We will be having another social get-together at Dive Sports on Tuesday night, April 21. We had a great time at the last one, so we think another is in order. We have no events planned….just an opportunity for all the area divers to get together and chat and have some fun. Terry Briscoe and Phil Hutchins are providing barbeque and chicken and we will get all of the side items and soft drinks. Plan to drop by around 6:00PM on Tuesday and enjoy a little fellowship with you local dive buddies.
I guess you have noticed, but I have not been making my normal blog posts over the past several weeks. After lots of cat-scans and several MRI’s, I have learned the the severe pain in my left arm and shoulder is the result of spine and disc problems. Unfortunately, the condition has made work on the computer VERY painful. After filling the days online orders, I just can’t force myself to spend the time working on the blog. I am on schedule to get the problem cured, but the pain is still here. Please cut me a little slack if I don’t post as often as I should.
There are many things that could be considered “over the top” at The Palm Resort Atlantis Hotel in Dubai. The gazillion dollar resort is built on a completely man-made group of islands known as the Palm Islands. Fashioned to resemble a palm leaf, the island is the result of a United Arab Emirates initiative to utilize state wealth to expand developable shorelines and to provide a place for the richest people of the world to retreat for a little rest and relaxation. To many around the world, the opulence is an in-your-face reminder that most of the countries of the world are exporting massive amounts of hard-earned money in exchange for oil; which is then used by the oil-rich countries for boondoggles like Palm Island. Now, the resort is getting even more pressure because of Sammy the Whale Shark.
The shallow waters around the man-made Palm Island are not very conducive to the survival of a migratory species like the whale shark. In August of last year, a small female whale shark was spotted near the island and fishermen feared that the animal was in distress due to water conditions. The owners of the Palm Atlantis resort responded by capturing the shark and placing it in the gigantic lagoon at the hotel. From the beginning, they promised to simply provide the shark with a protected place to recover from the stress and to provide around-the-clock protection and medical care. From the moment of capture, they insisted that the shark would be released.
Pressure is now building for the hotel to do exactly as they have promised. Officials from wildlife preservation organizations all over the world say that the risk of releasing the animal now are far smaller than the continued risk of maintaining the shark in this captive environment. However, there is fear that the resort is moving extremely slow on the promise because the visitors to the hotel simply love seeing this majestic animal. Simply put, the Sammy the Whale Shark is good for business.
While resort management claims that the circumstances around the capture were necessary because of the immediate stress that the shark was experiencing, some employees of the resort say that management intended to capture a whale shark all along. Regardless of the motives and no matter what the current circumstances are, support for immediate release is building. We will provide updates as more information is released about this situation.
“Your Scuba Training Starts Today” with DiveSports. With warmer weather right around the corner, now is the perfect time to get started on the adventure of a lifetime, Scuba Diving. In just two weekends, you can become a certified scuba diver…for life! Scuba Lessons the DiveSports way are fun and exciting. First, you’ll need to register for a course at our retail store; you’ll then go home with your PADI Open Water Diver Crew Pack, which contains your textbook, dive tables, a logbook, and a few other items. You’ll read your textbook before the first day of your class, so that when you arrive, we can get under the water as soon as possible. On the first day of your PADI Open Water Class, we’ll spend just a few hours in our on site classroom reviewing the home study material, then you get into the swimming pool to start learning the skills to become a safe and competent scuba diver. On the second day of your class, we’ll spend more time in the classroom and in the pool, then you’ll be ready to go diving in a real open water environment.
During the second weekend of your Open Water Class, you will travel to an open water dive site, where you will put the skills you learned in the swimming pool to the test under real diving conditions. You will conduct four “checkout” dives over the course of two days under the direct supervision of your instructor. During those dives, you’ll demonstrate the skills you learned in the swimming pool, and you will also learn a few skills that are unique to diving in open water. At the completion of the weekend, you’ll earn the title of “Open Water Scuba Diver.” The Open Water Diver certification will be your passport to scuba diving all over the world.
To help you become a certified scuba diver, we are currently offering a discounted tuition special on any regularly scheduled Open Water Class at Dive Sports. The tuition portion of the course regularly sells for $220, but for a limited time, you can purchase the tuition for ONLY $99. Thats a savings of over $120 off of the regular tuition price, a savings you could put toward the purchase of your personal equipment, a wetsuit, or even an entire package of your very own scuba equipment.
To find out more about the Open Water Scuba Course and tuition special at DiveSports, give us a call anytime between 9am-6pm Monday thru Saturday, or you can check out our website for more complete course details.
