Earth Day Clean-up Dive - Fun & Prizes

June 7, 9:00- 1:00 PM
Spanish Rocks, Bradenton

You can make a difference by joining our Earth Day celebration. We are cleaning one of our favourite spots for dive training. Spanish Rocks will be the location. We’ll be meeting at 9:00AM. If there isn’t enough parking, swing by drop your gear off and we’ll get you form the nearby public parking lot back to the site.

We’ll be giving away classes and cool dive gear as well for those of you who show up. We plan to complete by about noon which will give you time to drop by Mote’s celebration if you want to.

There is NO entry fee, so come out and have fun!!!
Join us for the Celebration!

Seal Team Distinctive Specialty Training

Yesterday the Seals worked just like NASA's Astronauts. They were shown a structure to build on the side of the pool then it was disassembled and the pieces and parts were taken into the pool and they assembled the structure underwater. They used great teamwork and planning to get the job done. When one piece came up missing they searched together, found the part and completed the job. Once complete they took every thing down and left no trace.

Nice work Andoni, Kegan and Miles

Carl

P.S. Kayda has video and I will post it when it is ready.

Service Club Beach - What a difference a day makes...

Wednesday I was back out at Service Club doing more check out dives and the vis was great!!! 20 feet! We had very little wave activity and great dives. I really wanted to stay out longer but that is how it goes... Three divers were certified, congratulations to Val, Eric and Brad on earning your certs.

More soon, Carl

Seal Team Wreck Aquamission

Last week we did the Wreck Aquamission for the Seals. These guys are haveing the time of their lives. They surveyed the wreck and logged the items that were strewn about the wreck. Take a look at the photos.


Great Job, Andoni, Joshua, Kegan and Miles on a very successful Aquamission.



Carl

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Service Club Beach Report

I have been out at Service Club Beach for the last few days and diving is great. Water temp is 75-76 degrees and vis has been steady 6 to 8 and seems to be getting better as time goes on. I am out of my three mil and wore my one mil today.

You know, it is hard living in paradise...

Carl

Sunday on M-8 and Silvertooth

Yea, yea, yea! Viz is really coming up quickly. Good 20-25' on the landing craft on Sunday (nasty seas though with the strong wind form the east and surprisingly good viz of 20' on Silvertooth. It was cool though when I was coming back on the surface, I could barely see the bottom (31').

Get out there while it is good! Greg

Service Club Today and Navigation

Great day to do an underwater navigation dive at Service Club - 5-6 feet of viz and 74 degrees in the water! Students did great. They are all working on getting their Advanced Open Water.

Underwater navigation is something that you start to learn, but only through a lot of practice can you become really good at it. Good question came up during class - "What makes a good underwater navigator?" In my opinion, there are a few things:

• Always knows roughly where they are at (even if they aren't leading the dive)
• Uses both natural navigation, estimation and compass to find his/her position in the water
• Knows the bottom topography
• Has a mental picture of the dive site in their head at all times
• Can estimate how far they will move in 5 minutes of dive time
• Knows which way the ordinal directions are (N, E, S & W)
• If they feel lost, they stop, take time, move in a safe direction if needed to locate themselves
• They are comfortable with their compass

So, finding yourself isn't that hard, it is really about practice and starting out with a solid foundation of the basics. let me know if you have any questions, or comments. I'm sure a few of you will have something to add to my list above! Greg

Cool Technology

Okay - so, I'm off topic here, but I really do enjoy when technology is used to do amazing things. One of the best uses that i have seen lately is www.kiva.org. Kiva is a site that allows you to make mirco loans to businesses in developing countries. What is amazing about this is that Kiva works with loan agencies in places where simply dumping aid into the economy has not worked. It allows people to start or grow their businesses and improve their standard of living.

You can actually read what people want to do with the money and you can check the history of both the person and the agency that is sponsoring the loan to figure out if you want to risk money. When the person repays the loan, it comes back with interest. I have had one loan repaid and made four more loans from the site.

Explore the site - check out all of the loans that are funded. It really is amazing to see how small amounts of money can make such a difference. Greg

The PADI National Geographic Diver Course - NEW!

Florida Underwater Sports is now offering the National Geographic Diver certification!

Join an elite group of divers who are more than tourists; they are explorers, adventurers and conservationists.

National Geographic partnered with PADI, the world’s leader in scuba diving training, to jointly create this program with the goals of encouraging public interest in recreational scuba diving worldwide and exposing people to the aquatic environment to help them gain a better appreciation of our underwater cultural heritage.

The insight and training you gain during this program will broaden your awareness and take your diving skills to a new level. You will complete a minimum of two dives during this certification.

What You Learn -
1. As part of the National Geographic Diver Specialty course, you fine-tune your buoyancy, then set off on your exploration project. Whether it’s a survey of plant life or a study of water temperature variation, this project is your chance to think, observe and document like those who dive for science and discovery.
2. On your next dive you’ll hone your navigation skills, and then dive into an aquatic life exercise – which may also be part of your exploration project.

