Further Progress made on Matthew Johnstons Quest to Scuba Dive February 28, 2006
Posted by Andy Carroll in : general , add a comment
Matthew Johnston is a bit of a hero of mine. In a recent Yorkshire Divers discussion he announced his latest article from the MDA ‘Quest’ website. Matthew aims to go scuba diving in the sea. This wouldn’t be such a big deal for many people until you realise that Matthew has Duchenne muscular dystrophy and relies on 24-hour ventilator assistance. He had a trach inserted 11 years ago, he’s used a power wheelchair for 20 years, and he has movement only in his thumbs. Incredibly, Matthew discusses his dream on many scuba diving forums, and edits his own website.
He’s had seven dives that lasted over 30 minutes, with the longest at 60 minutes, and he’s reached a maximum depth of 6 feet with his current equipment. In a practice dive in January, he remained under water at 6 feet for 60 minutes. So far, he’s logged 280 minutes in practice dives.
At each practice dive, Johnston’s nurse, Sara Freking, and two professional divers assist. Freking stays above water to monitor the ventilator as it floats on the surface in a sealed, 9-gallon plastic container. She also monitors the ventilator connection that runs through Johnston’s drysuit, while the two divers accompany him under water.
Before each dive, Johnston is transferred into a manual wheelchair that goes into the water. Since he can’t move his arms or legs, he depends on the vent, drysuit and diving buddies for survival.
What must seem like a very straightforward task to most scuba divers represents a phenomenal effort by Matthew and his dedicated team of scientists, medical staff, and dive buddies. Matthew aims to go scuba diving in the Bahamas in the summer of this year, and will be using newly developed equipment specifically designed for the task.
Why is Matthew so keen to get underwater? Well, he says;
Johnston believes that his will and determination to achieve his scuba diving dream also will enable him to “make a difference in the world by helping to create better technology and making diving safer for everyone.
“I want to help open the door for other people with similar problems,” he explained. “There are a lot of people on vents, and they can’t handle it so they give up. I want to give people hope and encourage people to not give up on their dreams.”
Matthew needs donations to keep his dream alive. If you would like to help then visit www.scubadivingdream.com or www.divingadream.org.
Scuba Diving Scientists Discover Marine Treasures on an underwater mountain February 15, 2006
Posted by Andy Carroll in : general , add a commentEvery time I read these kinds of report it makes me wonder just what we still haven’t seen in the underwater world we have the privilege of being able to visit. It also raises questions as to how we protect our fragile planet but at the same time, allow industry and commerce to continue.
In a report by Dive News, a two-week expedition in January encountered new species of fish, seaweed and other ocean life at little-studied Saba Bank Atoll, a coral-crowned seamount 250 kilometers southeast of Puerto Rico in the Dutch Windward Islands.
In a series of dives buffeted by high winds and strong currents, scientists from Conservation International (CI), the Netherlands Antilles government and Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History found scores more fish species than previously known in the region and vast beds of diverse seaweed, including a dozen or more possible new species.
“We discovered a new species literally every day we were there,” said Michael Smith, director of CI’s Caribbean Biodiversity Initiative. Among the apparent new fish species found were two types of gobi, while the total number of fish species recorded reached 200, compared to fewer than 50 before the expedition.
The unprecedented richness of marine life and vulnerable status of the atoll’s coral beds make Saba Bank a prime candidate for designation as a Particularly Sensitive Sea Area (PSSA) under the International Maritime Organization (IMO).
Mark Littler, marine botanist of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History, declared Saba Bank the richest area for seaweeds in the Caribbean basin, including as many as a dozen new species along with commercially valuable species that will facilitate the creation of economic activity zones under PSSA designation.
Paul Hoetjes, marine biologist with the Ministry of Nature Affairs for the Netherlands Antilles (MINA), called the expedition crucial to getting the area protected to benefit local populations.
“The community of about 1,500 people on nearby Saba Island derives a large part of its economy from the atoll, and the atoll is being damaged,” Hoetjes said.
A petroleum trans-shipment depot on neighboring St. Eustatius Island causes significant marine traffic, including oil supertankers in the area around the submerged atoll. The fragile ecosystems of Saba Bank get damaged by anchors and chains of ships that wait at the atoll to avoid anchoring fees in territorial waters of St. Eustatius.
