I enjoy the travelling but it's nice to be home . . .
BACK FROM YAP - We left Manta Ray Bay at 11:59PM Tuesday (local time) and ended up back in L.A. (and some went to SFO) anywhere from 5-10AM on Wednesday (multiple flights). I don't know if it was a one-time thing or not, but my "secret" taxi stand just outside of LAX T7/8 didn't answer their phone until 5:30AM so we stood around for a bit. And in that time, we'd didn't see any of the LAX-It busses that are supposed to run every five minutes. (I'm still not a fan of this system.) Personally, my morning was further complicated when I walked into my apartment only to find that I didn't have any electrical power. Somehow, the main breaker to my place outside the building by the meter got thrown and it took a call to my landlord and DWP to get that all straightened out. Not exactly what you want to be doing when it's hot and you're tired and jet-lagged. But it all worked out so c'est la vie.
YAP TRIP REPORT & PIX - The trip report is done and I'm going to put the final touches on the SmugMug slide show later on this evening. You'll get a separate e-mail with links to both. The short version of the trip report is that we saw lots of cool stuff, some of it unexpected, but we had crappy weather for 19 of our 21 days due to unseasonal big storms moving through the Pacific. We were still able to dive every day - although we canceled one shark feed due to conditions and went elsewhere - and got in 52 dives during the entire time we were there. Despite the conditions, the dives were generally very good-to-excellent. The rain affected the visibility in some spots, especially in the channels, so our viz ranged from 20 feet to 100+ feet. But most of the time, especially on the outer reefs, viz was 60-100+ feet. The group overall were real troupers and took the weather in stride. You very quickly learn that there's nothing you can do about it so you might as well just deal with it. (And we had a couple of days of gorgeous weather.) So look for more details and lots of pictures in your in-box in the next 24 hours.
NEXT UP: ISLA MUJERES - We go from Mantas to Whale Sharks (aka Embarrassment of Riches). In two weeks, we leave for our Isla Mujeres trip where we will visit the Cancun Underwater Museum, cavort with Whale Sharks, examine the reefs around Isla, and explore of the array of amazingly good restaurants they have on the island. (It's just north of Cancun, in case you didn't know.) We hope to give you live reports from there in both TWARS and on FaceBook, like we did from Yap.
MALDIVES IN NOVEMBER IS DOWN TO ONE SPOT - Two of the folks on our Yap trip decided they were having such a good time that they wanted to grab two spots on the Maldives trip in November so that leaves us with one spot remaining. If you're interested in grabbing that final slot, call us at 310/652-4990.
ZOOM SEEKERS RESUMES THIS TUESDAY - Sorry for the kerfuffle last month but we're back on track this Tuesday for our monthly Zoom Seekers gathering. Our speaker this month will be Rachel Cushman who is the Dive Safety Officer of Aquarium Operations which means she's in charge of the on-site diving at AOP. More importantly, she's also in charge of recruiting and staffing divers for our volunteer program and that's what she'l be talking about Tuesday. And even if you're not in the L.A. area, many aquariums around the country have volunteer programs, some modeled after ours, and Rachel's talk can give you an idea of what to expect if you want to join. We start at 7:30PM and will take questions once Rachel's presentation is done. Here's the link:
FLORIDA REEF BLEACHING - What is going on down there? I guess this is one we can't blame on Ron DeSantis. But Florida has been suffering under record heat which has produced record water temps which is some areas have topped 100º!!! That's about 16-20º above normal and could easily be called coral-killing, because some of the reefs are bleaching seemingly overnight. Researchers are working diligently to try to save some genetic strands of some corals in the hopes they can replant them once the waters cool back down. But it's a rather harrowing example of just how fragile coral reefs can be.
SAN FRANCISCO BAY HAS A RED TIDE - Not to be outdone, San Francisco is also in the environmental news with reports that a red tide has started creeping in to their waters and fish have started dying. A red tide is caused by some specific algaes that then produce a toxin that can be deadly to fish. As the algae bloom spreads, bacteria then attack the algae but that then depletes the oxygen levels in the affected water so it's sort of a double whammy. The fish may avoid the toxic parts but then suffocate due to lack of oxygen. These types of blooms are seasonal, so not totally unexpected, but the last one in the Bay area was especially devastating so hopefully this one will cause less damage.
LAST WORD - I don't have a witty, happy story to end with so let me end with a couple of pix from Yap. I love doing staredowns with fish where they're looking straight into my camera and these three especially struck my pleasure zone this trip.
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