Flotsam & Jetsam

Win A Free Trip to Cocos. Buy a $100 raffle ticket from the Sea Turtle Restoration Project for a chance to join its shark-tagging expedition near Costa Rica’s Cocos Island aboard the Undersea Hunter March 20 to 30, 2009 (the all-inclusive trip value is $4,950). Only 100 raffle tickets are being offered; winners will be announced November 16. Get details at www.seaturtles.org (look on the bottom right of the homepage).

Maui Dive Shop Pays Reduced Penalty. It’s not a slap on the wrist but Maui Dive Shop got its penalties for wrecking Molokini reefs reduced from $550,000 to $406,000. It will pay Hawaii $250,000 now and the rest over three years for a 2006 incident in which its dive boat sank with 15 people aboard (read the details in our March 2008 issue).

Repricing of Eternal Reefs. We wrote about underwater burials in our August 2008 issue but we lowballed the price of admission. Eternal Reefs president Chuck Kizina told us a plot in the “community reef” is now $2,495 instead of $995, and the poshest reef burials have jumped from $5,000 to $6,500. Looks like the underwater real estate market isn’t sinking.

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North Carolina Dive Pioneer Dies. If you’ve dived North Carolina wrecks, there’s a good chance you went out with George Purifoy, owner of the Olympus Dive Center in Morehead City. Sadly, George, 63, died on September 14, collapsing on board his boat during a dive at the Queen Anne’s Revenge shipwreck site, where he was taking state archeologists to collect artifacts. His son Robert will continue running the dive center.