Diving Thoughts

Dolphins are normally cast as the good guys, maybe it’s the perpetually smiling face that helps.  And while they are undoubtedly inquisitive and often seem friendly, we shouldn’t forget that they are wild animals.

Earlier this week in New Zealand a swimmer had to be rescued after a dolphin which has been named Moko wouldn’t let her return to the beach. Moko hangs around Mahia beach, east of Wairoa on the east coast of the North Island, and has a habit of playing with swimmers. On this occasion, when a swimmer tried to get back to shore, Moko kept diving next to her and circling her. Eventually she had to grab hold of a buoy and shout for help. Despite having a wetsuit she was cold and exhausted, but was eventually rescued by some people in a dinghy.

So no matter how cuddly dolphins might appear, we should not forget that they are powerful marine predators who may not be aware of our limitations in the water.

For more information there is an article in the New Zealand Herald, from where I borrowed the above photograph.

Given all the press recently about the serious decline of blue fin tuna worldwide, should we be eating  tuna? Well, it seems to depend on what type of tuna it is and which tuna “stock” it comes from. There are seven species which are divided into 23 stocks. Research shows that six of these stocks are overfished, six are fully utilised, two have not been assessed and nine are not yet fully utilised. So leaving aside blue fin tuna, the largest and most highly prized species, it sounds as though things could be a lot worse. However there is an over-capacity of tuna fishing boats, and there are no controls to prevent new boats from entering fisheries.

Tuna migrate long distances and may well pass through fishing zones of several countries as well as international waters. This makes their conservation that bit more problematic, as they suffer from the tragedy of the commons, meaning everyone has an incentive to take as much as possible of a resource  because if they don’t then other people will. Now would seem to be a good time  for countries to look at working together to try and preserve tuna while their numbers are in relatively good shape.

There is a good article on this on the New Scientist’s website.

A couple of days ago, SCMP were reporting that a dead fin whale was spotted on the bow of a cruise ship as it arrived in Vancouver last Saturday. An investigation is now under way to try and find out if it was killed by the ship, or whether it was already dead when the vessel hit picked up its unexpected passenger.

The Princess Cruise Line, owner of the Sapphire Princess which is the ship involved, claim to have a strict whale avoidance policy, and the company said that there were not reportings of whale sightings as they came into Vancouver.

The photo above comes from the SCMP’s website, and if you are a subscriber you can read the article here.

Due to the unfortunate demise of SCDC‘s scheduled boat in a recent typhoon, it looked as though the weekend’s diving was going to be scrapped. But the Hong Kong Underwater Club (HKUC) very kindly invited us out on their boat instead.

After a bit of excitement in the morning, involving Catheryn hijacking our van, changing the departure time and completely failing to tell us, we got to the boat fashionably on-time. We set off from Tso Wo Hang and headed to Tai Long Wan, which has long been an HKUC favourite. Anchoring near the channel between the 2 islands that make up Tsim Chau, we had 3 other dive boats in close attendance. Fortunately they were doing training and despite their tenders racing around dropping people off and picking them up, they weren’t a problem.

Rita and I headed through the channel between the 2 islands before heading left towards the mouth of the cave. This cave runs through the island and on the seaward side where we were heading, the floor starts in around 10 metres. It’s also quite a large entrance on that side. There is an air space all the way through apparently, but the surge can often be a problem. We headed into it with 2 very small torches and after about 20 metres, decided to come back another day.  If there had been no surge, or if we’d had better torches, we might have pressed on, but we decided that discretion was the better part of valour. There was quite a lot to see, but it did involve quite a long swim. A better way to do it may be to surface swim part of the distance to the entrance, or better still, get a tender to drop you off on that side of the island.

After lunch we headed to the cement wreck, but after a short debate as to exactly which part of the headland it was on, I was able to persuade them to go to the Dollos instead. These are the bizarrely shaped concrete monstrosities that are intended to protect the shoreline in front of one of the dams of High Island reservoir from wave damage. Although I like the site, I’ve not actually dived here for several years and Rita had never dived here, so we were looking forward to it. I do remember that there used to be a school of maybe 200 juvenile barracuda, so I was hoping we’d see them. Well, things have changed. The school of barracuda has turned into something of Sipadan proportions. We were swimming among them for the entire hour of the dive. There were also some big butterfly fish and a large cornet fish. The concrete blocks were good to swim through and around too, with a variety of more shy creatures hiding among them. Without a doubt the best dive I’ve done this year for fish life.

I would like to thank HKUC for their hospitality and for a very enjoyable day out. It was a lot of fun, great diving and yet very relaxing.

The Scuba STAR Network have a new survey out. This one on air quality. Please go and fill it in at http://www.scubastarnet.com/11801.html.

This morning we had a partial solar eclipse in Hong Kong. It was predicted to happen between 08:15 and 10:46, with the maximum eclipse at 09:26.

Obviously staring up at the sun, even through sunglasses, is not a sensible thing to do so I needed an alternative.  Ten years ago I was in Munich for a total eclipse and I was far better prepared, with some of those eclipse goggles to allow me to watch it. Today I decided to try out a couple of alternatives. Borrowing from the image on the right from the Hong Kong Observatory, I stuck a pin through  a sheet of paper three times (to see what difference larger or smaller holes made).  I also took down a pair of binoculars, not to look directly at the sun, but to project on to the cardboard.

