Who says you can't do a surface interval on a golf course . . .
THE U.S. OPEN AT LACC - That's good friend Bill Acker, owner of Manta Ray Bay Resort in Yap, with me as we went in for the final round of the U.S. Open (golf) at the Los Angeles Country Club on Sunday. (It's also why this TWARS is a day late.) Bill's an avid golfer and he and I have been talking about this almost since it was announced that LACC would host. And we had a blast even though Bill's favorite, Scottie Scheffler didn't do as well as hoped. (Bill's doing a "Hook 'em Horns" because he and Scottie both went to the University of Texas.) But it just goes to show that we can have a good time under the water as well as above.
WELCOME BACK - I did some cleaning up of our Constant Contact database over the weekend which included realizing that a number of you - I really and truly don't know how this happened - who had been on our list somehow fell off. So welcome back to those of you who re-confirmed.
LOOKING FOR THE LOST TOURIST SUBMARINE - (This is a developing story so some of what we know may have changed by the time you're reading this.) A submarine that takes tourists down 13,000 feet to see the wreck of the
Titantic has gone missing and is still unaccounted for. The sub - named "Titan" - started their dive Sunday morning, but about an hour and forty-five minutes into the 2-hour descent to the bottom, contact between the sub and the mothership from where it launches was lost, according to OceanGate, the owner/operators. The sub carries five people, two crew and three passengers. OceanGate says there's enough life support on-board for up to 96 hours (4 days). The U.S Coast Guard is heading up the search efforts with aircraft, sonar buoys, and other assets. The search is complicated not only by the location, some 900 miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, but also by the fact that they need to search both underwater and on the surface. The sub could be disabled on the bottom or it could have aborted the descent and ended up on to the surface, somewhere unexpected.
RELATING THIS TO MY ALVIN DIVE - I have some perspective and speculation about what might have happened. As some of you may know or recall, in 1996, as part of a TV show I hosted and produced for KCET, I did a dive in the
Alvin submersible (ironically the submersible that first discovered the final resting place of the
Titanic). Although we "only" dove to 3,500 feet off the backside of Catalina, the prep for that dive was similar to what I presume those in Titan went through. Among the things we discussed was how to get off the bottom if we were disabled, which included showing us what to do and how to do it if our pilot was unable to perform the task. For
Alvin, which was actually buoyant, that involved dumping lead weights that we carried on the outside of the sub (similar to ditching your weight belt) and also ditching parts of the sub structure so that the inner sphere where we all were housed would basically do a free ascent to the surface from any depth. We also put on full-face masks that supplied breathing gas, as well as discussed what the options were in case of some structural failure of the sub, like a port/window failing at some point. I'm guessing that there are similar procedures prior to a dive in Titan. The point of mentioning this is to illustrate that even if they suffered a total power failure - which would certainly explain why they lost communication contact with the mothership - there are options for a successful outcome. But don't lose sight of the fact that, like running out of air on a scuba dive, this is a very serious issue and decisions that need to be made in a split second can be the difference between surviving or not.
ZOOM SEEKERS FROM LAST WEEK - Our speaker was sculptor (and Reef Seekers diver) Victor Douieb, who does amazingly realistic and detailed sculptures of (mainly) marine animals, as you can see below. Victor gave the whole story of how he turned to sculpting - his previous experience as a dental technician helped - and what inspires him to create the works he does. If you missed his wonderful talk, you can still catch it on our YouTube with this link:
ZOOM SEEKERS AND SCULPTOR VICTOR DOUIEB.
