TWARS (This Week at Reef Seekers - Oscar edition)

[Ken Kurtis]

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 [ SOLD OUT!!! ]

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 - 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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And the winner isn't . . .

OMG!!!! - I've never hosted the Oscars (much as I would have liked to) but I have hosted other awards shows and live TV shows or live events where you're announcing things that you HAVE to get right. Your biggest fear is somehow announcing the wrong name. I will be VERY interested to hear how this went wrong. My guess is that someone's going to lose their job over this or will be given a chance to "retire". I certainly don't blame Warren Beatty or Faye Dunaway. I've watched this back a couple of times now and you see a puzzled look on Warren's face when he pulls the card out. Then he looks inside the envelope. Everyone laughs because they think he's doing a bit. Then he looks at the card again with a puzzled look. He says, "And the Oscar goes to . . ." And then he stops. And you see him show the card to Faye. I think he's showing it to her as if to say, "There's something wrong here. Look at this." But you hear her say good-naturedly under her breath, "Oh Warren, you're impossible. La Land!!!!" Now you've got to figure the two Price-Waterhouse-Coopers people who are backstage and who are the only two that already know who the winners are immediately say, "That's not right." But it's about almost two minutes after the wrong name is read that you see a stage manager in headsets come on and take the card from the "winning" producer's hand. During the misplaced thank yous, you can also see people glancing offstage as if there's some commotion going on there. Emma Stone has apparently said through her press people that she held on to her winning card (along with her Oscar) so it wasn't as if her card went back out again. There's a screen grab from the ABC News Twitter feed that shows the envelope Beatty's holding and you can see that it says "Actress in a Leading Role." Ooops. (Did the Russians hack the Oscars too????) It'll be interesting to hear how this all plays out and what really happened. First Fake News, now Fake Winners.

NO FAKE WINNERS AT THE AVALON UNDERWATER CLEANUP - Thanks goodness we got it all correct on Saturday in Avalon. We didn't announce any wrong winners for the Trash Awards, the Jon Hardy Award, the Golden Flipper, or the Ken Kurtis Silver-Tongued Devil Award. Whew!!!! Congrats to Cleanup Chair Jill Boivin and her crew for a job well done. We had about 400 divers and 100 additional volunteers participating this year. LOTS of stuff being brought up including a lot of larger items (at least the Green Pier) than in years past. The largest thing I saw was a shopping cart brought up by Lowell Smith. The weather was fabulous (albeit a little chilly early in the morning), the ride over was fairly smooth, and a lovely time was had by all. I've got some shots of the Cleanup on my SmugMug page. If there's a shot of you, right-click on the full image and you should be able to download a printable copy: Avalon Underwater Cleanup 2017 - kenkurtis. The favorite thing I saw all day was this little fold-up portable warmer/rain-shelter one of the diver's wives brought (which I had to try for myself):

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TWO WORDS THAT BEGIN WITH THE LETTER "F": "FIJI" AND "FULL" - I'm pleased to say that our November trip on the Fiji Aggressor is now sold out. Of course, we've still got other great trips that we can take you on this year which include Bonaire in two weeks, Isla Mujeres in June, Yap (choose from two different weeks) in July, and Isla Guadalupe in September. See what works, give us a call or send an e-mail, and let's get you diving!!!!

SQUID THIS WEDNESDAY - That may qualify as "fake dive news" since I can't guarantee the squid will be there but that doesn't mean we can't go looking for them. We've got a squid dive scheduled for this Wednesday evening at Vets Park. Meet around 6PM and then well do a single-tank dive. The new moon (aka no moon visible) is today and usually we get some pretty good action a few days after the new moon. So you never know unless you go look. There doesn't appear to be any building surf this week and Vets looked fairly flat today so fingers crossed for good conditions. If you're interested, get in touch.

