NEWSLETTER June 12,
2003, Issue 29
Members are encouraged to
submit articles, dive plans and dive reports.
Visit club web site at https://www.angelfire.com/nj4/divers/
DA Dive Log
DA Dive Plan
The Wah Wah Dive
May DA Meeting Minutes,
Unapproved
Divers
Anonymous Days at Dutch Springs
3rd
Annual Event, Saturday and Sunday
July
19, 8AM thru July 20, 5PM
Diving,
Camping, Treasure Hunts, Prizes, Pizza, Food, Fun, Discount Coupons, Rescue
Course, Meeting Members, and Some More Diving!!
Sign up at our June 30
meeting for a food assignment and a coupon or
Contact Tom to register for you and your guests by
July 17.
Rain Date: July 19 and 20,
2003 (We have a pavilion reserved.)
Directions: Route 78 westbound to
exit 3 to Route 22 westbound into Pennsylvania.
Pass Route 31 and exit Route 22 (turn right at end
of ramp) onto Route 191 northbound. Go approximately 1.5 miles and turn left at
traffic signal onto Hanoverville Road. Look for Dutch Springs on left after railroad
tracks.
__________________________________________
Next Meeting
Notice
June 30 meeting,
Topic of discussion: Boat
dive safety
__________________________________________________________________
Peggy’s News
The
Empty Ocean: Invisible Extinctions by Richard Ellis
From the New York Times - sent without permission!
May 25, 2003
Book Review By THURSTON CLARKE
The ghosts of vanquished animals still haunt their former habitats; jungles
without tigers, prairies without buffaloes and savannas where herds of
elephants once foraged all remind us of what has vanished. But maritime
extinctions, as Richard Ellis so eloquently reminds us in ''The Empty
Ocean,'' are largely invisible, leaving us,
''stranded on shore, watching as the bountiful sea life disappears before
our uncomprehending eyes.''
And so Florida mangroves cleared for condominiums are an ecological slap in
the face, but a reef off the Florida Keys bleached by the effluvia of legal
septic tanks and
illegal cesspools looks no different from the shoreline; waves continue
breaking gently across it, and its shallows are still the same beautiful
turquoise. Walk along a resort beach in Baja California and you would never
guess that offshore, in areas where a half-century earlier divers found
4,000 abalones per acre, they can now find only one per acre. Stand on a
rocky promontory on one of Norway's Lofoten Islands and the black North Sea
waters below look as chilly and forbidding as they have for centuries;
unless you had read Ellis's book, you would have no way of knowing that a
century earlier they supported shoals of fish teeming in 130-foot-high
underwater columns, a miracle known as a ''cod mountain.''
Sometimes the dying occurs within sight, at the water's edge, and hints at
the wider devastation beyond. Residents of high-rise condominiums on
Florida's Atlantic shoreline sometimes trip over dead or dying female sea
turtles while taking morning walks. The creatures have crawled ashore at
night to lay their eggs and, mistaking the lighted condominiums for the sun
rising over the Atlantic, then head inland, become stranded and die.
Visitors to remote Enderby Island could not fail to notice the rabbits,
introduced by French settlers in the 19th century and numbering in the
thousands. They would notice, too, in some of the rabbits' deep burrows, the
carcasses of sea lion pups, 700 of which every year wriggle into these
burrows,
become trapped and die.
But usually the maritime tragedies happen out of sight, and we must look to
clues: jars in Chinese apothecaries filled with a powder of ground-up seal
penises; shoehorns, cribbage sets and eyeglasses fashioned from tortoise
shells; sea horses turned into key chains; Hong Kong restaurant aquariums
teeming with colorful fish harvested from reefs with crowbars, cyanide and
dynamite; and restaurant menus offering ''Chilean sea bass,'' a
mild-flavored, soft-fleshed creature formerly known as the Patagonian
toothfish that in two decades has gone from trash fish to gourmet sensation
to endangered species.
