Scuba Shack Radio

The 3rd and 4th quarter issues of Alert Diver from DAN is on the streets. It is packed with great articles. One article in particular is from Becky Kagan Schott regarding her work on creating 3-D print outs of Great Lake shipwrecks.

Sunset House on Grand Cayman is getting ready to open in January 2022. Great news from a great dive resort.

Why are there two different dive flags? Scuba News recently ran an article of how this came about.

RAID shook up the scuba training agency industry this week by offering free membership to their professionals and shops. Could this be a game changer?

Last month I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Roxane Boonstra from the Coral Restoration Foundation. Roxane talks a little bit about her journey in the dive community that led her to CRF. Quite an interesting background.

Roxane has been the coordinator of diving operations at the Coral Restoration Foundation in Key Largo and tells us about the volunteer program.

Roxane also coordinates all of the training for interns as well as volunteers.

Is there a blood test on the way to detect DCS? Research is ongoing but how close is it?

Shearwater has now indicated that production has been halted on the Perdix dive computers along with the Peregrine (they use the same screen). According to Simon Morris from Shearwater it may be March 2022 before they are again shipping the computers.

Stream2Sea will be offering a new sunscreen in 2022. It is being branded as An Everyday Sunscreen with Eco-Safe Zinc. This is a great new product that is absolutely reef safe.

Diving Unlimited International is about to release a redesign of their DuoTherm undergarment.

Need to take your car key fob diving and want it to be safe, then look at DRYFOB.

The Dive Equipment Marketing Association - DEMA 2021 Show was an outstanding success (in my opinion). Despite all of the headwinds and challenges and negativity from may, DEMA persevered and produced the show. It was what the scuba diving industry needed.

I connected with Tom Ingram, the president and CEO of DEMA. He is cautiously optimistic about the future. He recognized this year as challenging but with the commitment of the board of directors, they forged ahead.

The full slate of seminars was outstanding. They covered a wide range of sales, marketing, leadership and motivational topics. This access is a tremendous value.

The exhibit floor was noticeably smaller but what lacked in quantity made up in quality. The exhibitors were easily accessible and able to spend time to really have a great dialog.

You just can't beat the networking opportunities.

DEMA is an association that is critical to our business and we all need to think of what the future of the show will be - not what it was.

Dan and Betty Orr have a new ebook titled "101 Tips for Scuba Divers". You can get it online at Apple Book Store, Amazon or wisediver.com for $9.99.

The Shearwater Peregrine computer is currently on back order. The delays may last until early January 2022.

Alert Diver from Divers Alert Network is combining their third and fourth quarter edition. It should be hitting the streets in mid-November.

4Ocean is cleaning up a section of Osborne Reef. In the 1970s, just off Ft. Lauderdale over two million tires were placed in the ocean to create an artificial reef. The tires are now tearing up the reefs and 4Ocean has obtained a permit to cleanup a 34 acre area just north of the reef. It is being funded by the 4Ocean Osborne Reef Bracelet.

Stuart Cove is back with some new installments of Last Man Diving.

Your Next Dive takes us to Pompano Beach where we do some diving with South Florida Diving Headquarters. It is easy to get to Pompano Beach by flying into Ft. Lauderdale Airport and taking a short ride to Pompano. Staying at the Sands Harbor Resort in the same marina as the dive shop. The rooms are what you'd expect for a hotel that does cater to divers. South Florida Diving Headquarters operates several boats. Be prepared to potentially go out with a partner dive boat. We did one day of diving with Scuba Tyme. The diving off of Pompano was excellent. There were some great wrecks and healthy reefs. With great visibility and warm temperatures, it was great to get back in the water. Listen to the podcast for more information on the diving operation.

Andy Leisner is PADI's Chief Consumer Officer and is responsible for Scuba Diving Magazine, Sport Diver and PADI Club along with other areas of accountability. Andy tells us a little more about his background, this new role at PADI, PADI Club, the benefits and some new and exciting ideas in the pipeline for PADI Club as we move into 2022.

It looks like the "highly regulated harvest" of goliath grouper in Florida was approved by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Committee in early October. Final approval is set for March 2022. If that were to happen, the harvest would begin in early 2023. There is a lot of opposition to this proposal. Hopefully, there will be no reason to kill these gentle giants.

