Ken Kurtis
Contributor
Want to travel??? Upcoming 2017 vacation trips:
• September 1-6 - Great White Sharks of Guadalupe on the Nautilus Belle Amie [ SOLD OUT!!! ]
• November 2-12 - Fiji (SE Viti Levu area near Suva) on the Fiji Aggressor [ SOLD OUT!!! ]
• STARTING TO THINK ABOUT 2018 - WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO???
GET MORE INFO ON ALL OF OUR VACATION TRIPS HERE: www.reefseekers.com/foreign_trips.html
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Upcoming local dives & classes:
• WORKING ON A SEPT/OCT SKED
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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Clouds be gone . . .
GREETINGS FROM NASHVILLE - We flew here Saturday as this is where we plan on watching the Great American Eclipse. I've also got two friends who live here so it'll be nice to visit them as well. The forecast for us for Monday is for clear skies, as it is today, but although the morning started clear, there were some scattered clouds by late morning. Don't know what Monday will bring but anytime you chase eclipses, it's always a crapshoot and you're trying to figure out the right place at the right time. Totality here is from 1:28:02-1:30:37. And sometimes just being a mile or two one way or the other can make all the difference in the world. This will be my fifth total solar eclipse and I've been very fortunate in only getting weathered out one time (Shanghai in 2009 where it poured rain during totality) and when we did our combo dive/eclipse trip to Australia in 2012, we were the ones who lucked out because we were 20 miles offshore on Mike Ball's Spoilsport and had an excellent view while the people in Cairns behind us got clouded out. So you never know and you hope for the best. But even under cloudy conditions, an eclipse is a marvelous thing to experience. And when you have a good view of totality, it's an emotional/amazing/near-religious experience. I've got a couple of cameras with me and am hoping for some decent shots to share with you post-event. But here's one to get you started because we ran into Renee LaBran at LAX and modeled our eclipse glasses for her:
GREAT VISIBILITY IN SOCAL - I doubt it has anything to do with the eclipse but I'm getting multiple reports of suddenly-clean water all around SoCal. There were reports from the weekend of 40-foot visibility at Vets Park in Redondo which is simply spectacular for that site. I'm looking at the live shot from the Redondo Piercam as I type this and it's flat as a pancake out there. There have also been reports of great vis around Catalina and at Anacapa. And you'd logically think this is happening at the other Channel Islands as well. So this sounds like a great time to get out and dive. It's also not unusual as the fall (and yes, we're getting close to the start of fall) usually offers the best visibility of the year so maybe the ocean's just getting an early start on primo conditions.
WHO'S INTERESTED IN COCOS? - I'm starting to put together plans for 2018 and a couple of people have mentioned they'd like to do Cocos. We had two great trips there previously and I'd think we'd use the Okeanos Aggressor again. One thing I'm set on is that, given the time it takes to get out there, you need to do this as a 10-day trip, which should yield 6-7 days of actual diving. (In case you don't know, Cocos is some 300+ miles off of Costa Rica.) But this is where you get schooling hammerheads, lots of sharks, and just phenomenal fish activity. It's also where the famed Whitetip Shark night dive is (we usually do this two or three times) where every night at one spot, hundreds of Whitetips forage frantically for small fish in the cracks and crevices, totally ignoring any divers who happen to be watching. It's truly an amazing dive. Of course, the trick to all of this is figuring out when to go. Right now (and I want to see if there's enough interest around this timeframe), I'm looking at three different weeks in November, 2018. My goal would be to get 11 people going, which is half the boat. It's not a cheap trip by any means (the published Aggressor rate is $5,500 for a standard double room) but there may be deals to be had. But add to this the $490 park fee (paid in cash to the rangers), $30 medical evacuation fee, crew tip ($300-500), airfare ($700-ish), and hotel overnight, and you can see that this is not a trip for the frugal diver. But it will be absolutely worth the money and quite memorable one. So this is the "Who Wants to Go" solicitation. No commitment needed but just trying to get a sense of things. Let me know if you'll be thinking about this. And if you'd like to decide if this will be money well-spent, here's the trip report from our last time there in 2007: Cocos trip report - April, 2007.
USS INDIANAPOLIS FOUND - Probably the first time you heard about the USS Indianapolis was in "Jaws" when Robert Shaw (Quint) reveals to the others that he was on the doomed ship, and that this is the basis for his feelings about sharks. What a lot of people didn't know at the time was that the sinking of the Indianapolis, which really HAD carried the A-bomb, was a true event. But no one had ever located the actual wreck. But over the weekend, that mystery was solved as Microsoft founder Paul Allen led a team that found the ship in about 18,000 feet of water in the Philippine Sea. The sinking was considered one of the worst U.S. naval disasters of all time, with only 316 of the 1,196 men on board surviving, many of them taken by sharks as the men floated in the ocean for days awaiting rescue. You can read abut the discovery of the wreck here: Wreckage of U.S.S. Indianapolis, Lost for 72 Years, Is Found in the Pacific. And if you want to see the "Jaws" scene again, and Shaw's magnificent and chilling speech, click this link: .
And that'll do it for now. To my fellow eclipse-chasers, here's hoping for clear skies for everyone on Monday. For the rest of you (and don't forget you'll get a 62% partial eclipse in L.A. - make sure you use approved eclipse glasses), have a great week, and let's go diving soon. . . but probably after the Great White trip.
