July 2010 >> Archives
Caribbean Diving – No Passport Required
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The Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill is not affecting the Florida Keys. Come enjoy our fabulous summer weather - perfect for diving and snorkeling! Looe Key Resort and Dive Center offers guests peace of mind with our oil spill cancellation policy for hotel and dive/snorkel trip bookings.
Please visit oursite for updates on the spill and it's effect on the Keys.
You deserve a break!
All rooms 20% OFF internet published rates
1 June - 27 July 2010
*** ASK FOR the "INTERNET SPECIAL" RATE when making your reservation ***
School is out but our classroom (and pool and ocean) are open! Take a second dive course within 30 days of completing your first course and get 10% OFF your second course. We offer dive training at all levels - from Intro to Scuba all the way to Divemaster.
Lobster mini-season is almost here!
Mini-season is a two day period, before the opening of the commercial lobster season, when recreational hunters can try their luck at bagging these tasty crustaceans. This year, mini-season opens Wednesday July 28th at 12:01 am and closes on Thursday July 29th at 12:00 midnight.
Get ready!
We have air fills and all of your "hunting supplies." Need to buy gear or get your's serviced? We are an authorized Mares dealer and service center. We also rent scuba gear. Questions about gear prep, hunting regulations, online license purchase? Check out Mini-Season FAQ's
Saturday July 10th. 10:00 am to 2:00 pm
"Alice in Waterland"Come celebrate the 26th anniversary of this unique event which takes place right on Looe Key Reef.
This year, the festival offers an offbeat salute to the classic children's tale "Alice in Wonderland" with underwater appearances by divers costumed as Alice, "Cheshire Catfish", "Mad Haddock", "Mock Sea Turtle" and the "March Herring."
Keys radio station US1 Radio 104.1 FM will stage the event and broadcast music underwater via Lubell Laboratory speakers suspended beneath boats positioned at the reef. The playlist will include ocean-themed ditties such as Jimmy Buffett’s “Fins,” authentic humpback whale song and, of course, the Beatles’ “Octopus’s Garden” and “Yellow Submarine.” Underwater music “afishionados” also plan to jam on aquatic instruments sculpted by Florida Keys artist August Powers. Blending elements of sea creatures and actual instruments, Powers’ creations include a trom-bonefish, manta-lin and drumfish.
Yes, it's goofy and fun. But the underlying focus is serious - promoting preservation of the Florida Keys' coral reef ecosystem. Divers and snorkelers - come join the fun from 10 am to 2 pm!
Call now to reserve your spot aboard the Kokomo Kat II 1-877-816-3483.
2009 Festival photos
Learn to dive in your jammies
Did you know that PADI now offers ONLINE instruction for Open Water as well as Advanced Open Water Diver certifications? That's right - you can do the classroom work at your convenience, from the comfort of your home. Once you've completed the course work online, you'll meet with your scuba instructor for a quick quiz, some skills practice in the pool
then four open water dives. Learn more about
Gear Meister answers your gear questions...
Lost and Found
As good (and safe) divers, we try to control for all the things that could go wrong in a dive. We plan our dive and dive our plan. We maintain our equipment in good working order. We keep our skills practiced and sharp.
But one of the things we may overlook in our risk management is being alone in the
middle of the ocean. Contrary to the movie a few years ago, this situation doesn’t happen often. And even if it does, it is usually resolved successfully. Which may be why many divers overlook this area in their planning. Looked at another way, in order to avoid playing your own private game of “Where’s Waldo”, you need to plan to be left behind. Huh? Why would I plan to get left? Simple. If you plan to get left, you can also plan all the things you could do to prevent getting lost in the first place. Failing that, you can have on hand a variety of tools to help you "get found" quickly. For our discussion, we’ll consider “alone in the ocean” to mean you’re too far from the boat or shore to get there on your own during the normal course of the dive.
Why so lonely?
First, let’s look at some of the reasons we could find ourselves alone at sea. Getting left behind by a dive boat can happen, although it is absolutely inexcusable in this day and age. Any good commercial boat should be conducting a diver roll call system after each and every dive. With a very small group, it could be a simple head count matched with a roster. With a larger group, there should be a physical roll call to verify everyone is back on board. Some boats augment this by checking divers in and out of the water or having a tag system that indicates who is still in the water. What if you’re diving from your own boat or from shore? Then you’re the crew responsible for accounting for all divers including yourself. Always leave a dive plan with someone so that they can alert the authorities if you haven’t checked in by some predetermined time.
