Houston's Premier Scuba and Dive Shop Oceanic Ventures Inc.

(713) 523-3483 (dive)
5808 Newcastle Drive
Houston, TX 77401

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Too Busy Diving

Open Water Sidemount Divers
Open Water Sidmount Divers

 I am not sure where the summer has gone.  We have been busy teaching new students to dive, upgrading the skills of our previous students and traveling.  It seems there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done. 

 We want to congratulate our new divers for completing their course and entering the realm ofNeptune.  Our new divers are featured in the video below as well as some of our other divers who completed classes such as Night and Limited Visibility Diving, Deep Diving, Search and Relocation, Navigation, Advanced Buoyancy Control, Technical Deep Diving, Advanced Recreational Trimix, Open Water Side-Mount, and the Principles of Technical Diving.

 Other Places We’ve Been

 Over the past few months you might have seen our divers in Grand Cayman for Inner Space (Oceanic Ventures is a continuing sponsor), Cozumel, Isla Mujares, the British Virgin Islands, St Croix, Utila, Little Cayman, the Dry Tortugas, the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador as well as our local favorites like 288 Lake, the Blue Lagoon, and Mammoth Lake.  It has been an action packed season so far and we are not finished yet!  

It is Not Too Late

It is not too late to hop into the water and become one withNeptuneunce again.  We have some fun adventures coming up and continuing education course are filling up the calendar so there is no excuse to stay dry! 

So here is our photo thank you and remembrances of our season so far.  Please tell me what you think….

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Travel Tips – Packing Light and Healthy

Today’s post comes to you from Thomas A. Mackey, PhD, ARNP-BC, FAAN, FAANP with UT Health Sciences

It’s the savvy traveler who packs light.  Who wouldn’t want to board a plane with only carry-on luggage?  The trick is to find that perfect balance between taking essential preparedness items and breaking the bank with airline charges for checked baggage.  Let’s review some essential travel items and what to leave at home.

Documentation

In terms of documents for foreign travel, you’ll find it well worth the space to pack a copy of your passport.  These documents are much easier to replace if you have a copy available.  If you are traveling to a country that requires yellow fever vaccination, take the record with you; otherwise leave the record at home safely filed away with other health records.  Consider wearing medical alert jewelry to identify any serious medical conditions such as: serious allergy to penicillin or bee stings, insulin dependent diabetes, or severe asthma.

 First Aid

Medical Kit
Complete First Aid Kit

There are many packing lists and prepared travel kits for first aid that are very comprehensive.  The advantage of purchasing a commercial travel kit is  there is usually a large variety of supplies in small quantity allowing the traveler to cover a number of contingencies with a fairly compact package.  Travel kits usually have a small first aid reference giving instructions on how to treat a broad range of illnesses and injuries and how to use the supplies in the kit. 

 One important thing to remember about a travel kit is that up-keep is required.  Many of the unit dose medications contained in the package have an expiration date.  These will need to be replaced along with any other items  used on the last trip prior to traveling again.  Small quantities of unit dose medications are readily available but tend to be expensive.  Consider this in your decision to purchase a travel kit.

For the adventurous traveler who will be in remote places with exposure to outdoor hazards, a travel kit is well worth the investment.  Many travel kits are tailored for specific adventure style travel including: salt water marine, rock climbing, backpacking, and kayaking.  These kits not only have supplies you need like a snake bite kit and the reference manual is specific to the hazards you are likely to encounter. 

For travelers who will be within an hour of emergency medical care or you are on a hosted vacation where the tour guide has first aid training and a kit, convenience would be the only reason to purchase a travel kit.  Pack a small complement of the first aid items that you keep around the house.  Remember, “common things are common” and pack for the first aid issues that commonly happen to you at home like minor cut and scrapes, blisters, headaches or body aches, nasal congestion and allergies.  No need to carry the whole package, just pack enough to manage the event without disrupting the itinerary in search of treatment for a headache.

The one item anyone traveling outside of the U.S. should take along is treatment for diarrhea.  It’s not a pleasant topic but the fact of the matter is that diarrhea is the most common illness experienced by travelers outside of the U.S.  Unfortunately, diarrhea can strike without warning and could make it difficult go out in search of a pharmacy.  Don’t leave home without a box of over-the-counter anti-motility medication such as Imodium AD. Ask your primary care prneuder for a prescription antibiotic to take with you.

Speaking of prescribed medications, don’t forget to get your routine prescription medications filled well in advance and pack these in your carry-on luggage.  If you have life saving rescue medications such an epi-pen or an asthma inhaler, take an extra along in case of loss, mechanical failure, or any number of other calamities.  Do not pack them in checked luggage. Carry them on the plane with you. It could make the difference between a life and death situation and a mere hassle.  

Insect Control

Mosquitoes and insects are more than a nuisance.  These can carry serious diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.   Insect repellent can be purchased in individually packaged towelettes.  This is a compact way to carry insect repellent without risking leakage during the flight.  Look for an insect repellant brand that is greater than 30% DEET and plan to apply every 4 hours while mosquitoes are out, especially dawn, dusk and after dark.  Bathe every day and you should have no risk of toxicity.

