Avalon Remodel

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Bob Kennedy, mayor of Avalon and owner of the ScubaLuv dive shop, tests a "Sea Trek" helmet at Catalina Island's Descanso Beach with dive instructor Tim Mitchell, left . The Santa Catalina Island Co. is planning a massive makeover for Avalon; one of the planned tourist attractions is "Sea Trek," in which customers walk through offshore kelp forests.

This ought to be fun...
 
Yeah I wonder how fun it will be for all the invertebrate reef life that can't get out of the trampling tourists feet:shakehead: Anytime you hear "improvement" or "development" it usually means the environment is about to get the crap end of the stick.
 
I have been surprised that there hasn't been more discussion about the phase in the article "walk through offshore kelp forests".

Anyone?? :popcorn:
 
At first I was aghast, but I'm willing to give Kennedy and Scubaluv a chance to give full details of this program before I begin my complaints.
 
The Sea Trek idea is seriously dumb. NO WAY will they be able to stroll around in a kelp forest. Environmental impact aside, can you imagine how freaking difficult it would be to walk on one of our rocky reefs through kelp?!? With a surface supply rig?!?! :rofl3:


I've seen this in Hawaii and they are limited to shallow sandy areas with no chance of harming a reef. Hey, that may be enough. Give the tourists a grapple-stick and a bag and they can help keep the harbor clean.
 
At first I was aghast, but I'm willing to give Kennedy and Scubaluv a chance to give full details of this program before I begin my complaints.

Bob is no huckster. He will insure that this program will no harm the environment and yet give the customers something they will remember. ;)
 
I've seen this in Hawaii and they are limited to shallow sandy areas with no chance of harming a reef. Hey, that may be enough. Give the tourists a grapple-stick and a bag and they can help keep the harbor clean.

Good suggestion. :D

John
 
Since I boat dive and am very aware of my buoyancy, many of my dives I do not touch anything....

Walking around the the ocean floor is an interesting concept - May have to get an extra 10lbs of weight around my ankles and some boots - Remove my fins and go for a moon walk:D
 
To put some of your minds at ease, I was asked to conduct two informal surveys for the Sea Treks operation (gratis so no financial considerations in what I reported).

I was adamant about NOT having it in the dive park where it was planned for some time. I did survey the d ramp area and it was perhaps the best spot to place it. However, I didn't like the talk about "pruning" the kelp (nor did Bob), etc.

I later surveyed the Descanso Beach site with Joel Geldin as my buddy. I was much haer with that site as it should NOT require any "kelp pruning." The participants will NOT walk directly on the bottom. They will walk on raised fiberglass platforms that should give the sand-dwelling infal critters current flow (and therefore oxygen and food).

Based on the decision to move it from the dive park to Descanso, and my survey of the proposed area, I feel pretty good about it not having a lot of negative impacts... and probably much fewer than a class of BOW students kneeling on the bottom in the park.

To give you some perspective on these plans, I arrived on Catalina in August of 1969. The next month we were told by the SCICo ("Island Company") that they would be breaking ground for a new hotel at the Isthmus (Two Harbors) and we had two weeks to conduct an emergency archaeological salvage dig a site before construction began.

It is now almost exactly 40 years later and they still haven't broken ground!

I've seen a number of development plans come and go over the last five decades... but I've seen relatively little of the actual development occur. Of course I consider that a good thing. Will Avalon change in the near future? Well, the majority interest in the stock of the SCICo has shifted and the new parties have some great ideas coming up. However, we'll see what the realities of financing and freshwater supply bring... There certainly are changes we, and our visitors, would like to see!
 

Back
Top Bottom