Some of the other reasons your could find yourself alone: really bad navigation, a current that wasn’t compensated for and carries you too far from the boat or your exit point, a change in sea state that prevents you from swimming back, or darkness that prevents you from seeing the boat or the boat from seeing you. Since we should be practicing our navigation skills and should have a dive light whenever there’s a reasonable possibility of being in the water after dark, the two biggest culprits remain the current and the sea state.
Oops...
Before discussing the equipment that can help us be found, you need to realize one cardinal rule – you can only use it if you have it with you. No matter how good a device you could dream up, if you don’t have it with you on each and every dive, it can’t help you when you need it. So make sure that whatever device you decide is best for you, that you are willing and able to carry it all the time.
See me, hear me
Surface signaling devices can fall into three broad categories – visual aids, acoustic aids, and electronic aids. Ideally, at a minimum, each diver should have both a visual and acoustic device with them. If their chosen devices rely on batteries or air from the cylinder, then they should also carry backup devices in case the primary powered device runs out of juice.
Also keep in mind that you may be partially incapacitated and/or very tired. Devices that are simple and easy to deploy will have a greater chance of success.
And always, always, always, start using your signaling devices early, at the
first sign of a potential problem. Almost every device rapidly loses effectiveness with distance. Many of the common visual and acoustic aides had a maximum effective range in ideal conditions of only ¼ mile (500m), and very few were effective past ½ mile (1km).
Look This Way!
A diver on the surface without any signaling device is remarkable hard to see. In fact, any sea state greater than a one foot (24cm) chop, is higher than the diver sticks out of the water, making him very difficult to see. Obviously, the greater the distance between the observer and the diver, the more difficult it is to be seen as well. Simply put, the sea conditions don’t have to be horrible to prevent you from being seen.
The most commonly used visual device is the signal sausage / surface marker
buoy / signal tube. Generally in the shape of long tube, these devices come in various heights and colors, and are usually pretty easy to clip to your BCD or stash in the BCD pocket. The number one rule with these is “the bigger the better”. The higher the tube is and the bigger around, the easier it will be to spot. Of course, you still have to carry it, so you have to take that into consideration. Semi-scientific
studies indicate that fluorescent yellow is easiest to see under cloudy or overcast skies, while fluorescent orange is a little easier to see under bright sunshine. The tube should come with the ability to clip it to your BCD in such a manner that it sticks up into the air rather than flopping over. Considering how tired I could be after a couple of hours adrift, I recommend a sealed tube that won’t spill air if I’m not paying attention. Many tubes also have a place to attach a small dive light or chemical light stick to aid in being seen at night. Bonus: With the addition of a fifteen foot (5m) line, the tube can even be deployed from your safety stop to help the boat start looking for you or to keep unwanted boats away if you’re not lost.
The next most commonly carried visual signaling device is a signal mirror. With a little
practice, under bright sunlight, the flash from a signal mirror can be seen as far as seven miles (15km) by a boat and a whopping 40 miles (65km)by airplane! And, although range is reduced, it can even be used with overcast skies, bright moonlight, or even a dive light. They are quite simple to use and don’t require batteries. Simply reflect the light source to scan around the horizon to attract the attention of any searchers looking for you. (You did leave a dive plan behind with somebody, right?)
For night diving, your dive light is the most effective visual aid you have. Similar to the mirror, just sweep it around the horizon to attract attention. A flashing strobe light is even more visible, but is one extra thing you have to carry.
There are also some less commonly carried items because of weight, space, or complexity. Signal flags are available and can stick up quite high, however, the diver has to put the flag staff together to deploy it, and, after a certain height, the staff tends to bend under its own weight reducing its overall height. There are also signal flares that can be carried under water and can be very useful for getting attention day or night. Just make sure you keep up with the expiration date. Sea dye markers won’t help a boat see you, but are very visible to an aircraft. This could be a very useful secondary signaling aid. And while not necessarily convenient, some boats require that the individual dive teams drag along a floating dive flag. Not only does this keep other boats away, it also allows your boat to have constant awareness of where all their dive groups are.
Can You Hear Me Now?
It’s really tough to yell for a long time. And, in the scheme of things, we really can’t yell that loudly. So to increase our chance of attracting attention, we can also use some kind of audible signaling device. The cheapest and easiest to carry is the whistle. But not all whistles are created equal. Some are definitely louder than others, but almost all will be louder and last longer than your yelling. Whistles are also easy to attach to your BCD – often near the end of the BCD inflator – for quick use before you drift any further from the boat.