Another measure for insect control is to spray all of your clothing with permethrin spray.  The spray can be purchased in the outdoor section of stores as tick repellent or in the pharmacy section of the store as lice treatment for furnishings.  Before you leave, spray your clothing (no need to spray under garments) with a light spray as if you were spraying on starch before ironing.  Allow the spray to air dry and pack your clothing.  The permethrin will last multiple washings on the clothing but will not stain or have an odor.  Do not spray permethrin directly on the skin because it can be a skin irritant.  Treating your clothes with permethrin is an added measure for mosquito prevention and will deter chiggers, gnats, and flys.

Hygiene

Last on the list is an important hygiene product that might keep you from becoming ill by transferring germs from environmental surfaces to your eyes, nose and mouth, and that is alcohol based hand sanitizer.  It is sold in convenient packaging in small bottles or as spray pens.   There is no reason to be obsessive compulsive about it, just use a little on your hands before you eat and when you know that your hands are dirty.  Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth during the day along with the hand sanitizer use for good solid prevention.

Your healthcare prneuder is an excellent resource for travel preparedness.  Depending on the location and style of travel, you prneuder may recommend additional medications for treatment of bacterial diarrhea or malaria prevention.  Your prneuder is also an excellent resource on required and recommended vaccines for travel.  Call your prneuder today or come see us at University of Texas Health Services (713) 500-3248. We prneude travel health services to hundreds of patients every year.  Happy travels!

Thank you to Susan Parnell, MSN, MPH, CIC  and Thomas A. Mackey, PhD, ARNP-BC, FAAN, FAANP

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Technical Training at Local Destinations or Not?

Divers walking to waterRecently I was asked why I don’t do more technical training in the deep lakes in Texas.  My reasoning has to do with both philosophy and the environment. 

First, let’s look at the environment itself.  The lakes have the advantage of being close allowing for short drives from home. To some, this helps keep the training costs lower, especially if you can camp near the lake.  They are familiar dive sites to many of the divers in the area so there is an increased comfort level which is beneficial for the student.  The problem with the lakes is that they are generally not very clear because of sediment and algae.  Because of the reduced visibility, class sizes are limited, which is not a bad thing, and students are forced to swim very close to one another or on a line.  While following a line is a good skill to learn, it inhibits the diver’s ability to fully integrate the skills and procedures into their diving.

The deeper lakes also tend to be cold at depth.  To properly train in this environment, the student needs a drysui or at a minimum a thick wetsuit.  This requires that they be comfortable with drysuit diving before the course starts because starting a technical diving program introduces more equipment and skills so adding a suit that the diver is not familiar with diving adds more complications to an already stressful situation.

This is not to say that a student cannot learn in this environment.  There are many skilled and successful divers who started their training in murky local lakes and quarries.  However, it takes more effort to become proficient in less than ideal conditions.

The second reason I prefer other locations is one of philosophy.  Beginning down the road of technical diving requires that the student develop skills, intuition, and procedures to survive and enjoy the dives.  Swimming with multiple cylinders whether manifolded or separate, as in a side mount configuration, or even on a rebreather requires that you retrain your brain to deal with different buoyancy characteristics and with mass.  I find that students master these skills faster, with more confidence, when they can see what they are doing in relation to their instructor and fellow students.  Further, by allowing them to have more room between them, they can develop better swimming and buoyancy skills in a shorter period of time.  Additionally, with clearer visibility, the stress on the instructor is reduced which I believe makes me more effective in the learning environment.

I also believe that students start this type of diving to do something or to go somewhere.  Some take it merely for the training, but moreover the student has a goal in mind when they enroll in a course.  I have yet to find someone who came to me saying they wanted to find out what the mud looked like at the bottom of Lake Travis.  Diving is about experiences and in my mind it should be predominately positive experiences.

This is not to say that these locations do not have their place in technical diving.  Before leaving for a destination, open water, I like to take the students to one of the shallow training lakes.  This allows them to refine their equipment configurations and develop some buoyancy skills in their new equipment.  You don’t need deep water to work on buoyancy; in fact, it is better to work on it in a shallow area because the trim changes are magnified.  Additionally, these locations allow me to teach some of the skills needed for this type of diving and the start helping them create procedures to deal with equipment and to start building more diving intuition.

For the final dives, I find it to be a more positive experience to go where the water is clear and there is depth and support for the type of diving you are learning.  Since we have completed the knowledge or classroom portion of the course and some basic skills dives prior to leaving for the destination, we can concentrate on the diving and planning when we arrive.

One argument against completing the open water divers in a destination rather than a local lake is the cost.  However, once you figure in the cost of fuel, lodging, meals, entry fees, etc.  The differences are not that great.  By electing to complete your training in a destination like Grand Cayman or Cozumel you will have a better experience and will enjoy the dives more.  Additionally, I believe you will learn faster and progress in this style of diving further because you have a solid foundation on which to build.

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The Law of the Wild – Revised?

