New Year's Eve Pikes 2013

The last beautiful and calm dive in 2013: the New Year's Eve pikes in Lake Murner See. Enjoy the nice impressions from the final dive (61 mins, 6°C)  of the year just bygone.

Murner New Year's Eve Pikes (view on YouTube)

This video shows that next to suitable and willing actors you cannot get away with the following two important indegrients for getting good shots: light and sight.

So when it comes to light: the money I spent on my two video lights Sola 2000F from Light & Motion was spent very well. Appearently these lights are quite an improvement for scene lighting. Even with the overcast sky the pike in their environment show fine colors. You know what? I rarely had so far so much fun grading the underwater raw footage ... because I mainly just had to adjust the contrast, while colors were already almost fine, apart from really small adjustments.

Murner See UW Landscape and Life (Video)

Murner See UW Landscape and Life (watch on YouTube)

Murner See

The Lake Murner See is a former brown coal open pit. Many years ago a renaturation program was started. Part of it was to slowly and carefully flood the pit in a controlled manner. Due to its history, the waters of Murner See are still comparably sour: pH values in the range from 5.1 to 5.4 in the northern region around the entry «Aussichtsturm» (literally: «Look-out Tower»). However, sight is often more than fair; depending on weather and diver strain sight can be even incredibly good ... just these photos demonstrate. We now even see the first fish: perches, pikes, and even a catfish.