Ken Kurtis
Contributor
Want to travel??? Upcoming 2015-2016 vacation trips:
• August 1-6 - Isla Guadalupe & Great White Sharks [ ONLY 5 SPOTS AVAILABLE ]
• August 13-20 (WEEK 1) - Isla Mujeres & Whale Sharks, cenotes, and statues [ SOLD OUT!!! ]
• August 20-27 (WEEK 2) - Isla Mujeres & Whale Sharks, cenotes, and statues [ A FEW SPOTS LEFT ]
• November 3-16 - Maldives on the Manthiri [ FILLING - ONLY 6 STILL AVAILABLE ]
GET MORE INFO ON ALL OF OUR VACATION TRIPS HERE: www.reefseekers.com/foreign_trips.html
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What a difference a day makes . . .
WIND-WHIPPED WEEKEND - The wind that we had on Friday really whipped things up to the point that there was an 8-foot swell in the channel. That didn't make for pleasantness on Saturday when the swell was still in the 6-8 foot range. But give it another 24 hours, and today (Sunday) it looks like it was in the 3-4 foot range. Numerous points here and ones we've made before but they are worth repeating. First is that when it comes to ocean weather, wind is usually the key thing to watch. But things that get whipped up quickly by the wind (and it can change VERY quickly) also calm down quickly once the wind subsides. So just because Catalina make seem undiveable today, it doesn't mean it'll be undiveable tomorrow. And the hardest task the boat operators have is balancing the conditions against the safety and comfort of the passengers. Most of the times, the boats are big enough that they can get across without damaging the boat, but you'll be puking your guts out and what's the point of that? On the other hand, sometimes they cancel in anticipation of things getting worse and they don't, and then folks are going, "Well, we could have gone. What was the big deal?" So it's tough no matter how you cut it.
PALAU BLUE CORNER VIDEO IS READY - If you've got a spare three minutes and two seconds, take a peek at our video of the Friday morning dive from Blue Corner in Palau last month. This was the dive where everything was popping: sharks, barracuda, tuna, triggerfish, snappers, you name it. It was everything a Blue Corner dive should be. Check it out on our YouTube page (and make sure you have your speakers on): .
GET FREE CHAMBER DAY RAFFLE TICKETS BY DIVING IN APRIL - With the hopes that the windy weather is behind us (at least until May 5), did you know that you can get FREE Chamber Day raffle tickets just by diving in April? Absolutely true. If you do an April weekend dive on any of our 10 Chamber Day Fleet boats (Chamber Day Boats & Sponsors > Chamber Day > USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences), at the end of the dive day they'll hand you five FREE daytime raffle tickets. It doesn't matter whether you're signed up to dive Chamber Day or not. EVERYONE who supports our Chamber Day Fleet boats in April, will get the bonus tickets. You can then mail them in to us, or fill them out (name & phone #) and leave them with the boat, or bring them back on Chamber Day (Wednesday, May 4) and deposit them yourself. So hopefully you'll take advantage of this opportunity.
ROOM AT THE CHAMBER EVE REEF SEEKERS TABLE - Hopefully you've been seeing some of the updates we post on-line. Chamber Evening at the Aquarium of the Pacific is now about 60% full and we've still got some seats left at our Reef Seekers table as well. The whole thing, of course, is a vital fund-raiser for our Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber, providing close to 50% of the needed annual funds to keep our Chamber available to us in time of need. So make sure you get yourself signed up for a boat (we're one of the Cee Ray sponsors) or the Flying Dutchman, attend the evening event, or just make a direct contribution through the Chamber Challenge. You can do it all on-line (www.chamberday.org) plus you can also order t-shirts, posters, and other goodies. Support your Chamber through Chamber Day 2016!!!
FOLLOW-UP (UNKNOWN MARINE CREATURE WASHED UP LAST WEEK) - First of all, I mixed up my metaphors a bit and got the location wrong. Although it was indeed Shark Harbor, that place is on Catalina's backside, not near the Chamber. But I sent an e-mail out to Alisa Schulman-Janiger, who's basically the West Coast Whale Woman, and she got very excited and said it's a Pygmy Sperm Whale, specific species unknown. But she said it's a very rare and important stranding. I put her in touch with some of the people who relayed the info to me, so hopefully this unfortunate creature can give us some better insight into the overall species.
ISLA MUJERES WHALE SHARKS WEEK #1 SOLD OUT - We've closed off Week #1 of our Whale Shark trips this year since we're at capacity. We've still got a few (perhaps three, maybe four) spots left on Week #2 if you're interested. Give us a call at 310/652-4990 to get signed up.
