Ken Kurtis
Contributor
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Want to travel??? Upcoming 2018 vacation trips:
• June 8-20 - Yap Immersion (We're back!!!)
• August 18-25 - Isla Mujeres (Whale Sharks, Cancun Underwater Museum, Cenotes)
• October 27 - November 3 - Roatan at Anthony's Key (3 SPOTS LEFT)
GET MORE INFO ON ALL OF OUR VACATION TRIPS HERE: Foreign Trips
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Upcoming local dives & classes:
• Thu., July 12 - CLASS - Fish ID ($25)
• Sat., Aug. 4 - Catalina Express - Avalon Underwater Park
• Sat., Aug. 11 - Redondo - Navigation (single tank - $25)
To sign up for any of these dives, either call us at 310/652-4990 or e-mail us at kenkurtis@aol.com
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Busy days this last week . . .
WE'RE BACK FROM YAP - Nothing like starting week (but ending our trip) with a fabulous and exciting shark feed (Yap Top 10 Pix - Monday, June 18 - BONUS - SHARKS!!! - kenkurtis) followed by an exhausting 24.5-hour trip home (door-to-door, including layovers). And this time, I'm having some trouble shaking the jet lag. Then we had a big day Thursday with the regular Aquarium of the Pacific shift during the day and a special 20th Anniversary celebration that evening, looped back down to Long Beach on Friday, and then had the Scuba Show and our "Why Divers Die" panel on Saturday. So today (Sunday) feels like the first "free" day I've had in quite some time.
YAP PIX ON SMUGMUG - If you didn't get a chance to follow along daily with us, you can still see the pix we posted from the Yap trip with this link: YAP 2018 - DAILY TOP 10 PIX. There are 10 images/gallery and 10 galleries. I'm still working on the trip report and the other pix and hope to have those completed in the next few days. I'll send out a separate link when they're available.
SCUBA SHOW IN LONG BEACH - Nice seeing many of you on Saturday at the Scuba Show. Seemed like a nice, busy day there. We also had a good turnout for our "Why Divers Die" panel, which is the annual review by L.A. County Coroner Captain John Kades, Chamber Director Karl Huggins, and myself, of the fatalities from the previous year. We had four in 2017, and the takeaway lessons involved proper use of a drysuit (over-inflation caused an inverted ascent & embolism), two potentially medically-triggered issues, and an out-of-air situation where the diver used up his pony bottle and couldn't/didn't switch over to his main tank. Over-weighting, while not apparently a trigger, certainly seemed to play into at least two of the fatalities in terms of adding another factor to deal with that could have affected the outcome of the accident. I have pointed out for years that many divers dive (IMHO) over-weighted. Before you say "Not me!!!" an easy check to do next time you dive is remove 2 pounds of weight and see how it goes. The ideal test is at the end of the dive, at your 15-foot safety stop (with about 500psi), take all the air out of your BC, stop kicking (cross your ankles), and see if you sink or start to rise. If you're sinking (which is my assumption), you've still got too much weight. Take off 2 pounds on the next dive and repeat until you are neutrally buoyant at that 15-foot safety stop. You might surprise yourself with how much weight you don't need (even though you think you do).
RESCUE ISSUES - The other theme in two of the cases dealt with rescue scenarios on dives that exceed recreational limits. I think there ought to be a "Tech Rescue" class because the options are very different. Bottom line is that the deeper you go, the less your margin for error can be as well as there can be other complications with the rescue. A 20-foot dive does not have the same rescue issues as a 100-foot dive, which is not the same as a 200-foot dive. In one case, rescuers were already in deco when the accident occurred and had to decide whether they'd blow their deco and risk getting bent (but it's likely treatable) or whether they'd complete their deco and inflate the victim's BC to get the victim to the surface. The other one involved an oil rig dive where the rescuer had to decide not only how deep he was willing to go to retrieve a sinking buddy, but also how to get that person up from a fairly extreme depth. My point in these two cases was not that there's a right or wrong answer, but that you have to consider and discuss these scenarios BEFORE you do the dive, and then be ready to respond. The time to make these choices is NOT when things go south. But that's what too many people do nowadays. So whether it's a shallow rec dive or a deep tech dive, don't assume everything will go right, assume things might go wrong and discuss what your options are to deal with those situations.
POSTPONING NITROX AND AVALON - It looks like I have to fly back to east with my sister on Wednesday evening so we can complete the details and close on the sale of my dad's house in Dover, Delaware. That means I'm going to have to postpone the Nitrox Class scheduled for Thursday evening as well as the Avalon trip scheduled for Saturday. Once I get my travel plans situated, I'll post alternate dates for both of those. July is quite wide-open so we should be able to re-offer these in the next few weeks.
A MERRY-GO-ROUND MADE OF SHARKS - And that's why it's called a "Sharky-Go-Round." Laurie Kasper's brother Bill Kasper has been intimately involved in this project to help raise awareness about the evils of shark-finning and just sharks in general. The original goal was to have it ready for Burning Man 2016 (Sharky-Go-Round Ghost Shark) and it seems from their FaceBook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/546881962134796//) that they now take it around to various locales. Here's what it looks like as well as "in action" at the recent Maker Faire up north:
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And on that'll do it for this week. Have a great week and let's go diving soon (once my schedule calms down)!!!
