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Letter
FROM The Editor
THANK YOU!
Last month was a big surprise for you...and a bit scary for me. February
2002 marked our very first-ever web-published newsletter. I wasn't
sure what to expect from you, our members, and I was ready for your criticism
with well-prepared responses for why we went to this format. Well,
I ended up more surprised than you! Your response has been overwhelming.
I've heard from several of our members, as well as from other members of
the diving community, both here in South Florida and nationwide.
I know why I received nothing but compliments...and it has nothing to do with me. It's ALL ABOUT YOU! Our members who have shared articles, news, photography, recipes, trip reports, and other assistance...YOU are the reason that SOUTH FLORIDA DIVERS's website is garnering praise from divers everywhere.
Please take some time to poke around the website. Much has been added since the February newsletter, especially under Links and Photography. My favorite page, under Links, is the Sea Hunt and Diving History page. Don't forget to share Just for Kids with your children and remember, if you find any good websites that would be appropriate for our website, all you have to do is let me know. Have any photos, trip reports, recipes, or tall tales? Show them off! Remember too that classified ads are FREE for club members. Just let me know if it's OK to publish your phone number or e-mail address on the website for your ad. Contact me at Debby @ RaptureDivers dot com.
Just one more thing to note...I've added a little section entitled "New since the last newsletter" which is updated throughout the month. It contains items that are either too urgent to keep until the next newsletter, or items of interest but not quite appropriate for the newsletter. You may access it by clicking on "News" then "New since the last newsletter." Good diving to you!
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March is here, and I hope there will be better diving weather this month
than we had in February. The end of March is also the end of lobster
season, until it reopens again in August, and for all you lobster lovers,
there are two dives on the calendar this month just for you. There
will be a beach dive on March 30 and a private boat dive on March 31, so
make sure you sign up for these dives in order to fill your freezer to
hold you over until the season reopens in August.
On March 1-3 there is a Manatee/Springs weekend with eight of our club members. Also planned in March are a picnic, bike trip, fishing, and some nighttime activities, such as Uncle Funny’s comedy night and a Shoot-’em-Up night.
April 4-7 make plans to visit the Dania Beach Marine Flea Market at Dania Jai Lai; there are some great bargains there. Mark your calendars on April 20 for our annual Pig Roast.
The (now-McDonald’s-sponsored) Air and Sea Show is May 4-5 on Fort Lauderdale Beach, this year featuring the U.S. Navy Blue Angels. A Memorial Day weekend, Bahamas/Bimini, Captains' Choice trip is on May 24-27. There are a lot of events planned, so come out and participate and enjoy some great times with your fellow divers.
Dive Safe, ~ Ski
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~ By Susan Judah
Ken Weemhoff of Galapagos Adventures, a dive travel company that specializes in tours to Galapagos, will be our speaker on March 6. He will bring a variety of slides and video and will share his experiences and knowledge of Galapagos with our club. He has personally been to Galapagos 23 times. Ken took these photos on one of his many trips to Galapagos. You will see the one of the rays on his website. I went with Ken in 1997 along with Annie Baugh, Cheryl Jones and Keith Knollman. It was a great trip. He also ran the Maldives and Seychelles trips that I went on. If we get enough people on the questionnaire who say they would like to do an "expensive" live aboard, I would consider running one through Ken. His trips cost a little more, but you get what you pay for, and he puts together a great trip. ~ Susan Judah
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All paid-in-full members received their March 2002 calendar by e-mail or snail mail. Here are a few highlights, as well as some future activities.
| Just under a mile
from shore, and slightly more than a mile south of the Boca Raton inlet,
lies the 120-foot freighter, Noula Express. She was originally
built in Europe and cruised the Caribbean before it became disabled and
abandoned on the Miami River. Her sinking in 1988 was the first joint
project between the Broward County and Palm Beach County Artificial Reef
Programs.
The Noula Express was sunk right on the county line, and its proximity to the dive operators in Pompano Beach make it a frequent stop on their itineraries. This is an enjoyable and safe wreck to dive. Instead of using explosives to sink the ship, she was submerged by intentionally flooding her hull. All of the ship’s hatches, doors and other potential safety hazards were eliminated prior to her sinking in relatively shallow water. During Hurricane Andrew, in 1992, the vessel was ripped in two pieces. The freighter lies in 70 feet of water on the east side of the third reef line, with her bow pointing southward. The shallowest point of the wreck is her mast, which rises to a depth of 45 feet. Adjacent to the Noula Express, on the southeast side near the bow, divers will discover a submersible that was intentionally sunk after it washed up on the Boca Raton’s north beach. Local authorities suspected that it had been used to smuggle illegal drugs, although they found no evidence. At one time, the vessel was a subject for underwater photographers, before the surge waters of Hurricane Andrew, flattened it. |
~ Photograph
by Ron Streeter
courtesy of www.scubaexcursion.com |
Researchers at the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission's
Florida
Marine Research Institute are looking for information on lionfish or
other Indo-Pacific fish seen in Florida waters. Research Scientists at
FMRI want to document all sightings, collections and other incidents relative
to this species as well as other non-native marine species. Scientists
also want to learn more about their distribution, abundance and habitat
preference. Any information on species, locations, dates observed, numbers,
and sizes of these exotic fish will be greatly appreciated. There
is a lot of information about this on
their website, including a lionfish
photo gallery. For more information, contact Allison McDonald
at (727) 896-8626.
Have you looked at our Photography page lately? Many of our extremely talented club members have contributed this month. Cheryl Jones and Carol Shurtz are contributing this month for the first time. Here is what they had to say about their submissions:
Cheryl
Jones: "Here are a few pictures that I happened to have on my
laptop from a recent Bahamas trip. Note - the shark feeding was off
of West End - it's still legal over there. I was diving in late October/early
November with Jim Abernathy's dive operation (out of West Palm Beach).