LOOKING AHEAD TO THE MALDIVES IN NOVEMBER - As we've mentioned previously, we've got the mighty Manthiri booked for a 10-day (9 dive days) Maldives excursion. Dive dates are November 5-14 which means we'll fly out of LAX the evening of November 2. We're still looking at airline routing but were delighted to find last week that we can go on Turkish Airways through Istanbul for shade under $1100. Best of all, it's only two flights (LAX-IST and then IST-MLE). Other routings we were looking at required three or even four flights and were running closer to $2,000. I know some of you have said you've been thinking about this but haven't been able to commit yet so hopefully this might help somewhat. The nice thing about the Manthiri (I've done two trips with them previously and I wouldn't go back again if they weren't top notch) is that the boat only takes 12 people and we've got the entire vessel. So we'll be able to dive the sites WE want to dive. It's going to be a really nice trip and we'd love to have you join us. Call us at 310/652-4990 for more information and to sign up.
THE DEMISE OF SPORT CHALET - I'm sure you've heard by now that Sport Chalet announced over the weekend that they are closing all of their stores due to financial issues. (Apparently, they haven't turned a profit since 2007 and last year lost $10 million on $334 million in revenue.) While some retailers might be cheering this turn of events, I'm not one of them. We (Reef Seekers) actually have always had a good relationship with Sport Chalet and never really looked at them as "the enemy". There were things they could bring to the table based on their size and that they were spread out, and things we could do and offer that they couldn't. But one thing Sport Chalet did was churn out a decent number of divers and perhaps people who wouldn't ordinarily have thought about our sport, but they went into a Sport Chalet to get something for a different activity, saw the dive department, and signed up for a class. That introduced diving to a lot of people who might not have otherwise discovered our sport and many of them started frequenting local dive shops once they got through their Sport Chalet class. And while the volume of students Sport Chalet turned out has diminished in recent years, that ability to reveal our sport to people who hadn't thought about it will now be gone. I think overall, that will hurt our local dive industry (which is already hurting a bit). So it'll be interesting to see how all of this plays out but it's just sad on a number of levels, the least of which are the numbers of people - dive department and otherwise - who will soon be out of a job. Although they haven't announced a firm date for closing, they have said on their website that if you have gift cards or have items in repair, you have until April 29 to cash in the cards or pick up the repair. So my guess is that end-of-April is pretty close to the end date for them.
And that'll do it for now. Have a great week and let's go diving soon!!!
- Ken
• August 1-6 - Isla Guadalupe & Great White Sharks [ ONLY 5 SPOTS AVAILABLE ]
• August 13-20 (WEEK 1) - Isla Mujeres & Whale Sharks, cenotes, and statues [ SOLD OUT!!! ]
• August 20-27 (WEEK 2) - Isla Mujeres & Whale Sharks, cenotes, and statues [ A FEW SPOTS LEFT ]
• November 3-16 - Maldives on the Manthiri [ FILLING - ONLY 6 STILL AVAILABLE ]
GET MORE INFO ON ALL OF OUR VACATION TRIPS HERE: www.reefseekers.com/foreign_trips.html
——————————————————————————————————————————
What a difference a day makes . . .
WIND-WHIPPED WEEKEND - The wind that we had on Friday really whipped things up to the point that there was an 8-foot swell in the channel. That didn't make for pleasantness on Saturday when the swell was still in the 6-8 foot range. But give it another 24 hours, and today (Sunday) it looks like it was in the 3-4 foot range. Numerous points here and ones we've made before but they are worth repeating. First is that when it comes to ocean weather, wind is usually the key thing to watch. But things that get whipped up quickly by the wind (and it can change VERY quickly) also calm down quickly once the wind subsides. So just because Catalina make seem undiveable today, it doesn't mean it'll be undiveable tomorrow. And the hardest task the boat operators have is balancing the conditions against the safety and comfort of the passengers. Most of the times, the boats are big enough that they can get across without damaging the boat, but you'll be puking your guts out and what's the point of that? On the other hand, sometimes they cancel in anticipation of things getting worse and they don't, and then folks are going, "Well, we could have gone. What was the big deal?" So it's tough no matter how you cut it.
PALAU BLUE CORNER VIDEO IS READY - If you've got a spare three minutes and two seconds, take a peek at our video of the Friday morning dive from Blue Corner in Palau last month. This was the dive where everything was popping: sharks, barracuda, tuna, triggerfish, snappers, you name it. It was everything a Blue Corner dive should be. Check it out on our YouTube page (and make sure you have your speakers on): .
