Mote Scuba Camp 2.0

Arianne, Meghan and Alecia show off the huge hermit crab that they found while snorkeling in the grass beds near Mote. We all had a great time discovering the life that lies in the shallows. We also fought the heat a bit on their compass course. Then it was back to hard labor setting up and trying on Scuba gear.

Great find girls!!!!

Carl

Dry Tortugas!!!!!

So, I had these great intentions of writing up the trip in the evening, but.... this is as far as I got:

Day 1 - Seven dives, pretty tired, maybe I can just get up early and do this in the morning.
Day 2 - Wanted to get back in water, didn't have time to blog this morning, six dives, maybe if I take a short nap, I'll have the energy to blog today.
Day 3 - Wow - slept through the night, woken by the engines starting - time to get in the water.

So, the truth is that I was really focused on the diving and not the writing part of the adventure, so I'll recap for those of you that didn't make this trip.

The bottom line is that the bunks were small, the food was well... hot and plentiful, but the diving was fantastic!

This boat is a converted oil rig tender and is purpose built to be a work boat converted to a dive boat. The amenities are not plentiful, but it makes it easy to make 15 dives in 3 days well off-shore. I was really surprised by the diving and compare it to some of the best Caribbean diving that I have seen including Roatan's north side. The reefs themselves were in very good shape with large amounts of sea life. There are a large number of mooring buoys put in by NOAA so reef damage was minimal to none out there. I saw fishing line on one site and no garbage the whole time out there, which is a change form a lot of the other countries I have visited in the last couple of years. Viz ranged from 40' at it's lowest point to a little over 100'. One of the dives the water was so blue you would ave thought you were in the Indo-Pacific.

We left the dock at about 7:30PM and arrived on the site at 9:00AM the next morning. The sea was a little rough on the way out and I wedged myself against the wall of the bunk to get a good night's sleep. A good breakfast got us started and we made three dives before lunch, three after and one night dive. We moved into the lee of Fort Jefferson for the night and then out again to arrive on our dive site at about 8:00AM with three dives before lunch and three after. The night dive was cancelled because the crew thought there wouldn't be enough surface interval before the deep dive on the Baja the next morning. During the night we moved close to the wreck of the Baja and then at 6:45 on the nose, the engines started and they hooked into the the wreck. We dove the wreck and then moved to the nearby Air Force tower. After those dives, back into the dock at 5:00PM.

It had been a while since I had been on a liveaboard, and it take a day to fall into the routine of the ship and understand how the crew runs things, but being out there makes me want to go for a longer liveaboard trip again.

I did a quick edit of the pictures int he slide show to get them out. We are already planning another trip out there, so if you don't mind small bunks and hot food this is really a trip you can't miss. Greg

Mote Scuba Camp

Wow, what a great success! I am not sure who had more fun during scuba camp, the kids or the instructors. This week long camp resulted new National Geographic Open Water Divers! These young adults learned a lot while having a great time. Brianna, Devon, Eric, Helen, Ian and Jeffrey had a great time learning about scuba, navigation the aquatic world and protecting that world. there was some hard work and great teamwork and yes there were a ton of fun and games along the way. Congratulations to those new ambassadors to the deep! Greg and I both look forward to diving with all of these divers in the future.
Carl

Misc Viz Reports

Spanish Rocks yesterday - 6-10' with 87 degree water. Nice amount of life out there.

South Brohard today - 8-15' of viz with large sting ray and lots of fish. Reportedly a great dive.

M5 today - 30-35' of viz wonderful water, in closer 20-25' of viz and mill pond flat. Greg

Service Club - 17 June

Nice morning out there! No waves, good viz (10-15') and 86 degrees. Found an interesting place where I found a couple of nice meg shards. Both were gold in color and were in really good shape, except they were missing an edge of the root. If my other divers weren't low on air, I would have stayed out for a while longer.

We were just north of the stairs, just past the coquina. I was surprised at how close in the teeth were! Greg

Regulator Annual Service Day

Today we converted our classroom into "Service Central". The tables were configured so Greg, Carl & Tom could work and consult with each other. Tools were arranged and the 3 technicians started annual service on our rental regulators. You can count on Florida Underwater Sports for top quality rental gear that is maintained in prime condition.

Those of you who haven't been diving recently should have your gear serviced so it will be ready for you when you want to get wet. The water is warm and inviting now.

