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

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

drysuit

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Need a reason to take that Trimix Course?

Underwater Object Discovered300ft down.. perfect reason for me to get hypoxic & expedition trimix certified.  Such were the words of one of our clients, John Mittendorf.  What was John talking about you ask?  Well it seems a group of Swedish treasure hunters discovered a perfectly round object at the bottom of the Sea of Bethena off the coast of Sweden.  According to the team, it is unusual because it is perfectly round and appears to have a “drag” clearing leading up to it.

Of course there are other reasons to take a Trimix course.  Imagine being able to swim with huge sponges reaching out and up from the depths along the walls in Grand Cayman.  Visit a turn of the century sailing ship in the Dry Tortugas or a WW II submarine from the United States and another from Germany; these await deep divers in the Dry Tortugas.  There are some incredible sites waiting for Trimix divers around the world including, caves, wrecks and walls.  Dave and I have been fortunate to have visited a number of them over the past few years and we are always looking for some other adventurous souls to join us.

John, may be right.  This might just be the reason to continue his rebreather training to include Hypoxic and Expedition Trimix.  Of course you will also need some practice in a dry suit.

Here is what CNN reported about the find:

 

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100 Scuba Dives…Dive Mom Needs Help!

Dive Mom Ready to Go
Dive Mom Ready to Go!

“For the first time I can remember, I don’t have my 100 dives by November 1; I need your help to get there before December 1!”
 Ann Keibler will be venturing up to the DUI Dog Rally and Demo Days in Terrell Texas on November 19-20 and she would like for you to join her. So that you both have something to do while swimming around the lake, she will be doing dry suit open water dives and dry suit demos. To give you some incentive to show up, she has come up with the following specials:

  • Take a Dry Suit course, reg $225, for only $125 and she will pay for your DUI entry ticket for Saturday and Sunday. By doing your open water here, you also save the dry suit rental charge ($100 for the weekend).
  • Take your Nitrox course, reg $225, for only $125 and she will pay for your DUI entry ticket for the day and include the Nitrox for your dives!

Both courses include the educational materials and the classroom portion is a home study program. You should turn in your homework and take the test before you leave. She will be staying late Wednesday November 9, so you can get the test over with early. You can take the test at the lake, but who wants to skip the fun and take a test so doing it early is really better.
Of course if you are already certified as a dry suit diver, you can still come up and go diving. Remember, she needs a lot of dives and she doesn’t think any one person will want to do that many in a day. As such, she needs multiple buddies and lots of moral support.
DUI’s Dog Rally and Demo Days is a really cool event where you can try almost every suit DUI makes, almost every style of undergarment, get lunch and a hat all for $10.00 (when purchased from Oceanic Ventures, in advance). And, if you are already a DOG (DUI Owners Group) and you bring a friend to the event, you will get a special gift.

Please send Dive Mom and email and tell her you will help her reach her goal.

She would like to know who is going to attend by Friday.

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Feeding the CHUM

Chum MeetingDry suits in Texas – what are we crazy? 
When we introduced drysuit diving to Houston (ok, on a retail basis) who would have thought that we would actually have sold some, much less have two regular demo events in the state and make the DUI Hot Sheet for the most dry suit sales in a month? Ann & I certainly planned for the eventuality and Faith Ortins, our friend at DUI had faith in us but to see it happen has been exciting. It is hard to really introduce someone to the concept of Dry Suit diving, especially in Houston which is the gateway to warm Caribbean and Pacific diving but it is fun to help people extend there diving horizons and their diving seasons. 
This evening we had the opportunity to introduce some diving divers to the fun of being warm while underwater.  The City of Houston Underwater Mariners invited us to talk about dry suit diving  and tempt their club members into attending one of the upcoming DUI Demo events, the first of which is in two days and the other in the spring.  DUI helped us by donating a DUI jacket to the event for us to give away and we of course threw in some t-shirts and other give away items. 
This was a special meeting so according to Ryan, there were not as many people as in previous meetings.  Still there were 30 brave souls (lots of rain just before the meeting screwed-up traffic in Houston) who came out to hear me espouse the virtues of drysuit diving.  To entertain them, I obtained a number of slides from friends around the industry showing divers diving dry and some of the places they could dive.  Faith sent me some fun photographs including a photo of divers having martinis on an ice flow in British Columbia (posed of course – you can’t drink and dive!) 
While we were not successful in getting some members of the group interested in joining us that weekend, we did garner some support for the spring event. And, who knows, we may have sent a few of them group thinking there was diving in the winter…