Ellis makes imagining this offstage dying easier. It requires a not
inconsiderable leap of imagination to picture the marine life sacrificed in
the service of a plate of salad-bar peel 'n' eat shrimp, but Ellis helps us
by reporting that for every pound of shrimp scraped from the bottom of the
Gulf of Mexico in 1996, nets also brought up eight pounds of rays, eels,
flounder, butterfish and other miscellaneous ''bycatch'' -- a term the
fishing industry prefers over ''trash fish'' (much as the Pentagon prefers
''collateral damage'' to ''dead civilians'') to describe untargeted species
snagged by long lines and dragnets and then discarded at sea. Also snagged
by the shrimpers' nets is a large unweighed and unreported bycatch of
starfish, crabs, urchins, coral, sponges and horse conchs, so that a diner
leaving the salad bar with a one-pound plate of shrimp in one hand could
also be said to be balancing in the other an imaginary platter heaped with
at least eight pounds (and probably more) of eels, urchins,
crabs, flounder, porgies, lizardfish, batfish and butterfish.
Ellis is candid and modest to a fault about what ''The Empty Ocean'' is and
is not, declaring in his preface that ''I am not a field researcher -- I
classify myself as a
library or Internet researcher.'' But he is more than someone who has spent
time poring over library books and computer printouts. He has studied marine
life for four
decades and has served on the International Whaling Commission. He has
become a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, and
has painted and
drawn the sea creatures that appear in many magazines, and that swim
engagingly across the pages of this book.
One sees here both the benefits and the drawbacks of his preference for the
library and Internet. Rather than writing the ''Silent Spring'' of the
oceans, he has
produced a book that is likely to provide the inspiration and source
material for such a badly needed work. Any reader who tires, as I sometimes
did, of the procession of
facts, statistics, long quotations and random polemics (''the ubiquitous
Homo sapiens, far and away the most dangerous and destructive creature the
planet has ever
known'') should remember that although Ellis has written a book closer to an
encyclopedia than a stirring narrative, it is an encyclopedia of the highest
order, the result of a passion for research. It is also a splendid example
of history illuminating ecology, with well-chosen facts that enable us to
picture a largely invisible catastrophe.
THANKS to Ellis, if I am ever tempted to order shark's fin soup -- which I
probably will not be -- I will picture the 60,857 sharks that were landed in
Honolulu in 1998 (a 2,500 percent increase in shark landings compared with
1991), and because 99 percent of them were killed for their fins, I will
also be picturing 60,248 finless shark carcasses ground up for pet food.
Ellis has also diminished my appetite for fish-farmed salmon. The next time
I poach a fillet, I will be seeing the three pounds of wild fish necessary
to feed a pound of farmed salmon, wild salmon locked in fatal embrace with
domesticated escapees, and Scottish fish farms pouring twice as much waste
into surrounding waters as the entire population of Scotland.
Near the end of his book, Ellis writes in summary, ''We mourn the loss of
rain forests and timberlands; we watch helplessly as urban sprawl encroaches
on meadows and
prairies . . . but the rampant destruction of the ocean floor and its
endemic fauna is one of the greatest environmental disasters in history, and
it is occurring virtually unnoticed.'' The destruction may have gone
unnoticed until now, but with the publication of ''The Empty Ocean'' it will
at least be easier to imagine, and to
mourn.
Thurston Clarke's recent books include ''Pearl Harbor Ghosts'' and
''Searching for Crusoe: A Journey Among the Last Real Islands.''
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/25/books/review/25CLARKET.html?ex=1054868899&ei=1&en=91032cfb534b5e5d
= = = = =
Peggy note: The sharks killed in Hawaii were killed to satisfy an over seas
market in Shark Fin. Laws have been tightened and fines imposed in the last
year. We are not done yet... The Dive Council watches lots of fishery
topics.