Artificial reefs certainly play a gigantic role for those of us who enjoy scuba diving in the Florida panhandle. Famous scuttled shipwrecks such as the Black Bart in Panama City, the Three Barges in Destin, and the world famous USS Oriskany in Pensacola have provided hours of fun for scuba divers and millions of dollars in visitor revenue for the local communities. The ongoing artificial reef program all along the panhandle coast moves steadily forward, with additional efforts planned for 2009 and beyond. There is even a special non-profit organization, Reef Ball Foundation, dedicated to the expansion of artificial reefs. Of course, not all artificial reefing efforts are as successful as those listed here, and there is considerable debate as to the importance of artificial reefing on ocean fisheries.
Since the origin of the idea of depositing structures on the ocean bottom to enhance fish life, there has been a scientific question that is asked many times over. Does an artificial reef actually increase the sea life in a given area, or does it simply act as a magnet that draws existing sea life to the new reef? Clearly, the answer to this question is not yet proven, but the debate is active, and sometimes heated, on both sides of the issue. There is no doubt, the number of individual fish species expands when artificial reefing efforts are undertaken. This is evident on any of the successful artificial reefs. The successful ones certainly seem to indicate that reefing is a good idea. But not all artificial reefing efforts are successful.
I wrote earlier on this blog about the misfortune with the Atlantic City Reef using abandoned subway cars. The state of Florida is still paying the cost of the damages for the use of millions of automobile and truck tires in an artificial reefing project. The state of Alabama saw less than perfect results from the use of old automobiles as an artificial reef structure.
Despite the damage from some of the unsuccessful artificial reefing efforts, most scuba divers and fishermen would argue that shipwrecks, oil drilling platforms, bridge rubble, and other similar materials make wonderful fish attractions in our local oceans. We are not dealing with the dominant scientific questions, we are simply observing the improvement we see in the fish population as a result of reefing efforts.
We would love to hear your comments on this issue. Please share your thought in the comments section of this post.
Officials of the Discovery Bay at the Minnesota Zoo are getting increasingly excited about the arrival of a new baby dolphin. The mother-to-be, Allie, will be the first to deliver a newborn calf since the death of three dolphins in 2006. The April birth will be the start of a complete rebuilding program for the zoo, and no precautions are being overlooked. Each month, Allie receives an ultrasound test to measure the progress of the calf. Trainers are working to make sure that the mother is comfortable around human trainers and that she is accustomed to moving from one holding pen to another. To keep the public informed on the progress and the care of Allie, they have created a special blog to document the weekly happenings as they prepare for this important birth. You can use the link below to visit this special blog.
The exploits of scuba divers Joseph Hartranft and Yessic Spencer offer some valuable learning opportunities for anyone who is willing to benefit from their diving story. Unfortunately, neither of these two men will know about any valuable lessons that result from such study. They both died in November of 2008 in a scuba diving accident that should have never happened, on a dive that should never have taken place.
The dive that took the lives of these two men in an underwater cave in Hudson, Florida is a dive that should never have been made. Cave diving requires intense training, planning, skill, preparation, and experience. Neither of these two men had what it takes for such a difficult dive; and neither seemed willing to heed the advice of friends with much more experience and much more respect for the necessity of proper training.
In the months leading up to this fateful dive, Mr. Hartranft had integrated himself into the local north Florida cave diving community, despite his lack of training and certification for the types of dives that he often openly discussed with friends and on online scuba technical diving chat boards. Mr. Spencer, the apparent “leader” on this dive had the most basic level of cave diving certification, far less than was necessary for this dive. Common sense would surely indicate that both understood the importance of following the rules of safe and proper cave diving, but they apparently felt the rules did not apply to them. I remember reading a particular post where Mr. Hartranft chided and openly criticized another diver for diving in conditions for which he was not trained. What a shame he couldn’t even abide his own advice. These two died because they ignored many admonitions to never enter overhead environments, to never attempt cave diving without the proper training, and to never dive in conditions for which they were not experienced. The cave in which they perished, known to locals as “Wayne’s World”, presented the worst combination of challenges possible for these two relatively inexperienced divers. This dive site and the experience of these two divers was a deadly combination. Their actions were not a bad outcome for what might have happened; they were the result of what will happen when divers do everything wrong and ignore years of collective knowledge about best diving practices.
The news of this event is several months old. I would not write about this accident today were it not for an article that appeared in many newspapers this week, including the Decatur Daily, our local newspaper. Written by Christine Armario of the Associated Press, this article gives good insight into the danger of cave diving and the unique factors of this particular disastrous dive. From the day this happened, I personally followed this incident closely and participated in real-time discussions of the accident on TheDecoStop, an online chat board for technical and cave divers. While I did not know these two personally, I know many of their close friends. During the ongoing discussion of this horrible event, it was painful seeing these friends grapple with the hard reality of such unnecessary deaths.
I would encourage everyone to read the well-written article by Ms. Armario. I have provided a link to an online publication of the article in The Oakland Press.