042701cbc8b067a818a0FA34BDBF@OwnerPC 300x136 The Law of the Wild Revised?The Law Of The Wild says kill only when you are hungry. Photographer Michel Denis-Huot, who captured these amazing pictures on safari in Kenya’s Masai Mara in October last year, said he was astounded by what he saw:
“These three brothers (cheetahs) have been living together since they left their mother at about 18 months old,’ he said. ‘On the morning we saw them, they seemed not to be hungry, walking quickly but stopping sometimes to play together. ‘At one point, they met a group of impala who ran away.. But one youngster was not quick enough and the brothers caught it easily’.”
These extraordinary scenes followed.
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The images, which ran in the Daily Mail, show the cheetahs playing with the impala and the sequence ends with the impala running away, you assume to safety and a happy ending. But that’s not the whole story. When you look at Denis-Huot’s website, he posts the entire series, which ends with the big cats eating the impala. Sorry, no Disney ending here.
The picture sequence shows how complicated the animal world really is, and how often we want to simplify it by putting our own human vision on it. Cheetahs are hunters at heart, and those in the pictures probably didn’t kill the impala right away because they weren’t so hungry, or because it was a different time of the day than when they usually hunt, or for some other reason. Many animals, though, show kindness, and even to people. There are sometimes reports of dolphins rescuing fishermen from capsized boats, and there was even one recently about a pod of dolphins helping a lost dog. Naturalists like Bernd Heinrich have written about how ravens will share food with each other in the dead of winter, and scientists Frans de Waal have studied how primates will help their sick and take care of their elders. We may have a lot in common with animals, but we also need to respect them for who they are, not for what we think they are. This is a truth that I discover, and share with you, on so many of my BigAnimals trips.
Follow me on Twitter. Look at my How I Did It series on Facebook. I tell you how I made some of my iconic photographs.
[If you would like to join Amos on one of his Big Animal Adventures, let Dive Mom know and she will take care of all of your reservations with Amos]

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Why should you take an Advanced Open Water Scuba Course?

Lift Bag by Chuck GerlneuchNew divers often wonder how they can start an Advanced Open Water Course so close to completing their Open Water Course; they simply do not feel like advanced divers.  While it is true they are new to the world of diving, and they need to go out diving, it is also true that having a few more underwater skills under their belts would make diving more enjoyable.  This is really what an Advanced Open Water Course is all about; it is a combination of diving specialty courses designed to give new divers a few more underwater tools.

There is no substitute for simply going out and diving.  After you complete your open water class, you and your diving buddies should plan on going diving as much as possible so you can gain some confidence and put your newly learned diving skills to work.  At our facility, we try to promote this by offering dive local weekends at other times during the month.  We also encourage new divers to return with us on the next month’s Open Water Weekend.  By participating in these other events, there is a professional dive leader on hand to give you advice and to answer your questions while learning to dive outside of the classroom setting.

But, like I said earlier, one way to make an improvement in your diving is by learning some basic underwater skills. An Advanced Open Water Course combines the following specialty classes into one package:

  • Underwater Navigation
  • Deep Diving (over 60 feet)
  • Night and Limited Visibility Diving
  • Search and Relocation

 These specialties are designed to introduce you, the new diver, to new environments and equip you with come new skills that you will use throughout your diving career.  They are also tailored to give you more confidence and help you to relax more underwater.  Why these specialties you ask?  Well, let’s look at each of them in more detail.
Underwater Navigation – You probably noticed in your Open Water Class that you had no real idea where you were.  You just followed your Instructor or a Dive Control Specialist with your Instructor following behind.  You were mostly concerned with trying to maintain buoyancy and look around at things as you glided past.  However, when you are diving without your instructor, you will have to find your way around the lake on your own.  This course introduces you to the skills needed to navigate underwater and the ability to get lost creatively.
Deep Diving – While many people do not consider diving deeper than 60 feet deep diving, you were trained and certified in 20 to 40 feet of water so 60 feet is deeper than you have been.  Assuming you do not want to repeat those out-of-air skills you were forced to endure as part of your Open Water Program, there are some things you need to consider when diving deeper, like when to start back to the surface.  So here you will learn what to do to scale the equivalent of a 6 story building and return to the surface safely and proudly.
Night & Limited Visibility Diving – Here you get more toys!  You need lights to complete this specialty so, boys get toys!  Ok, it is not all about the toys but rather how to use them as tools to safely execute a night dive.  And remember, if you are ever planning on sneaking into the cocktail party from the water, you will need this skill-set.
Search & Relocation – With the introduction of more toys comes the need to find them when you loose them.  Here we introduce you to the fine art of finding the things you lost underwater.  As part of the class you also get to use a lift bag to lift up a heavy object.  This is a useful skill if you run across an canon underwater that you think will look smashing in your front yard!
While you are learning these skills, you will be getting more comfortable underwater and may even find you do not need as much weight to sink below the surface.  You even get the opportunity to purchase some necessary toys to safely execute your dives – cool, more toys!
Taking an Advanced Open Water Course is a good way to prepare yourself for the dives that you want to do on your next vacation.  The comfort you gain in the water will make those vacation dives more enjoyable and just plain fun.  Don’t miss this opportunity to improve your diving while having fun diving in a structured program.