January 2011 >> Archives

Caribbean Diving – No Passport Required

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From all of us here at Looe Key Resort and Dive Center - wishing you health, happiness and lots of warm water adventures in the coming year...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Up coming FUN!!

We're into our busy Winter season and there's plenty of things to do (besides snorkel and dive...)


6th Annual Florida Keys Seafood Festival
Saturday, January 15, 2010 11 am - 9 pm
This family-friendly event showcases local seafood and the Keys' commercial fishing industry by providing the freshest seafood available. Photos 2010

more info

 

AHOY!

Big Pine & Lower Keys 6th Annual Nautical Flea Market

January 22- 23rd 8:00 am to 2:00 pm

Aficionados of boating, fishing and diving in the Florida Keys’ ocean realm can take their pick of maritime merchandise at the annual Big Pine Nautical Flea Market. Dive and snorkel gear, boats and motors, fishing tackle and marine merchandise of all sorts will be available for sale. Live music throughout the day provided by favorite local and regional entertainers. This family-friendly open-air event will take place on the grounds of the Lower Keys Chamber of Commerce, mile marker 31 oceanside on Big Pine Key.

 

26th annual Key West Craft Show
Jan. 29 and 30th
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Some 100 national and regional crafters will display their wares on lower Whitehead and Caroline streets among historic attractions and museums, including one honoring Audubon. All crafts in the juried show must be original and handmade. The colorful wares typically include stained glass, fabric, jewelry, pottery, woodcrafts, toys and more. Presented by the Key West Art Center. Admission is FREE.
more info.

 

Check out these links to even more JANUARY events in Key West, Marathon, and Big Pine Key

 

REMEMBER - Monday January 17th is Martin Luther King Day
Come visit the Fabulous Florida Keys for a long (warm) weekend! Check out Looe Key Resort room rates.

 

 

 

 

NO CASH tolls coming to Florida's Turnpike

No lines at the toll plazas - save time and fuel!

The southernmost portion of the Florida turnpike (mile 1 - 47) will no longer have cashiers at the toll plazas, starting in early 2011.

If you have a account, you won't notice anything different. If you don't have a SunPass account, you will be sent a bill for the toll. In a rental car? The toll will be charged against the credit card you used for the rental.

More info here

 

BEST Tiki Bar in the Florida Keys (maybe the entire world...)

Live music 7 days a week (band schedule.)

Monday is LADIES NIGHT 2 for 1 drink specials 4 - 7 pm

TACO TUESDAYS - a locals favorite!

 

 

 

Here's a DEAL...

Nemo Wide Multi-Gas Dive Computer

Only $299! What an amazing deal on a high-end, multi-function, decompression-capable dive computer! This can be your primary computer or a great backup for tech divers!
The Nemo Wide multi-gas dive computer is designed to be easy-to-read, intuitive to use, safe, and reliable. A large size display with a viewing angle of 170°, and large, easy-to-read numerals makes Nemo Wide perfect in any diving conditions. In order to optimize readability in every circumstance, special attention was also paid to the size and brightness of the numbers, to the intensity of the backlighting, and to maximizing the viewing angle. The four button Easy-Access system makes the Nemo Wide easy to navigate, even when switching gasses. The Nemo Wide allows use of up to three different gasses during a single dive, including high concentration oxygen for decompression. As Mares develops new features, the firmware and software in the Nemo Wide is upgradable from your home computer via the optional download kit.
We don’t think you’ll find a deal anywhere that’s close to this.
More info

 

Learn to dive in your jammies

PADI now offers ONLINE instruction for

• Open Water Diver (in English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, Japanese)
• Advanced Open Water
• Enriched Air Nitrox
• Scuba Tune-up
• Digital Underwater Photographer
• Dive Theory
• Dive Master
• Rescue Diver
• Instructor Development Course
  
  

That's right - do the classroom work at your convenience, from the comfort of your home.
Learn more

about

Gear Meister answers your gear questions...

"Love your BCD"

A good Bouyancy Compensation Device makes diving soooo much easier and more enjoyable. Over the next few months, we’ll take a look at our BCD - why we use one, how it works, how we get air in and out, some different features you can find on various BCD’s, and how to take care of it.

Let’s start with what it is. By its name, it is a device that compensates, or corrects, our buoyancy as we dive. Remembering back to our basic Open Water Scuba class, every object (including us), placed in water has some level of buoyancy. This buoyancy can be positive making us rise or float, negative making us sink, or neutral, allowing us to stay at one level in the water column. That would be fine and dandy if we only wanted to go where our natural buoyancy was a perfect fit. But how much fun would scuba diving be if we were always positively buoyant and stuck on the surface? Or negatively buoyant when we tried to swim back to the boat?