But to generate really loud noise we can use the air from our cylinder. There
are several models of air horns on the market that attach to
your low pressure inflator hose and sound off with just the push of a button. They even work underwater in a muted, duck-like kind of voice. Their big drawback is that you have to have air remaining in your cylinder, so they wouldn’t work if you surfaced away from the boat due to an out of air situation. Thus, the reminder to always carry a man-powered backup device.
Ping!
OK. So it’s not really like the sonar on a submarine, but it’s electronic and it’s pretty cool. There are now several model of emergency homing beacons on the market – not to be confused with diver navigation beacons. The systems work with a transmitter that sends out an omni-directional signal and a receiver that indicates signal strength and relative direction to the transmitter. For navigation systems, the transmitter is on the boat and the divers carry the receivers to point their way back to the boat. For an emergency system, the boat keeps the receiver and the diver activates his transmitter in an emergency. The boat receives the signal and follows the arrow on the receiver screen. These systems are being used more and more on large boats in areas of high currents, such as the Galapagos, where the chance of a diver being swept away are fairly common. The downside is that these systems are pretty expensive.
And a new entry on the market – really a modified use of a boat-based system – is a personal GPS beacon. The device is registered with the Coast Guard with the individual diver’s information. The diver must carry the unit in a watertight box during the dive, as it is only rated to about 16 feet (5m). In an emergency, the diver activates the signal and it transmits the diver’s information and GPS position to the Coast Guard. Again, a pretty expensive option. And even more expensive if you accidently activate it and cause a false search!
Keeping It All Together
Even the simplest of these devices need maintenance, at least in the form of cleaning, just like the rest of your dive gear. Salt or chlorine will bleach out those fluorescent colors on your signal tube, corrode your mirror, clog your whistle or air horn, or erode your electronics. So take care of your gear so it can take care of you.
And just like any other skill, you need to practice. Make sure you can easily deploy and use whichever devices you decide to carry. Regular practice sessions also allow you to find out if your device still works. It would be a bummer to find out your signal tube has a hole in it as you watch the boat getting smaller and smaller in the distance.
If you plan to deploy a signal tube from the safety stop, you definitely want to practice a few times first to ensure you can do it without getting entangled and pulled to the surface.
I’ve gone so far as to create my own little emergency bag. It’s
fluorescent yellow, and just big enough to hold a 72 inch (182cm) fluorescent yellow signal tube,15 feet (5m) of line with clips, a signal mirror, a chemical light stick, and an extra whistle. The whole thing easily fits in my BCD pocket or clips to one of my BCD D-rings. If I need it, I know where to find it.
I hope I never need to ...
Granted, it’s unlikely you will ever need to use any of these things in an emergency. But it sure is comforting to know that you have them if you need them.
Deep Diver
After your first few scuba dives, you soon want to explore a bit deeper. There’s something exciting and mysterious about the depth that attracts divers.
What You Learn
- Techniques for diving in the deeper range of 18-40 metres/ 60-130 feet
- Deep scuba diving equipment considerations
- Experience in planning, organizing and making at least four deep dives under the supervision of your PADI Instructor
Prerequisites
Be 15 years or older
- Have a PADI Advanced Open Water Diver certification (or have an equivalent qualifying certification from another organization.)
The Learning Materials You Need
PADI’s Deep Diver crewpak (DVD and manual) provides a thorough overview of the principles and techniques needed to complete the PADI Deep Diver specialty. In addition to previewing skills you’ll practice with your instructor, the materials serve as a reference guide for deep diving in a variety of conditions and environments.
You can purchase this product at Looe Key Dive Center.
More info at PADI.com
Schedule your class now! Call Looe Key Dive Center 1-877-816-3483
or contact us by e-mailHave you seen this fish??
Beautiful but deadly, the lionfish is an invasive exotic species native to the Indo-Pacific region. It is being found in increasing numbers along the east coast of the United States as well as the Caribbean. The red lionfish (Pterois volitans) is a predatory fish with few natural enemies that devours smaller indigenous reef fish at an alarming rate. It also poses a threat to divers and fishermen - the fins are tipped with venomous spines that inflict a painful sting.
What can you do?
If you see this fish, report it
More info about lionfish here
Four Eye Butterfly Fish, Chaetodon capistratus
These interesting little fish flit about the reef sucking up algae with their pointed snouts, often in pairs. They are oval shaped, with a black to dark gray line across the eyes, and thin, dark, diagonal lines radiating across the body. But the most distinctive feature is the large black spot on the rear body near the tail and dorsal fin. This “fourth eye” is thought to be a camouflage device to confuse predators on which end to attack. Commonly 3-4 inches (6-10cm) in length, they are generally tolerant of divers and snorkelers unless closely approached.
photo by Eric Smith
