It was a busy weekend! It was an open water weekend with great results!
Saturday was Stress & Rescue day with Bubba Alex being found all over the lake without his buddy. He seemed to find himself, stuck in the boat, laying on the bottom, panicking on the surface, running out of air numerous time. Throughout it all, Bill, John, Mike and Chris kept dragging him back to shore and helping him get ready for his next dive. I think they were ready to tie him up and leave him on the bottom by the time it was done. At one point Bill turned to John and asked, isn’t this the same fool we just rescued from the boat? Where is his buddy? I am thinking that his buddy knew what kind of diver he was and left for the day.
Congratulations guys for putting up with us and finishing your Rescue course.
After it was all said and done, Bill and Steve survived leading these wonderful divers around and in the process completed their Dive Guide and Dive Master programs. And, we would like to take this opportunity to welcome Bill Fuqua and Steve Soulen to the Oceanic Ventures staff as our newest Dive Masters! Welcome to the team!!!
Scuba Diving Activities
Scuba Diving Practice – Local Lake Diving
Wow! We had a great time up at Blue Lagoon yesterday. Wade proved once again that he is a master at the smoker and grill. The wild boar and grass fed brisket were awesome and no one went away hungry. While the weather threatened and delivered on the ride up to Huntsville, the weather at the Lagoon was nice and we had clear skies in the afternoon.
Practice your buoyancy skills locally…
I am often asked “do you still enjoy diving at Blue Lagoon?” I think what they actually mean is, that since I have been all over the world what can I possible find to do at Blue Lagoon or any local diving venue for that matter. What they fail to understand is that local diving affords you the opportunity to practice and maintain your skills. There is also a social aspect to local diving which I have often described as a barbecue interrupted by diving.
In order to keep the dives interesting you have to go in with a plan or purpose. In my earlier diving days I used local diving as a way to improve my navigational skills. It was a challenge to find all of the objects in the lake and return to the beach without surfacing. These skills have served me well over the years. To keep these skills sharp, I still practice underwater navigation in the lakes.
You can use your time underwater at these local venues to improve your buoyancy. In an earlier article I talked about using the underwater boats as a fixed point of reference and forcing yourself to hover in place. Another drill is to swim like a slalom skier maintaining neutral buoyancy and proper trim while swimming in and around rocks, trees, stumps, etc.
Pick objects on the bottom and swim around them, maintaining your trim and placement in the water. Work on making the turns without using your hands for steering. As you improve, try making sharper turns and then introduce changes in depth to your drills. Remember the first rule of scuba, breath continuously. Some people start concentrating too much on the drills and maintaining neutral buoyancy that they start violating this rule. Keep breathing but use your breathing to help you achieve these depth changes (unless you are on a rebreather of course).
As you do these drills, work on not kicking up the bottom. The tighter your turns, the more you will need to be in a bent leg diving position using “helicopter turns” and small very specific kicks to move through your course. If you are unfamiliar with these turns or this style of diving, then you might find an Advanced Buoyancy Control class useful.
The group diving with me this weekend got to experience this type of diving first hand as we wove through the boulder fields around the lake. Of course they skipped a few turns because they thought I was just doubling back, lost. Little did they know we were heading back to our entry point 50 more minutes in the future.
Scuba Divers Win Prizes at the Annual Dive Around Texas Competition
It was unusually cold on Sunday morning, but that didn’t stop more than 100 Texas divers from coming out to the Annual Dive Around Texas barbecue and prize give away in San Marcos. Many local divers and dive shops we’re represented, including Oceanic Ventures, Inc. Also, representatives from some of the certification agencies and manufacturers were there as well; some of the atendees were Eric Peterson with SSI, Tom Kurras with Cressi, Greg Gephart with Tusa, SEA&SEA, and Light and Motion.
We had a fun time, won some prizes—two of Oceanic Ventures’ own Steve Soulen won two Ikelite LED flashlights, and John Davis won a wetsuit. The barbecue lunch was great and it allowed us to swap dive stories with people from all over Texas, folks from Austin, Grapevine, San Marcos, and even Corpus Christi we’re all represented at the Dive Around Texas event.
I’m glad I got enough dives in, because the prizes we’re really great! And, I can’t wait to get even more local dives in for 2013, hope you can join me underwater in Texas!
Explore the Ocean with Google Maps!
Some of the newest technology related to diving has come in a form strictly for surface use, as Google Maps has recently expanded their Google Street View to the ocean and gone underwater to capture panoramas and videos of reefs around the world! Google Street View is an interactive program that allows users to virtually navigate streets, museums, and famous sites world-wide but has previously stayed on land. Google has teamed up with the Caitlin Seaview Survey to create images of 360o views of reefs, which will make phenomenal images of reefs and virtual tours of popular dive sites available to billions of people who have never experienced the underwater world.
