diver than you are today. So, here are Andy’s and my top New Year’s resolutions for divers; maybe you can pick one for yourself?

Diving a 200ft wreck to find a pair of tanks on top. There is always more to see and more challenges to get yourself there.

Take a Training Course

One of the most obvious but also most valuable resolutions is to take a dive course. Many divers complete their entry-level certification and then rely entirely on experience to carry them forward. Experience is important, but you only learn what the dives you do allow you to learn, and most of us do the same types of diving time and again with little variety.

In each issue of our newsletter, we will curate some top dive news from around the world. Links to each of the original articles are available.

Maldives Maritime Journal: “Safari Vessel Yasawa Princess Catches Fire Near Kuda Anbaraa. All passengers and crew were safely rescued after a safari vessel caught fire near Kuda Anbaraa in Vaavu Atoll on Sunday evening, authorities confirmed. The vessel, identified as Yasawa Princess, reported the incident at approximately 17:54. Emergency responders, including police and fire services, were immediately dispatched to the scene and carried out a full evacuation of those on board. All passengers and crew were later transported safely to Felidhoo.”

Divernet: “Search for fish-collector CCR diver called off. A two-day air and sea search for a fish-collecting rebreather diver missing in the remote Coral Sea off Australia’s north-west coast has been suspended. Tim Bennett, 65, skipper of the dive-boat Clearwater, was reported missing at around 4.30pm on Monday, 15 December. He had failed to surface from a deep rebreather dive at Heralds Surprise Reef, about 280km south-east of Cairns in Queensland.”

Dive Magazine: “Irish diver’s fatal heart attack was not diving related, inquest hears. An inquest into the death of a scuba diver who died off the coast of County Donegal last summer has heard that he suffered a fatal heart attack, but it was due to natural causes and not a diving-related incident.”

Deeper Blue: “DEMA Dive Boat Act Letter Gains More Signatures. The Diving Equipment and Marketing Association has formally sent a letter to members of Congress advocating in support of the DIVE BOAT Act, a critical measure designed to address the unintended consequences of the Small Passenger Vessel Act (SPVA) on the United States dive industry. The letter was signed by DEMA and a coalition of 78 respected scuba retailers and dive industry professionals from across the nation.”

Divernet: “Diver and camera pioneer Elwyn Gates dies. Elwyn Gates, the US underwater-imaging technologist who founded Gates Underwater Products, has died two days after his 89th birthday.”

Deeper Blue: “‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ Ship Becomes Artificial Reef. The Black Pearl, the pirate ship that was featured in Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, was recently sunk off the Florida coast to become the region’s latest artificial reef. The 97-foot/30-meter, steel-hulled pirate-themed vessel now rests 6.01 nautical miles/11.13km southwest of St. Andrews Pass. Positioned in 75 feet/23 meters of water, with the top of the structure reaching 54 feet/16.5 meters below the surface, the site is accessible to Open Water Certified divers and began attracting marine life within days.”

Divernet: “Massive coral-restoration testing on GBR. What is said to have been one of the world’s largest restoration tests on a coral reef ecosystem has been carried out by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) during a mass-spawning event on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The objective was to create a means of fast-tracking coral recovery on degraded reefs whenever action is required.”

Deeper Blue: “Sargassum Populations Show Marked Decline. A new study has shown a sharp decline in long-established Sargassum populations across the northern Sargasso Sea and parts of the Gulf of Mexico. The research was led by the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science with contributions from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Sea Education Association, Eckerd College and Florida Atlantic University.”

Mastering Natural Backgrounds in Underwater Macro Photography

Underwater macro photography is often taught as a subject-driven discipline. We are trained to find the critter, focus on the eye, manage strobe power, and move on. For many photographers, this approach works well enough to produce sharp records of small marine life. But if you look closely at the images that stay with you—the ones that feel complete rather than simply correct—the background is rarely an afterthought. In the strongest macro photographs, the background does as much storytelling as the subject itself. It provides context, balance, and visual flow. Mastering natural backgrounds is one of the biggest steps you can take to move your macro work from competent to compelling.