We service SCUBAPRO equipment on site and have parts stocked so we can promise it back to you in 4 days or sooner if there are no unusual issues. We always will keep you updated on the status if there are going to be delays. Other makes take 2 weeks; they are sent out to a professional technical service that we have used since we have been open. Bo

Spanish Rocks Clean Up!

First, I wanted to say think you to all those who showed up for the clean-up. We were able to remove approximately 300lbs of trash off the Rocks. Fantastic amount of stuff!

There were 46 of you at the clean-up - a great turnout for not the ideal dive day. Surf was 1-2 feet and viz was 3-4 feet. We had two boats there and Mike in the kayak. With the surface floats, everyone was able to get a lot of trash up.

We tried to make it easy for everyone by getting folks in the water as they showed up. Let us know if you think there is a better way to do the clean-up.

Lots of snacks, some prizes and some great fun. This dive site is important to us as a training site and we really love seeing all the trash we got off the reef.

Of note, we pulled four crab pot lids out of there leaving the encrusted crab pot bottoms there, but unable to trap any animals.

Thanks again for all the great work and fun out there. Carl and Greg

Mote World Earth Day

Today was a red letter day for Florida Underwater Sports. We sponsored our first Reef Clean-up and the World Earth day celebration at Mote Marine. The reef clean-up was a clean sweep of Spanish Rocks, Greg even got that pesky shrimp net out!

The Mote World Earth Day was a worthwhile and fun event for families. There were games, entertainment, food AND education. The wonderful Mote Aquarium is the place to learn about and appreciate our natural resources. We are fortunate to have this top tier research facility and aquarium at our doorsteps.

A huge "Thanks" to Josh and Allison Badgley and Tommy Fetterman for their help today! Congratulations to Stacy Alexander for putting on this super event!
Bo

Clean Up Day!

Hi all! Tomorrow is clean up day at Spanish Rocks. I've put a link to Google Maps below. Look forward to seeing all of you at 9:00AM. We know that parking is limited, so we will be running a shuttle to the Manatee Beach parking lot to the north.

We will have water and snacks and PRIZES! There will be surface support vessels and lots of staff there. Look forward to seeing you all there! Call us with questions at (941) 870-4461.

Map: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=113086376350813641921.000467adc71834160f0e5&z=4

Viz and the News

Hi all - FYI, viz was 15' yesterday off the beach in Venice. Not sure what it will be this morning after that thunder cell moved through :-(

Also, I saw in the news today about the guy in Australia that was just sentenced for killing his wife/dive buddy underwater. Such a sad situation, but I think we can take some good lessons away from this happening.

You can never predict what is going to happen underwater. Although extreme, this is a good example of what diver should be prepared to handle. There is nothing you can do about somebody going crazy underwater and deciding to kill someone, but when I saw the picture of the victim on the bottom not moving I knew that there was something that could have been done. Having just finished Rescue Diver class (congrats to Dave and Marcus!), I thought about what I would have done if I had seen something like that.

In Rescue class we work on drills where the students react quickly to a distressed diver (in this case, she was laying on her back on the bottom in the picture). We learn how to take an unresponsive diver back up to the surface keeping their airway open. The key here is that we need to respond quickly to give the diver a chance to survive and avoid permanent injury. The idea behind the Rescue Diver class is to give people the ability to respond without hesitating. One of the things I preach in the class is think through as many scenarios that you can come up with and figure out how you would respond and then when something happens that is close to that you'll have a mental plan already in place that you can modify to the situation. This is how we avoid hesitating to do something.

Please don't take this as I'm saying the response to the diver wasn't adequate - I only have the news reports to go off of and I know that the news leaves a lot out. Please do think about what you would do in an emergency like this - seeing a distressed diver on the bottom and how you would react.

As always feel free to let me know your thoughts as well. Greg

Sunday is the DAY - Earth Day Reef Clean-up

We have been in business for almost two years and are thrilled to have the support of so many good local divers. Because of your great respose to the Earth Day Reef Clean-up, Spanish Rocks will be the cleanest reef around.

Have fun, there will be snacks and water and prizes. Although the real reward is a clean and healthy environment. We'll have a truck to transport your gear down to the beach, so that you can find parking and save your energy for the real work.

While you are out finding debris, fish net and things that don't belong in our waters; Josh, Allison and I will be out spreading the word at the Mote Aquarium World Ocean Day from 11-2 PM.

Bo

Viz Report

Wow - a great day at Service Club park - 84 degrees with 15-20 feet of viz and flat seas! After three dives I found two newly certified divers, congrats to Nina and Chad!!!!

Get out there while the getting is good. Great time to go diving. Greg