Ken Kurtis
Contributor
As mentioned in a previous thread, we've now updated the Cousteau Monument plaque in the Avalon Underwater Park (more correctly and formally known as the Casino Point State Marine Conservation Area). As Paul Harvey used to say, "Here's the rest of the story."
The Cousteau Monument was originally created and installed in the Park in 1997, shortly after Cousteau died. As many of you have seen when you've been diving the Park, the monument consists of a plaque - which we now know was aluminum - placed on a large rock. (The rock was originally upright but eventually tipped over.) But 23 years underwater takes its toll, as you can see from the picture below. On the left is what the plaque looked like in 1997 and on the right, what it looks like today.
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So, we decided it was time for a change. "We" being me and, separately - but unknown to me - Signature Underwater Divers (the dive club arm of Signature Scuba in Rancho Cucamonga).
I have been thinking about this for quite some time and contacted someone I know in CA DF&W. Since the Park is an official MPA, it's under their jurisdiction as opposed to the City of Avalon, and got permission to proceed.
As fate would have it, I mentioned this casually to Dr. Bill one day and he said, "There's another group working on that too." So he put me in touch with Signature Underwater Divers. I had permission but no know-how. They had the know-how - a bunch of them are underwater mechanics/technicians - but didn't know how to get permission. We chatted and quickly decided to marshal efforts jointly. Once we merged, we were able to get things going in relatively short order. In fact, it was two months from when we first discussed this to when we actually installed the new bronze plaque on November 4.
Here's what it looks like and - we might modestly say - we think it's a nice improvement. We kept the wording of the original plaque (although we corrected two grammatical errors) and added a picture of Cousteau, which we hope personalizes it a bit more:
This absolutely couldn't have been accomplished by any single person or group/club and we are happy to have made it a joint effort with our collective collaboration and donation to the diving community. I've put together a 4-minute video (with music of course) of the process if you'd like to see what it took to get this done. It's a little more complicated than glue-and-go:
COUSTEAU PLAQUE INSTALLATION.
The Cousteau Monument was originally created and installed in the Park in 1997, shortly after Cousteau died. As many of you have seen when you've been diving the Park, the monument consists of a plaque - which we now know was aluminum - placed on a large rock. (The rock was originally upright but eventually tipped over.) But 23 years underwater takes its toll, as you can see from the picture below. On the left is what the plaque looked like in 1997 and on the right, what it looks like today.
So, we decided it was time for a change. "We" being me and, separately - but unknown to me - Signature Underwater Divers (the dive club arm of Signature Scuba in Rancho Cucamonga).
I have been thinking about this for quite some time and contacted someone I know in CA DF&W. Since the Park is an official MPA, it's under their jurisdiction as opposed to the City of Avalon, and got permission to proceed.
As fate would have it, I mentioned this casually to Dr. Bill one day and he said, "There's another group working on that too." So he put me in touch with Signature Underwater Divers. I had permission but no know-how. They had the know-how - a bunch of them are underwater mechanics/technicians - but didn't know how to get permission. We chatted and quickly decided to marshal efforts jointly. Once we merged, we were able to get things going in relatively short order. In fact, it was two months from when we first discussed this to when we actually installed the new bronze plaque on November 4.
Here's what it looks like and - we might modestly say - we think it's a nice improvement. We kept the wording of the original plaque (although we corrected two grammatical errors) and added a picture of Cousteau, which we hope personalizes it a bit more:
This absolutely couldn't have been accomplished by any single person or group/club and we are happy to have made it a joint effort with our collective collaboration and donation to the diving community. I've put together a 4-minute video (with music of course) of the process if you'd like to see what it took to get this done. It's a little more complicated than glue-and-go:
COUSTEAU PLAQUE INSTALLATION.