The large ships also endanger local fishermen of Saba in their small boats, forcing them away from traditional fishing grounds and causing the loss of fish pots that become so-called ”ghost traps” that harm fish stocks.
Leroy Peterson, a Saba fisherman, called the expedition crucial for protecting Saba Bank’s unique marine life. “Some of the scientists actually found new species not located anywhere else,” Peterson said. “There should be no-anchor zones. For things to survive there must be stricter controls.”
Cousteau legacy continues through the work of Jean-Michel Cousteau February 8, 2006
Posted by Andy Carroll in : general , add a commentA generation ago, Jacques-Yves Cousteau revealed the oceans’ mysteries to millions of landlocked PBS television viewers and inspired a groundswell of public awareness of the unique problems faced by the world’s marine environments. Now it seems that Jean-Michel Cousteau is continuing the legacy and has published his own series of documentaries.
Using state-of-the-art technology, Peabody and Emmy Award-winning Jean-Michel Cousteau and his acclaimed diving teams, accompanied by marine scientists and ecologists, will explore a thrilling array of natural phenomena, investigate little-known territories and eco-systems hundreds of feet beneath the ocean’s surface, and come face-to-face with the friendly and ferocious inhabitants of the deep.
“We know more about the ‘dead seas’ of Mars than our own ocean,” said Cousteau. “In this series, we are charting a course of human adventure and discovery of our real-life support system - our planet’s ocean.”
Consistent with the Cousteau hallmarks of exploration and conservation, OCEAN ADVENTURES will share with television viewers the largely inaccessible, dangerous and spectacular locales across the globe. Through Jean-Michel’s observations, the series will illuminate the great need for better understanding and sustainable management of the oceans’ rich natural treasures.
The six one-hour programs included in the Ocean Adventures series are:
“Voyage to Kure” (Part I and Part II)–The Cousteau team sets sail on the Northwest Hawaiian Archipelago. There, they discover diverse wildlife populations above and below the sea, and investigate these species’ fight against extinction and the devastating effects of pollution, mining, fishing and development on the most remote island group in the world.
“The Gray Whale Obstacle Course”– The Cousteau team follows gray whales, unchanged for 600,000 years and under constant threat of extinction, from the nursery lagoons of Baja California north to frigid feeding grounds in the Bering Sea - through the longest and most polluted migration routes of any whale species.
“Sharks: At Risk”–Long feared as objects of terror, sharks are gaining a new reputation due to unprecedented observation - yet their numbers are quickly dwindling. To better understand shark behavior and the impact their reputation has had on their survival, the Cousteau team observes gray sharks in French Polynesia and great white sharks in South Africa - unprotected by a shark cage.
“America’s Underwater Treasures” (Part I and Part II)–This two-part installment will take viewers to the rarely visited underwater parks that constitute the National Marine Sanctuary System - a diverse and uniquely American group of ecosystems that promise to inspire an ethic of ocean preservation that will translate far beyond any national borders.
Explorer, environmentalist, educator and film producer - for more than four decades Jean-Michel Cousteau has searched the world to document the pristine and perilous places of the oceans.
Son of renowned ocean pioneer Jacques Cousteau, Jean-Michel grew up aboard the Calypso and Alcyone. As the founder and president of Ocean Futures Society, he travels the globe, meeting with world leaders, businesses, educators and children as a “voice for the ocean” and our planet’s most significant ambassador of the water environment.
Ocean Adventure’s is produced by KQED Public Broadcasting and Ocean Futures Society. The exclusive corporate sponsor is Dow Chemical Company.
Mark Andrews writes about the world record deepest wreck dive on the Yolande January 31, 2006
Posted by Andy Carroll in : general , add a commentI previously wrote about Leigh Cunningham and Mark Andrews finding the Yolande, and estimating the depth to be over 170 mtrs, and then I wrote a short piece regarding their claim that the wreck lies at a max depth of 205 mtrs and that it was the worlds deepest wreck dive. Now Mark Andrews has written a report of the trip and some more details of the dive.
Leigh was describing to me how the last two weeks prior to my arrival had seen perfect conditions for diving ‘Yolanda” reef, with very little wind and smooth seas, of course with the luck we have been having with this project it was bound to all change. I cast my mind back to May when we started the project, all went well until I received a dose of Pharaohs revenge and spent the last part of the week wrapped up in bed while Leigh discovered the bow of the wreck in 145m.
