Ken Kurtis
Contributor
How about that Ohtani fellow . . .
WOW!!! - Even if you not a Dodgers fan (or even a baseball fan), hopefully you can appreciate the magnificence of Shohei Ohtani's performance Friday during the Dodgers' game 4 clinching victory over the Brewers. Simply magnificent. I'm not sure what the diving equivalent would be but it's on the order or making your tank last for three hours, seeing every rare fish in the book, and then having a whale bring you back to the boat. It was very special watching the outing.
SO FAR, SO GOOD - At the risk of jinxing it, we're very happy let you know that we haven't had any incidents or fatalities in L.A. County (can't speak for other jurisdictions) since the opening of lobster season two weeks ago. Keep up the good work. Regardless of whether you're looking for bugs or "just" diving recreationally, safety begins with you and no one can have a greater impact on whether you have a safe dive or not than you. Develop a safety mindset and keep it going.
TROUBLE AT DARWIN ARCH - Trouble for one hammerhead at least. Seems like two Orcas got hold of him and finished him off. There is FaceBook video: https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1686904305289492 .I think what's more surprising (to me) is that there are Orcas in the Galapagos in the first place. (They're well-known, especially at Darwin, for schools of Hammerheads.) By the same token, the Galapagos waters aren't exactly tropical, certainly not below the equator. Then again, Darwin Arch - called Darwin's Pillars since the 2021 collapse - is above the equator. But pretty amazing/interesting nonetheless.
OPEN YOUR TANK VALVE ALL THE WAY - I've seen a couple of posts lately about people noticing 20-30 minutes into their dive, that their pressure gauge drops to zero psi and the bounces back up. This is the telltale sign of a tank valve not being fully opened when gearing up. Essentially, you're sucking all the air out of all of the hoses - primary, octo, SPG, and LP inflator - faster than the tank can replenish. And the reason the tank can't replenish fast enough is because you didn't full open the tank valve when hooking up your reg. It should take 3-4 turns to fully open. (You no longer need to come back 1/4 turn.) One way to confirm your valve is fully open is simply to do a quick hit of the purge button on the reg while watching the valve. The pressure should not change. If it drops and then comes back up, confirm the valve is fully open. If this happens to you underwater, the quick solution is to signal your buddy and have him/her fully open your valve. (Make sure they don't mistakenly turn it off.) But this is also why you should be doing a buddy check prior to the start of every dive.
TRAVEL ADSVISORY FOR THE MALDIVES - I call BS, since I was just there for almost the entire month of September. It seems the U.S issued an advisory due to the possibility of terrorist activity since the Maldives is comprised of many isolated islands and atolls where terrorists can hide or attack without resistance. I can tell you that we never felt threatened or insecure while we were there, including the days we walked around the capital of Male. We also never heard of any such attacks happening. A friend of mine knowns someone in the Maldives Ministry of Defense who told him - take this for what you will - that because the Maldives will not allow people with an Israeli passport to enter their country, Israel asked/pressured the U.S. to issue the travel advisory as a retaliatory tactic against the Maldives, which depends heavily on tourism (the Maldives received some 2 million visitors in 2024). We saw absolutely no signs of any unrest or problems while we were there. The airport is shiny, new, and bustling. Male seems vibrant and thriving, and all of this IMHO seems much ado about nothing and is simply politics at play on an international scale.