----------------------
Peggy
Bowen, Director, NJ Council of Diving Clubs
E-mail: mailto:pegdiver@monmouth.com
______________________________________________________________________
DA
Dive Log
Shore Dive Log
Shore Dive Log
The shore dive log has been limited by the rough seas we have been
having. As a result of not being able to enter the ocean, we have done several
dives at our alternate locations such as the Back Bay, Manasquan River Railroad
Bridge, and the Shrewsbury River. In general we have found the marine life is
beginning to become abundant again as the water warms. Blackfish have been seen
in increasing numbers as have been flounder, bergalls, various crabs, and
invertebrates. On Sunday June 1 Rich Mullen, Tom Gormley and Angela O’Reilly
did the available alternate dive at the RR Bridge during a very rainy period
and surprisingly found excellent visibility of 15 to 20 feet. We met Pat Ryan
and Dan Brown, who frequently dive the site. Dan wrote to Captain Dan Berg’s
Weekly Dive Report and said this about the dive:
“NEW JERSEY BEACH DIVING
Captain Dan,
This report is going to be
hard to believe considering the torrential downpours we've been having the last
couple of days. Believe it or not we had at least 15 feet of visibility at the
RR bridge today 6/1/03. Dan Brown and
Mike Ryan actually had to use sheltered picnic tables to get suited up under
because it was pouring rain by the time we were getting ready. Other divers, including Tom Gormley and Rich
Mullen of Divers Anonymous, a Clifton based dive club, were already suited up
by the time the rains came again.
Angela O'Reilly was in the hurry up mode also in the rain. The only reason we bothered getting suited
up in the pouring rain is that you could tell from the parking lot that the
visibility was outstanding! And we
were not disappointed on descent, the vis was a real pretty 15 feet, water
temperature was 53 degrees. We saw a
couple of blackfish, fluke, pufferfish and plenty of mating horseshoe
crabs. Mike Ryan speared a nice 4 pound
blackfish. Who would have thought? I don't know how many time we've shown up
down there during beautiful weather patterns, only to find muddy water
!!!! Today was really nice, go figure
!!
Safe diving, Dan
Brown”
It was fun diving and chatting with Dan and Pat. Thanks for the
acknowledgement Dan.
To access this report go to:
Boat Dive Log
Tom, Al, Norva, and Angela went out on the Spring
Tide out of Brielle on Sunday, June 8. Conditions were good compared to
previous days of rough seas. Captain Tom and mates John and Bart were on board
as well as 2 beginner divers, Paul and May, who were doing their first NJ wreck
dives.
The first destination was the Meta. The wreck was
located and tied into for the divers to enjoy. Vis was a reasonable 3 to 4 feet
considering the location of the wreck. After a 45 minute dive, the boat went to
find the Stimson Barge, but when the grapple wouldn’t cooperate, they moved
over to the Railroad Barge. There the vis was only 5 feet and the current was
very swift. Bart rescued Angela’s wreck reel which landed inside the hatch, and
John found a dive computer not dropped by any of the on board divers. The deep
swells brought on some queezies, but all had a good day at sea.
Ian Fryer, fresh from his Galopagus Adventure, went
out on the Diversion to dive the Mohawk on Sunday, June 8 as well. He reported
having 20 foot vis and had a good dive. He reported not finding any artifacts,
but he enjoyed his dive nevertheless.
(Any
sales of gear are subject to terms agreed upon by sellers and buyers.)
E-mail:
Al Nesterok 2 aluminum 80 cylinders
E-mail: Rick Farmer stainless steel
backplate and OMS back inflation BCD
E-mail: Tom Gormley 50 cuft low pressure
steel tank, Nitrox ready, new condition
This
Story was sent to me by Don Wilson. All divers should read it, in spite of the
colorful language.
“I’ve heard the
wah-wah
by Bob Raimo
as told to aquaCORPS
Joe Odom asked me, "How
deep are you gonna go? We want to go deep."
I said I’ll go as deep as I feel
comfortable with. I don’t care how deep you guys go. When I say that’s enough for me, I
stop, and I come up, irrelevant to what you guys are doing. I said I’m not here to set any
personal records, or industry records. I’m here to have a good
time.
They all dove single 80s. I
was very uncomfortable diving with single 80s, so I juryrigged some telephone
wire to an 80 stage bottle because I refused to go deep on a single 80. I
wanted to at least have a back-up bottle.
