(From left) Becca Hurley, Robby Myers and Ashley Annin shoot at Alexander Springs.

Thanks to Roger Roy, the gear editor of Scuba Diving and Sport Diver, I got to go diving again during my internship! I went with Roger, Ashley, Robby and the Dive Group digital editor, Becca Hurley, to Alexander Springs to test underwater cameras, including a SeaLife camera, a DSLR in waterproof housing, GoPros and and an Olympus point-and-shoot.

Robby takes a photo of Ashley with a point-and-shoot camera in waterproof housing.

Alexander Springs is a smaller spring and swimming area in the Ocala National Forest. Despite going to school in Gainesville, which is about a half-hour drive from Ocala, I’d never been there before, so I was excited for the dive.

We met at the office at 7:45 a.m. and loaded up my Jeep with tanks, gear and a rolling cart. Then we caravanned an hour to the spring.

It was already pretty crowded when we got there, so we got our gear on quickly to try and beat dive classes to the boil.

A bass swims in the beautiful Alexander Springs with Ashley and Becca diving in the background.

After playing around with the cameras we tried out full-face masks, which were a little bit weird to me. It just doesn’t feel right to be able to breathe regularly underwater!

The spring is beautiful. It’s clear as glass and full of friendly fish, bright green eelgrass and white sand. It was great to work with the different cameras and capture my co-workers in their element.