LOOKING FOR WORK? - The Aquarium of the Pacific has a job opening if you're a current Instructor or Divemaster. The position is that of Assistant Dive Safety Officer (ADSO), is considered full-time (30 hours/week - three 10-hour shifts), and pays around $40K/year ($26/hour). I think it also comes with benefits. (And technically, for good or bad, you'd be my boss.) Here's how the Aquarium describes it along with a link to apply - and more details about the job and pre-requisites - if you're qualified and interested: "Assistant DSO - Paid Position, Full Time, 30 hours/week, $26/hour - The Assistant Diving Safety Officer of Aquarium Diving Operations (ADSOED) works closely with the Diving Safety Officer to oversee safe diving operations at the Aquarium of the Pacific. The ADSOED is largely responsible for the oversight of the routine daily dive operations and training inside the aquarium.
https://www.aquariumofpacific.org/employment/info/assistant_dive_safety_officer
SPOTS HAVE OPENED UP ON BOTH THE INDO AND PHILIPPINES TRIPS - I guess we're NOT sold out for next year's trips after all. Two spots have opened up for our Indonesia trip July 1-13 (where we'll also celebrate Marilyn Lawrence's 80th birthday) and one male-share spot looks like it will open up on our two week Philippines trip in September, with one week on land at Atlantis Dumaguete and one week on their liveaboard Infiniti. If you're interested in either or both, give us a call at 310/652-4990 or drop an e-mail to this address.
TAKING MADAGASCAR OFF OUR LIST - Looking ahead to 2027 and our planned trip to Luxor, Egypt, for the total solar eclipse, one part of the equation was figuring out where to go diving after that. Although the Red Sea seems the obvious choice, given the number of diving incidents there in the past few years and a seeming lack of a culture of safety, that wasn't high on our list. But one thought was to go to Madagascar (SE corner of Africa). That was, at least, until we read about last week's military coup there. So maybe we'll take that one off of our list of possibilities and keep looking. One option might to be do Luxor and then continue eastward to the Maldives, again on Manthiri, and then come home, making this a true around-the-world-circumnavigate-the-globe vacation trip.
SPEAKING OF MALDIVES - I hope you had a chance to look at the admittedly voluminous amounts of report, pix, and videos from our fabulous back-to-back trips. There's always an image or two we take on these trips that becomes my favorite and this was the one: A Sabre Squirrelfish doing a stare-down in one of my favorite (and hardest) types of shots to get, the dead-on-head-on:
And that’ll do it for now. Have a great week and let's go diving soon!!!
- Ken
WOW!!! - Even if you not a Dodgers fan (or even a baseball fan), hopefully you can appreciate the magnificence of Shohei Ohtani's performance Friday during the Dodgers' game 4 clinching victory over the Brewers. Simply magnificent. I'm not sure what the diving equivalent would be but it's on the order or making your tank last for three hours, seeing every rare fish in the book, and then having a whale bring you back to the boat. It was very special watching the outing.
SO FAR, SO GOOD - At the risk of jinxing it, we're very happy let you know that we haven't had any incidents or fatalities in L.A. County (can't speak for other jurisdictions) since the opening of lobster season two weeks ago. Keep up the good work. Regardless of whether you're looking for bugs or "just" diving recreationally, safety begins with you and no one can have a greater impact on whether you have a safe dive or not than you. Develop a safety mindset and keep it going.
TROUBLE AT DARWIN ARCH - Trouble for one hammerhead at least. Seems like two Orcas got hold of him and finished him off. There is FaceBook video: https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1686904305289492 .I think what's more surprising (to me) is that there are Orcas in the Galapagos in the first place. (They're well-known, especially at Darwin, for schools of Hammerheads.) By the same token, the Galapagos waters aren't exactly tropical, certainly not below the equator. Then again, Darwin Arch - called Darwin's Pillars since the 2021 collapse - is above the equator. But pretty amazing/interesting nonetheless.
OPEN YOUR TANK VALVE ALL THE WAY - I've seen a couple of posts lately about people noticing 20-30 minutes into their dive, that their pressure gauge drops to zero psi and the bounces back up. This is the telltale sign of a tank valve not being fully opened when gearing up. Essentially, you're sucking all the air out of all of the hoses - primary, octo, SPG, and LP inflator - faster than the tank can replenish. And the reason the tank can't replenish fast enough is because you didn't full open the tank valve when hooking up your reg. It should take 3-4 turns to fully open. (You no longer need to come back 1/4 turn.) One way to confirm your valve is fully open is simply to do a quick hit of the purge button on the reg while watching the valve. The pressure should not change. If it drops and then comes back up, confirm the valve is fully open. If this happens to you underwater, the quick solution is to signal your buddy and have him/her fully open your valve. (Make sure they don't mistakenly turn it off.) But this is also why you should be doing a buddy check prior to the start of every dive.
