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Has anyone been out to Lunada Bay recently from the beach? I've been down to the beach several times recently and the the kelp there seems quite healthy. Bluff cove seems OK too but Malaga/RAT/Torrance all seem sparse. If there is good diving at Lunada or points south I'd go in a heartbeat.

Anyone been to Lunada Bay lately? I was impressed by the kelp this afternoon while Malaga is just about bare. We did have dolphins this morning at Torrance Beach, RAT and Malaga but the kelp and fish population is spotty. Clearly the kelp is better at Lunada what about the rest of the ecosystem?

I take a cutting tool on my dives and my preferred choice is EMT shears. The shears, or really the rivet that holds to two sides of the shears together, rusts and fails after not too many dives. I do try to wash them and slow this down but it seems to be a losing battle. Does anyone have a...

What do you suggest as a dry glove ring system? I’ve been using the Viking bayonet rings and they can be pain to get off after the dive. Otherwise they are pretty good. They don't leak often (sometimes the o-ring gets unseated), and they take inexpensive Atlas gloves which are easy to...

On a recent live aboard to the Cocos I found that everyone excepting myself was using a ppO2 of 1.6 ATA as a hard limit. Most of the divers onboard were from Europe or the Near East. In practice there was little prolonged diving below a ppO2 of 1.4 ATA. My training on this was definitely in...

On a recent live aboard to the Cocos I found that everyone excepting myself was using a ppO2 of 1.6 ATA as a hard limit. Most of the divers onboard were from Europe or the Near East. In practice there was little prolonged diving below a ppO2 of 1.4 ATA. What do you use as your limit? Does it...

Where's a good place to get fill whip needle valves? I'm looking for brass, Cv~0.2, 1/4 MNPT, and oxygen compatible materials, from someone like Parker or Swagelok that has published specs.

Could some of you who live inland tell me about quarry diving, and lakes? Why do you do it, what do you see, what is the aquatic life like, what is the best part, what is a typical dive like? I’d really like to know. In my 600+ dives I have done exactly two dives in fresh water (Lake Castaic...

DAN just made available to public this set of papers related to diving deaths: 2010 Fatality Workshop There is data that resolves a number of discussions on this board about the risk of diving compared to other activities and the size of the diving population. PADI has compiled data from a...

Are there watches with extra long bands, or replacement bands that you like for diving? For warm water in a 3 mm wetsuit I use a Casio with a standard band and it is fine. But for cold water, where I am most of the year, a lot of real estate gets taken up by the dry glove cuff and computer...

What to you use to secure backup lights in place? I have been using bits of mountain bike inner tube and it certainly holds the light in place securely. So securely in fact that it is a pain to take the light out and replace it. In practice this means I do not check if my backup lights are...

Have there been studies that define the detailed mechanisms that cause DCS? It seems that there have been a number of threads lately about symptoms showing up some time after dives. The posters have been concerned that symptoms they have may be DCS. It seems many people do not have a clear...

I wanted to see if anyone had good ideas on checking the battery o-ring seal. I just changed the battery in my Suunto Vyper. The battery cover, annoyingly, is just opaque enough that you can not visually see if there is a uniform seal. And the retaining ring covers the battery cover when...

Suunto Dive Manger (SDM) is providing wrong average depth. For example for my last dive SDM reports 272 feet average depth, but the second page of the logbook on the dive computer provides an average of 62 feet. The second value appears to be correct, and is pretty much what I get by manually...

I am headed out for a warm water vacation in a few weeks and an trying to sort out if I will have enough ditchable weight with a 6 pound steel backplate or if I should get an aluminum backplate. How much buoyancy difference is there between a 7 mm wet suit plus a 4 mm hooded vest (California...

I have had a drysuit for a couple months and am basically happy with it -- except that I have had to add about 9 pounds to stay neutral. So I was wondering how much weight people typically add for different undergarmet types. I have a 200 gram/m^2 thinsulate undergarmet, under a trilaminate...