Happy Birthday Allison

Ok, it is a month late... but the party was a splash. My daughter Allison had her 13th (I know, I know) birthday party and wanted to share her love of scuba with some friends, with a discover scuba party. We got all of the girls together and did the briefing and headed to the beautiful Serendipity pool. Thanks to Eddie a Divemaster candidate we got the gear all set up and hit the water. The girls had a blast and are very excited about diving. Back to the store for pizza and a huge reef cake. No the cake did not taste like fish....

Happy birthday Allison
Love Mom, Dad, Joshua, Greg, Tom, Bo and of course Penny...

Riverview Marine Club Learns to Dive

Riverview High School students that are a part of the Marine Club run by Katrin Rudge are participating in the Open Water Diver Course. We are lucky to have five of these great young men and women in this first class. They are all progressing nicely through the class. They have all completed the eLearning of the PADI Open Water Diver Course and have had a couple of pool sessions at Serendipity Racquet Club's Jr. Olympic Pool. Keep up the great work ladies and gentlemen and we will see you next week.

Carl

3 New Members to the Scuba Community

Welcome and Congratulations to Joe, Chase and Carter!!!

Joe, Chase and Carter braved the 63 degree water for three training dives to completer their Open Water Diver course.
It was beautiful out at Lynn Sivertooth reef. Viz was 15 to 20 feet and there were no waves to speak of.

Dive 1: We were thankful for our layers of neoprene, hoods and gloves. With this protection we were able to comfortably focus on the tasks at hand. Skills then tour and back on to The Reef Dog for our surface interval. The sun was shining and we basked in it for the debrief of the dive and the briefing for the next dive.
Dive 2: Back into the water (I love those back rolls) and surface skills... Back at the float we descend into the blue and more skills completed, an easy tour and back to the boat. A nice touch of having hot water in a bottle to pour into the wetsuit warms the bones for the next dive.
Dive 3: We descend with three Open Water students and emerge from the water with three new Open Water Divers!!!

It is always a great time to see the smiles of satisfaction when students complete their Open Water Course and become new members of this amazing club of divers.

Way to go guys and thank you from all of us here!!!

Found the Mammoth!

Out at South Brohard today for two dives. Water was fantastic! 10-15 feet of viz, 64-66 degrees and yes, we finally found the mammoth again. We figured out where it was at near the end of the dive and didn't have much time to look through the VERY LARGE bones yet, but will go back out there. Pictures are from the dive. Sorry about the really bad picture of the Seahorse, but he was too busy trying to hide in the seaweed. Greg

Staff Dive - Cool!

Hi all - we made it out today for our normal semi-annual staff dive. A chance to get out and talk about what we are working on at the store with the staff, go over training changes, talk about what we want to do, and YES, go diving. Today, we dove "Icebox", a natural ledge at 56' just southwest of Big Pass. I've also included pictures of the NEW dive boat, the Reef Dog.

What a fantastic dive!!!! Okay, yes, the water was cool (68 degrees), but the fish were great. I've attached a slide show and a couple of videos so you can see the great amount on life on the ledges out there that we saw.

Sorry about the lighting, somebody left the flash on and it was dead by the time I hit the water. The photos are completely unenhanced, and you can see viz was about 15-20'. I was really surprised by the sheer number of fish on the ledge. A fair number of tropicals as well.

For our second dive, we came in shore to a ledge at 40' and the viz was about 10 and the water was a little cooler 66 degrees, but we still had a great time.

If you are wondering, I was diving a 1mm rash guard, 3/2 wetsuit and a 2mm hood and was pretty comfortable in the water. Greg

Staff dive and Christmas time at the store

It's a beautiful sunny Sarasota morning and Greg, Carl, Tom, Paul and Scott are out on a staff dive. Paul is hoping to spear some dinner. Stay tuned for a full report, including photos, when they get back.

Penny and I are putting the finishing touches on the Christmas display. We selected useful items to showcase and made it easy for you to browse and pick out the perfect gift for your special diver. On weekends, stop by and enjoy some warm spiced cider and cookies. Bo & Penny

November '08 Donut Dive

What a fantastic turnout! And what a beautiful day for a dive! We had 17 divers. There was plenty of coffee and donuts for all. (the coffee went faster than the donuts... it was cool out...)

Even with a slight wind out of the Southwest conditions were lovely. As usual the blocks were full of life and the Viz was about 8 to 10 feet. Water temp was 73 degrees. Minor waves and a bit of a flow to the north made for a start headed to the south. Some cool fossils were found. Greg found a beautiful Mastodon tooth and gave it to Kayda for her birthday. Happy B-Day Kayda!!

This dive was also our first Project Aware dive too. We had some bags for people to help keep our dive sites clean and safe. We pulled out some garbage (Thankfully there was not a lot to get) that included and old scuba mask, a lovely comb and a dive flag pole and rope... no flag. Thank you to all that showed up and we look forward to seeing you on the next dive.

Carl

Night at Spanish Rocks

Went out to the Rocks tonight for a night dive class. The wind was solid SW, but the surf wasn't too bad. Slight surge, but good night to dive. Viz was 15' on the sand, but went down as you got near the rocks to about 5'. Squid, flounders, sea robins in abundance out there. Great night to hit the water. Temp is back up a bit to a comfortable 73 degrees. This is a great place to practice navigation at night!

See you all in the morning at the donut dive! Conditions look good. Greg

Official Travel Planning Website for the State of Florida

Thanks to the folks at VISITFLORIDA. Check out their website for videos, blogs and articles to help plan your travel in Florida. Bo

Scuba Air?

