Welcome to Scuba shack Radio season 6 episode
141
recorded Monday, 07/01/2024.
Scuba shack radio is a bi weekly podcast
in support of our mission to empower individuals
with knowledge ability and experience to venture underwater
in pursuit of their aspirations and to advocate
for ocean health and sustainability.
Hello again, everyone. And as always, thank you
for tuning in to this latest episode of
Scoop shack radio. I'm your host, Jeff.
Welcome also to July and the second half
of 2024.
Wow, that first half of the year went
by really quick.
And 1 thing for sure, we've had some
very hot weather up here, and I know
much of a country has as well.
Now, do you miss those cold winter days
yet?
Not me, but still 98 to a hundred
degrees in New England is not what I'm
looking for either.
We are also getting ready for the fourth
of July holiday.
With it coming on a Thursday this year,
I'm sure there a lot of people are
going to be taking a nice long 4
day break as they head out to visit
friends and family.
They say it's going to be a really
busy travel time this year.
We're just going to stay put here in
Connecticut and just take the the 1 day
off and they get back to the shop
for the weekend.
Although,
we're expecting it'll be very quiet.
Now on today's show, I wanna talk about
my thoughts on complacency in Scuba diving.
But first, let's do some shop updates followed
by wet notes, news and information.
Well June was certainly an incredibly busy month
at Scuba Shack.
First off, we crossed a very important milestone
here at the shop.
We have surpassed 11000
patty
certifications.
Now earlier this year, I was talking to
Josh Cohen, 1 of our patty and he
let me know that we were closing in
on in this mark. I guess I was
a little surprised that this was coming up.
Looking at our numbers,
Of that 11000,
there were 6258
open water divers.
We are very fortunate to have a group
of instructors who are passionate about diving and
opening up the underwater world to so many
people.
11000 is certainly a nice achievement.
Now, as I said, June was a very
busy month. It's K Shack. There were 5
weekends in the month, which is unusual. So
after not having any classes the first weekend,
we proceeded to pack in a combination of
confined water and open water certification weekends.
As we have started to do over the
last few years, we alternate between the classroom
pool and then the open water dives.
Fortunately,
this year, the weather seems to be cooperating
a little more for our open water dives.
Last year it must rained every time we
headed it out for those open water lives.
Also, it seems that everyone has tanks that
need to be serviced. Just when we think
we're caught up another crop of tank shows
up for us to either do their visual
at... Or annual visual inspection or that 5
year hydro static test.
Ned has certainly stayed busy at the tang
station.
And now, it's time to start the second
half of 20 24.
This is Wet notes here on Scuba shack
radio from Monday, 07/01/2024.
First off, let's start with some very good
news.
I received an announcement from Dana Miller, senior
director strategic initiatives at Ocean.
And the email outlined an announcement that Amazon
will be replacing 95
percent of the plastic pillows
from their North American deliveries.
The plan is to replace the pillows with
100 percent recycled paper.
Now if this happens,
Amazon will avoid about
15000000000
plastic pillows per year. Wow.
These pillows are made up from, plastic film,
and that is the most common form of
plastic pollution in near shore at areas.
It's also the deadliest pollution to large marine
mammals.
I for 1 won't miss this stuff. I
find it hard to dispose of when trying
to get all the air out of the
bubbles.
This does beg the question of how much
of this stuff is already in the pipeline
with the manufacturers of the product.
I'm sure once Amazon pulls the plug. There'll
be a lot of other places that will
try to sell plastic pillows to companies that
do a lot of shipping.
I wonder if there can be some sort
of initiative to stop using the stuff.
In any case, we need to build on
the momentum from Amazon
and maybe we can even get Walmart to
do the same thing.
And while that last update was some good
news, Here is the flip side with some
bad news about Whale hunting.
You see, there was a story recently in
the online Scuba diver magazine news section with
the headline,
thin whale protection hopes dashed iceland.
I'm pretty sure I reported on this 1
before.
And recently, Iceland just granted the only remaining
whale
w company,
Valor
a permit to harpoon up to 128
citations this year.
The thin whale is the second largest whale
next to the blue whale in size.
The thin whale is also on the I
sees red as vulnerable to extinction.
Last year, there were 24 fin whales taken.
On a somewhat bit of good news though,
Valor
has indicated that they will not be able
to go after the whales this year because
of a late decision. Their boat won't be
ready to go out
during the mid June to September season.
But this still leaves both Japan and New
our way out there, hunting whales this year.
That leads me to wonder just when all
w will be stopped.