The early days 

In the early days of diving, the only thing we really tried to correct was positive buoyancy so that we could descend. The easy solution was to add weights. The diver would add enough weight that with his wetsuit and other gear on, he was only slightly positively buoyant, allowing him to float on the surface with just a little bit of finning. When it was time to descend, the diver had to swim his way down for the first 10-15 feet (3-5 m). As the diver descended, the increasing water pressure continued to compress the air spaces in the diver’s body and wetsuit making him more and more negative. The only way to counter the negative buoyancy was to fin up to stay at a certain depth. But - aha! - divers also noticed that at one point in the descent and ascent, they could remain level in the water column with little or no effort – neutrally buoyant.

Happiness is adjustable buoyancy

Wouldn’t it be great to spend the entire dive in that neutral condition without having to fin to stay down or stay off the bottom? This led to the first attempt at an adjustable buoyancy device. The first ones were really no more than minimally modified versions of aviation life vests (very similar to the one under your seat). At the selected depth, they would manually blow enough air into the vest to make themselves neutral. As they changed depth during the dive, they would manually add or vent air to reestablish neutral buoyancy.

The first devices had some inherent shortcomings such as having to manually inflate and deflate, and the fact that without a crotch strap, they rode up into the diver’s face. With many modifications over the years, we’ve come to the modern BCD.

All modern BCD’s have some common features. They provide a way to attach our cylinder to our body, and a way to move air from our cylinder into the BCD and a way to vent air from the BCD in order to adjust our buoyancy during the dive. After that, it’s just a matter of variations to provide these two functions and then additions to make the BCD more useful and functional.

Now that we know what a BCD does, let’s dissect it and learn how it works.

How does a BCD hold air?

Early BCD’s were little more than a plastic bag (the bladder) inside a protective cover. This did the job, but had a few problems. Since the technology didn’t exist to really attach the bladder to the inside of the cover, the bladder tended to move around and bunch up. This meant that the buoyancy might be trapped in one shoulder rather than spread out throughout the vest, resulting in poor balance. Second, the bladder also tended to be somewhat delicate and eventually developed leaks. And finally, since it was a separate piece, it was one more thing to malfunction. 

Technology has improved and now most modern BCD’s use a nylon shell which is coated on the inside to make it hold air. This one piece design also makes it easier and more reliable when we add holes to attach our inflation and deflation ports.

Sounds great, but what can go wrong with it?

The enemies

The biggest dangers to the modern BCD are ultraviolet light, chemicals, excessive heat, and salt. Wait a minute – that sounds like a typical dive day at the beach! Not to worry, we’re talking about excesses without cleaning. The sun can break down the materials in your BCD. Heat can break down the glue and resins. Even sunscreen can stain and degrade the material.

Care and feeding of your BCD

So, don’t leave your BCD lying in the sun for several days at a time.  Don’t store it  in the trunk of your hot car for days on end. Wear a shirt, wetsuit, or dive skin under the BCD.  After use in a swimming pool, the BCD needs to be rinsed inside and out to prevent the chlorine from degrading the material.

Same with ocean salt. When salt dries, it leaves salt crystals. On the microscopic level, these crystals are hard, jagged, and sharp, and can eventually wear holes through the inside of the bladder resulting in leaks. So, as with chlorine, your BCD needs to be thoroughly cleaned inside and out after every dive in salt water.

Stay tuned...
Next month we’ll go into detail about how air gets into and out of your BCD..

 

Gearmeister Archives

Enriched Air Diver

Want more bottom time??

The PADI Enriched Air Diver course is PADI’s most popular specialty scuba diving course, and it’s easy to see why. Scuba diving with enriched air nitrox gives you more no decompression dive time. This means more time underwater, especially on repetitive scuba dives.You can typically stay down longer and get back in the water sooner. No wonder many divers choose this as their very first specialty

What You Learn

• Techniques for getting more dive time by using enriched air nitrox
• Enriched air scuba diving equipment considerations
• Enriched air considerations, including managing oxygen exposure, how to tell what’s in your scuba tank and how to set your dive computer

 

 

Prerequisites

To take the PADI Enriched Air Diver course, you must be:

• Be 15 years or older
• Have a PADI Open Water certification (or have a qualifying certification from another organization)

The Learning Materials You Need

The Enriched Air Diver crewpak includes all required materials to complete PADI’s Enriched Air Diver specialty. The Enriched Air Diver Manual covers the procedures for diving with Enriched Air (up to 40%) and the Enriched Air Diving video on DVD demonstrates step-by-step how to plan a dive using multiple dive tables. The crewpak also includes the 32%, 36% and the DSAT Oxygen Exposure tables.

More info at PADI.com

Schedule your class now! Call Looe Key Dive Center 1- 877-816-3483 or contact us by e-mail

 

Looe Key Critter of the Month

Spotted Eagle ray (Aetobatus narinari)

These graceful swimmers look like they're flying when they cruise by. They have a flattened tapered snout and a long, thin tail with one to five venomous spines at the base. Eagle rays often cruise along walls or over sandy areas, stopping to dig in the sand for mollusks. Their "wingspan" varies from 4 - 6 ft. with a maximum of 8 ft.

 

photo by Eric Smith

 

Video by Diane Lundy