On the first day I dove deep I
was completely in control, I was completely capable of helping somebody else…which is my measurement
of my comfort level. If I feel that I cannot help somebody else, I’m in over my head. I
don’t like being able to just take care of me. I like to take care of
someone else if there’s a problem. If I can’t, I have no business
being there. And I did not feel that way at 300 plus feet. I felt fine. I mean,
I was narked, but I checked my gauges, and stopped at 250 feet on the way up in
case somebody needed air.
On the second day, I’m diving a Dive Rite
transpack with a travel wing, which is only 30 lbs. of lift, and I’m in an eighth-inch
shorty. When we did the second dive, we were out on this cable-it’s in 7,200 feet of
water, over 21,000 feet long, and is approximately 75 feet in diameter. It’s big. You could have a
party for a 100 people on top of this thing. There is no bottom reference.
I made two big mistakes. I
grabbed my weight belt from my rebreather instead of the weight belt for my
single 80. So there’s an extra eight pounds of lead on my belt, and I’m completely oblivious
to it. Bret wasn’t diving this day. Bret and Joe were saying that
one of the things that you need to be able to do if you’re going deep is you
want to get down there fast, and get out of there fast. I said, well, I couldn’t keep with you guys.
They asked how I came down? Well, I kinda floated down like I normally do. Joe
said there’s a lot of drag that way, you kinda have to go down head first. I’m like, I never go down
head first. I said I’d go down head first and try and keep up with you
guys. So I jump in the water and go behind Joe Odom, and I’m swimming upside down,
straight down. I’m kicking to go down to keep up with Joe. I couldn’t keep up with the
sucker; the guy is quick.
I never discussed with any of
them how they do it. And none of us went to the Bahamas with any of this in
mind. If I’d have known the week before, I’d have brought some
clips and hooks and stainless steel tank bands. I’d have come ready to
make real stage bottles, not telephone wire.
I have no concept of how deep
I am…’cause I don’t look at my depth gauge. If I know I’m going deep, I just
try to stay in tune with my body. When I don’t feel good, it’s time to come up. And
sometimes if you look at your gauge and you see a big number, it scares you:
Oh, omigod, and all of a sudden, adrenaline, a little bit of CO2, and it makes
you worse off than you are. So I like to go down, I’m comfortable. But what
was uncomfortable initially was my descent. It was an abnormal descent for me.
I’m used to floating down, now I’m swimming down. I’m exerting myself
kicking trying to keep up with this sucker.
At one point I’m saying, this is about
my tolerance. I was really getting narked, I’m at the limit. If it
gets worse than this, I won’t be able to help anybody. And as I’m starting to think
about this, I look at my depth gauge and it says 340 feet and Joe Odom turns
around-he was below me, he was the lowest guy on the line, and I don’t know who’s behind me at this
point, if anybody-and Joe looks at me and I give him a clear as day signal of
"I’m stopping here." I take my arm and sweep it slowly back and forth
saying I’m leveling off. Joe gives me the okay sign. I start inflating my BC.
After Joe sees me inflating my BC-because I could see him watching me, making
sure that I was okay-he then turned and continued going deeper, figuring I was
okay. Which at that point I was. I don’t know that if Joe had
had a problem that I could have helped him going deeper, but anybody at my
depth and shallower, I was okay.
So, I’m inflating my BC and I’m going deeper and
deeper…348 feet, 350, my BC’s full, 352, and I’m not feeling too
happy. I went from feeling really good to feeling really narked. This is where
I made what I believe to be the second and almost fatal mistake-I kicked. I
used my legs, which is the normal diver reaction. At that point, I just wanted
to stop. Not even to go up, just to stop.
I took one or two kicks and I
went from being completely in control and just about capable of helping
someone, into a complete headspin. That one kick used so much O2 and generated
so much CO2… And I was like, WHOA, man, I got really fucked up. And it happened
again, and I went, WHOA man…and thank god for that cable. I just reached out
with my right hand and-ka-chink-barehanded. This cable had fish hooks on it and
was encrusted with all kinds of shit. But believe me, I was so numb, I didn’t feel anything. I just
grabbed on to this cable. I looked at my depth gauge again, and all the pixels
were lit up on my screen.
