TWARS (This Week at Reef Seekers) - August 1-8

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Ken Kurtis

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Location
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Rod's memorial, Cozumel, Zoom Seekers, and more
(please scroll down for details)

Since you just got the newsletter, I'll keep this relatively brief . . .

ROD FRANCIS' MEMORIAL - Very fitting and moving memorial today for Rod Francis, who taught for us for many years as well as being our pre-Robert repair guy. I gave one of the spoken remembrances as did Rod's son-in-law Mike and daughter Kim, among others. We had a great turnout from people with Reef Seekers connections, including Billy Wright (now sporting a white beard), Blake Whitney, Rich Capparela, Rhett Price, Malcolm Boyd, Floyd & Pat Bryan (dive boat Maverick), Jerry Lewis (dive boats Sea Bass & Magician), Fred Vanacore, Josh & Staci Kaye-Carr, Aggie Wallbom, John Lumb, Karen Norris & Craig Gelpi, Dave Bunch, and others I'm forgetting but all of whom had Rod make a mark in their lives. It's a lousy reason to get together but a wonderful afternoon of remembrances of Rod as well as rekindling old acquaintances.
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ZOOM SEEKERS ON AUGUST 10 - Make a note for August 10 at 7:30PM (next week) as our next Zoom Seekers meeting. Our speaker is good friend Bill Acker, founder and owner of Manta Ray Bay in Yap, and fondly known as "The Manta Man." Bill will bring us up to speed and the re-opening of Yap in 2022, and will hopefully get you salivating for a visit to this fabulous place where we love to go. Hope to see you then.

PLACES TO GO THAT ARE OPEN - In the newsletter, I mentioned Mexico and specifically Cabo and Cancun. I forgot about Cozumel and got this nifty reminder from Larry Schnabel, who was there recently: "Your flock might like to know UAL offers a Saturday direct flight out of LAX to Cozumel. You can fly there on a Saturday morning and fly back to LAX directly the next Saturday, or if you return during the week UAL offers flights out of Cozumel to LAX with a stop in Denver. This is how I flew on my trip, where I stayed at the El Presidente Hotel and dove with its on-site scuba dive operation Scuba Du. Easy way to have a fairly easy trip, and the El Presidente offers COVID-19 testing on site as part of the dive package you can book with them."

ANOTHER UNDERWATER SCULPTURE MASTERPIECE - Got a note from Jason deCaires Taylor (he created all the sculptures in the Cancun Underwater Museum) about his latest work off the coast of Cyprus. It's an underwater forest which is designed to help repopulate the waters around Cyprus and the Mediterranean, which has been depleted over the last 20 years. From the press release: "The artworks, in particular those which represent trees, are designed to attract marine life on a large scale and as such will develop organically. These installations are placed at various depths from the sea floor to its surface and laid out to resemble a path through a dense underwater forest. Some of the tree forms will float just beneath the surface so that the whole structure provides a complex environment for marine life at all levels of the water column.Among the sculpted trees children can be seen playing. They remind us of our need for the natural world as a place to explore, discover and fire our imaginations. Over the last 50 years children have become more excluded from the wild places that once existed. The forest children, camera in hand as they play hide-and-seek in the woods, point their lenses at the human race. They hope for a future in which the mystery and magic of nature will return. The need to re-wild our oceans is as pressing as the need to re-establish our connection to the natural world."
You can see the individual pieces through this link: CYPRESS UNDERWATER FORREST.

WEBSITE ISSUES - Earthlink hosts our website and we update through FileZilla. Suddenly the two aren't playing nice with each other. So there may be things on the website that aren't yet updated. Hopefully I can get this resolved shortly.

And that'll do it for now. Hope you have a great week, and let's go diving soon!!!

- Ken
 

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