Preparing for the big dive didn’t pass without any mishaps, the first of which was the lack of a 300 bar decanting whip for the 300 bar compressor. Mark had decided to use triple Worthington Carbon/Steel combination (Anyone else thinks that sounds like a name for a gun!) cylinders, which meant they needed a 300 bar system for the fills.
We hit a major problem within minutes of starting, although we had a 300 bar compressor we had overlooked the fact that we needed a 300bar decanting whip for the blending panel, the mood changed as we tried everything we could to mate various parts lying around the centre to make a workable whip. Just as despair was setting in Chad came to the rescue and called a local engineer who came down to the centre, we showed him a 300 bar spin tube and the high pressure decanting hose and simply stated that we needed “this bit to fit onto this bit” this was met with a little scratch of the head followed by “no problem, 2 hours” This was 8pm in the evening, can you imagine this situation in the UK!
On to the diving and after a number of buildup dives including a fully simulated dress rehearsal complete with support divers (who were all placed at a max depth of 30 mtrs), Mark and Leigh headed out to the Yolande, supported by the Sharm Search and Rescue centre.
The plan for the day was a dive to 150m to relocate the bow of the wreck and plot the position with GPS ready for the big dive. We already had a good idea where we needed to drop and Vern our GPS man was ready when we dropped off the back of the boat. Snorkelers entered the water and checked our dive rigs for leaks, this completed we descended into the blue on our 45/12 travel/intermediate decompression gas. At 10M we gave each other the gas switch signal and switched to our back gas of 9/57. We both settled into the descent and enjoyed the ride. We reached 100m and there was still no sign of the reef wall just dark water all around, I turned on my Metal Sub 200W HID and shone it in all directions but nothing, then at 120M the light picked up the funnel of the wreck lying off to one side on the steep reef wall. We had landed about 50m to the right of the main wreckage and made the swim across and down to 150m to be met by the bow of the wreck. The Metal Sub lit up the wreckage like it was in a football stadium and we could clearly see the debris scattered all around the steep reef wall.
Then came the big dive itself and using the previous dives as a guide they positioned the dive boat above the wreck. After bubble checks from one of the support divers they descended towards the Yoloande, the rest is better said by Mark,
We descended the initial 20M on our travel/lean deco mix of 52/15 before signalling each other to switch to our bottom mix of 7/66. Once switched we relaxed and descended at a steady 50m per minute until reaching 120M where we slowed to 30M, this reduction in speed helps lessen the risk of high pressure nervous syndrome (HPNS) bought on by rapid pressurisation of helium (fast descent).
This drop was perfect, the bow of the wreck came into view at 130M and we descended onto the wreck itself slowly swimming down along the length of its remains. As I reached 195M a large bang went off behind my left ear and my dry suit inflator stopped working, I came to a halt at 205M as measured on our dive computers a Suunto D9 and a Nitek 3, as we levelled we could see that we were just under the stern of the wreck and that the ship was perched on a ledge roughly 40M wide. Beyond this a vertical wall descended into the abyss. The wreck had slid down the reef walls and slammed into this small ledge stern first, the rest of the wreck crumpled under the force and there she rests today slowly filling with sand. As we swam under the stern my pressure gauge imploded on my intermediate Trimix (16/43), luckily no leaks occurred and it just filled with water, one of Leighs computers imploded squashing the LCD screen (Vytec).
We finished the bottom time by swimming up the other side of the wreck and looking at all the scattered wreckage that lay around the site. We gave each other the up signal after a bottom time on the wreck of five and a half minutes and slowly raised back into the dark blue water getting a fantastic view of the wreck as we did so.
During the initial ascent we prepared our intermediate Trimix (16/43) for the gas switch but my regulator was not responding, I tried to purge but had no response, I maintained a steady 10m per minute ascent rate as I mulled over the thought of having to miss all my deep stops and ascend to the point at which I could switch to my lean Trimix decompression gas, this was not a good option and would have almost certainly resulted in a long stint in the chamber. We had plenty of spare gas on the dive boat but this was of no help as I ascended toward the gas switch. As I approached 100m I again purged the regulator and to my amazement a little air escaped from the mouthpiece followed by a loud gushing sound and then all was operational again, I safely made my gas switch at 84M along with Leigh and a large sigh of relief.