• You will also improve your ability to observe your surroundings to get the best experience from each dive
• Get practical experience by gathering information and collecting images to create a visual representation of a dive site, detailing what you’ve discovered through your observations
• Improve your underwater navigation skills and ability to find your way around underwater by using a compass as well as natural reference
• You’ll be introduced to a multitude of aquatic species and be able to identify local plants and animals.

Bo

Buoyancy Clinic (or Floating Around the Pool)

Had a great clinic today. Everyone worked on configuring both equipment and weight distribution, amount of weight and then buoyancy fun and games. Lots of hovering, playing with the toypedo and navigating the hoops.

It is a lot of fun to see people have that "aha" moment with buoyancy. Sometimes, it is simply moving the tank up a couple of inches or distributing weight in a different way to help trim.

The next clinic that we will be doing is in May to get set for local dive season. Remember the clinic is free!!! Greg

Donut Dive for April

Wow - what a nice day on the water. Strong wind from the east and viz that was coming up (not great, but pretty decent) made for a great morning of diving. Also, everyone headed over to the Venice Shark's Tooth Festival afterword.

So, the viz was a good six feet or so, but the water was really calm and 74 degrees. Nice diving conditions for fossil hunting. We came back with bison, shark, horse and mammoth teeth. A bunch of femur bones (kind of weird how many nice specimens we found) and a piece of tuck as well - small, but still a piece.

Carl was out with his open water class getting people certified. It was great to see new divers and experienced divers meeting and talking about how much fun it is to get in the water.

And at the end of the dives, I was able to get a Divemaster Candidate back out to demonstrate his unresponsive diver rescue abilities to the crowd on the beach :-) Greg

Scubapro Regulator Museum

Check out this link - http://www.scubaproregulatormuseum.org/. Courtesy of Ocean Divers down in Key Largo they have put together the best display of Scubapro regulators through the years. The evolution of the regulator through the years is fascinating. Just like any piece of life safety equipment, evolution has been gentle. You can see a number of features in early regulators that still exist in regs today.

The 1964 Scubapro catalog featured everything the diver could want, including regulators, recompression chambers, and submarines. In 1965 the first version of the Jet fin first appeared. After 40 years the fin is still popular with technical and military divers worldwide and is one of the most copied scuba products ever sold. In 1966 the catalog also added the Automatic Decompression meter, a forerunner to the modern dive computer.
Greg

Reef Rakers on WEDU

Good piece on the Reef Rakers on Gulf Coast Journal. Good shots from underwater. And yes, I know they got my name wrong :-).

For those of you who don't know Reef Rakers is a teen non-profit that cleans up local reefs as well as travels to clean other reefs. It is great to see the kids out diving and having fun.

Click on the title or this link: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1529573314?bclid=1532914250&bctid=17995796001

Greg

Silvertooth 13 April

Wow - was pleasantly surprised by the 10 feet of viz we had on Silvertooth yesterday. All that and had the entire site to ourselves :-). Little bit of surge and funny thing there was actually some current running south to north. Not much, mind you, but more than I have ever experienced at depth there.

Lots of life on the reef there, continuing to see more tropicals all the time. Greg

Viz Report

Hi all - first, let me say I'm sorry it has taken so long to get a blog post out. We have been really busy (which is great) starting 14 students this week on Open Water, 4 on Advanced, and several more specialties. Spring break has really had us running at fever pitch. The weather of course didn't cooperate, which sent us up to the springs (both Blue Grotto and Hundson Grotto) for a day. Hudson was salty and cold :-).

We headed out to M-8 today, not sure what to expect. With the viz off shore being almost nothing and the weather we had through, we weren't sure what we were going to get. Boy, were we surprised. A little swell out of the south, but flat seas otherwise. Vis was about 10-15 on the Landing Craft and the Tanks!!! It was a great dive! I got three more folks Advanced certified - congratulations Jeff, Adam and Rick!!!!

The cool thing was that on the landing craft there were a ton of tropical fish. Angels, Porkfish, Butterflies, Spanish and Cuban Hogs, Damsels and more. If you had thrown a Moray into the mix, I would have thought I was at Pompano on one of those wrecks there were so many colorful fish.

Monday and Tuesday, we're going out to Silvertooth and I'll post viz reports both days. Greg

Platinum Dealer Award!

Florida Underwater Sports is now a SCUBAPRO Platinum Dealer! Less than 5% of all SCUBAPRO dealers are awarded this designation.

We achieved this honor by:
· Representing SCUBAPRO exclusively and carrying the entire line of quality SCUBAPRO products
· Having a thorough SCUBAPRO product knowledge
· Having a well trained staff and service professionals
· Offering exceptional customer service
Each SCUBAPRO Platinum Dealer is considered a "diving professional”. Bo