So first of all I tried with my ridiculously simple pin-hole device, secure in the knowledge that it wouldn’t work. Immediately I was quite taken aback when I saw 2 small crescents projected on to the cardboard. The third “pin”-hole was too big and was ineffective.

Flushed with the unexpected success of my very simple pin-hole device, I then tried to use a pair of binoculars to project an image of the sun on to the cardboard. This took a bit more effort aligning the binoculars with the sun and the cardboard but eventually I managed it, and was blessed with a sharp, bright crescent that was considerably larger than I’d got out of the pin-holes. In fact I got 2 images, one for each lens in the pair of binoculars, but they were large enough that I could only fit one of them on my cardboard box at a time. A telescope on a tripod would have made life a lot easier, as it was quite difficult to keep the binoculars aligned, and I couldn’t hold them steady enough. But despite that, I would still count the morning as a success and I was really pleased to have been able to see the eclipse in such a simple way.

Last week I was fortunate enough to be at a talk by Dr. Wilson Li of the International Association of Hand-in-Hand Divers. It was given at South China Diving Club’s weekly meeting and was a Medical Seminar on Adaptive Diving for the Disabled. Among other things Dr. Li covered :

• Common physical and mental handicaps, chronic illnesses
• The personality, behavior and social adaptation of the Disabled
• Special considerations in adapting scuba diving for the Disabled

Dr. Li’s presentation was enthusiastic, informative and  inspiring. Very few of us had any experience of diving with disabled people, and were not aware of the pleasure and in some cases, the medical benefits, they can gain from diving.

One of the most impressive stories was about Matthew Johnston. When he was 7 he was diagnosed with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), which is a debilitating neuromuscular disease. By the time he was 27 he only had mobility in his thumbs and depended on a ventialtor to breathe. Typical life expectancy for people with this illness is 30 years. Despite this he dreamed of diving, and had the determination to make his dream a reality. He may not be diving in the sense that most of us go diving, and he does require a dive team to support him. But few people can have had the determination to overcome such insurmountable odds to experience diving.

Closer to home in Hong Kong, the International Association of Hand-in-Hand Divers (IAHD) is working to help disabled divers to try diving. They now have over 100 members and have run a number of Discover Scuba Diver Courses for Physically Handicapped People.  They have even organised overseas trips to the Philippines.

If you are an instructor or just a diver who is interested in helping out, you should take a look at their website – http://www.iahd.org.hk/, although it is only in Chinese at the moment. And if you get chance to go to one of their presentations then I would thoroughly recommend it, as it may change the way you think about diving and instructing.

The Royal Geographical Society in Hong Kong have a talk this evening entitled Namibia: Survival of the Fittest. This is about a 7 day foot race over some of the most harsh but beautiful terrain on earth. Three of the participants were Joanna Eades, Michael Wellstead, and ex-SCDC member Keith Futcher. Keith was one of the people who helped to teach me to dive in the early 90′s. And I needed a lot of help!

Anyway the talk is tonight (Monday, 20 July 2009), at the Pacific Place Conference Centre, 5/F One Pacific Place, Admiralty. There is a Drinks Reception at 6.30 pm, followed by the Lecture at 7.30 pm

More information from the Royal Geographical Society (HK)’s Website.

Our favourite diving boat, Hong’s junk has run aground after Typhoon Molave on Saturday night. I’ve not got details yet, but it looks as though it broke its mooring and wound up on the breakwater near the pier at Tai Mei Tuk. I’m not sure how long it will be out of action, but good luck to them getting it sorted out and back in operation.

It looks as though SCDCwill have to find an alternative boat for this weekend’s dive.

Molave hit the territory on Saturday night with the number 9 signal being raised at 1:30 am on Sunday. Wind speeds were reported as reaching 148 km/h.

Swiss group, Act Responsible showcases striking ways to raise awareness of green issues. Here are 27 adverts to save the planet from the Guardian’s website.

Project Kaisei have organised a charity fundraiser on Saturday 11 July. This is part of their programme to raise awareness about the Plastic Vortex that we mentioned several weeks ago. It consists of a sunset cruise on the Bounty out to Hemingway’s in Discovery Bay. HKD 600 per head for the cruise, snacks and open bar on board.

At 8pm on Wednesday 8th July they will be screening the award-winning documentary “Addicted to Plastic” at Hemingway’s. The screening is free.

You can find out more on Hemingway’s website.

Yesterday SCMP had a story about the diver who died while diving off Ping Chau on Thursday night. He was part of a group of over 10 people who were staying in a rented house there and had been diving by day and night. His name was Cheng Cheuk-yin and he was 50 years old and apparently was a veteran diver.

At around 9:45pm on Thursday he and a buddy were diving at Tai Tong Wan, which is on the east side of Ping Chau, Mirs Bay. They were in about 3 metres of water and less than 50 metres from shore. Mr. Cheng sufaced around 11:30pm and complained of feeling unwell. He had difficulty breathing as they swam back to shore. When they got back, his friend called marine police who arrived within about 5 minutes, by which time Mr. Cheng was semi-conscious. He was taken to Prince of Wales where he was declared dead shortly before 1am. One of the Chinese papers apparently mentioned that there was speculation he had suffered from a heart problem, which would fit in with the SCMP report.

The SCMP points out that diving deaths are on the rise, although in this case it could just be a medical problem that happened while someone was diving. There are also more people diving now than there used to be.

If you are a subscriber, you can read the SCMP article here.