Google hopes to make these dive sites accessible to users to promote interest and conservation of the ocean and the images will be added to an archive for marine scientists to use for studies of these marine environments. From September to December the project will travel down the coast of Australia taking thousands of images that will be continually uploaded new sites to Google Maps. Currently there are six sites available to view on Google Maps, including three sites at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, two sites in Hawaii, and one of Apo Island in the Philippines.
This is especially exciting for me because I have been lucky enough to dive Apo Island on an Oceanic Ventures trip and it is so cool navigate those sites via the internet! Although these images are amazing, they pale in comparison to the true underwater world of Apo Island. So, although Google cannot quite compare to really experiencing Apo Island, they’re making great strides forward and making dive sites more accessible to non-divers and divers interested in previewing sites in a sustainable way!
You can see what I mean by going here.
Trip Report – Live Aboard Scuba Diving in Belize
The Belize Sundancer Adventurers are on their way back to Houston, they are all sad to see their week of fun and adventures being replaced by emails and text messages. (@#$%& Internet). But despite the return of reality. the trip was awesome with 26 dives, and over 35 hours of bottom time for all!!!
Looking back on the week there were some fun things and some memorable notes. Karen loved her new second strobe, Steve loved his new strobe and tey both have the photos tp [rpve it. Mike promised to have an awesome YouTube video for us of fish and divers including a feeding octopus on one of the night dives. ( You will have to wait for a future post to see this one — video takes a little time to assemble.)
Zaide once again ran out of socks to lend everyone…thanks Z!!! (Alex will be stocking up on socks so everyone can have a pair.) Gordon helped the new divers find their way back to the boat so they could lose track of boat “bus” stop and just enjoy the fish while Kris helped refresh Ann’s memory by looking in her logbook to see if they were correct that they had met the Cpatain, Eddy, on a past trip when he was the dive master of the Bay Island Aggressor when it was moved to Belize especially for our group.
Thinking about Half Moon Wall I found it even more beautiful than I remembered it from my last dive here in 2003. Sofie arrived with only 6 dives and became an Advanced Open Water Diver on the trip!! Congratulations Sofie!!! Steve completed his 100th dive and Bill his 300th dive. And speaking of Bill, he & Debbie learned to really like their new full face masks. Bill was even hear to comment that Debbie did not talk as much as he thought she would but he was happy for the communications device when the shark went by; Bill didn’t miss it while he was taking photos of blennies.
Barbara and Barney were first in the water on all of the dives save for one and met their goal of photographing spotted eagle rays. Rich was awarded the best buddy for a photographer and he and Steve prompted Ann to offer a Marine Life Id course while on board.
Two cylinder man, John, and Sharkbait Karen were able to finish Ann’s fish-id check list on one dive, at 30 feet under the boat without mneung more than two feet. Great Lion Fish Hunter Jess assisted by Mike suggessfully removed 35 lionfish from the reefs. Steve commented that there were more little fish this year and less lion fish. An autompsy of the lionfish showed why….their favorite meals were sergeant majors, juvineele runners, and gobies.
Chef Jerry feed us wonderful local Belzian dishes, fresh fish or stuffed pork chops, peanut butter chocolate chips bars, fluffy rich cheese cake, and even turkey dinner. Karim, John Eddie and Jerry lead the dives, photographed the fish and the guests, and waited at the ladder for up to an hour for each guest to get out of the water after leading dives just to help take off our fins and hand up equipment. Waiting at the “bus stop” for the hang bar to swing was almost as much fun the ride the bar for the safety stop.
The comment after tubing sums up the week: “Where are we going next year?” This says it all…great time, good friends, aweomse crew, memorable vacation.
My only comment is why wait until next year?
Dry Suit Scuba Diving and DUI DOG Rally and Demo Days in Texas
But despite our living in the South, the lakes tend to cool down a bit. Dry suits are the way to dive year round and laugh at the cold. And, to make it even more special, DUI’s DOG Rally and Demo Days is coming up November 10-1, 2012 at Clear Springs Scuba Park. This is your opportunity to get certified to dive a dry suit, try out the complete line of products from DUI and get fed lunch all for one price! And, if you want to, you can even camp with the rest of our divers!
Sign-Up today and get ready for this winters diving marathon!
Dive Mom, I hate being cold and I want to dive! (please sign me up or send me some more information)
