Archive for September, 2009
September 30, 2009 at 12:29 AM · Filed under Scuba Diving
The pristine coral living reef is a colorful and wondrous site. Watching numerous varieties of fish, sponges and plants providing food for one another is what makes the underwater world breathtaking. The more life, the more spectacular the show!
The living reef is a breathing animal made of a hard limestone exoskeleton, covered with a very thin film of living tissue, much like our own skin. The soft touch from ones hand is enough to puncture their tissue against their boney skeleton.
Have you ever touched coral and felt that slimy film on your hand? Well…this may sound a bit harsh but that would be, coral guts. Yes, sad but true. Once the coral is exposed, much like humans having a deep cut with no treatment, bacteria & infection will set in and cause these beautiful reefs to die. If you’ve ever seen a dead reef, it’s not a pretty site, there’s no color, a horribly baron and gloomy scene.
A simple fin kick too close to the sand/coral is also harmful; some divers are unaware of their dangling gauges/consoles and what damage they do to the corals.
Buoyancy control is the chief cause of the physical damage by divers and is almost always associated with being too heavily weighted. Learning to maintain neutral buoyancy; hovering 3-4 feet above sand/coral will keep divers safe from stepping on or frightening these magnificent creatures.
Wet suit & gloves keep us warm, comfy and protected from cuts, stings, scrapes & burns, yet neither protects the coral from us unless we practice good diving etiquette.
The world wide diving population has continued to grow at a rate of 20% per year with 10 million certified divers in the United States alone.
Understanding and respecting the u/w environment, being aware of our surroundings, using good judgment along with quality instruction insures one to be a great diver.
We must remember we are a guest in their home, it’s important to keep Mother Nature free from harm, ALIVE & BEAUTIFUL!!!
happy diving!
the scuba lady…
September 29, 2009 at 12:12 AM · Filed under Scuba Diving
Scuba Explorers, Scuba Diving Club has a well known reputation for guiding memorable trips to locations around the world.
You may receive a custom tailored scuba diving package to anywhere in the world departing from anywhere in the world!
Your scuba diving package can be as economical or lavish as you decide, your choice of accommodations: hotels, condominiums, all-inclusive, liveaboards or resorts.
For people who like to organize, you may earn a heavily discounted and possibly free diving & accommodations!
Let’s talk!
September 27, 2009 at 5:29 PM · Filed under Scuba Diving
Have you ever slept in an Underwater hotel? Venues are sprouting everywhere:
Fiji Poseidon Undersea Resort – Maldives Conrad Maldives - Key Largo Florida Jules Undersea Lodge - Vasteras, Sweden Utter Inn – Dubai Hydropolis
Visitors to Istanbul will soon have a chance to view the most spectacular ocean views on the planet. A seven floor, seven-star hotel is being built underwater, under the city center, which should make for an interesting experience. There will be exhibition halls, and restaurants, and all rooms will be sea facing.
The underwater hotel will have an inauguration and is set to coincide with the city’s taking over from Linz, Austria as the Cultural Capital of Europe in 2010.
September 25, 2009 at 7:44 PM · Filed under Scuba Diving
![Bonaire,_Dutch_Caribbean[1]](http://thescubalady.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/bonaire_dutch_caribbean1.jpg "Bonaire,_Dutch_Caribbean[1]")
One thing you’ll notice when you first begin your scuba diving certification, is the importance of maintaining neutral buoyancy. It can be a bit of a challenge but in time… it’s a piece -a-cake!
Once we learn equalization, mask clearing, regulator recovery, breathing through a free flowing regulator and a few other easy skills, repetition makes these procedures become second nature.
For a safe comfortable diving our goal is to be neutrally buoyant in the water. This allows us to be weightless in the water, change position freely and easily with little effort, expending the least amount of energy and minimal amount of air.
By simply understanding how each effect the other will help control buoyancy. Three factors of our body compositions effect on underwater buoyancy, the type and amount of:
Muscle mass versus bone mass versus body fat
Fat is buoyant, and yes we all have it to some degree; after all fat does float. Dense bone and muscle sink. The two off set each other. Some do not have dense bone and some have very little muscle.
