Ken Kurtis
Contributor
Want to travel??? Upcoming 2017 vacation trips:
• March 17-25 - Bonaire [ LIMITED TO 12 DIVERS - CAN STILL SQUEEZE YOU IN ]
• June 10-17 - Isla Mujeres (early in the Whale Shark Season)
• July 7-19 - Yap Immersion #1 (special 13-day trip featuring all that Yap has to offer) [ LIMITED TO 12 DIVERS - 6 SPOTS LEFT ]
• July 21-August 2 - Yap Immersion #2 (week #2 - same sked as above) [ LIMITED TO 12 DIVERS - 6 SPOTS LEFT ]
• September 1-6 - Great White Sharks of Guadalupe on the Nautilus Belle Amie [ WE'VE ONLY GOT 6 SPOTS - ONLY 1 OFFICIAL SPOT LEFT ]
• November 2-12 - Fiji (SW area near Suva) on the Fiji Aggressor [ 10 SPOTS TOTAL - ONLY 1 FEMALE-SHARE SPOT LEFT ]
GET MORE INFO ON ALL OF OUR VACATION TRIPS HERE: www.reefseekers.com/foreign_trips.html
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Upcoming local dives & classes:
• DIVE - Sat., 2/25 - 36th Annual Avalon Underwater Cleanup (6:00AM - $150 w/event, boat, & taxi)
• DIVE - Wed., 3/1 - Squid night dive at Redondo (6PM - FREE!!)
• FREE DAY - Sat., 3/11 - Diver's Day at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach (9AM-6PM - FREE ADMISSION WITH C-CARD)
• CLASS - Wed., 3/15 - Photo Workshop (7PM in Westwood - $25)
To sign up for any of these dives, either call us at 310/652-4990 or e-mail us at kenkurtis@aol.com
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Be careful what you wish for . . .
MORE RAIN - Think back to all those times in the last year we all thought, "If only we could get some rain." Yowza!!!! To say we've been getting it in spades would be an understatement and we're not done yet, with current forecasts calling for some more (most likely fairly light) rain into Monday late-morning or early-afternoon. I was up north in the Fresno area this weekend (also came to a 15-minute stop on I-5 through the Grapevine due to a mudslide that closed the freeway) and what was very encouraging was to go by Pyramid Lake and see how full it is, especially compared to what it was a year ago. In fact, the Fresno Bee had an article about the reservoirs in that general area and where they are in terms of capacity versus where they are versus their historical average for mid-February and many of the reservoirs are 80-90% full (of course, this also could portend a few more Orovilles down the road) and most of them were at anywhere from 100-125% of the normal mid-February averages. So this is all promising in terms of easing, if not erasing, the drought. One issue when the spring thaw and runoff begins is how much of this stuff will then dump into the ocean and what effects that may have on visibility, water quality, etc. But to go back to this weekend, it definitely wasn't a time you'd want to be beach diving, as this shot of the Topaz Jetty illustrates (those are surfers you see milling about):
SOME DIVING GOT DONE - I know one boat had a 3-day trip and was able to get over to the island early Friday morning, just ahead of the major part of the storm. They had a bit of a tough time finding viz the first two days and there was some rocking and rolling going on overnight, even though they were in a relatively protected area, but they made it through and came home Sunday afternoon. Asante (Gary Jackson & Kevin Bell) went over Sunday morning and was up in the Ishtmus area where it seems the viz had cleared up significantly from the previous day. Gary says they had about 40-foot viz and roughly 60º water temp (at least at the surface) so a marked improvement from the day before. It's a really good illustration of how conditions can change, one way or the other, for good or for bad, in just a day.
WEATHER LOOKS GOOD FOR THE CLEANUP - After tomorrow's system moves through, it looks like it's clear sailing for at least ten days or so and that's good news for the Avalon Underwater Cleanup this coming Saturday. On-line registration has closed but you are allowed to do day-of registration at the Main Stage. The last count I heard was somewhere around 400 divers already signed up. This will be an interesting year because with all the rain, a LOT of stuff should have washed into Avalon Harbor so hopefully there will be plenty of stuff to find. Remember that if you're diving, bring a goodie bag or even a big trash bag into which to stash your finds. And when you come out, check in at your respective station and make sure that if you've got a good story behind your treasure, that you tell it to them and maybe get chosen as one of our contestants from the highly-coveted "Ken Kurtis Silver-Tongued Devil Award" which goes to the best BS story. Again, the advice is that it should be relatively short (but not TOO short) and have a good punchline. Anyhow, we'll hope to see a lot of you over in Avalon this Saturday.
STUNNING PHOTO - You need to see this to believe it. It's a Whiptail Ray coming through a cloud of Bannerfish in the Maldives, taken by a freediver. Very impressive image:
Image: Ray with Bannerfish by Václav Krpelik ::.
