Scuba STAR Network’s air quality survey must be coming to an end soon as it’s for July / August. So here’s a last minute chance to contribute. You can fill in the online survey from their website.
Last Sunday Rita and I went out with Hong Kong Underwater Club for a couple of dives at the dollos. The dollos are bizarrely shaped concrete blocks which are used to protect the shoreline in front of High Island reservoir dam. This is now the third time I’ve dived there in the last month. Not that I’m complaining, because yet again we had fantastic dives.
However for a bit of variety on our first dive, we headed away from the dollos and along the rocky reef below the south-west shore. Depth was between 5 and 10 metres and there were plenty of fish. More exciting was a lovely flatworm that was bobbing gently before us in the current. Later on we came across an octopus in a hole, which was very brave and started to emerge as we retreated, but hid away as soon as Rita tried to take a photograph. He needn’t have worried as her camera was telling her there was a memory stick error! The dive was mainly in lovely warm water, but if we moved away from the slope, we were suddenly hit with quite a strong, cold current pushing us towards the dollos. The temperature variation was a quite striking 4 degrees C., from 29C. to 25C. in a very short distance. And while it wasn’t too difficult to swim against the current, it was surprisingly strong in an area I’ve not come across one before.
For the second dive we decided to see if the barracuda were still loitering around the dollos. They were out in force, there were hundreds of them, mainly between 5 and 8 metres. There were also quite a lot of cornet fish too, as well as a variety of other fish. We swam in and out of the passages between the concrete blocks, looking at the crabs and a small shoal of stripeys, and at one point we came across a large lobster which was a nice surprise.
All in all a great day’s diving, rounded off nicely with a few beers on the way home.
Thanks very much to the Underwater Club for inviting us out and for organising a great day and 2 excellent dives.
Last year, after 3 months of marriage, Aleki Taumoepeau was working in Wellington harbour when he dropped his wedding ring. He quickly threw an anchor in to try and mark the site. Three months later he did a dive but couldn’t find it. This year, 16 months later, he went back to try again, armed with GPS coordinates. As he was getting cold and tired, he spotted the anchor at around 3 metres depth, with the ring lying really close to it. They’re now calling him Lord of the Ring.
Maybe Big-Ears at our dive Club could try something similar in the hope that, if he’s trying to recover his wedding ring, his missus might actually let him out to go diving.
The story is on the BBC website.
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.
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 :
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.
A British diver in his 60′s has been reported missing while diving the Empire Javelin, a D-Day landing vessel. The wreck is in 60 metres of water 22 miles north of Cherbourg. He was part of a group of divers who were diving on 23 June from a charter boat.
There is a brief report on Divernet.
With a forecast of heavy rain and squally thunderstorms following on from a week of heavy rain, I wasn’t expecting a great deal from Saturday’s dive. In fact the Underwater Club had cancelled their Sunday dive because of the weather and apparently Mandarin Divers abandoned their plans too. So were we keener, tougher, or just less smart? Whichever it was, we were also considerably luckier, as there was no rain, no thunder, no squalls, just a very pleasant day with 2 metre vis which was much better than we all expected.
Just for a change, I decided to dive twins. I had a twin tank wing which I picked up remarkably cheaply from someone who’d won it in a raffle. It looked in good nick, but when I tried to fit it to my backplate, I found the holes didn’t line up with the bolts on my twin tank adapter. There were 2 pairs of 3 holes at top and bottom, so I did the best I could but it wasn’t attached all that smoothly. Also I need to replace the inflator hose and I will have to service the kidney dump valve because it was sticking closed. But apart from that, well it was cheap!
I fixed the tanks and regulators, and warned Marcus L. that my sinuses were playing up. We agreed I’d lead the descent down the anchor line so I could stop if I was in pain. Then he’d take over and lead the rest of the dive as practice before he starts a Dive Leader course. The anchor was in 12-13 metres, but we came off at about 7 metres and headed inshore because I couldn’t get any deeper than that. Gradually my sinuses improved and we were able to head down the steep slope to 15 metres. Not a lot to see, but certainly much better than I’d been expecting. Quite a lot of schools of apogon, rabbitfish and damsels, plus a nice goatfish. Quite a lot of urchins too, one of whose spines is now securely lodged in my knee.
Marcus got us back to the boat where we came across Catheryn doing a rescue assessment with Andreas as instructor and Rita as a rather noisy victim. The de-kitting didn’t go too well, so Andreas wanted them to redo it. As Rita jumped back in her weight belt came adrift and plummeted to the depths. I shouted for Marcus to fetch a weight belt and, once I’d managed to impress on him the urgency, he gave me my own weight belt. Unfortunately it only had 2 lbs on it so I scrounged a 3 lb weight and gave it to Catheryn to lower down as a shot with a dSMB fixed to the top. David and Joerg were next in so they did a circular search from the hastily improvised shot, and within 5 minutes they’d found the weight belt and brought it back to the boat. A successful demonstration of the skills learnt on the search and recovery course.
Meanwhile the Kiss boys, Brian and Andy, had finished a deep (for Hong Kong) dive using trimix. They’d encountered vis of less than 0.5 metre and Andy was taking a bit of persuading that he really wanted to do a second dive. In LS’s absence, Mike and Marcus S. took the prize for worst navigation when they surfaced with a long swim back.
Then a speedboat appeared out of nowhere and tried screaming between us and the shore. The ABC boatmen responded immediately and started blowing the horn and waving the speedboat off. The speedboat crew didn’t seem to be aware that they should keep well clear or travel at slow speed. Sadly this is pretty typical of boats in Hong Kong waters, in fact we had the same problem with a squadron of jetskis, 2 weeks earlier. The ABC boatmen phoned in a report about this speedboat although whether anything will happen as a result is uncertain.