Last week, I attended a special webinar that
deemed a sponsor to discuss the lobbying efforts
supporting Scuba diving.
The presentation was done by Emily Coy, who
is deemed as federal lobbyists.
The webinar title was how politics shapes to
dive industry.
Bet a lot of you like me never
realized that there are a lot of things
that go on in Washington
that impact the diving industry. Either positively or
negatively.
Laws that sometimes look good on paper failed
to recognize the serious impacts on another area.
The small passenger vessel liability Act is 1
of those laws.
And through our lobbying efforts, hopefully, that will
be rectified with the dive bo act.
Emily took us through a lot of details
about how congress is shaping up and how
the changes impact the efforts that are going
on.
I learned something interesting about something called the
4 corners.
That is where the committee chairs and ranking
members must all agree to something thus allowing
various
legislation to move forward.
Now I'm pretty sure back when they set
up our constitution, the founding fathers didn't contemplate
4 corners.
But this is where we are today, and
we are certainly fortunate to have emily lobbying
for the dive. Community.
Now here are a couple of stories about
underwater discoveries, and they are very, very different
First, there was a news article that I
saw on Fox News 35 out of Florida
by brief.
The headline is,
Florida treasure hunters amazed by discovery in 300
year old ship wreck. You don't expect that.
So there is this group of treasure hunters
who have been working with Sal Ga
who runs the 17
15,
fleet Queen's Jewels
Llc.
Now, his company is the Us district courts
custodian as the exclusive sal,
for the Spanish ships that sank during the
hurricane,
in July 17 15.
According to the article, this group was out
treasure hunting off of Indian River County. That's
near Vera Beach.
They've been doing this for several years from
a boat named Lily May.
Well, they were in luck 1 day and
discovered 214
coins and other artifacts from wrecked ships.
After all this time, this is amazing
this is an amazing find
Now, what is it that Mel fisher said?
Today is the day.
Now, in the other story about an underwater
discovery? I don't think these divers we're expecting
to find this.
This story was reported on W v and
Tv out of Miami.
Now, a group of divers were down in
Key la, and going out on a reef
to do some cleanup with rainbow reef.
They said that the reef was in at
about a hundred feet, and that is where
they discovered 25
individually wrapped kilos of cocaine.
The coke was wrapped in plastic
display in plastic, displaying the Nike
logo.
All the kilos were salvage and turned over
to the authorities.
Somehow, I don't think Nike would appreciate having
their logo on the kilos of cocaine.
In key la this October is now open
for registration,
Every year I talk about this, and it
seems every year it falls during our October
dive trip.
This year is no exception.
Well, Fast runs October seventeenth, that's Thursday through
Sunday, October twentieth.
Activities include Scuba diving, snorkeling, kayak,
Ocean seminar, socials in nature tour.
If you wanna learn more and take a
look at the detailed schedule, go to WWW
dot reef dot org slash
fest.
Fast is 1 word, REFEST.
I'll bet it's going to be a great
time.
And finally, I wanted to let you know
about a new 3 part series coming out
soon from Brian Scary.
The series has titled sea changed, the gulf
of Maine.
Now, Brian gave us a little sneak peek
at of this at the last month... Last
March at the Boston Sea Rover show, and
it should be really interesting.
This series is part of a project by
a scary to document how warming waters are
affecting the golf.
It also,
a cover story for the June edition of
National Geographic magazine,
beck
Looks like this is going to be a
Nova series on Pbs starting July 20 fourth,
and some schedules that I saw have it
running over a 3 week period.
The 3 episodes are titled bounty,
peril, and survival.
I'll definitely be making some time to watch
all 3.
Set your Dvr now and catch sea change
the golf of Maine with Brian Scary.
Well, that's it for this installment of wet
notes here on Scuba shack radio.
In the most recent addition of alert diver
magazine from Dan,
there is an article title don't let complacency
kill you.
Well that got me thinking a bit, and
it seems that the more I read through
the various scuba of publications, It appears that
this concept of complacency jumps out.
In another article in that same addition, Francois
Berman and Mark G warned us
do not be complacent. Our scuba gear is
life support equipment that we fully depend on
when underwater.
And then in the May addition of Scuba
diving magazine,
Art Douglas lessons for life article is titled
left behind.
For 1 unfortunate diver,
familiarity leads to complacency.
Okay. So the term complacency is being thrown
around a lot. But is it really complacency
or is it something else?
Let me start by defining complacency?
We might have an idea of what the
concept means. But if we look at the
definition, it literally means a feeling of quiet
pleasure or security
often while unaware of some potential danger,
defect or the like.