- Ken
• September 1-6 - Great White Sharks of Guadalupe on the Nautilus Belle Amie [ SOLD OUT!!! ]
• November 2-12 - Fiji (SE Viti Levu area near Suva) on the Fiji Aggressor [ SOLD OUT!!! ]
• STARTING TO THINK ABOUT 2018 - WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO???
GET MORE INFO ON ALL OF OUR VACATION TRIPS HERE: www.reefseekers.com/foreign_trips.html
——————————————————————————————————————————————
Upcoming local dives & classes:
• WORKING ON A SEPT/OCT SKED
To sign up for any of these dives, either call us at 310/652-4990 or e-mail us at kenkurtis@aol.com
——————————————————————————————————————————————
Clouds be gone . . .
GREETINGS FROM NASHVILLE - We flew here Saturday as this is where we plan on watching the Great American Eclipse. I've also got two friends who live here so it'll be nice to visit them as well. The forecast for us for Monday is for clear skies, as it is today, but although the morning started clear, there were some scattered clouds by late morning. Don't know what Monday will bring but anytime you chase eclipses, it's always a crapshoot and you're trying to figure out the right place at the right time. Totality here is from 1:28:02-1:30:37. And sometimes just being a mile or two one way or the other can make all the difference in the world. This will be my fifth total solar eclipse and I've been very fortunate in only getting weathered out one time (Shanghai in 2009 where it poured rain during totality) and when we did our combo dive/eclipse trip to Australia in 2012, we were the ones who lucked out because we were 20 miles offshore on Mike Ball's Spoilsport and had an excellent view while the people in Cairns behind us got clouded out. So you never know and you hope for the best. But even under cloudy conditions, an eclipse is a marvelous thing to experience. And when you have a good view of totality, it's an emotional/amazing/near-religious experience. I've got a couple of cameras with me and am hoping for some decent shots to share with you post-event. But here's one to get you started because we ran into Renee LaBran at LAX and modeled our eclipse glasses for her:
GREAT VISIBILITY IN SOCAL - I doubt it has anything to do with the eclipse but I'm getting multiple reports of suddenly-clean water all around SoCal. There were reports from the weekend of 40-foot visibility at Vets Park in Redondo which is simply spectacular for that site. I'm looking at the live shot from the Redondo Piercam as I type this and it's flat as a pancake out there. There have also been reports of great vis around Catalina and at Anacapa. And you'd logically think this is happening at the other Channel Islands as well. So this sounds like a great time to get out and dive. It's also not unusual as the fall (and yes, we're getting close to the start of fall) usually offers the best visibility of the year so maybe the ocean's just getting an early start on primo conditions.
WHO'S INTERESTED IN COCOS? - I'm starting to put together plans for 2018 and a couple of people have mentioned they'd like to do Cocos. We had two great trips there previously and I'd think we'd use the Okeanos Aggressor again. One thing I'm set on is that, given the time it takes to get out there, you need to do this as a 10-day trip, which should yield 6-7 days of actual diving. (In case you don't know, Cocos is some 300+ miles off of Costa Rica.) But this is where you get schooling hammerheads, lots of sharks, and just phenomenal fish activity. It's also where the famed Whitetip Shark night dive is (we usually do this two or three times) where every night at one spot, hundreds of Whitetips forage frantically for small fish in the cracks and crevices, totally ignoring any divers who happen to be watching. It's truly an amazing dive. Of course, the trick to all of this is figuring out when to go. Right now (and I want to see if there's enough interest around this timeframe), I'm looking at three different weeks in November, 2018. My goal would be to get 11 people going, which is half the boat. It's not a cheap trip by any means (the published Aggressor rate is $5,500 for a standard double room) but there may be deals to be had. But add to this the $490 park fee (paid in cash to the rangers), $30 medical evacuation fee, crew tip ($300-500), airfare ($700-ish), and hotel overnight, and you can see that this is not a trip for the frugal diver. But it will be absolutely worth the money and quite memorable one. So this is the "Who Wants to Go" solicitation. No commitment needed but just trying to get a sense of things. Let me know if you'll be thinking about this. And if you'd like to decide if this will be money well-spent, here's the trip report from our last time there in 2007: Cocos trip report - April, 2007.
USS INDIANAPOLIS FOUND - Probably the first time you heard about the USS Indianapolis was in "Jaws" when Robert Shaw (Quint) reveals to the others that he was on the doomed ship, and that this is the basis for his feelings about sharks. What a lot of people didn't know at the time was that the sinking of the Indianapolis, which really HAD carried the A-bomb, was a true event. But no one had ever located the actual wreck. But over the weekend, that mystery was solved as Microsoft founder Paul Allen led a team that found the ship in about 18,000 feet of water in the Philippine Sea. The sinking was considered one of the worst U.S. naval disasters of all time, with only 316 of the 1,196 men on board surviving, many of them taken by sharks as the men floated in the ocean for days awaiting rescue. You can read abut the discovery of the wreck here: Wreckage of U.S.S. Indianapolis, Lost for 72 Years, Is Found in the Pacific. And if you want to see the "Jaws" scene again, and Shaw's magnificent and chilling speech, click this link: .
And that'll do it for now. To my fellow eclipse-chasers, here's hoping for clear skies for everyone on Monday. For the rest of you (and don't forget you'll get a 62% partial eclipse in L.A. - make sure you use approved eclipse glasses), have a great week, and let's go diving soon. . . but probably after the Great White trip.
- Ken