Its certainly a massive dive and congratulations to Mark and Leigh for finding the Yolande and breaking the world record.
Legendary Scuba Diver has a whale of a tale to tell January 30, 2006
Posted by Andy Carroll in : general , add a commentRay McAllister is an 82 year old retired oceanography professor at Florida Atlantic university. He recently recounted a few of his underwater escapades at a Deerfield Beach dinner honoring him and several other South Florida diving luminaries.
After showing him how to use a tank and regulator, McAllister’s colleagues told him, “‘Don’t hold your breath because it will kill you,’” he recalled with a laugh. “I made it to 90 feet and I was hooked for life.”
The next day he ran out of air 160 feet deep and had to make a free ascent, exhaling the entire way. Undiscouraged, he continued diving and is believed to be the first U.S. civilian dive instructor.
Ray’s most excellent story though, and why I chose to recount his story, is his encounter with a Humback Whale around 1960.
Aboard the Sir Horace Lamb, he saw a humpback whale laying tight against the ship, apparently rubbing her skin. For some reason, he got the idea to jump on the whale’s back and try to ride it standing up alongside the boat.
“I decided to do a ‘look ma — no hands’ on her back,” McAllister wrote in his as-yet unpublished memoirs.
“I leaped onto her back and went down through a fetid, fishy spout as she blew. My left foot went into her left blowhole (there were two set side-by-side in a ‘V’) about six inches beyond the ankle joint. She did what any intelligent beast would do if someone stuck a foot in her nostril: she started to roll away from Sir Horace and dive.”
McAllister barely had enough time to push with his right foot and yank his left foot out of the blowhole, leaving his open-top Air Force boot in her nostril.
After the adrenaline wore off, McAllister realized his left ankle was badly sprained and asked someone to take him to a nearby Air Force hospital. But before he could go, he had to fill out a workman’s compensation form.
“Where it asked how the accident happened, I wrote ‘I jumped on the back of a humpback whale and got my foot caught in her blowhole,’” McAllister recalled. ‘Where it asked what steps were being taken to prevent a recurrence of the accident, I wrote, ‘I won’t jump on any more whales!’”
After one of the base commanders read the form and got through laughing, he made McAllister change it to say that he had jumped onto a dock and next time would use a gangplank. Then McAllister was taken to the hospital.
But the whale tale had an epilogue: a couple of months later, McAllister was perusing a publication called The Norwegian Whaling Gazette when he read about a 35-foot female humpback whale that had been taken off Bermuda with a shoe in her left blowhole.
He ran around the base, showing his colleagues the news item and later was invited to recount the tale at the Kindley Air Force Base Fishing Club. McAllister’s was voted best in a contest of fishing stories, and he was supposed to win a Boston Whaler and fishing tackle. But the commanding officer, who was president of the club, disqualified his entry because “I was not a member of the club and it was a mammal story — not a fish story.”
Scuba Dive with Dolphins January 23, 2006
Posted by Andy Carroll in : general , add a commentBill Bleyer from Newsday.com was lucky enough to be able to join one of the Dolphin Dives offered on Grand Bahama, and it looks like its something every scuba diver could treasure. For those people worried about keeping animals in captivity, these dolphins aren’t kept in captivity but are free to leave if they wish.
The dolphins are free to swim away into the ocean once they leave their pen if they choose. But Cuccurullo said they are unlikely to do that because they know they have a good deal: They get plenty of food and they’re protected from predators like sharks circling on the reef. “Sharks are their No. 1 predator,” she said. In a tense situation, they won’t run away. “They run home” to the pens.
The dive costs $159 and for this you are able to pet, be spun around by, kiss and swim around a reef with a pair of relatively tame dolphins. It’s sort of like going to a SeaWorld show, except you’re underwater and part of the cast.
Besides operating a full-service dive center, UNEXSO operates a habitat and training facility for dolphins. When you sign up for the open-water dolphin encounter, a dive boat takes you from the shop in Lucaya down the coast to the dolphin center, where you meet two of the eight trainers who will join you on the reef.
I think diving with dolphins is one of the most common reasons people give for learning to scuba dive, and the experience available in Grand Bahama must be one of the best ways to guarantee that you can.