GET FREE CHAMBER DAY RAFFLE TICKETS BY DIVING IN APRIL - With the hopes that the windy weather is behind us (at least until May 5), did you know that you can get FREE Chamber Day raffle tickets just by diving in April? Absolutely true. If you do an April weekend dive on any of our 10 Chamber Day Fleet boats (Chamber Day Boats & Sponsors > Chamber Day > USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences), at the end of the dive day they'll hand you five FREE daytime raffle tickets. It doesn't matter whether you're signed up to dive Chamber Day or not. EVERYONE who supports our Chamber Day Fleet boats in April, will get the bonus tickets. You can then mail them in to us, or fill them out (name & phone #) and leave them with the boat, or bring them back on Chamber Day (Wednesday, May 4) and deposit them yourself. So hopefully you'll take advantage of this opportunity.
ROOM AT THE CHAMBER EVE REEF SEEKERS TABLE - Hopefully you've been seeing some of the updates we post on-line. Chamber Evening at the Aquarium of the Pacific is now about 60% full and we've still got some seats left at our Reef Seekers table as well. The whole thing, of course, is a vital fund-raiser for our Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber, providing close to 50% of the needed annual funds to keep our Chamber available to us in time of need. So make sure you get yourself signed up for a boat (we're one of the Cee Ray sponsors) or the Flying Dutchman, attend the evening event, or just make a direct contribution through the Chamber Challenge. You can do it all on-line (www.chamberday.org) plus you can also order t-shirts, posters, and other goodies. Support your Chamber through Chamber Day 2016!!!
FOLLOW-UP (UNKNOWN MARINE CREATURE WASHED UP LAST WEEK) - First of all, I mixed up my metaphors a bit and got the location wrong. Although it was indeed Shark Harbor, that place is on Catalina's backside, not near the Chamber. But I sent an e-mail out to Alisa Schulman-Janiger, who's basically the West Coast Whale Woman, and she got very excited and said it's a Pygmy Sperm Whale, specific species unknown. But she said it's a very rare and important stranding. I put her in touch with some of the people who relayed the info to me, so hopefully this unfortunate creature can give us some better insight into the overall species.
ISLA MUJERES WHALE SHARKS WEEK #1 SOLD OUT - We've closed off Week #1 of our Whale Shark trips this year since we're at capacity. We've still got a few (perhaps three, maybe four) spots left on Week #2 if you're interested. Give us a call at 310/652-4990 to get signed up.
LOOKING AHEAD TO THE MALDIVES IN NOVEMBER - As we've mentioned previously, we've got the mighty Manthiri booked for a 10-day (9 dive days) Maldives excursion. Dive dates are November 5-14 which means we'll fly out of LAX the evening of November 2. We're still looking at airline routing but were delighted to find last week that we can go on Turkish Airways through Istanbul for shade under $1100. Best of all, it's only two flights (LAX-IST and then IST-MLE). Other routings we were looking at required three or even four flights and were running closer to $2,000. I know some of you have said you've been thinking about this but haven't been able to commit yet so hopefully this might help somewhat. The nice thing about the Manthiri (I've done two trips with them previously and I wouldn't go back again if they weren't top notch) is that the boat only takes 12 people and we've got the entire vessel. So we'll be able to dive the sites WE want to dive. It's going to be a really nice trip and we'd love to have you join us. Call us at 310/652-4990 for more information and to sign up.
THE DEMISE OF SPORT CHALET - I'm sure you've heard by now that Sport Chalet announced over the weekend that they are closing all of their stores due to financial issues. (Apparently, they haven't turned a profit since 2007 and last year lost $10 million on $334 million in revenue.) While some retailers might be cheering this turn of events, I'm not one of them. We (Reef Seekers) actually have always had a good relationship with Sport Chalet and never really looked at them as "the enemy". There were things they could bring to the table based on their size and that they were spread out, and things we could do and offer that they couldn't. But one thing Sport Chalet did was churn out a decent number of divers and perhaps people who wouldn't ordinarily have thought about our sport, but they went into a Sport Chalet to get something for a different activity, saw the dive department, and signed up for a class. That introduced diving to a lot of people who might not have otherwise discovered our sport and many of them started frequenting local dive shops once they got through their Sport Chalet class. And while the volume of students Sport Chalet turned out has diminished in recent years, that ability to reveal our sport to people who hadn't thought about it will now be gone. I think overall, that will hurt our local dive industry (which is already hurting a bit). So it'll be interesting to see how all of this plays out but it's just sad on a number of levels, the least of which are the numbers of people - dive department and otherwise - who will soon be out of a job. Although they haven't announced a firm date for closing, they have said on their website that if you have gift cards or have items in repair, you have until April 29 to cash in the cards or pick up the repair. So my guess is that end-of-April is pretty close to the end date for them.
And that'll do it for now. Have a great week and let's go diving soon!!!
- Ken
