Diving the Subway

by Erik Olsen on

I didn’t know this, but apparently the sea floor off New Jersey is often compared to a desert. Nature was not as generous to New Jersey when it comes to reefs and wildlife as it was to, say, Mexico, and so the folks there have hit upon a novel solution: build your own reefs. And more, they’ve decided to construct these reefs out of a rather unusual piece of man made stuff: sold subway cars.

I know, this is not a new idea. Artificial reef programs are all over the place. In fact, Lake Erie contains faux reefs made of rubble from Cleveland Stadium, and Texas formed a rigs-to-reefs program that recycles its petroleum platforms. And as was blogged about over at Divester, in May, the 888-foot USS Oriskany, a retired aircraft carrier, was sunk about 24 miles off Florida’s Pensacola Beach in the Gulf of Mexico, creating the world’s largest artificial reef. It’s also been done before in New Jersey. But being that this one is so close to home, I had to post about it. In fact, it is my goal to try to get out there to dive this baby.

The Dive Doctor Answers Your ?s

by Erik Olsen on

It’s been a while since we did a scuba diving post here. I suppose we’ve kind of let the folks over at Divester handle the topic lately. Too bad, that, because I very much want to get in the water again and blow some bubbles. I think it’s been almost a year since I last went diving. Damn.

Well, here are a few questions:

What do you do if you’re diving and someone you’re diving with gets the bends? How long should you wait before flying after a deep dive? Is alcohol bad to drink before diving? Al good questions that both novice and expert divers don’t necessarily know the answers to.

But you can find out the answers yourself by going to Doc’s Diving Medicine Web site. The “Doc” in question here is Edmond Kay, who is a Diving Medical Officer for the University of Washington, and also Medical Director for the Divers Institute in Seattle.

I got certified some 13 years ago in Seattle, and I’ve done probably 120 or so dives. But I still found the info on this site very useful. You know how fast knowledge can fade if you don’t use it regularly. This is a nice little site to check out on a Friday while you’re waiting for the day to wind down. By the way, let me also recommend a book (whose authorship was clarified by the Doc himself), called Scuba Explained. The book was written by Lawrence Martin, MD, and it can be purchased online, but there are also large portions downloadable, all of which make good reading.

Next Stellar Stop – Bohol, Philippines

by Adrienne Wilson on

Bohol is a place of unusual familiarity for me. Almost all my Pinoy and Pinay friends speak highly of the island if not above some of the other thousand islands. And I know one day I’ll be able to walk the lands and sail the seas with my brethren and sistren from my birth country, but until that day comes I’ll just have to make due with their reports and various others on the net like this Stellar feature.

Whitney Weis gives the facts on the island paradise becoming popular with nature tourists because of its eight distinctive regions. To the right you’ll find one of them pictured. Known as the Chocolate Hills visitors come year round even when the mounds aren’t so chocolate looking. For diving fanatics there are really a couple of great finds in Bohol, or should I say off of Bohol. Balicasag has some of the best diving in the entire Philippines according to her notes and Cabilao is perfect for adventurers wanting to go head-to-head with the hammerheads that frequent the waters. There’s much more to this 60-mile long Asian jewel, but you’ll need to see the Stellar piece for the rest. It wouldn’t be fair of me to tell you all here and besides I’ll have my stories to share one of these days.

Divester’s First-Ever Photo Contest!!!

by Adrienne Wilson on

Hey all! Our sister site Divester is having their first-ever photo contest and to establish who’s got the best underwater snapshot they’re asking the masses to vote. After receiving over 1,200 entries in the Divester Flickr pool they somehow managed to narrow it down to 10 very diverse and amazing water works. (Good job!) The winner of this contest will get a complimentary issue of Diving the World and the satisfaction of knowing they’re better than all the rest on Divester! Voting ends on Thursday, August 10, 2006 at midnight. Go vote now!

Just on a personal note: It seriously took me quite a while to place my vote. I was stumped. So many incredible shots, but there can only be one winner… Gah! Seeing I’m the biggest non-diver I know I really wanted to vote for the shot you see to the right here taken by Brad77. Looking at this picture makes me wish I too were an deep water adventurer exploring ocean caves, corals, schools of fish and I’ll pass on the shark encounters. While this piece added a lot to my imagination I still wasn’t sold. There are nine others to choose from. What was my final decision? I guess we’ll know once voting has come to a close. Maybe I went with it anyway.

Our Plastic Seas

by Neil Woodburn on

Here’s a rather disturbing article.

The LA Times has been running a series on our horribly polluted oceans. While it’s hardly news that our oceans, gasp!, are polluted, the sobering doomsayer articles are rife with runaway algae, toxic bacteria, red tides, acidic seawater, disappearing species, deformed offspring, and apocalyptic forecasts.

Something I found most fascinating, however, are the so-called Garbage Patches. Garbage Patches (also known as a garbage gyre) are where the ocean currents take most of the plastics and floatable trash dumped into our oceans. These swirling masses literally trap garbage for decades.

Two such patches plague the Pacific Ocean; the Western Garbage Patch south of Japan and the Eastern Garbage Patch off the west coast of the United States. The Eastern Garbage Patch is twice the size of Texas.

Let me just reiterate that: TWICE THE SIZE OF TEXAS!

Since plastic can take more than 100 years to break down in the ocean, the LA Times points out that every bit of plastic that has found its way into the ocean in the last fifty years (indeed since plastic itself was invented) is still floating out there–including that Frisbee you lost at the beach in 1972.

This does not bode well for those who rely on the ocean to survive. Scientists who recently cut open the stomach of a baby albatross on Midway Atoll discovered within its stomach, “a collection of red, blue and orange bottle caps, a black spray nozzle, part of a green comb, a white golf tee and a clump of tiny dark squid beaks ensnared in a tangle of fishing line.”

Hardly the stuff of albatross dreams.

There really is no other way to end this post than with the following exclamation which pretty much sums up the situation: Ugh!!!