SPEAKING OF GOOD PHOTOS - Contest winners from the "Underwater Photographer of the Year" contest (I think it's British-based) have been chosen and there are some very cool shots as well as quick stories behind the shot. You can click on any image for a larger version &/or to access it all as a slide show: 2017 Underwater photographer of the year results and winners .
BUT CAN THEY SING "UNDER THE SEA"??? - Some Australian scientists have been studying fish sounds and calls and have come to the conclusion that the fish will sing a "chorus" in the early morning hours and around dusk, in the same manner as birds do. You can read more about it and hear the fish singing (but I doubt it's going to be a Top Ten Hit) at this link: Fish recorded singing dawn chorus on reefs just like birds .
POISONING THE OCEAN - Scientists have recently discovered that chemicals that have been banned almost 50 years ago - things like PCBs - have been found in the Marianas Trench, the deepest place in the ocean, as well as in some of the animals that dwell in that area. Obviously, they weren't dumped directly there but have drifted and made their way down there over time. But it's a sobering thought in this day when there are calls in Congress to abolish such oversight/regulatory agencies as the EPA, that just maybe that's a little rash and these agencies really DO serve a larger purpose that will help us from destroying our planet through carelessness and ignorance. You can read the study that was published in Nature here: Bioaccumulation of persistent organic pollutants in the deepest ocean fauna : Nature Ecology & Evolution.
NOT REALLY DIVING BUT IT CAME OFF OF FROZEN WATER - I've caught foul balls at baseball games before but I've never caught a puck at a hockey game (which is actually a much rarer occurrence - 50-ish balls go into the stands in a major league game but maybe 3 or 4 hockey pucks go into the stands in an NHL game). That streak ended last week when I was at the Kings-Arizona game sitting a few rows behind the penalty bench, two players came fighting for the puck and slammed into the boards, the puck flipped up and over the plexiglass in a high arc, and while others around me ducked, I reached out and grabbed it. (I was fairly proud of myself.) What's very cool (IMHO) is that this puck has a great 50th anniversary Kings logo on one side and a 100th anniversary NHL logo on the other, but it also says on both sides, "Official Game Puck." I've gotten other souvenir pucks over the year and none of them say that. Here's my with my prize as well as both sides of the caught puck. And yes, this makes me a very "pucky" guy.
And that'll do it for now. Have a great week, and I'll see you at the Cleanup bright and early Saturday morning.
- Ken
• March 17-25 - Bonaire [ LIMITED TO 12 DIVERS - CAN STILL SQUEEZE YOU IN ]
• June 10-17 - Isla Mujeres (early in the Whale Shark Season)
• July 7-19 - Yap Immersion #1 (special 13-day trip featuring all that Yap has to offer) [ LIMITED TO 12 DIVERS - 6 SPOTS LEFT ]
• July 21-August 2 - Yap Immersion #2 (week #2 - same sked as above) [ LIMITED TO 12 DIVERS - 6 SPOTS LEFT ]
• September 1-6 - Great White Sharks of Guadalupe on the Nautilus Belle Amie [ WE'VE ONLY GOT 6 SPOTS - ONLY 1 OFFICIAL SPOT LEFT ]
• November 2-12 - Fiji (SW area near Suva) on the Fiji Aggressor [ 10 SPOTS TOTAL - ONLY 1 FEMALE-SHARE SPOT LEFT ]
GET MORE INFO ON ALL OF OUR VACATION TRIPS HERE: www.reefseekers.com/foreign_trips.html
————————————————————————————————————————————
Upcoming local dives & classes:
• DIVE - Sat., 2/25 - 36th Annual Avalon Underwater Cleanup (6:00AM - $150 w/event, boat, & taxi)
• DIVE - Wed., 3/1 - Squid night dive at Redondo (6PM - FREE!!)
• FREE DAY - Sat., 3/11 - Diver's Day at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach (9AM-6PM - FREE ADMISSION WITH C-CARD)
• CLASS - Wed., 3/15 - Photo Workshop (7PM in Westwood - $25)
To sign up for any of these dives, either call us at 310/652-4990 or e-mail us at kenkurtis@aol.com
————————————————————————————————————————————
Be careful what you wish for . . .
