Friend and professional photographer Jonathan Bird recently took a 10 person group to Antarctica aboard the Russian ship Aleksey Marychev for above and below water exploration. They enjoyed some great dives including a 70 minute encounter with a curious pair of Leopard seals. Unique encounters included penguins, icebergs, whales and even some wreck diving!

With water temperatures ranging from 30 to 34 degrees these are some of the harshest diving conditions on Earth. At right Jonathan poses on the ice with his Ikelite D300 housing after a macro dive south of the polar circle in 30 degree water. The curious Leopard seal was captured using his Nikon 12-24mm lens behind our 8" dome port with dual Substrobe DS125's.

Jonathan spent some of his trip working on his television show Jonathan Bird's Blue World which airs within the United States on local public broadcasting stations. You can also learn more about Jonathan's work on the Jonathan Bird Productions website.

An interesting bit of trivia, the first underwater photos taken with production Ikelite Strobes came from Antarctica. Four Substrobe 150's accompanied photographers on an Antarctic research mission way back in 1978.

In continuation of the tradition our newest strobe—the Substrobe DS160—has also been put to the Antarctic test. Norbert Wu returned this month from an extended trip South and reports that his new DS160's performed flawlessly. Ikelite remains Norbert's most trusted brand of strobes to capture the world under the ice.

This weekend we will be at the Beneath the Sea show held in the Meadowlands Convention Center in Secaucus, NJ. Several of our latest housing models will be on display amongst a sampling of our full line of products. If you are able to drop by Booth 537 be sure to check out our two newest LED lights—the C-Lite 8 LED for exploration and the Pro-V8 LED for videography.

We'll also be introducing a new adapter to attach the W-20 Wide Angle Conversion lens and other 67mm threaded lenses to our line of ULTRAcompact digital housings for Olympus cameras. This adapter works with Ikelite brand housings for Olympus Stylus 550WP, 1030SW, 1050SW, Tough 6000 and Tough 8000 cameras. Product #9306.78 can be ordered through any authorized Ikelite dealer and will be available mid-April.

We're working on a slew of new housings for all of the recently released camera models from Nikon, Canon, Sony, Olympus, Fuji and JVC. Watch the "What's New" section of the home page for the most up-to-date information. Or follow IkeliteUSA on Twitter for a direct flow of Ikelite-related announcements! More soon!!!