Friday, April 30, 2004

1+1+1=4? Want to go diving with Ocean Adventures Dive Co.? Somehow, I don't think I would. The spacecraft engineer for Boeing Satellite Systems and three dive buddies entered the water at about 8:45 a.m. Sunday, but Carlock had problems equalizing the pressure in his ears and he fell behind. He tried following his partners' bubbles, but he lost them. He decided to end the dive after 15 minutes, but he was 400 feet down current from an oil platform where the boat was anchored. He blew his whistle to attract attention. "I figured when the dive was over they would realize I was missing and come looking for me," Carlock said. But they never came. The boat left and headed for a shipwreck six miles southeast of the entrance to the Port of Los Angeles, said Coast Guard Petty Officer Collin Croft. File under The Undersea World. 7:39:57 AM

	Thursday, March 04, 2004

I Just Gotta Dive This Place! At my dive club's monthly meeting our speaker gave a video and PowerPoint presentation on his trip to Sabah, the Malaysian portion of the island of Borneo. SPECTACULAR! I definitely have to get over there and dive. There's alot to see and do on the land side too. Above and below sea level, tremendous bio-diversity. I’d seen other places like Sipadan [an island off Sabah] 45 years ago but now no more. Now we have found again an untouched piece of art.. a jewel. --Jacques Cousteau Just one small problem though. A couple of years ago Muslim extremists attacked Sipadan Island and took 21 dive tourists and resort staff hostage. In fact, the Cyber Diver News Network has issued a travel alert for this area. Damn! I knew it was too good to be true. File under The Undersea World. 12:30:43 AM

	Friday, February 06, 2004

Things That Make You Go Hmm... Or maybe w00t! I always swore I was never going to say that. Anyway, for the last few years, whenever I've booked a dive vacation, I've always ended up winning the raffle at my monthly scuba club meeting. 2 years ago, right after I booked a trip for me and Mrs. Hondo to Maui, I won a SUUNTO Mosquito dive computer. Last night I won a Spare Air™ emergency tank. Hopefully, I won't use it on the trip to the Bahamas my wife and I just booked. 3 cubic feet of air in a tank just a little over a foot long. We had a really interesting speaker at last night's meeting. A representative from the Shark Research Institute came and gave an interesting talk about the Whale Shark, a 40+ foot long gentle behemoth, and the Institutes efforts which got it listed (along with the Basking Shark) as an endangered species, over the objections of the Japanese fishing interests. He also showed a video, filmed by National Geographic, of him tagging a Tiger Shark underwater. The shark abruptly turned and tried to reduce his body mass by about 50%! I've tagged sharks before, the largest being a 200 pound Mako (got the newspaper article to prove it), but I've always been on a boat, not in the water. I'll never forget that big black eye staring at me with an absolute and primal hatred. I'll also never forget how the thing went ape-shit when we put the tag in it! But that's another story to tell. File under The Undersea World. 12:51:45 AM

	Friday, August 15, 2003

Whale Flatulence Okay, just when I thought that I had brought you your Moment of Zen, Mother Nature goes and upstages me. This is a picture of a minke whale in Antarctica "cutting the cheese" so to speak. As reported by the Daily Telegraph: The researchers claim this is the first photograph of a minke whale letting one go in the icy waters of Antarctica. It was taken from the bow of a research vessel. "We got away from the bow of the ship very quickly ... it does stink," said Nick Gales, a research scientist from the Australian Antarctic Division. I think Dr. Gales summed up the situation best:  "Every piece of this research is surprising." 1:18:19 PM

	Saturday, June 07, 2003

The rain ain't stoppin'. So I went out and spent some coin on a pair of SCUBAPRO Twin Jet Fins. Any questions? File under The Undersea World. 4:39:34 PM

	Wednesday, March 05, 2003

Even though the temperature around these parts finally made it up to 50 (it's still supposed to snow tomorrow) I was more in the mood for a speaker at my scuba club meeting with a presentation on tropical dive sites. What I got instead was an interesting presentation on the wreck of the Andrea Doria. What really made it interesting was that he focused on the luxurious shipboard life and the design and artwork on the ship during its time in service, rather than the usual presentation of photos from the wreck (in over 200 feet of water) and the usual "show and tell" about artifacts recovered. One of the more interesting slides he showed was of a particularly awful looking suite on the ship known as the Zodiac Suite. A picture of it appears below in all of its "splendor." I think I would go nuts if I had to spend an 11 day cruise in there. You had to pay top dollar for that suite too as there were only four suites on the entire ship (unlike today's cruise behemoths). The other suites were quite a bit more tasteful. All in all the shipboard experience in those days must have been much more elegant than it is today with all of the "stuff-your-face" buffets that cruise ships seem to specialize in. Hey, even with airlines, remember when there was such a thing as the "jet set"? 11:57:41 PM