We are taught a person should use 10% of their body weight in lead to become neutral in the water… it’s only a guest mate, a point of reference. We don’t know for certain until we actually submerge.
Typically lean people sink & heavier people float, most think it’s the opposite. Yet some may appear large, if they have extremely dense bone and lots of strong muscles mass; they will sink like a rock. It may only take an a few pounds of lead with their BC & 3 ml wetsuit. Conversely, a thin person with hardly any body fat may need 16 lb of lead for their particular bone & muscle is not dense enough to offset their body structure.
Other consideration that will make a person more positively buoyant are: excessive breathing, salt water, a wetsuit (the thicker the more buoyant), a buoyancy control device (some BC’s have larger bladders and more material which means more buoyant) along with other objects weighing less than water i.e. camera, flashlight, net bags, etc. Thus being the reason we compensate with weights to neutralize ourselves in the water. Otherwise we would be like a cork bobbing in the water, fighting to get and stay under, wasting precious air & energy. Wouldn’t you rather use your precious air & energy to follow a ray or a turtle?
When more weight is required to sink, more drag is put on our bodies; more air is needed to breathe; the less weight needed the better.
The deeper we go the more negatively buoyant we become; water pressure compresses everything as we continue downward, everything becomes more dense. If a person sinks too quickly, it’s not a good thing! We never want to be too negatively buoyant; otherwise we could be on the bottom with our BCD fully inflated and have a difficult time, using air & energy… a bit dangerous, wouldn’t you say?
We always want to begin & end our dive neutrally buoyant, then as we descend we add small amounts of air into our Buoyancy Compensator’s (BC’s) to maintain a neutral position, as we ascend we deflate our BC little by little all the way to the up, making certain all air is depleted before reaching the surface. It’s not good for the lungs to pop out of the water like a bottle rocket.
We also do a safety stop 15 ft below the surface to breathe off excess nitrogen while under pressure. This is a good reason we cannot be too positively buoyant at the end of our dive. At the end of our dive our tank is low of the compressed air we began with making our tank weigh even less, therefore making it more difficult to remain 15 ft under for a given amount of time before surfacing. When weighted properly, we can focus on the fish and enjoy the beautiful scenery.
Then there is breathing, movement and streamlining, but that a whole new topic, we won’t go into now!
Like any sport, once you learn the safe procedures, scuba diving is safe, simple & fun! This is why we have 16 hrs of quality instruction plus two full days for cuba diving certification. Once equipped with all the safe diving knowledge, we are totally safe & competent divers.
Happy Diving!
September 24, 2009 at 8:46 AM · Filed under Scuba Diving
Brittle Starfish
Brittle starfish are closely related to sea stars. There are more than 2,000 species worldwide, and they’re typically found in shallow reef environments, hiding under coral and between other living organisms.
They crawl on the seafloor using their flexible arms for locomotion with their five long slender, whip-like arms which may reach up to 2 feet in length, also known as serpent stars.
Brittle Stars generally mature in 2 years, are full grown in 3 – 4 years, and live up to 5 years. A few other species may well live much longer.
Brittle starfish are not used as food even though they are non-toxic.
They can readily regenerate lost arms unless all arms are lost; they use this ability to escape predators, similar to how lizards deliberately shed the distal part of their tails to confuse pursuers.
I wouldn’t say these are among my top 100 fav’s; like most everything else you see down there, it’s pretty darn fascinating!
September 23, 2009 at 4:00 PM · Filed under Scuba Diving
Have you ever had mermaid sightings?
Mermaids are a mythological aquatic creature, a spirit of the water, with a human head, a torso and the tail of an aquatic animal such as a fish.
The word is a compound of mere, the Old English word for “sea,” and maid, a woman. The male equivalent is a merman; however the term mermaid is sometimes used for males.
Various cultures throughout the world have similar figures, typically depicted without clothing.
1) Mermaids would sometimes sing to people and enchant them; distracting them from their work and causing them to walk off the deck or run their ships aground.
2) Other stories have them squeezing the life out of drowning men while attempting to rescue them.
3) They are also said to take humans down to their underwater kingdoms.
