No pony on solo shallow teeth dive?

[HalcyonDaze]

I've only done one day of tooth diving in Venice and didn't take my pony bottle. I felt comfortable (well, as comfortable as possible) with my ability to do a CESA at that depth and an AL80 was possibly overkill on the gas.

 

[CuzzA]

No. I was a life long Republican since '76 until just recently. Now I'm a 'hardcore' independent because of partisanship just like this. Nice red herring, though. I don't belong to either TEAM RED or TEAM BLUE, but am partial to TEAM FLORIDA (Go Gators!!!). Of course, I like TEAM UM, TEAM FSU, TEAM UCF, TEAM FIU and all the other teams out there who are trying to restore our great state.

Fixing the dyke is great and I'm glad it's politically advantageous for Scott. However, the problem with the green crud is relatively new and has been directly linked to relaxed regulations foisted on us by Scott and Putnam. No matter what party you belong to, these two have failed Florida in regards to clean water and the environment as a whole. There are better Republicans, better Democrats and hopefully an independent out there who is beholden to neither party. I don't know enough about the Red Tide, but there are some indicators that ag runoff exacerbates it as well. I don't mind paying more for sugar if it means we get clean water out of the deal. Sugar is killing us.

Fixing the dike is critical to stopping the Lake O discharges. Unfortunately we are at the mercy of federal funding.

I get the issue with sugar, phosphate mining, chickens, cows, strawberries, oranges and all of the other agriculture Florida grows and exports, but there needs to be a happy medium between farming and the environment. Everyone blames big sugar as they pour some in their coffee every morning. It's no different than the diver chastising a spearfishermen and then ordering Hogfish at the tourist restaurant.

At the end of the day, no politician is going to shut down agriculture, to many people depend on it for food and work. What a politician can do is be unrelenting on getting the necessary funding to fix what has been done over the past century that has led to this problem. Could we criticize Scott there? Perhaps, though all I've seen since the issue got bad a couple years ago is him trying to get funding.

I will point out one other thing too and that is apparently red tide was as bad or worse in the 40's (I don't know, wasn't alive), and despite the concentration of red tide in Southwest Florida, so far it's still not as bad as we had several years ago when it blanketed the entire west side of Florida including the middle grounds.

North of Sarasota has been uunaffected by it.

Finally, for what it's worth, I stopped fertilizing and using insecticide and weed killer on my lawn several years ago. I would encourage everyone to do the same. Big Lawn and Big Fertilizer are killing the ocean... all for grass that literally serves no purpose other than curb appeal. All that water wasted everyday. It's stupid.

 

[JamesBon92007]

At the end of the day, no politician is going to shut down agriculture,

Finally, for what it's worth, I stopped fertilizing and using insecticide and weed killer on my lawn several years ago. I would encourage everyone to do the same. Big Lawn and Big Fertilizer are killing the ocean... all for grass that literally serves no purpose other than curb appeal. All that water wasted everyday. It's stupid.

In California agriculture has been slowly fading away--it turns out that it's more profitable to grow houses. We eat oranges from Texas and Florida and other produce from Mexico and South America.

It seems futile to me but if we all do our own little part it might at least postpone some disasters. Unfortunately, I am in constant amazement at how wasteful most people are and it often boils down to some fleeting convenience. It's been hotter the past few summers here and more people are removing their lawns and planting cactus etc. I think we got about 1 1/2 inches of rain this past season and around 11 inches used to be normal. It's almost as if there is some kind of global warming or something going on. Huh. I suppose that might be a good thing in some ways because every time it rains a descent amount many parts of the ocean are too polluted to go in. Based upon my own personal experiences it looks like we don't have adequate sewage treatment to accommodate the present population and yet they keep building more houses. Will they ever stop? Unlikely.

 

[aquacat8]

Nothing a large die off of Homo Sapiens won’t fix. I think that is the future those in power are choosing for us.

 

[CuzzA]

Some perspective for those of you new to Gulf waters... Recalling the devastating Red Tide of 2005 and dreading a repeat

This was before Rick Scott was governor and before the Lake O' discharges.

 

[johndiver999]

The lake did not discharge before 2005?

 

[CuzzA]

The lake did not discharge before 2005?

Of course, but not like what we observed the past couple years. IIRC it was only recently we discovered the dike issues which required the Army to release massive amounts of water due to the extremely high rain fall. The point is every informed citizens and marine biologist recognizes red tide is natural and like it did in 2005, typically forms offshore. They knew this current patch was out there. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, we have had very little tropical activity to break it up.

Nevertheless, there are many people, some who have participated in this thread and current political candidates who are pointing the finger at what is a normally occurring marine bacteria in the Gulf. It's like blaming humans for a volcano erupting and killing a large portion of land. Doesn't make sense.

The green Lake O' algae is an entirely different topic.

 

[aquacat8]

Yes but I read that although it begins offshore, once it blows in it feeds on the nutrients from Lake O and run off... which is why it is lasting so much longer and therefore killing more.

 

[aquacat8]

2005 is not a baseline for pre-man made problems.

 

[aquacat8]

I talked to a local and he said when he was a kid it only lasted a short while, and now he said “maybe it’s the new normal”.