TWARS (This Week at Reef Seekers) - August 3-10, 2025

[Ken Kurtis]

Bowl, Airlines, Sad Fish, & more
(please scroll down for details)​

It may be August but we've still got more than a third of the summer to go . . .

NOT DIVE-RELATED - I hope you were one of the 52,500 people who saw one of the performances at the Hollywood Bowl of Jesus Christ Superstar. Wow!!! Cynthia Eriva and Adam Lambert each had command of the crowd throughout the entire performance and the supporting cast was top-notch as well. We were there Friday night when John Stamos subbed for a COVID-stricken Josh Gad and made the most of his one scene, done with only a day's rehearsal time and aided (though it didn't seem he used it) by a TelePrompTer discreetly placed in his eyeline. Andrew Lloyd Webber was there Friday night (he sat two boxes behind us for the show) and took a bow with the rest of the cast. Really special night and kudos to the Bowl for putting this together and pulling it off.

TOO RICH FOR MY BLOOD - As I've mentioned previously, we've got two people interested in selling their Maldives spots if possible. So I can let people know the total cost of the trip if anyone's interested, I also checked the Singapore Airlines website. Economy (LAX-SIN-MLE round-trip) is running just under $2,000, which is about par for the course. Knowing some of our folks prefer Business class on a long flight like this, I checked that as well. $11,000. (That's not a misprint.) Yikes!!! And then you wonder: Who the hell pays that kind of money?????

SPEAKING OF AIRLINE ISSUES - I'm looking at airfares for our Yap trip in March of next year. You've got two options. You can fly through Honolulu (LAX-HNL-GUM-YAP) but you have a 5-hour layover in the Guam Airport and just about everything is closed. Or you can go through Tokyo (LAX-NRT-GUM-YAP) which only requires a 90-minute layover in Guam, but you also only have a 65-minute window in Tokyo to make the connection for the flight to Guam. So I've been checking the United flight status the last couple of days LAX-NRT and it seems almost every day, that flight leaves on time and lands as much as half an hour early. I've taken the flight before and it's a little nerve-wracking if you leave LAX late but it seems doable . . . unless you were on the LAX-NRT 10:45AM flight today. It left the gate 15 minutes late - no big deal - but then something happened because the status was marked as "RETURNED TO GATE" for some unspecified mechanical problem. It must have been a doozy because they had to swap planes. The delayed flight is leaving six hours late and is literally on the runaway waiting to take off as I'm typing this. And the issue here is that if/when you miss the connection in Guam, the next GUM-YAP flight isn't for four days. (United only flies GUM-YAP twice a week.) And this underscores general issues with air travel these days. A lot of the places we want to go dive, even relatively close-in spots like Roatan or Cozumel, may not have flights every single day, and if you get delayed along the way and miss a flight, it can cause major issues. All the more reason to have travel insurance and, if you can do it, arrive a day or early in a connecting city. Also, before you start your journey, research and understand the various options you might have if a flight of yours gets delayed or cancelled. But there's still no guarantee that day-of, there might not be an issue so be prepared to cope if need be. Oh the joys of long-distance travel.

TONIGHT'S WEATHER BROUGHT TO YOU BY SHARKS - This is not a reaction to the Trump Administration's ill-advised slashing of NOAA and National Weather Service budgets and personnel, but scientists lately have been tagging sharks with special marine monitors as a way to keep an eye on weather patterns. It seems Makos may be the shark of choice as they come to the surface often which means the data can be uploaded to a satellite. You can read more about this innovative and creative tagging here: SHARK WEATHER.

WARM(ISH) WATER TEMPS - We're hearing of water temps in the mid-to-upper 60s all around Catalina in the last week or so. You may hit a thermocline occasionally - and sometimes that's where you'll find the Giant Sea Bass of the Avalon Underwater Park - but upper 60s is a somewhat comfy temperature zone, even for a warm-water-wuss like me. Beach temps also seem to be holding in the upper-60s range. And if we get a string of hot air temp days, maybe we'll even break 70º in the water. August/September/October usually represent the warmest-water months for SoCal diving so get out there and take the plunge.

THE SADDEST-LOOKING FISH I'VE EVER SEEN - It's called a Coffinfish and can be found in temperate SW Pacific waters, off of the coast of Australia. This pix popped up in my FaceBook feed and I had to confirm it was real and not AI-generated. (It's legit.) Coffinfish might be related the the Handfish family (Frogfish, some Scorpionfish, some Batfish) as they seem to be able to walk on their pectoral fins. But the next time you think YOU'RE having a bad day (maybe you're on that delayed LAX-NRT flight), keep this guy in mind and realize he's probably sadder than you.

And that'll do it for now. Have a great week and let's go diving soon!!!

- Ken

 

[Mossman]

Years ago I was flying Continental to Bali. Simple, LAX to HNL to GUM to DPS, right? All in biz class, so somewhat survivable even with the biz class seats at the time (pre-lay flat). But a little hitch: flight leaving LAX was delayed two hours. That meant missing the connection to GUM which meant we were screwed because the GUM to DPS leg was only twice a week. And we were going on a liveaboard. Yes, we had allowed for a couple days in Bali before the liveaboard departed for Komodo, but waiting for the next Continental Bali flight would have made us miss the boat.

Continental got us tix to Bali via Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific, but only in coach. I paid up the nose to upgrade (I think $2K each) as I had my heart set on comfort across the Pacific. Cathay Pacific was very nice as was their lounge, but the coolest was that the entire biz class cabin from HK to Bali was empty save for one other guy. And the flight attendants were fawning all over him.

I said to J, is that Ed Norton? She said no, definitely not. What's weird is that she would recognize even the most minor celebrity. Like the time a limo driver threw a bottle through my windshield while I was trying to park at the corner of Westwood and Pico in front of what used to be a newsstand, waiting for J to get off work at the Westside Pavilion Sunglass Hut while we were on summer break. I accidentally bumped bumpers. He honked, I flipped him off, and the next thing you know there's a bottle through my windshield, got glass everywhere.

Plenty of witnesses. I asked this guy walking down Westwood if he saw it, and right then J shows up, OMG you're Arye Gross! WTF is Arye Gross, I just wanted a phone number to give to the cops for a witness statement.

No, definitely not Ed Norton, she swore. Then why are the FA's all over him asking for autographs? Hmm. Of course he started to get nervous because we kept glancing his way, but his fault for being a celeb and not at least wearing a groucho marx disguse.

In any case, as we were the only three in biz class, we got to disbark first and I was directly in line behind him. Now he may give his height as 6'1" but so am (was) I and I was definitely an inch-higher. That was the only thing I got to compare as he was called up to the window and then so were we.

We did make our liveaboard. And the diving and those big lizards were quite amazing.