MORE RAIN - Think back to all those times in the last year we all thought, "If only we could get some rain." Yowza!!!! To say we've been getting it in spades would be an understatement and we're not done yet, with current forecasts calling for some more (most likely fairly light) rain into Monday late-morning or early-afternoon. I was up north in the Fresno area this weekend (also came to a 15-minute stop on I-5 through the Grapevine due to a mudslide that closed the freeway) and what was very encouraging was to go by Pyramid Lake and see how full it is, especially compared to what it was a year ago. In fact, the Fresno Bee had an article about the reservoirs in that general area and where they are in terms of capacity versus where they are versus their historical average for mid-February and many of the reservoirs are 80-90% full (of course, this also could portend a few more Orovilles down the road) and most of them were at anywhere from 100-125% of the normal mid-February averages. So this is all promising in terms of easing, if not erasing, the drought. One issue when the spring thaw and runoff begins is how much of this stuff will then dump into the ocean and what effects that may have on visibility, water quality, etc. But to go back to this weekend, it definitely wasn't a time you'd want to be beach diving, as this shot of the Topaz Jetty illustrates (those are surfers you see milling about):
SOME DIVING GOT DONE - I know one boat had a 3-day trip and was able to get over to the island early Friday morning, just ahead of the major part of the storm. They had a bit of a tough time finding viz the first two days and there was some rocking and rolling going on overnight, even though they were in a relatively protected area, but they made it through and came home Sunday afternoon. Asante (Gary Jackson & Kevin Bell) went over Sunday morning and was up in the Ishtmus area where it seems the viz had cleared up significantly from the previous day. Gary says they had about 40-foot viz and roughly 60º water temp (at least at the surface) so a marked improvement from the day before. It's a really good illustration of how conditions can change, one way or the other, for good or for bad, in just a day.
WEATHER LOOKS GOOD FOR THE CLEANUP - After tomorrow's system moves through, it looks like it's clear sailing for at least ten days or so and that's good news for the Avalon Underwater Cleanup this coming Saturday. On-line registration has closed but you are allowed to do day-of registration at the Main Stage. The last count I heard was somewhere around 400 divers already signed up. This will be an interesting year because with all the rain, a LOT of stuff should have washed into Avalon Harbor so hopefully there will be plenty of stuff to find. Remember that if you're diving, bring a goodie bag or even a big trash bag into which to stash your finds. And when you come out, check in at your respective station and make sure that if you've got a good story behind your treasure, that you tell it to them and maybe get chosen as one of our contestants from the highly-coveted "Ken Kurtis Silver-Tongued Devil Award" which goes to the best BS story. Again, the advice is that it should be relatively short (but not TOO short) and have a good punchline. Anyhow, we'll hope to see a lot of you over in Avalon this Saturday.
STUNNING PHOTO - You need to see this to believe it. It's a Whiptail Ray coming through a cloud of Bannerfish in the Maldives, taken by a freediver. Very impressive image:
Image: Ray with Bannerfish by Václav Krpelik ::.
SPEAKING OF GOOD PHOTOS - Contest winners from the "Underwater Photographer of the Year" contest (I think it's British-based) have been chosen and there are some very cool shots as well as quick stories behind the shot. You can click on any image for a larger version &/or to access it all as a slide show: 2017 Underwater photographer of the year results and winners .
BUT CAN THEY SING "UNDER THE SEA"??? - Some Australian scientists have been studying fish sounds and calls and have come to the conclusion that the fish will sing a "chorus" in the early morning hours and around dusk, in the same manner as birds do. You can read more about it and hear the fish singing (but I doubt it's going to be a Top Ten Hit) at this link: Fish recorded singing dawn chorus on reefs just like birds .
POISONING THE OCEAN - Scientists have recently discovered that chemicals that have been banned almost 50 years ago - things like PCBs - have been found in the Marianas Trench, the deepest place in the ocean, as well as in some of the animals that dwell in that area. Obviously, they weren't dumped directly there but have drifted and made their way down there over time. But it's a sobering thought in this day when there are calls in Congress to abolish such oversight/regulatory agencies as the EPA, that just maybe that's a little rash and these agencies really DO serve a larger purpose that will help us from destroying our planet through carelessness and ignorance. You can read the study that was published in Nature here: Bioaccumulation of persistent organic pollutants in the deepest ocean fauna : Nature Ecology & Evolution.
NOT REALLY DIVING BUT IT CAME OFF OF FROZEN WATER - I've caught foul balls at baseball games before but I've never caught a puck at a hockey game (which is actually a much rarer occurrence - 50-ish balls go into the stands in a major league game but maybe 3 or 4 hockey pucks go into the stands in an NHL game). That streak ended last week when I was at the Kings-Arizona game sitting a few rows behind the penalty bench, two players came fighting for the puck and slammed into the boards, the puck flipped up and over the plexiglass in a high arc, and while others around me ducked, I reached out and grabbed it. (I was fairly proud of myself.) What's very cool (IMHO) is that this puck has a great 50th anniversary Kings logo on one side and a 100th anniversary NHL logo on the other, but it also says on both sides, "Official Game Puck." I've gotten other souvenir pucks over the year and none of them say that. Here's my with my prize as well as both sides of the caught puck. And yes, this makes me a very "pucky" guy.
And that'll do it for now. Have a great week, and I'll see you at the Cleanup bright and early Saturday morning.
- Ken