The Women Divers Hall of Fame provides a number of scholarships and grants to help individuals in pursuit of their studies of the ocean and the underwater world. The deadline is October 31, 2021 to apply. You can do this online at their website. https://www.wdhof.org

If you want to get some great discounts you might consider joining PADI Club. You can get a 20% discount on the SeaLife SportDiver Smartphone housing, plus 20% off 17 different electronic learning courses from PADI. A great deal for the $50 membership fee. You can get a 45-day free membership at https://www.scubadiving.com/padiclub45

If you are on the fence in buying the Shearwater Peregrine because you are concerned that it might become air integrated in the future, don't delay. Shearwater doesn't have any plans to make the Peregrine air integrated. The price point for the Peregrine makes this a great affordable recreational dive computer.

Raise the Reef is the Coral Restorations Foundations annual gala for reef conservation. It will be held in March 2022.

Sunset House made the list as one of the 12 best house reefs according to a PADI blog.

The Boston Sea Rovers 67th annual clinic took place on October 2 and 3, 2021. The move from March to October allowed for time recover from the pandemic and safely stage the event. Friday is mainly a workshop day before the show officially opens. With 39 daytime seminars, the film festival, plus an exhibit hall with over 40 booths, you stay very busy. The exhibit hall also featured artifacts from the Andrea Doria to mark the 65th anniversary of the sinking.

It demonstrated that with tenacity and good planning that an in-person scuba show is possible. Congratulations to Nick Fazah and all the Boston Sea Rovers for a job well done.

Scuba Shack Radio is proud to now be the Vurbl Ambassador for Scuba Diving. We are proud to gain this designation. Check us out at Scuba Shack Radio and please consider subscribing.

Congratulations to Tec Clark and The Dive Locker Podcast on celebrating their 2nd anniversary. The Dive Locker podcast is a weekly podcast for dive professionals but is very relevant to all divers. Tec also hosts a podcast called The League of Extraordinary Divers. Please check out both. Scuba Shack is a proud patron of The Dive Locker.

Another message in a bottle story. This time a bottle was found in Hawaii after being tossed in the ocean in 1984 from Japan. Wow!

Bad news from the Caymans - the borders will be closed until 2022.

DEMA has no plan for cancelling. It will be happening in Las Vegas in November.

You can take your smartphone underwater with the Sea Life Sport Diver Smartphone housing. Rated to 130 feet with a color filter and bluetooth enabled, you can travel light with this interesting piece of underwater camera gear.

Sea Hunt It's Still Alive takes us back to season 3 episode 38 titled Diplomatic Pouch. Mike is back in a small Latin American country working with Paul Alexander trying to recover a diplomatic pouch from a wrecked US airplane. Problem is the country has been taken over by a dictator not friendly with the US. Mike and Paul must figure out a way to get the Diplomatic Pouch. How will Mike succeed? Listen to find out.

If you want to dive with a purpose, check out an opportunity next year to spend a week at the Atlantis Dive Resort in Dumaguete in the Philippines participating in a program led by the Coral Restoration Foundation.

This year the PADI AWARE Foundation's AWARE Week is set for September 18 to 26, 2021. AWARE Week's goal is to empower the global dive community to lead or take part in conservation activities and courses focused on local action for global impact.

The 2022 Aqualung buyers guide was recently released and they a lot of new products and colors coming out next year. First there is a new regulator - the Helix Pro and the Helix. Additionally they have reworked their Aquaflex wetsuits and now have Aquaflex Mens and Aquaflex Womans along with the FreeFlex 2 mm suit. New colors include Sand, and Petrol along with Red and Orange on some different equipment. Apeks also has a new regulator - the XL4 Ocea - billed as a totally sustainable regulator made with post consumer waste. Also, Apeks is releasing its first dive computer - the DSX - capable of programming 6 gases and can monitor 6 transmitters.

Your Next Dive takes us to Gloucester, MA where we will dive the wreck of the Chester A. Poling. The Poling was a coastal tanker that sank on January 10, 1977. The ship split in half with the stern section coming to rest just off Eastern Point, Gloucester in 75 feet of water while the bow section went down about 4 miles from Eastern Point in 190 feet of water. Subsequent winter storms moved the stern about 800 yards off of Eastern Point in about 90 feet of water. The stern section is upright. Summer bottom temperatures range from the upper 40 degrees F to the lower 50s. Visibility can be up to 30 feet. You can book a charter with Cape Ann Diver 2 out of Gloucester. Just remember you need all of your own gear.