For the second dive Marcus and I decided on the same arrangement as on our first dive, I’d lead the descent to make sure my sinuses were OK, then he’d take over at the bottom. This time I had less trouble and we made it to the bottom of the anchor line before heading off deeper. We got down to 17.5 metres where it seemed a lot darker, but we hit some patches of really good soft coral and some nice whips. There was a particularly big scorpion fish, plus the smallest moray I’ve ever seen. This was turning out to be a much better dive than the first one. We got back up to 9 metres and Marcus sent up a dSMB. I then checked my dSMB was still in place as I’d replaced the bungee earlier in the week. It was now held by only one of the two bungee cords, so I decided I might was well deploy it rather than risk dropping it as I got back on the boat. So I put a puff of air into it to make it easier to control, then felt for my spool, only to find that it had mysteriously disappeared leaving just the double ender behind. Since I’d not bothered to carry my reel on this dive, I was left with no choice but to finish the safety stop and ascent with a dSMB looped over my arm. Marcus who hadn’t realised the problem thought I was mad. I did try and signal to him what was going on, but I was laughing so much that my mask kept filling up with water.
Most people were impressed with the soft coral that was down below 15 metres and we had some surprisingly good dives with quite a lot to see. Back on board, beers and champagne were opened. It seems we were celebrating a number of things:
Oh and we should also mention Mike making it out on the boat which is always a bit of a rarity.
All in all a good day out.
The USNS General Hoyt S. Vandenberg was originally named the USS General Harry Taylor. It saw service ferrying American troops to the Pacific in 1944. After the war it brought troops and holocaust survivors out of Europe. In the 1960′s it spent some time monitoring missile launches in the Cold War.
It has now been sunk in 140 ft (43 metres) 7 miles off the Florida Keys. The City of Key West is hoping that it will attract divers who will help stimulate the local economy by USD 8 million.
The Vandenberg displaced 17,250 tons and was 523 ft. long. It was decomissioned in 1986, and has been sitting on a river in Virginia since then.
It is the second largest ship in the world to have been deliberately sunk as an artificial reef. Experts are hoping that it will be colonised by invertebrates within six months and will provide a new habitat for fish.
There is more detail in the Times Online.
Many of us have seen first hand how damaging dynamite fishing can be to the marine environment. I once dived Pedro Blanco, in Chinese waters east of Hong Kong, just after some dynamite fishermen had left. The seabed was carpeted with dead fish, and while we did manage a good lunch out of it, it was very depressing to see. More recently I dived a Japanese wreck near Malapascua and found hundreds of dead and dying fish lying all over the bottom.
But I suspect most of us don’t consider dynamite fishing as being dangerous to us as divers. Well perhaps we should because apparently a diver was killed in Vietnam after some fishermen mistook him for a big fish. They threw in an explosive, but when they went down to get their catch they realised they’d killed a diver. Police have said they will be charged with killing the diver as well as destroying aquatic resources and the illegal use of explosives.
When I first read this I thought it was an urban myth like the one about the diver found dead in a forest after a forest fire. Or perhaps an April Fool, but the story seems to have come out on 24 March. Both CDNN and Divernet have this story on their websites.
A 50 year old man has died off the coast of Little Barrier Island in the Hauraki Gulf. He was diving with family and friends when he failed to surface as expected. He was later found on the sea bed, but despite medical attention he died before reaching the shore. Police have impounded his gear and reported that he was apparently in 4-5 metres of water.
The New Zealand Herald has the story. Apparently he was free-diving, but according to the Herald’s story he was the only one “wearing snorkelling gear”. I can only assume that they meant diving gear.
SCMP has an update on the story of the 2 divers who died in Cebu. They were part of a group of 6 people from Hong Kong. They left their resort at 10am on Sunday for Olango Island, and descended to 40 metres. According to a local report, after half an hour they had not surfaced, so another group of divers went to look for them. A few minutes into the search they were found floating unconscious, but were declared dead on arrival at the Mactan Doctors Hospital.
Apparently another male diver also had trouble in the water, and while he suffered injuries, these are not life-threatening. It was not explained whether this other diver’s injuries were related to the incident, whether they happened during the search and recovery for example.
The divers were described by Curly Wong Fan-tai, director of the Hong Kong Underwater Association, as veteran divers who held “technical diving qualification”, although the SCMP didn’t elaborate on what qualifications those were. Apparently at the site there is a chance to see Thresher sharks, but they are quite deep and there are sometimes strong currents.
Julius Bolado of the homicide section of the Lapu Lapu City Police apparently said that the incident appeared to be an accident, and that the instructor, Cheung Hung-kam (also from Hong Kong) had told him that the pair may have run out of air. At first sight, it seems a bit odd that both could run out of air at the same time. However a couple of years ago, due to multiple equipment failures, and a very bad decision to try and repair a second stage at depth, my buddy and I found ourselves in an out of air situation. In the event we were able to buddy breathe our way from 40 metres to the surface on one second stage from a tank that, due to a free flow, was rapidly losing its remaining air. We got to the surface with the tank nearly empty (and the other unusable) having missed several minutes of decompression stops. We immediately put ourselves on oxygen and fortunately we were both unhurt and considerably wiser, but it was touch and go for a while. It just goes to show how quickly things can go horribly wrong, and how steep the incident pit can be. At the moment there is not enough information to know what happened in this case, there are still more questions than answers.
To read the story, if you are a subscriber you can go to SCMP’s website. (Otherwise you’ll have to buy the paper!)