- Ken
Want to travel??? Upcoming 2018 vacation trips:
• June 8-20 - Yap Immersion (We're back!!!)
• August 18-25 - Isla Mujeres (Whale Sharks, Cancun Underwater Museum, Cenotes)
• October 27 - November 3 - Roatan at Anthony's Key (3 SPOTS LEFT)
GET MORE INFO ON ALL OF OUR VACATION TRIPS HERE: Foreign Trips
—————————————————————————————————————————————
Upcoming local dives & classes:
• Thu., July 12 - CLASS - Fish ID ($25)
• Sat., Aug. 4 - Catalina Express - Avalon Underwater Park
• Sat., Aug. 11 - Redondo - Navigation (single tank - $25)
To sign up for any of these dives, either call us at 310/652-4990 or e-mail us at kenkurtis@aol.com
————————————————————————————————————————————
Busy days this last week . . .
WE'RE BACK FROM YAP - Nothing like starting week (but ending our trip) with a fabulous and exciting shark feed (Yap Top 10 Pix - Monday, June 18 - BONUS - SHARKS!!! - kenkurtis) followed by an exhausting 24.5-hour trip home (door-to-door, including layovers). And this time, I'm having some trouble shaking the jet lag. Then we had a big day Thursday with the regular Aquarium of the Pacific shift during the day and a special 20th Anniversary celebration that evening, looped back down to Long Beach on Friday, and then had the Scuba Show and our "Why Divers Die" panel on Saturday. So today (Sunday) feels like the first "free" day I've had in quite some time.
YAP PIX ON SMUGMUG - If you didn't get a chance to follow along daily with us, you can still see the pix we posted from the Yap trip with this link: YAP 2018 - DAILY TOP 10 PIX. There are 10 images/gallery and 10 galleries. I'm still working on the trip report and the other pix and hope to have those completed in the next few days. I'll send out a separate link when they're available.
SCUBA SHOW IN LONG BEACH - Nice seeing many of you on Saturday at the Scuba Show. Seemed like a nice, busy day there. We also had a good turnout for our "Why Divers Die" panel, which is the annual review by L.A. County Coroner Captain John Kades, Chamber Director Karl Huggins, and myself, of the fatalities from the previous year. We had four in 2017, and the takeaway lessons involved proper use of a drysuit (over-inflation caused an inverted ascent & embolism), two potentially medically-triggered issues, and an out-of-air situation where the diver used up his pony bottle and couldn't/didn't switch over to his main tank. Over-weighting, while not apparently a trigger, certainly seemed to play into at least two of the fatalities in terms of adding another factor to deal with that could have affected the outcome of the accident. I have pointed out for years that many divers dive (IMHO) over-weighted. Before you say "Not me!!!" an easy check to do next time you dive is remove 2 pounds of weight and see how it goes. The ideal test is at the end of the dive, at your 15-foot safety stop (with about 500psi), take all the air out of your BC, stop kicking (cross your ankles), and see if you sink or start to rise. If you're sinking (which is my assumption), you've still got too much weight. Take off 2 pounds on the next dive and repeat until you are neutrally buoyant at that 15-foot safety stop. You might surprise yourself with how much weight you don't need (even though you think you do).
RESCUE ISSUES - The other theme in two of the cases dealt with rescue scenarios on dives that exceed recreational limits. I think there ought to be a "Tech Rescue" class because the options are very different. Bottom line is that the deeper you go, the less your margin for error can be as well as there can be other complications with the rescue. A 20-foot dive does not have the same rescue issues as a 100-foot dive, which is not the same as a 200-foot dive. In one case, rescuers were already in deco when the accident occurred and had to decide whether they'd blow their deco and risk getting bent (but it's likely treatable) or whether they'd complete their deco and inflate the victim's BC to get the victim to the surface. The other one involved an oil rig dive where the rescuer had to decide not only how deep he was willing to go to retrieve a sinking buddy, but also how to get that person up from a fairly extreme depth. My point in these two cases was not that there's a right or wrong answer, but that you have to consider and discuss these scenarios BEFORE you do the dive, and then be ready to respond. The time to make these choices is NOT when things go south. But that's what too many people do nowadays. So whether it's a shallow rec dive or a deep tech dive, don't assume everything will go right, assume things might go wrong and discuss what your options are to deal with those situations.
POSTPONING NITROX AND AVALON - It looks like I have to fly back to east with my sister on Wednesday evening so we can complete the details and close on the sale of my dad's house in Dover, Delaware. That means I'm going to have to postpone the Nitrox Class scheduled for Thursday evening as well as the Avalon trip scheduled for Saturday. Once I get my travel plans situated, I'll post alternate dates for both of those. July is quite wide-open so we should be able to re-offer these in the next few weeks.
A MERRY-GO-ROUND MADE OF SHARKS - And that's why it's called a "Sharky-Go-Round." Laurie Kasper's brother Bill Kasper has been intimately involved in this project to help raise awareness about the evils of shark-finning and just sharks in general. The original goal was to have it ready for Burning Man 2016 (Sharky-Go-Round Ghost Shark) and it seems from their FaceBook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/546881962134796//) that they now take it around to various locales. Here's what it looks like as well as "in action" at the recent Maker Faire up north:
--And on that'll do it for this week. Have a great week and let's go diving soon (once my schedule calms down)!!!
- Ken