A study published by Niklas Boers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research indicates that the Gulf Stream is on the verge of collapse. This would dramatically change the weather in North America and Europe - making it colder. Additionally there would be sea level rise, disruption of the monsoon patterns and impacts to the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheet.

Do you miss Dive Training Magazine? Word from Catherine Castle Garcia is that they are hoping to be publishing again in the fourth quarter of 2021. Looking forward to a new edition coming soon.

The Boston Sea Rovers annual show is still on track for October 2 and 3, 2021.

Here is the latest update on Dutch Springs. Last week the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission reviewed the plans. They were not supportive of the plan but there may be little that can be done to stop the proposed warehouse development. PADI also has developed a white paper outlining the economic benefit that Dutch Springs generates as a diving venue. The developer is working with local officials to "offload" the quarry but not sure exactly how this would work.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, a team of Navy divers was tasked with the salvage efforts for the US Pacific Fleet. The book Descent Into Darkness by Commander Edward C. Raymer is a memoir of one of these divers who spent most of the war working on the salvage efforts on all of the battleships damaged at Pearl Harbor. Commander Raymer also spent about eight months in the South Pacific doing salvage operations in the Solomon Islands. This book provides a great insight into the courage and stamina that these men exhibited doing a very difficult task.

The owner and operator of Dutch Springs since 1980, Stuart Schooley has decided to retire and I congratulate him on this well deserved milestone. Stu is selling Dutch Springs to a Texas developer who plans to create a 300,000 square foot warehouse facility on the property. This development will restrict access to the quarry and with that it looks like Dutch Springs will close at the end of the 2021 season. This is extremely sad news for the northeast diving community. So many dive shops like Scuba Shack have made Dutch Springs an integral part of their diving culture. Very sad and disappointing news.

Shearwater just announced a new wireless pressure transmitter. It is called SWIFT. The SWIFT is said to maintain a highly reliable connection to the dive computer and it apparently listens for other transmitters and only communicates when the channel is clear. The SWIFT is backward compatible with all existing Shearwater air integrated enabled computers. You just have to do a firmware upgrade. With this firmware upgrade you will be able to monitor up to 4 SWIFT transmitters on your Shearwater. It looks like it will retail for $395 US.

On this installment of Sea Hunt It's Still Alive, we go back to season 2 episode 33 - Proof of Guilt. This episode premiered 62 years ago on August 16, 1959. In this episode Mike is in the Hawaiian Islands testing underwater film and television cameras. His underwater cameras are needed by the owner of a private island, Sandy who grows cultured pearls. It seems that thieves are stealing the pearls but Sandy needs proof. That is where Mike's cameras come in. Mike agrees to help Sandy and as you can guess there's trouble ahead. It's three against one during these underwater fight scenes. Mike and the Honolulu police prevail and Mike gets a well deserved vacation with Sandy on this mythical Hawaiian Island.

The 2nd quarter 2021 edition of Alert Diver Magazine from Divers Alert Network (DAN) is out. A great publication packed with so much great information. You can learn about shallow water arterial gas embolism, and travel to Roatan. You can also read about the Flower Garden Banks and Thunder Bay Marine Sanctuaries. It is a cover-to-cover read.

The Cayman Islands are still not open to tourists at this time but they have put forth a five phase plan for reopening. The next milestone is September 9, 2021 when they will open for vaccinated tourists to enter with some restrictions but only if 80% of the island's population is vaccinated. If that is achieved then by October 14, 2021 the plan is to admit vaccinated visitors without quarantine restrictions.

Great news out of Washington, D.C. - the US Senate passed the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act of 2021 with a vote of 68 to 34. With bi-partisan support and sponsorship the bill is now with the US House of Representatives where hopefully it will make its way to President Biden for his signature protecting these apex predators.

On this installment of Your Next Dive we will be heading to St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands - no passport necessary. You can get in some great diving. If you like wrecks there is the Wit Shoal, Miss Opportunity or the Kennedy Barge. For reefs you can experience Sprat Point or Amando's Paradise. With water temperatures in the mid 80s and visibility between 60 to 100 feet you won't be disappointed. As for dive shops you might check out Admiralty Dive Center.

Take a tour of the island and head to Mountaintop for a fantastic view and the world famous banana daiquiri. Some good places to eat include the Green House, Glady's Cafe or Coco Beach Club.