The Wreck Hunters: Dive to the Wreck of the USS Bass
This dvd is a mixed bag to me. The video gives a distinctly amateur feel compared to other videos that I`ve become accustomed to and the narrator tries to give it a dramatic telling and pretty much fails. But, there is a definate reality to this video. It isn`t slick, the people in the video are divers not "stars". They look like divers and act like them. They have fun on the way. It`s great to watch the "advanced navigation equipment" in use (a beer on a stick hung in front of the helmsman. They help each other set up for the dive and you can definately feel the cramped and somewhat chaotic conditions on a dive boat as a group of divers get ready to hit the water.
It`s a short video at 34 minutes but they still get some excellent background on the submarine, including footage of her role as a U-boat in an old movie.
The biggest disappointment for me was the failure to show the dive site as a whole with a map, drawing or photo mosaic. You only get to see bits and pieces of the wreck as the divers move over the site. Which is of course how you`ll see it if you ever dive it. But, if you`re interested in going to this 160 foot deep wreck, you wouldn`t be able to plan your dive from this video. They show you some excellent pictures and a model of the Bass in one piece, but it`s in two now. As they guide you around the wreck, they will show and describe the features including penetration points. And they often flash back to what those spots looked like when the boat was in service with archival photos.
I guess it comes down to this. The video lacks focus. It has a lot of historical information but the Bass isn`t really a historic wreck. She was a submarine built while the Navy was developing its ideas of what a fleet sub should be so she wasn`t an especially successful boat and she was finally sunk as target practice. It takes you to what looks to be an excellent dive site, but doesn`t show you the site as a whole. You never get an overall feel for the wreck.
If you have another source that shows you what the whole wreck is like, then this video would be an excellent supplement to it.
www.wreckdivingbooks.com says that Captain Lou has more videos coming. I`m hoping that the Bass video is his learning movie and that he builds from it. If he does more on subjects I`m interested in, I`ll give him another try. BUT, I`ll be hoping for improvement and if he stays at this level, I`d probably stop unless I was prepping to dive a wreck that he`s documented and needed more source material.
You can find it on Amazon.com of course
http://www.amazon.com/Wreck-Hunters-Dive-USS-Bass/dp/B00079RC1E/ref=sr_1_1/ 103-2697282-5679866?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1178429124&sr=1-1
or
http://www.wreckdivingbooks.com/multimedia.htm
I just found www.wreckdivingbooks.com and ordered some items from them. The selection is very interesting and I stumbled across titles that I didn`t find just searching diving on Amazon. But when I plugged them into Amazon, up they came though some were out of stock there. I guess it`s a matter of the right search terms.