While this article is about natural backgrounds, I must preface it by saying I have used artificial backgrounds widely in my older macro photography work, and I still fully believe that mastering them is a helpful way to develop your understanding of backgrounds much faster. However, photography goes through fashions and trends. We’ve been through a period of gaudy-looking artificial backgrounds and come full circle back to a more natural style; a great natural background will always beat an artificial one.

A simple subject with a natural background and enough depth of filed to tell the story.

Why Backgrounds Matter More Than You Think

The background sets the emotional tone of a macro image. A perfectly sharp nudibranch against a cluttered or distracting background feels busy and unresolved. The same subject against a soft gradient of color or a clean natural texture suddenly looks deliberate. Backgrounds guide the viewer’s eye; they decide whether attention stays on the subject or wanders away. In underwater macro, the background also communicates habitat. A goby on clean sand tells a different story than the same goby framed by coral rubble or seagrass.

Dedicated Strobes For Macro And Wide Angle. Optimisation Or Unnecessary Expenditure?

By Alex Mustard and Matthew Sullivan

In this article from The Underwater Photography Show, we'll be diving into one of everybody's favorite topics—should you be buying more gear. Well ’tis the season, and all that. Specifically, we're discussing whether it's useful to have dedicated strobes for macro and separate dedicated strobes for wide-angle, or if one quality set of strobes can get the job done for everything. We're going to explore both sides of this debate.

The Argument for Dedicated Strobes

You can definitely see both sides of the argument. As a strobe manufacturer or camera shop, the line to push would be that everyone needs different strobes for macro and wide-angle.

Reasons to Choose Separate Strobes:

  • Optimization: Excellence in underwater photography is often achieved through the optimization of gear and approach. Having dedicated strobes for a specific job clearly follows this route of optimization.

  • Manufacturer Design: Some products on the market are designed specifically for one purpose, almost forcing you into a choice.

    • For example, Backscatter's offerings include the Mini Flash for macro and the HF1 for wide-angle. The Mini Flash wouldn't be a serious tool for high-quality wide-angle shots, and the HF1s can be too bulky for macro and don't turn down enough, often being too bright even at low ISO and a reasonably open aperture.

    • We've seen this trend with other companies as well, including some of the Chinese brands and Kraken, which have made both big and small lithium strobes in recent years.

  • Bulk and Maneuverability for Macro: Macro-centric strobes are often significantly smaller, taking up less space and potentially being easier to maneuver.

  • Strobe Shape and Light Quality:

    • Strobes that are shaped like cake tins (shorter) rather than beer cans (longer) are easier to maneuver, especially when you want to front-light subjects in macro or super macro situations by sliding them next to the port.

    • Many macro strobes have straight flash tubes, which makes it easier to shape the light or achieve harsher light for more contrast and textures, compared to the big round flash tubes on most powerful strobes.

  • Convenience and Optimization: If you can afford it (both monetarily and in terms of travel space), having both types of strobes allows you to really optimize your gear around what you are doing—just as you would change lenses and ports when switching to wide-angle.

Our Instagram Spotlight is back, and this week we’re diving into the feed of Bella Zandoná. Originally from Brazil and now calling the Pacific Northwest home, Bella is a talented underwater photographer and Marelux Ambassador. Her work offers a look at the life beneath the surface in the cold, nutrient-rich waters of the PNW and around the world.

Summary

As 2025 draws to a close, we want to say a huge thank you for following along with us through fifty issues of Inside Scuba. Whether you are spending the next few days planning your next big expedition or simply enjoying some downtime before the New Year’s celebrations begin, we wish you a safe and happy transition into 2026.

May your visibility be clear, your buoyancy be effortless, and your "once-in-a-lifetime" trips be frequent in the coming year. Happy New Year to you all—we'll see you on the other side!

Andy & Byron

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