I was with members from my Friday night dive-club: CUDA. It was a
Thursday night thru Monday morning trip and we got 3 solid days of diving
(except the oceans were pretty rough on Sunday because there was a storm).
I was really impressed with the coral there - but I didn't send you any
of those pictures since most folks think they are boring. We had
a shark feeding every day - which impressed most of the divers. I
don't particularly care for shark feedings - to me they were not acting
like 'normal' sharks. I have been on several shark dives in the Indian
Ocean (Maldives and Seychelles) where we had more sharks and no food was
required. If you go out on Jim's boat though - you will see &
feed sharks. Click on the shark photo to see Cheryl's other photos.
| Carol Schurtz: "The bat fish and the yellow sea horse were taken in a highly guarded secret dive (to avoid collectors) in South Florida in about 15 feet of water. The clown fish was in Papua New Guinea." Carol would like to know if any club member has a slide scanner; contact her through your Buddy List or e-mail your editor. Click on the sea horse photo to see Carol's other photos. |
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On Saturday, February 9th, a small group of club members went to the IMAX
Theatre at the Museum of Discovery in Ft Lauderdale to view the 3D
film Galapagos.
As Donna Eades always says, "A good time was had by all."
Actually that would be an understatement. The film was awesome! The film is an expedition conducted by Dr. Carole Baldwin, Marine Biologist at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. You join the expedition by putting on a pair of very high tech 3D glasses, not the cardboard and plastic we're used to. During the film you are face-to-face with the island inhabitants including numerous birds, and the legendary iguanas and tortoises. They are so real, and so close, you feel like you can reach out and pet them.
She then takes you underwater where you feel like you are frolicking with the seals, and diving with a school of hammerhead sharks. The sea life is overwhelming in the variety and numbers of fish life. Dr Baldwin then takes you 3,000 feet below the ocean floor in a submarine and collects numerous specimens which have never before been seen by humans.
The film is an exhilarating glimpse of an exciting world that is rare, and ancient, and still holds many mysteries.
We ended the evening with dinner at the "Ugly Tuna" at Riverwalk. I'm sure I can say for all in attendance that it was a really great evening and they would do it again in a heartbeat. Now that you know what you missed....I hope you'll join us next time.
A lucid and disturbing report on grim happenings in the sea turtle world
- and by extension the oceans themselves - from Osha Gray Davidson (The
Enchanted Braid). A pestilence is burning through the populations of
sea turtles: fibropapillomatosis (FP), a nasty little virus now a serious
epidemic, perhaps the most serious epidemic raging through the nonhuman
world: outbreaks of FP have been found from Hawaii to Australia to Florida's
Indian River Lagoon, while the mortality rates and the startling spread
of the disease give it the profile of an emerging virus. FP forms tumors
over the body of the sea turtles and eventually kills them. As Davidson
explains, it is transglobal, has claimed up to 90 percent of some sea-turtle
populations, and has jumped species within the sea-turtle world, attacking
victims already in danger of extinction.
Davidson's steady voice carries momentum as he suggests that FP may well be another warning light that we are on the verge of leaving our children an oceanic environment resembling "a sickly ghost, drained of animal life and crowded with pathogens." Following the scientists as they search for answers to the FP crisis, Davidson provides insights into both the environmental assaults on the green sea turtle-overhunting, habitat destruction, transforming coastal waterways into breeding grounds for disease, global warming-and the preliminary biological thinking behind the causes of FP, which include non-native pathogenic pollution such as toxic dinoflagellates in algae and the mysterious workings of the herpes virus. But it is impossible to escape an obvious element, "and that's precisely the one characteristic shared by all FP hotspots: humans haveradically changed the marine environment in which the diseased turtles live." Davidson brings environmental passion, as well as a gimlet-eyed environmental appreciation, to the turtles' predicament, giving the plague a moral dimension as well as delivering on the scientific one.
Click here for more book reviews!
Diving
Myths and Realities at www.mindspring.com/~divegeek
is the most comprehensive diving information website I've ever seen...and
I've seen a bunch of them. Dr. Larry "Harris" Taylor, Diving Safety
Coordinator, University of Michigan and Dive Geek Webmaster, calls
himself the "River Rat." In 1997, DAN
named him "Alert
Diver of the Month," and this is what writer Hillary Viders said:
"Larry "Harris" Taylor, a biochemist and senior research associate at the University of Michigan School of Medicine, is truly a diving scholar....Combining his affinity for scuba diving and academia, Dr. Taylor, who prefers to be called "Harris," has compiled a diving library that is considered by many to be one of the best recreational diving information resources in North America....Harris's collection and remarkable "information-gathering capacity" are routinely used by authors, training agencies, attorneys and DAN as a resource tool; and the bibliographies he has compiled based on this library have been circulated worldwide via the Internet. Harris is also a diving author with more than 100 publications to his credit."Dr. Taylor's site is so extensive that I could fill this page writing about it. Instead, I invite you to pay him a virtual visit on your own. Click on his very extensive "links" and you'll surf forever!
Click here for more Websites of the Month!
The following members
will be blowing out birthday candles in March. We wish them a great
day and many more!
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This recipe won the South Florida Divers Chili Cook-off at our 20th Anniversary celebration. It's the only thing I know how to cook, and the crockpot always comes home from parties bone-dry. Many have asked for the recipe over the years, and this month it's my gift to you.
INGREDIENTS
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Remember to give our Divers Alert Network sponsorship number at the time you renew. We receive points toward the purchase of raffle prizes. The number is 16529. Note: This number appears permanently on our About Us page for your convenience. |
