Hot enough for you????
COOL PLUNGE - This is when that giant stride entry into 65º water REALLY feels good. In Westwood Sunday morning, we had 87º at 10AM. Yikes!!! Redondo looked a little choppy Sunday morning but Mark Guccione's reports from the Avalon UW Park lately have sounded pretty good. There's always some place to go get in a good dive and, as we mentioned last week, fall is a great time to experience epic conditions in California waters.
ZOOM SEEKERS THIS TUESDAY - Our speaker will be Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber Director Karl Huggins who will be telling you about some of the things you should know about how your dive computer operates because if you DON'T understand some of the basics behind them, they CAN get you in trouble. As always with Zoom Seekers, this is a Zoom-based talk (hence the name) which starts at 7:30PM and will be followed by a moderated Q&A when Karl is done. Join us by using this link:
ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST - Back in the "good old days" (generally thought of as the mid-80s and early-90s), we had as many as 30 dive boats in the general Los Angeles area. A lot of the were fairly large boats, accommodating 30 or more people (Charisma, Encore, Atlantis, Scuba Queen, Golden Doubloon, Maverick, See Vue, and more). Needless to say, it was a different market then for a lot of reasons, including that a day trip to Catalina back then cost around $30 plus food and airfills. Times have changed and dive boats fell by the wayside. Now another one is going to leave us as word comes that the Magician, out of 22nd Street Landing, has been sold and will become a fishing boat. Not sure exactly when this will take place (or if it has officially happened already). And while there's no word directly from the Magician owner, there are numerous posts on their Facebook page about the sale so this seems like legit info.
LOOKING AHEAD TO 2024 TRAVEL - I'm still working on stuff. I had hoped to maybe line up a Tubbataha trip (Philippines) for May of 2024, but it looks like that may not work out because you're limited to liveaboards and the better ones are already booked or don't have enough room for our group. However, I may have a lead on a land-based trip to Misool Island in Raja Ampat but I still need to do some research. I'd also mentioned to some folks - and forgot to put it in the newsletter - about doing a Cayman Islands trip, most likely land-based on Grand Cayman but there might be Little Cayman or Cayman Brac options too. So we shall see. Work-in-progress.
ANOTHER RARE FISH SPOTTED - We talked last week about a number of fish discovered on a deep dive, one of which was a Frogfish, which is a type of Handfish (so named because they "walk" on their pecs which look like hands). Now there's another Handfish sighting but this one is special because this particular species hasn't been spotted since 1996. It was seen off the coast of Tasmania at a depth close to 1,000 feet. You can read more about it here as well as see a picture of the cute little guy:
TASMANIAN HANDFISH.
And that'll do it for now. Have a great week and let's go diving soon!!!
- Ken