4) In Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” it is said that they forget that humans cannot breathe underwater, while others say they drown men out of spite.
Which type of mermaid/merman are you?
September 23, 2009 at 1:57 AM · Filed under Scuba Diving
The Sand Dollars are spiny, hard-skinned animals, shaped like coins. There are many different species of sand dollars. They live on the sandy sea floor.
Most sand dollars are found at depths of 30- 40 feet. Sand dollars partly bury themselves under the sand, with an edge poking up out of the sand. You can often find the dead “shell” of a sand dollar, called a “test” washed up on sandy beaches. If you break open a test, there are many hard, loose, white pieces; these were the teeth of the Sand Dollar.
Sand Dollars are related to sea urchins and sea stars. Their tiny larvae (baby Sand Dollars) travel many miles as they are swept along by ocean currents.
Anatomy: Sand Dollars have 5-part radial symmetry. These invertabrates have ard skin made of calcium carbonate plates. The bottom surface contains the mouth, many black spines (which trap food), and the cilia (small hairs) that help direct food into the mouth. Sand Dollars have tiny tube feet that are used as gills. The holes on the top surface are where the eggs and sperm are released.
Diet: Sand Dollars eat tiny particles of food that float in the water.
Predators: Sand Dollars are eaten by sea stars, starfish, snails and skates.
September 22, 2009 at 9:17 PM · Filed under Scuba Diving
Chuuck Island, originally know as “Truk Lagoon” is an island group in the south western part of the Pacific Ocean. There you will find the best wreck dives in the world because of their preservation and beauty.
Depths vary from the surface in excess of 200 feet. You can penetrate into the wrecks but you can’t remove any artifacts. Caustic substances like high octane aviation fuel, oils, gasoline and acid exist on many of the wreck dives. Explosives, mines, munitions, detonators, torpedoes and shells are still “live”.
The wreck dives of Truk Lagoon are war graves. Fines & jail sentence possibly await those who disobey. The Trukese hopes to preserve their lagoon as an underwater living monument and museum of the war.
On the morning of Feb 17, 1944 “Operation Hailstone” a surprise attack by United States Navy aircraft caught Japanese merchant vessels and warships by surprise in Truk Lagoon. 400 tons of bombs and torpedo were dropped. Attacks continued through Feb18, 1944. A total of forty ships were sunk and thousands of Japanese were lost. Ten weeks later, a second successful raid sank more ships. For more than two years after the war, oil from the sunken ships covered the beaches and reefs.
The Lagoon is 40 mile wide surrounded by a fringing coral reef. To the south-east is Kuop Atol and Lagoon.
Chuuk state consists of seven major island groups lying within the Eastern Caroline Islands, about 617 miles southeast of Guam and 3,262 miles southwest of Hawaii. The total land mass of Chuuk is approximately 77 square miles.
September 14, 2009 at 8:56 AM · Filed under Scuba Diving
![Trunkfish[1] (3)](http://thescubalady.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/trunkfish1-3.jpg "Trunkfish[1] (3)")
Trunkfish, are the cutest little creatures you’ve ever seen; they have big brown eye and funny little fish lips?
Their short triangular bodies are covered with a firm hexagonal bony plate. The jaw, fins and tail protrude from it’s carapace. These fish can navigate very quickly through the water.
They are pretty fun to watch!
September 13, 2009 at 6:16 PM · Filed under Scuba Diving
Have you ever tried to blow Bubble Rings while scuba diving?
The following is not recommended for novice divers:
At the end of a dive and before ascending, lie flat on your back on the ocean floor.
Take a deep breath before removing your regulator (no duh), make an O shape with your lips, and exhale from deep inside your lungs. One can usually make 3-4 from one breath of air. With the tank it’s a bit difficult to get the angle of your body and head completely horizontal.
If done properly, a perfect ring (like a smoke ring) will spin to the surface, expanding and expanding until the size of a hula hoop.
The sunlight reflects through the spinning swirl of air, illuminating it to shine bright silver in color…
It’s amazing how something so simple can make you smile inside when you are able to blow these perfect bubble rings! It makes you feel like a kid again!
Until the next not so important tidbit of useless information.
the scuba lady…
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