I got this question the other day - what does it take to make scuba air? Good question actually. Making quality air is not difficult, but there are some real issues along the way you have to solve. I like to say it is part science and part art. To start from the beginning - when we opened the store, we understood all of the basics of making compressed air and even took a course in basic compressor maintenance and operation. But, what that told Carl and I was that we didn't know enough, that was when we went to the expert in Florida (which is saying a lot), Compressed Air Supply down in Broward County.

We had all the components for the system, a used military compressor, filter towers, banking bottles and a manifold, but needed expert advice. We knew that messing up the air is not an option, as this is life safety. Dick from Compressed Air set up us and built the system.

The system starts with the air intake. We use air from inside the store since cooler drier air makes for more efficient filters that last longer. At the intake, we use a small filter similar to a filter on a lawn mower. The air is drawn into the four stage compressor and each stage it goes through, the pressure is increased. After each stage, there is a separator. The separator's job is simply to take a high speed stream of air, hit it against a metal element which separates most of the oil and water out of the air stream (yes, oil, but more on that later). In the picture, there are two separators, one on each side of the radiator. All of the separators dump into a collector on the compressor and every 15 minutes, the compressor opens up the collector and blows it clear using air from the second stage. You can see the collector in the picture on the bottom just to the left of the gray electrical box. That is the sound you hear in the store when the compressor is running, a loud hissing noise as the air moves up through the muffler.

Once the air moves out of the compressor at working pressure (up to 4000 psi), it goes through the filter tower, starting with a very large separator that has to be manually emptied and then going into the filters. By now, the air is already low moisture and most of the oil should be removed. Oil gets into the air stream normally in a compressor when it goes around the piston rings and gets into the air. This is why we use food grade oil in the compressor, so that even if it did make it into the final product, it wouldn't be a major issue (it would taste VERY bad though).

Once in the filter tower, the air goes through layers of Hopcalite and activated charcoal. The Hopcalite scrubs carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide while the activate charcoal removes and residual taste. The air is then moved through the manifold, normally into the banking tanks and then into scuba tanks for breathing.

Every quarter, we test our air to make sure that it is safe. We send it to a national testing lab in Miami that does a number of test, including a spectrograph to test for stuff that shouldn't be there. It is important to note AIR SHOULD NEVER TASTE LIKE ANYTHING. If you get scuba air and it tastes like something, don't use it. Remember if we screw up and something gets past the filters, we have to assume that something is wrong and carbon monoxide may be making it past the filters as well. A lot of times, taste comes from something stored near the air intake. Most common culprits are paint products like thinner, gasoline and insecticides.

We had an issue where the carbon dioxide was raising earlier and our expert Dick figured out the issue for us. When the compressor was dumping the collector, the pressure on the filters was dropping, which was "breaking free" the carbon dioxide when the pressure came back up. We installed a one-way valve between the filters and the compressor and this solved the problem.

Filters need to be changed frequently to ensure good air quality. And the system needs to be drained everyday. We actually have a start up checklist for the compressor. Whenever I go diving, I always take a good look at the compressor and fill area. I have a new respect for clean, efficient and well maintained air systems.

If you ever want a tour of the air system, let me know. Greg

Seal Team!!!

Our Wednesday Seal Team is going very well. We are having a blast exploring the underwater world at the Serendipity pool. This exciting activity for young kids allows them to experience scuba in a safe and controlled environment. As the team members progress they are learning how to recover and clear their regulators, work on buoyancy control and just have fun underwater. Minimum age in 8 years old. It is fantastic to see how these kids take to the water. They really are amazing. Come in and get your little ones involved in the sport that we all love so much.

More to come...

Carl

Noronto NO MORE!

For those of you that haven't heard, the Bayronto has become the "Noronto" for us. We have had to cancel more trips to the Bayronto. So today was the day! It was about 6 inch seas the whole way out there and back. Perfect day to dive. Water temp was 75 and the viz was about 20-25 feet. The viz was a little weird, as it was fairly dark at depth.

What impresses me about the wreck is the size. The first dive we dropped down in the middle, froward of the break in the boiler room and went aft and around the rudder post. By the time we got back to our anchor, we had 30 minutes of bottom time and we had to go up. On the second diver, we went forward form the break and back around before running out of deco time. LOTS of fish. A lot of bait balls as usual, cobia, jacks, cuda, etc. There were only two boats out fishing there, which was a surprise for such a nice Saturday.

Also, last night, I was out doing a night dive on South Brohard, the viz was no very good. About 5-6 feet max for most of the dive. Surprised a very large nurse shark that was down in the blocks. Greg

Bay Cleanup and South Brohard

Great cleanup dive yesterday with Reef Rakers. For those of you who don't know about Reef Rakers, please visit their link above. Great group of kids that dive and clean up our waterways. Yesterday was great with a ton (literal ton, I think) of trash coming out just north of Coquina Boat launch to Leftis Cay. It is amazing to see how dedicated these kids are to come out on a very cold day with 68 degree water and go diving and do a cleanup. I hadn't dived there before, but found a lot of cool stuff. Large Seahorses are in abundance there, found a small Frogfish. Viz was pretty good for that site (there is a lot of mud) with viz up to about 8 feet in places.

Thanks again to Reef Rakers for cleaning up our waterways! Please support their group. Sarasota Scuba Club was out as well to support the clean-up.

Went out on South Brohard today for two open water dives. The students did great and only have two more dives to make before they are certified. Viz was good with 8 to 12 feet. Found a skate in the sand there (I am not great with IDs on skate, so I will be looking it up). The skate was very patient with me and allowed itself to be "unburied" so i could show the students. Found a couple of horse teeth and a meg tooth, but we didn't spend a lot of time in the water. Water temp was 70 degrees.

I heard back from the charter that water temp at 50 feet is still about 73 degrees.