SOBERING THOUGHT OF THE DAY - I was talking with one of our divers the other week who relayed how valuable his DAN insurance policy was for what would seem to be a non-dive related problem. He was diving in the Indo-Pacific and most likely got some little cut on a coral or something like that. No big deal and it probably happens to just about everyone on every trip and nothing comes of it. However, in his case it somehow turned into a staph infection. Although these can be fairly mild, some are known as MRSA (basically they're resistant to antibiotics) and this may have been what he picked up. The outcome of all of this is that he spent 18 days being hospitalized and is still somewhat weak but recovering. The good news is that he has medical insurance. But the bad news is that it wasn't going to cover everything and his total bill before insurance was $750,000. (That is not a typo: three quarters of a MILLION dollars.) This is where DAN comes in because, as a secondary insurer, they picked up a lot of what his primary insurance didn't cover. So while he's having to pay a little bit, he's not having to file for bankruptcy because a small cut got infected. So bear in mind that your DAN insurance policy can be very valuable to you when traveling, even if you're not on a diving vacation. I think the main caveat is that the injury has to occur at least 50 miles away from your home. But it bears remembering that's it's an inexpensive insurance arsenal you can have at your disposal. If you don't already have DAN insurance, you should join DAN and get signed up today (Scuba Diver Accident Insurance — Insurance for Scuba — DAN | Divers Alert Network).

And that'll do it for now. Have a great week, and maybe you'll join us for squid Wednesday evening.

- Ken

 

[Sam Miller III]

Ken
You are so verbose but never answered my question from last week:

HOMBRE,
36th annual UW clean up!

Wow!

I would assume that you are familiar with the history of the Catalina UW Clean Up?
it is documented that it began 36 years ago--
but
by whom?
why?

Inquiring minds want to know

SDM

DD

 

[drbill]

Wrote my weekly "Dive Dry with Dr. Bill" newspaper column about the annual harbor cleanup and make no mistake about it... there were no mistakes!

DIVE DRY WITH DR. BILL #720: AVALON HARBOR CLEAN-UP 2017

 

[Sam Miller III]

Great article-- enjoyed the read as I do all your "Dive Dry with Dr. Bill"

But Ken should have SOME history of the event that he promotes so very well
So I repeat

"Ken
You are so verbose but never answered my question from last week:

HOMBRE,
36th annual UW clean up!

Wow!

I would assume that you are familiar with the history of the Catalina UW Clean Up?
it is documented that it began 36 years ago--
but
by whom?
why?

Inquiring minds want to know

SDM"

Drop your hockey puck and begin researching and replying
SDM

 

[MaxBottomtime]

As I recall Lil Lancaster, then wife of Captain Arnie Lancaster organised cleanups in Avalon in the early 1970s. After she and Arnie split the cleanups faded away until Dennis Reitinger began the annual cleanup in 1980 that we have today.

 

[Sam Miller III]

Max
So correct !--Pin a rose on your nose for you shall be the queen of May !

The Lancasters were all over diving in those days
Arnie's reef was name after Arnie Lancaster
His then wife Lil organized the Avalon clean up.

They divorced the boat was sold and as I recall never used again for recreational diving. It was reported they both moved back to some where in one of the southern states, but I cannot verify that they did.

I attended the first Avalon Clean up, As I recall after all these many good and great years it occurred in the middle of the week and was a free event. All of the charter boat fleet donated their boats at no charge to make the clean up a success.

I believe I hitched a ride over on one of Roy Hauser's boats ? Truth ? Vision ?

Being the very first clean up dive tons of items were salvaged, strange looking bottles probably dating back before the American Civil war as well as recent items were dug up- I recall almost every one found at least one pair of sun glasses - I found three pairs !

There was no ceremony at the end of the event as to who found what, it was strictly a dive in a previously restricted area to clean up the harbor. All the items were placed in burlap bags and it mid channel tossed over board. So much history of Avalon was lost that day-- but it was another time with different dive morals.

The event was documented in print by the late Mavis Hill which appeared in either one of John Gaffney's magazines or SDM.

I was shocked when I did receive the magazine opened it and there I was a full frontal view walking up a gang plank with my WW11 surplus Willie Peter back bag we used at that time as dive bags..

Oh the days of our dives !

Now Ken you and others know a little history of the Avalon clean up..at least the very first one..

