The worst part of all of this is that the cars nowadays come with voluminous owner's guides and I feel compelled to read through everything they sent, all 1,086 pages. Yikes!!! Just the infotainment system alone as as separate manual of 385 pages which they have the audacity to call "Quick Guide." But so far, so good on the car and if you're in my vicinity, I'm happy to show it off and give you a ride.
GOOD DAY NOT TO BE IN AVALON - Windy, windy, windy!!! Where did it all come from? As we've said many times, wind is what can really make a place undiveable. That was the case with the Underwater Park Sunday. Mark Guccione is a buddy and lead instructor at Catalina Divers Supply. Every day he posts a video on FaceBook called "Mark at the Park" to give you updated diving conditions. With the wind blowing into Avalon overnight and this morning, conditions were, shall we say, less than favorable. So it brings to mind one of my favorite sayings of, "You never get hurt on a dive you don't make." I'm not sure if you need to be signed up for FB, but here's a link to Mark's short video of today's conditions. "Gnarly" doesn't even begin to describe it:
https://www.facebook.com/mark.guccione/videos/827471925817957
ZOOM SEEKERS ON HIATUS - I gave this a lot of thought the last few months but have decided that Zoom Seekers, our monthly Zoom-based lecture series (our equivalent of a dive club) is going to take a break. Zoom Seekers debuted in January, 2021, because of the pandemic and was held every month since on the second Tuesday of the month from 7:30-9:00PM. We really appreciate the efforts of all of our speakers these past three years. But it's a lot of work to put together the speaker schedule, our speakers need to commit time and effort to assembling and then presenting their talk, and lately the attendance numbers just seem to justify taking a break and maybe re-tooling. So I'm not going to say "cancelled" but we'll take a short break and see what's what. Maybe we'll come back on a quarterly basis or something like that and we will obviously keep you posted. But many thanks to all of you who "attended" these in the past and remember that we've archived them on the Reef Seekers website so you can revisit any of the talks any time you like. Here's the link:
ZOOM SEEKERS FULL 2021-2023 ARCHIVE.
ORCAS STILL IN THE AREA - We mentioned in the January newsletter that there's been a pod of perhaps as many as a dozen Orcas in our local SoCal waters and it seems they're still hanging around. No one really knows how long they'll stay - most of the assumptions are that this is based on available food sources - but whale-watching boats are having a field day when they run into them. Because the Orcas are hunting, they've been observed making a few kills, including a Gray Whale calf and some dolphins. But it's also nature at work. Mike Coffer's been getting some great shots and also shared these two photos from Capt. Dave's in Newport (
https://www.dolphinsafari.com/). You can see how close they're getting to the boats. And you'll be pleased to know the Mola Mola was unscathed, despite the close approach:
