What he said....
It was really great to meet Tridacna in person! Super nice guy. Top bloke.
Unfortunately, I stayed pretty darn busy in our booth, so I did not get to spend nearly as much time checking out everyone else as I would have liked.
@Dive Right In Scuba was there. I walked by and met Mike in person, but he was in the middle of talking with someone so I said I'd come back and then never got a chance - until after the show ended yesterday and when I went to look for him, his booth was packed up and gone already.
Wetwear had a booth there. I was surprised but pleased to get to see their "wears"
in person as I have been long curious. My biggest curiosity was how "stretchy" their NCN (Nitrogen Compressed Neoprene) is compared to, for example, the neoprene in my SP EverFlex suits. I got to give it a thorough grope and thought it felt plenty stretchy. Not stiff and dense feeling like my dad's suits were back when I was a kid - which is sort of how I feared it might be. If I needed a new wetsuit now and I were not affiliated with a shop and getting stuff at a big discount, I would definitely consider ordering a WW NCN suit.
The Coast Watch Alliance was there, with a booth directly across from us. They are really working hard on helping to fight the Lionfish invasion. They brought a cooler full of lionfish and did several demos on how to handle and clean them. And they were making fresh lionfish ceviche and giving it out with corn chips. It was DELICIOUS! And they were really nice folks. Shoutout to them:
coastwatch
I am also an assistant organizer for the DC/VA/MD Scuba Meetup group. We had a booth there, under the banner of Washington Dive Club. We are actually still trying to figure out what to call ourselves. We were sharing the booth with on or our sponsers, Patriot Scuba. The folks at Patriot are really nice. I enjoy hanging out with them at our meetups. The new Organizer for the meetup group took it over last Spring, and he is really working hard to get the group's 2600 members out diving. And socializing. If anybody reading this is in the DC Metro area, please check out the group and come out to a happy hour.
https://www.meetup.com/dcscuba
The folks from Juturna Springs were there. That is a new dive site that is slated to open for business (hopefully) in May. It is a spring fed quarry just up the road from us in Maryland. Somewhere near Frederick, MD, is my understanding. I was told: It has a max depth of 220'. The spring flows something like 1.2M (I think - but that really does sound like ridiculously a lot, so I may be misremembering) gallons of water a day, so one end of the lake stays gin clear all year 'round. The folks opening it are putting in some very large/long floating docks. There is a TON of fish in there now. They are going to have a shop on site that will offer trimix fills, equipment sales, rental, and servicing. They will have camping. They will be open Fri-Sun plus by appointment. They will have some permanent pavilions put up.
At our (the Coral Edge) booth, we had a good time and a successful event. We sold a bunch of new old stock regulators at dirt cheap prices. We sold a bunch of Big Blue lights. We had 4 different rebreathers on display (O2ptima, Prism 2, rEvo, and Explorer) and got a lot of questions about those. The shop has a large stack of brand new Explorers in boxes that they are trying to sell. Cheap enough that even with what Hollis has said and done regarding the Explorer, some people will still find them to be a good deal. They are selling them at WELL below what cost was. Our Fourth Element rep was there with us and had a bunch of their exposure protection, rash guards, and swim wear hung up in our booth to look at. A lot of their new gear is being made from recycled plastic that is coming from plastic garbage taken out of the ocean. It is their Ocean Positive initiative and it seems pretty cool. Something that might sway you to maybe buy Fourth Element over another brand if all other factors are equal, anyway. I got to check out Fourth Element's new X-Core vest (drysuit undergarment) and I think I'm going to be ordering one. It felt extremely warm and I'm hoping I can use it to allow me to wear thinner undergarments, plus the vest, stay just as warm, and have greater freedom of movement in my shoulders to be able to reach the valves on my doubles.
Lastly, our ScubaPro rep SAID that they are still working on bringing what was the Seabear H3 computer to market. I know. We've heard that before. But, I am still hoping that it really does come to pass at some point.
The event was in the Radisson hotel. The Radisson is dog friendly, so I brought my girlfriend and our dog and we made a weekend of it. I brought our dog into the booth for a bit and he was very popular. He is WAY cuter than me!
And that is my show report. [Elvis voice:] Thank you very much.