I had no idea how deep I was.
For all I knew I was at 500 feet. I knew I had inflated my BC and my BC wasn’t going up. I had about
1400 psi left my main cylinder, and I’ve got the stage bottle
on me. So I decide I’m going to kick and I’m going to pull on this
cable. I’ve got to reduce the pressure. I want to scream out of here and I’m gonna stop when my
depth gauge says 100 feet. Now, mind you, I can’t read it.
By now, I’m assuming I’m pulling on the cable.
Mitch Skaggs, who was at 325, said later that I went by him, but I never saw
him. He could have been behind me when I passed him; it’s easy to miss people
going up and down. He said I had one hand up in the air, my eyes were rolled up
in my head, and he thought I would wake up on the way up. That’s how I felt: I needed
to wake up.
One thing that really scared
me was this noise. When I couldn’t read my gauges, I
heard this noise-wah-wah-wah-wah-really loud. I didn’t know what it was.
When I heard the noise, I could not see my hand on the cable. All I could see
was my gauge. I couldn’t see anything else-everything surrounding the
gauge was black. And I’m sure I started to breathe really heavy when I
heard that noise…of course, more CO2 build-up. I’m thinking: the next
thing that’s going to happen is that I’m gonna black out, and
I said to myself, "You’re not gonna black out." When this gauge says
100 feet, you’re gonna stop and do deco. That’s what I said to myself
my entire ascent, "You can’t black out, you’ve gotta do deco. You
can’t black out, you’ve gotta do deco." I kept kicking-at least I
think I was kicking, I might not have been. This may have just been my thought
process. I have to go on what other people say because I don’t know.
I had a very, very strong
desire to live. I really believe staying focused on going to 100 feet to do
deco saved me. I haven’t spoken to a lot of people about this, but at the
worst point when I was really fucked up, I can understand how people give in to
the euphoric feeling and die in deep water black-outs. Because as scared as I
was, I felt fuckin’ good. I don’t know how you can say
you feel good and think you’re gonna die at the same time. But I can say this:
I could have very easily said, "Oh, fuck this." And die.
But I’ve got a two-year-old
boy, I’ve got a wife. I thought about that when I starting to get that
blacked-out feeling. I saw my son on that dive. I said, I’m not leaving the kid,
what am I stupid? I’m going to 100 feet and I’m doing deco.
So, I think I’m pulling myself up
this cable, and at about 175 feet, I can see blue in the background, everything’s clearing up, I’m starting to see some
divers again up above me at 130 feet, 150, and I can read my gauge, I can read
my pressure gauge-I’ve got 1,000 psi. 175 feet, 150, 140. I get to 100
feet, I dump the air out of my BC, and I say thank the fuckin’ Lord. I do my
"Hail Mary"s and "Our Father"s, I swim up to 40 feet, I
start my deco, I go over to the 60/40 mix, and I do my deco.
During my deco, Joe Odom swims
over. I write on my slate: "Scared myself today," and pass the slate
over to him.
He writes down: "Were you
in control?"
I write: "I thought I
was, but wasn’t."
So we get out of the water and
I describe to him what happened on the dive. And he says that noise is very
typical. If someone hasn’t heard that noise, then he hasn’t been that deep on
air.
That’s called the
"wah-wah." He says when you hear that noise, you’ve been fucked up on
air, you’ve been deep on air.
I’m a damn good diver,
but I don’t do deep air diving. If it wasn’t for all of my years
of training, all of my years of acquiring knowledge, and general good diving
skills, and the strong desire to live, I can understand how people just give in
and die.
I probably learned more on
that dive that I could do in a hundred dives…about dive ability,
about the physiological true effects of gases on one’s body, why we shouldn’t be diving deep on
air. I learned an awful lot about my own ability, tolerance, and desire to
live.”