Diving is indeed fortunate to have you come on board as the third promoter of the event - you are doing a great job! Keep up the pace!

SDM
oops--gotta do a Ken
LA CO UW instructor
NAUI instructor A27- (Ken did you read the article ?)
PADI, SCIP, CMAS etc etc
Retired
Own a little dog named Max

 

[Ken Kurtis]

Your historicsla knbowledge puts me to shame Sam. (And I only saw this now.) Couple of things:

1. This was the 36th Cleanup which means the first one would have been 1982.
2. I don't think we've skipped any years but I do know we realized a few years ago that we had the numbering wrong by 1 and corrected that.
3. To be clear, I am but a small cog in this event, mostly day-of. Jill Boivin is the chair and force-of-nature behind the Cleanup.
4. I can't remember the first year I personally did the Cleanup but it was likely 1985-ish.
5. I don't ever recall any boats being involved bringing people over. Everyone in my experience came on the ferry.
6. One of the big attractions has always been the ability to dive the Harbor &/or Step Beach as this is the only time you can legally do it.
7. Lovers Cove was added a few years ago as an additional site. Plus we also dive the backside of the UW Park breakwater.
8. The first two years I did the event, I won both years what was then called the "BS" prize for the best story about what you found. After my second win, they offered me a deal so someone else could win: You stop entering and we'll name the prize after you. At some point along the way the official name because "The Highly-Coveted Ken Kurtis Silver-Tongued Devil Award." The plaque the winner gets is a genuine piece of freshly collected and cured Catalina Bison dung (painted silver).
9. There are many trash awards. categories are sort of loosey-goosey and can be created as the need arises.
10. "Heaviest" was eliminated a few years ago because people were bringing up mooring rocks, anchors, and REALLY big stuff.
11. Rebreathers aren't allowed because we would have no idea if those divers had strayed from the designated search areas.
12. The rebreather ban was instituted maybe 10-12 years ago after two navigationally-challenged divers from the Green Pier surfaced under the Catalina Express over the Mole. This was shortly after 9/11 and the Sheriffs shut down Express operations, called in a Sheriff's dive team to search the Express area and the hulls of the boats to make sure nothing had been fiddled with, and the two divers ere lucky they didn't get arrested. Ergo, no more rebreathers.

As for Arnold Lancaster, he's still around as the owner of the Cee Ray. I want to say he bought that from Scrappy Rhea somewhere in the early-to-mid 80s. I just talked to him a few weeks ago. Although he's not actively captaining now (some health issues - Kim & Mike Lancaster run the boat), he's sounding good and will likely be at Chamber Eve along with wife Kay.

And now you know . . . more of the story. (With apologies to Paul Harvey.)

- Ken

 

[Sam Miller III]

Ken.
I generally buzz the SCUBA board early in the AM -- check on the subjects covered ,,some times for information but most recently for my day's worth of humor.

Some how I missed your response and for this I apologize.

You put a heck of a lot of work into the response and in a sense created a historical document that should be expanded as much as possible.to include past events as well as all future events.

All soo soon the participants - those like you who devote so much time and effort as well as the event winners and even the logos.all too soon all will be entombed in personal histories and covered by the dust of father time forgotten by the next generation of divers.

Some time ago I received an e mail from Gordon Bovin (Jill's Husband ??) who was very interested in researching and preserving the local dive history. He wanted to visit my library to research the project. Unfortunately I had honored a similar request which the researcher, now deceased, absconded back to Mexico with all to many one of a kind non replaceable historical documents. So my library which consists of over 2000 historical dive related books, 13 now defunct local and national dive periodicals and stacks associated brochures is totally off limits to all

Perhaps you Jill and Gordon Bovin, along with Arnie Lancaster and even Lil Lancaster if she can be located) can create a research group to investigate document and possibly produce a history of the Catalina clean up. If so I would be honored to be a associate of that group and would willingly research my library year by year for articles relating to the Catalina Clean up

If a book is created put me down for Issue a well inscribed copy by all concerned.

The diving world needs dedicated people like you...Keep up the good work !

SDM
LA Co UW instructor
NAUI Instructor A 27
etc, etc,etc