TRAVEL ADSVISORY FOR THE MALDIVES - I call BS, since I was just there for almost the entire month of September. It seems the U.S issued an advisory due to the possibility of terrorist activity since the Maldives is comprised of many isolated islands and atolls where terrorists can hide or attack without resistance. I can tell you that we never felt threatened or insecure while we were there, including the days we walked around the capital of Male. We also never heard of any such attacks happening. A friend of mine knowns someone in the Maldives Ministry of Defense who told him - take this for what you will - that because the Maldives will not allow people with an Israeli passport to enter their country, Israel asked/pressured the U.S. to issue the travel advisory as a retaliatory tactic against the Maldives, which depends heavily on tourism (the Maldives received some 2 million visitors in 2024). We saw absolutely no signs of any unrest or problems while we were there. The airport is shiny, new, and bustling. Male seems vibrant and thriving, and all of this IMHO seems much ado about nothing and is simply politics at play on an international scale.
LOOKING FOR WORK? - The Aquarium of the Pacific has a job opening if you're a current Instructor or Divemaster. The position is that of Assistant Dive Safety Officer (ADSO), is considered full-time (30 hours/week - three 10-hour shifts), and pays around $40K/year ($26/hour). I think it also comes with benefits. (And technically, for good or bad, you'd be my boss.) Here's how the Aquarium describes it along with a link to apply - and more details about the job and pre-requisites - if you're qualified and interested: "Assistant DSO - Paid Position, Full Time, 30 hours/week, $26/hour - The Assistant Diving Safety Officer of Aquarium Diving Operations (ADSOED) works closely with the Diving Safety Officer to oversee safe diving operations at the Aquarium of the Pacific. The ADSOED is largely responsible for the oversight of the routine daily dive operations and training inside the aquarium.
https://www.aquariumofpacific.org/employment/info/assistant_dive_safety_officer
SPOTS HAVE OPENED UP ON BOTH THE INDO AND PHILIPPINES TRIPS - I guess we're NOT sold out for next year's trips after all. Two spots have opened up for our Indonesia trip July 1-13 (where we'll also celebrate Marilyn Lawrence's 80th birthday) and one male-share spot looks like it will open up on our two week Philippines trip in September, with one week on land at Atlantis Dumaguete and one week on their liveaboard Infiniti. If you're interested in either or both, give us a call at 310/652-4990 or drop an e-mail to this address.
TAKING MADAGASCAR OFF OUR LIST - Looking ahead to 2027 and our planned trip to Luxor, Egypt, for the total solar eclipse, one part of the equation was figuring out where to go diving after that. Although the Red Sea seems the obvious choice, given the number of diving incidents there in the past few years and a seeming lack of a culture of safety, that wasn't high on our list. But one thought was to go to Madagascar (SE corner of Africa). That was, at least, until we read about last week's military coup there. So maybe we'll take that one off of our list of possibilities and keep looking. One option might to be do Luxor and then continue eastward to the Maldives, again on Manthiri, and then come home, making this a true around-the-world-circumnavigate-the-globe vacation trip.
SPEAKING OF MALDIVES - I hope you had a chance to look at the admittedly voluminous amounts of report, pix, and videos from our fabulous back-to-back trips. There's always an image or two we take on these trips that becomes my favorite and this was the one: A Sabre Squirrelfish doing a stare-down in one of my favorite (and hardest) types of shots to get, the dead-on-head-on:
And that’ll do it for now. Have a great week and let's go diving soon!!!
- Ken