Note: For those interested in reading the real-time online discussion of this terrible accident, you can visit that thread on TheDecoStop that deals with these events. Due to the nature of the technical diving discussions, TheDecoStop does requires registration to view and participate in threads, but membership is free and I encourage everyone interested to take a moment to join.
A growing legal battle has been brewing since early 2008 between the states of Ohio and Kentucky…all over a rock. It appears that local historian Steve Shaffer, a life long resident of Portsmouth, Ohio had heard about Indian’s Head rock, a popular river landmark, most of his young life. It seems that Indian’s Head rock was once a popular place to carve your initials, and the majority of the visible surface of the rock contains just that. The rock was partially visible during the 1920’s as it sat in the Ohio River about 60 feet from the Kentucky shoreline. When navigational dams raised the level of the Ohio River during the 1920’s, it was lost from sight forever. But Shaffer, diver David Vetter, and several other scuba diving friends were determined to find the notorious rock. It took a while, but they eventually located the 8-ton boulder and removed it from the river. The divers donated the rock to the City of Portsmouth for display. City officials, realizing that the Ohio river is actually in Kentucky, promptly offered the rock to the City of South Shore, Kentucky. When the city of South Shore showed no interest in the sandstone rock, Portsmouth officials made plans to display the rock in their city. That is when the legal dispute began.
Indians Head rock has long been the subject of much discussion among the residents of Kentucky and Ohio. Believed to possibly be the work of Indians native to the area, the rock was placed in the Ohio registry of antiques. Just before the completion of the dam that would eventually cover this rock forever, the following entry was made in Volume 30 of Ohio History.
“In all probability, neither the Indian’s head, nor the rock upon which it is cut, will ever be seen again, as it is hardly within the realms of chance that the dam will be broken at such an opportune time. Unquestionably, the Indian’s head was not the work of a quarryman. It bears strong resemblance to other Indian carvings and impresses the mind with the fact that it is thoroughly Indian in its execution. The outline is cut in the southeast corner of the rock and faces east.
“There is another rock, about one hundred years upstream from the Indian rock, upon which someone in recent years carved an Indian profile with feathered head-dress, but this one is not the genuine Indian head, though frequently taken for it.”
Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway wrote a letter to the Portsmouth city government demanding the return of the rock. The Kentucky Attorney General insists that the well-inscribed rock is actually a registered antiquity in the state of Kentucky, and that removal of the rock is theft of an antiquity and subject to prosecution. To make matters worse, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers is claiming jurisdiction over the rock because it was taken from a waterway regulated by the Corp. Steve Shaffer is making no comments, since his involvement in the removal might be the subject of criminal penalties. The rock now sits in a maintenance garage at the City of Portsmouth, pending the outcome of this interesting legal battle.
Diving in the southeast during the winter and spring months presents unique problems. Though we seldom experience the conditions that our northern friends would see during the winter, we still have our need to stay warm while diving. Of course, we all know that a properly fitting wetsuit, or even a dry suit, is essential for diving in lower water temperatures. Nothing else can properly protect you from lower water temperatures. However, staying warm BEFORE and BETWEEN dives is also essential for your health and your enjoyment.
When you come out of the water in lower-than-comfortable air conditions, your wet dive suit acts just like an air conditioner. The evaporation of the water from the suit take swith it valuable body energy and heat. Add a little breeze to the mix and you have all of the conditions necessary to make you really, really cold. Of course, being cold is not good for you physically and it certainly is not comfortable.
Divers should remember to IMMEDIATELY cover themselves when they come out of the water. Any large coat or blanket will probably do the trick. There are even special coats, made to be worn over your wetsuit. These “boat coats” will warm you quite nicely. Anything that blocks the flow of air and reduces the rate of evaporation will make tons of difference and help your body recover the valuable heat lost from the dive. While you might think you are “tough” enough to stand out in the elements while you change your tank over for the next dive, it is a bad idea. While already chilled from the previous dive, things do not improve if your body continues to loose heat during the surface interval. This only makes the second dive even colder and harder on your body. This is not about being tough; it is about being smart.
ScubaMax Hooded Boat Coat. This boat coat is designed to be worn directly over your wetsuit or dry suit when you come out of the water. The long below-the-knee design covers you completely. The nylon outer shell provides protection against wind, and the carbon fiber inner shell provides the insulation you need to stay toasty warm. Extra large arms allow you to easily wear this coat without removing your wrist computer. The dual zipper provides easy closure against the elements. Available in 4 sizes.
So remember, use your head and stay warm between dives. Subsequent dives will be much more fun and you will be protecting your health.