__________________________________________________________
Divers Anonymous
Scuba Dive Club
Mario’s Restaurant
/ 710 Van Houten Avenue, Clifton, NJ / (973) 777-1559
May 19, 2003 -
Monthly Meeting Minutes
Due
to the gracious nature of Mike Emmerman coming from NYC to do his presentation,
the officers decided to forgoe the business meeting for this month. The members
present voiced no objections.
Mike Emmerman gave a very interesting and informative presentation of "The
Rules of Diving". He was joined by his lovely wife, Pat and friends,
George and Connie. The club paid for their dinners at the cost of $63. Mike
left some handouts which can be distributed at our next meeting, and said he
will send Tom some web site references to share with the club.
Next
club meeting is Monday, June 30th.
Minutes submitted by Secretary, Richard Mullen
_____________________________________________________________
2003 Calendar
2003 Divers Anonymous
Calendar 2003
Updated 06-12-03
|
Jan
2003 ·
01/03: DA Planning meeting 6 p.m. at 6 Bros
Diner Rt. 46 ·
01/11: DA Holiday
Party 7:30 p.m.
San Carlos Rest
620 Stuyvesant Ave, Lyndhurst ·
01/27: DA Club Meeting 7:30 p.m. “
Marine History Presentation” by Lada |
Feb
2003 ·
02/02: Bottle Show, South River ·
02/15: 4th Annual DA Ski
Day ·
02/23: Toms River Flea
Market ·
02/24: DA Club Meeting 7:30 p.m.
Presentation: “How We Shore Dive” by Tom Gormley and Rich Mullen |
Mar
2003
|
|
Apr
2003 ·
04/06: Manasquan RR Bridge Dive, 12
noon ·
04/07: Pool Dive for gear check and
warm-up 9:15 p.m. Clifton YMYWHA ·
Sunday shore dives ·
04/28: DA Club Meeting 7:30 p.m. Annual Dues and Officer Elections |
May
2003
|
June
2003
|
|
Jul
2003 ·
Local Shore Dives TBA ·
07/13 Ben Boat Dive on Spring Tide ·
7/19 & 20 DA Weekend at Dutch Springs ·
07/28: DA Club Meeting, Topic, TBA |
Aug
2003
|
Sep
2003 ·
Local Shore Dives TBA ·
09/14 Ben Boat Dive on Spring Tide ·
09/28 Ben Boat Dive on Spring Tide ·
09/29: DA Club Meeting 7:30 p.m. |
|
Oct
2003
|
Nov
2003 ·
Local Shore Dives TBA ·
Annual gear maintenance
workshop TBA ·
11/24: DA Club Meeting 7:30 p.m. |
Dec
2003 ·
12/15: DA Club Meeting
7:30 p.m. 4th Annual Artifact &
Photo Contest ·
12/28: Winter Shore Dive |
Pink highlighted events are subsidized by DA dues
Divers Anonymous first scuba quiz.
1)
Name 6 middle ear equalizing techniques.
2)
Name the national park that was recently studied by marine biologists
within a year after the federal government declared its waters closed to
fishing.
3)
This man teamed with J Cousteau to invent the first scuba regulator.
4)
Name this local pioneer who tested one of the first submarines.
5)
What year did Europeans first visit New Jersey?
6)
What was the name of their ship?
7)
Who was the original captain of the dive boat Seeker?
8)
When did Divers Anonymous hold its first official meeting?
9)
These organisms are primarily responsible for the deterioration of the
Titanic.
10)
A perfectly round balloon has a volume of air equal to 1 cubic feet on
the surface. A diver takes it underwater in the Atlantic to a depth of 33 feet.
At that depth what is the new diameter of the balloon measured in feet?
Rules
are: First member to email, telephone, mail, or communicate the correct answers
to all of the above questions to Tom Gormley will be awarded a new scuba mask
and snorkel. If no one provides all correct answers, the person with the most
correct answers and at least 8 correct, by the Summer Solstice, 2003 will be
declared the winner. Judges are Tom and Rich. Their decision is final.