It’s 2015!

Happy New Year!  All of us on the Underwater Sombrero project team would like to wish you a happy and prosperous new year!  As we look forward to the coming year, we can’t wait for our next expedition to Sombrero, tentatively planned for October 2015.  Be sure to check back soon as well to see more of the images we’ve captured on our most recent short outing to the reefs just weeks ago.   Here’s a quick teaser from that outing:

We’ve still got a ways to go before we’re ready to publish and we’d love it if you’d like to help.  Please take a moment to visit our funding incentives page to see how you can do so.

As always, we thank you for your support!

Steve, Dee, Elizabeth, Dennis and Robert – The Underwater Sombrero Project Team

Happy National Lighthouse Day!

On this date in 1789 Congress passed legislation which provided for the establishment and support of lighthouses and other navigational aids.  One of which was installed on our favorite key!

Perhaps you could help us celebrate National Lighthouse Day and help support our Underwater Sombrero project by purchasing a print of the Sombrero Lighthouse!

As always, we thank you for your support!

Steve, Dee, Elizabeth, Dennis and Robert – The Underwater Sombrero Project Team

Celebrating Word Oceans Day 2014!

Happy World Oceans Day 2014 everyone!  Thanks for taking a minute to check out our website.  There’s lots of information on our project here so please be sure to look around.

As you go through your day today (and hopefully everyday) be sure to take a minute and reflect on how important our oceans are to life on this planet and how they touch on your lives daily, even if you’re a thousand miles from the nearest one.   The ocean’s influence touches everything from the food you eat to the air you breathe to the weather you experience.

The Underwater Sombrero project team will be celebrating World Ocean Day today with a series of images from our project shared on our social media pages.  We hope you’ve liked the Facebook page and are following the Twitter Feed!  Watch for the hashtags: #WorldOceansDay and #OurOcean2014!

Our project is #crowdfunded, so if you think you’d like to help us out, check out our Funding Incentives page.   Thanks for visiting, and again, Happy World Oceans Day!

Steve, Dee, Elizabeth, Dennis and Robert – The Underwater Sombrero Project Team

MAC Instructor Show

Underwater Sombrero photographer Steve Weigold is a photography instructor for the Middletown Arts Center in Middletown Ohio and is being featured along with the center’s other instructors in the upcoming Instructors Exhibit.

Images from the Underwater Sombrero project will be on display and on sale at the exhibit!  Sales of any of the prints will go directly to support the project.

We hope you join us for the opening reception Friday August 23, 2013 starting at 6pm.  Light refreshments will be served.

Check out Dive Board!

Everyone, be sure to check out our friends at Dive Board, your online scuba logbook!  We’ll be using their services to log and share the Underwater Sombrero project dives and they’ve been very helpful in helping us spread the word on our project.  If you’re a diver and interested in a place to log and share your dive information online, or even an observer with an interest in reading more about dives and seeing the pictures and videos, you need to check them out!

Reef Relief!

Exciting news everyone!   We’ve been in contact with the awesome organization Reef Relief and we’re pleased to report that we’ve started working on the logistics for our book to help support their mission!  Once we get past the publishing stage, the plan is for a portion of the sale price of the book to be donated to Reef Relief to support their mission of education and preservation.  Be sure to check out their blog post on the project!

As we get closer to publication and have a better idea of cost and publication price, we’ll have a better idea of what the actual contribution will be, but we’re excited about this step and wanted to share!

Keep in mind that our Kickstarter funding drive is only in support of the publishing expenses for the book.  Kickstarter does not allow projects to be used to benefit causes like Reef Relief, so we have to be careful about how we present our efforts.  Assistance to Reef Relief comes after the book is published and ready for sale.

We plan to include some information on the organization in our book.  The coral reefs of our world are very fragile and it’s through the work of organizations like Reef Relief that the public is educated about the need to preserve these wonders of our world.  It’s only logical that our book on the reefs of Sombrero Key would help this mission!

Wondering About the Holidays?

Wondering about a gift for that special someone for this upcoming holiday season? Perhaps the Underwater Sombrero project can help!

We’d love to say that we’ll have all of our work done, prints made and the book published by the 2012 Holidays, but we’re afraid that isn’t going to happen.   Since the diving and the photography is currently planned for late December 2012, we’ll barely have the photography done before Christmas.  Publishing is planned for March 2013 but only if we can get the funding raised!

What we can do though is provide a beautiful Certificate of Support, featuring our colorful project logo, customized for presentation as a present from you, suitable for framing, which will arrive in time for the holidays if you act soon! We’ll ship it to you so you can present it to them.   All you need to do is support the Underwater Sombrero Project for at least $10 and then let us know that you want your certificate of support as a gift for the holidays!

If you like, we’ll also customize your contributor recognition in the book and on materials to reflect your gift.  Then your gift recipient can wait in anticipation for the delivery of prints and books!

It’s a Challenge!

Exciting News!!   One of our awesome project backers is going to help us run a special challenge!!   For the next 60 hours, starting Sunday 9/16 at noon, an awesome anonymous backer is going to MATCH ALL PLEDGES up to a combined total of $1000!!!  Yes, ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS!   Wow!  Come on everyone!  This is just the boost our project needs!  Pledges start at just $1 Visit the Kickstarter Project Page right now to pledge!

Note:  Please remember that this is NOT a contest.  There is no prize involved.  Kickstarter does not permit the use of contests to increase support for projects.