The Gulf of Mexico at the northern panhandle of Florida offers those of us in the southeastern United States some absolutely great diving. The water is warm, the shipwrecks are numerous, and the fish are plentiful. As the water warms in the spring and heads toward the high temperatures of the summer, we also get another unwelcome visitor……jellyfish. During the peak of the summer breading season, they are so plentiful that they are present in large numbers, known as jellyfish “blooms”. Blooms are simply large aggregates of the jellyfish, typically prospering in a the local area around a plentiful food source or exceptionally warm water.
Like many organisms found in the ocean, jellyfish are unique characters. With no bones, no brains, and very little body mass material, they are the most “nothing” creatures in the sea. The body mass of a typical jellyfish is only about 5% biological material, with the remaining body spaces filled with water. However, this simple little “nothing” creature sure can cause some pain. Just one entanglement with the jellyfish’s tentacles will often leave a pretty severe rash and that nice stripped, red appearance many have seen. There is no doubt that the stings from jellyfish cause more than a few tears each year among Gulf coast visitors, and the pain from a serious encounter with these creatures can be quite severe.
The two most common jellyfish types found in the northern Gulf of Mexico are the moon jellyfish and the sea nettle. The moon jellyfish is a bell-shaped, softball-looking character, with the stinging tentacles hanging below. Almost completely milky-white in appearance, the moon jellyfish can be distinguished by the four pear-shaped darker organs seen just inside the “moon” of the jellyfish. Divers often tangle with the moon jellyfish as they near the surface, often surfacing into them without realizing they are present. Of course, any uncovered skin areas that contact the tentacles will result in numerous stings. The pain associated with the sting of the moon jellyfish is not severe, but it does persist for 15-30 minutes and is uncomfortable.
Sea nettles are also bell-shaped, much like the moon jellyfish, but have a slightly darker appearance and the characteristic brown body color. Sea nettles also tend to have slightly more tentacle mass hanging beneath, and the sting of the sea nettle is slightly more painful than that of the moon jellyfish. Sea nettles stings often have moderate to severe pain for up to an hour, and the itching from sea nettle stings can last for several weeks.
There are a number of treatments for jellyfish and sea nettle stings, including household vinegar, weak ammonia cleaning solutions (such as Windex spray window cleaner), and frequent flushes with clean, salt water. Flushing with fresh water is a no-no and only makes the nematocysts that remain in the skin from the initial contact continue to fire, causing additional pain and discomfort. Treatment with various cortisone creams can also ease the discomfort of the itching that persists from stings. In addition, there are several commercial treatments designed just for the treatment of jellyfish stings and reduction of the associated pain.
Safe Sea Jellyfish Protection Lotion. Safe Sea is a unique lotion that actually makes you “invisible” to the jellyfish. When protected by Safe Sea, jellyfish do not sense your presence and do not fire the stinging nematocysts that cause the pain. Safe Sea is effective on about 95% of all users. Safe Sea is available with or without optional sunscreen protection.
Sting Zapper Gel. This is a single-use package of gel designed to be applied directly to sting areas to relieve the pain and itching of jellyfish stings. This gel contains Lidocaine HCL and provides almost immediate relief when applied directly on the affected area.
StingMate Sting Neutralizing Gel. StingMate is a Lidocaine-free treatment that deactivates the stinging cells, providing relief very quickly. Liberal applications of StingMate, along with scraping of the skin to remove the remaining nematocysts, provides very good remedy for the pain.
So, as you make plans to dive the beautiful Gulf of Mexico this spring and summer, don’t forget to take a few precautions. Look around when submerging and ascending for the presence of jellyfish. Avoid direct contact with jellyfish and sea nettles and avoid the pain that can put a damper on your diving adventure.
Update:January 25, 2009 10:30 AM. I have provided a pretty neat video of moon jellyfish filmed at the Perth Aquarium. The use of black light makes this really cool visual effect. Enjoy.
Welcome to the daily blog for Dive Sports. Dive Sports is a local scuba store in Decatur, Alabama and we operate an online retail store at www.divesports.com. We like to say that we are your local scuba store, no matter where you live. Our store and website are operated by scuba divers. We love diving, we love talking about diving, and we love all of the cool equipment and "gadget stuff" that goes with diving. Our store is a small family operation and we promise you friendly service, friendly information and conversation, and the best possible prices we can offer. We hope you will become a frequent visitor to our blog and our retail online website. If you ever have any questions, please give us a call toll-free at (800) 601-DIVE. Remember, we ALWAYS have time to chat with you about this really cool sport of scuba diving.
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There are many things that could be considered “over the top” at The Palm Resort Atlantis Hotel in Dubai. The 
Artificial reefs
The exploits of scuba divers Joseph Hartranft and Yessic Spencer offer some valuable learning opportunities for anyone who is willing to benefit from their diving story. Unfortunately, neither of these two men will know about any valuable lessons that result from such study. They both died in November of 2008 in a scuba diving accident that should have never happened, on a dive that should never have taken place.