It can also be defined as a feeling
of calm satisfaction with your own ability
or a situation that prevents you from trying
harder?
Now, are we using the term complacency to
soften what we might really mean in some
circumstances?
Is this really careless?
Is it really irr responsibility
or is it reckless?
Or is it all above?
Careless is the failure to give sufficient attention
to avoid harm or errors.
Irr responsibility is having no sense of responsibility,
while reckless is when you act without thinking
or caring about the consequences of an action.
Let's go back to the story by Eric
Douglas. The story is about a woman who
is a regular diver on a boat. She's
also out to hunt Lobster.
It seems the conditions were okay. And as
the lobster hunters
descended it, they all went their separate ways.
Her tells us that the last time the
woman's buddy saw her was at 15 feet
as they descended.
As the divers returned it a boat, it
seems there was some confusion with the roll
call given the mix of photographers and lobster
hunters.
Seems they finished the roll call, pulled up
anchor and headed to another dive site.
The woman was not on board and never
seen again.
Since the woman was a regular on the
boat, the crew did not put her name
on the list,
We don't know if the woman ever surfaced
or and was lost at sea or if
she carried an Smb or another signaling device.
How many things have gone wrong here? Now
is this complacency
or careless
or maybe even negligence by the boat crew?
The other thing that I know is that
I always stay with my buddy.
It's not die... It's is not diving with
your buddy complacent or reckless.
Maybe we think by using the term complacency,
there is a lessen of responsibility.
And here's another article for Eric Douglas. His
lessons for life common
column is really something that all divers should
read
because you never think you are being complacent
reckless or irresponsible. So stories from the March
20 24 Scuba diving magazine
about questionable fitness.
This is a story about a student diver
who's trying to overcome their fear of the
ocean. Not only that, they are overweight with
high blood pressure.
Student didn't disclose any of their, of this
on their medical form.
After doing 2 certification dives in a lake,
they had it 5 miles offshore, and there
were 4 foot c's. The student did the
giants stride and immediately had an issue. Couldn't
climb the ladder. With the helping instructor, they
made it back on board where they lost
consciousness and died.
I don't think the student diver here was
complacent. Maybe the instructor was because he had
done this so many times before and felt
that they could overcome any anxiety or fear
from the student?
You be to judge.
So how do we avoid this trap of
becoming complacent or careless with our diet? Thing.
It should be easy. Right?
We might well know that our equipment needs
to be serviced because it's either it's time
or we had an issue with our last
dive thing In our desire to get new
water, we might not do our function check.
We're we might ignore some other small problem
with the equipment.
Sometimes, we might take on a dive that's
beyond our training or capability,
and we leave it in the hands of
the dive master to take care of us.
There are just too many easy ways for
us to become lazy or quote unquote,
complacent.
As a small local dive shop, we cannot
not afford to be complacent careless or responsible
or reckless.
It is making sure that when a custom
comes in to get their tank filled. We
verified that they are a certified diver, make
sure the hydro static test is in in
and visual inspection are up to date. It's
ensuring that equipment is serviced in accordance with
the up to date manufacturers
specifications. A stress up to date because they
do change and we cannot afford to be
complacent in the service.
Sometimes,
it is hard to deliver the message to
a customer that their tank is no longer
serviceable
or that there are expensive fixes needed to
their regulator.
It is being diligent
and not complacent.
Look, we love scuba diving. We do something
that most people don't do.
We experience a whole new world every time
we go diving.
We also know that there are inherent risks
in diving.
We are some place where we naturally are
not supposed to be.
We are able to do this primarily
because of the equipment we have coupled with
the training and experience we have gained.
To minimize the risks, we have to be
prepared and diligent every time we go diving.
Even the so called easy dives cannot be
taken for granted.
I guess I really don't like using the
term complacent when it comes to diving
because we know better.
We are aware of the risks associated with
faulty equipment
are diving beyond our capabilities.
It's not being... Is is not being prepared
complacent
or is it something else?
What do you think?
Whatever you call it, complacency,
careless,
irr responsibility
or reckless.
I think we all agree that they have
no place in diving.
Well, that wraps up this latest episode of
Scuba shack radio.
Thanks again for listening, and have a happy
fourth of July. I'll talk to you again
in a couple of weeks
Until then,
take care everyone.
Scuba shack radio is a bi weekly podcast
supporting our mission to empower our individuals with
knowledge ability and experience to venture underwater in
pursuit of their aspirations and to advocate for
ocean health and sustainability,
and talk to you next time.