Tag Archive
Going Deep with April May Precious
April May Precious and her Turks and Caicos Dive Resort is clearly a diving icon. We first reviewed her magnificent resort with untouched reefs and fishes in 1992 when it was in the Caymans and provided a phone number to call for information. We received 600 phone calls. We reviewed her T&C operation online in 2007 and again earlier this month in an email we sent on April 1. If you missed the review, before reading further in this blog see the full story here It will add to your appreciation of the blog and our readers comments. Scores of our readers responded to our review of Precious Island, so we thought it would be fun to post several of those responses in our blog just in case you decide to make the trip. As you will see, some folks didn't realize it was too good to be true. -- Ben Davison I stayed in Little Caicos for a week in the 90's, at a dive dump that was the only place to stay there at the time. At that time the vis was the best I had seen ANYWHERE, (and I've done 500+ dives in the Carib, Indian & Pacific Oceans) there were absolutely huge stingrays the size of a VW and large schools of Eagle Rays. However the rest of the diving was pretty mundane, more like G. Cayman today, NOT the South Pacific. Are you sure you weren't enamored by the young lady who runs the place? Your description of the place is not credible from my experience. And I dove there 20 yrs. ago when it was really a virgin area. -- Bob K You had me going there, did sound too good to be true. My son and I spent a great week on Providenciales in 2009. You... More »
THE MASK FROM HELL
by Lada Simek A long time ago, when I was still teaching chemistry, Rob Weintraub, the owner of New York Scuba showed me a mask that he called 'the mask from hell'. Neither the original owner, nor he himself, was able to clean it sufficiently to keep it from fogging. He offered it to me as a challenge. I like a challenge and having a small laboratory at my disposal, I thought this would not be a big deal. There are two extremes of compounds based on their electron arrangement, polar and nonpolar. The rule is that like dissolves like. Polar substances attract and dissolve other polar substances, like alcohol and water. Nonpolar substances like wax do not attract water and dissolve in nonpolar solvents such as gasoline, paint thinner and oil. Since the silicone on the glass is similar in its chemistry to carbon and its compounds, I assumed it was nonpolar and all I needed was a nonpolar solvent to dissolve it and clean the mask. I took the mask to my lab and began experimenting. I did not use toothpaste because it had been tried before. The way that toothpaste works is that it contains an emulsifier (detergent) and a fine abrasive called diatomaceous earth. This consists of the skeletons of millions of microscopic animals which died and landed on the bottom of the ocean floor. I would bypass this gentle system and go to the heavy stuff, pure detergent and volcanic pumice as an abrasive. No effect! Next I tried one of the most nonpolar substances I knew, carbon tetrachloride. This is a liquid formerly used in the dry cleaning industry, until it was found to be a pretty strong carcinogen and it is no longer available for public use. No effect! Why not try alcohol? I sure did. I... More »
The Knife
My previous underwater camera, trusty companion for 22 years of diving deeper for longer, weighed over 15kg out of the water. In its prime it was coupled to a pair of huge Ikelite 150 strobes with rechargeable battery packs. Its mass stabilised my photographs. Its solid metal housing chipped shark teeth. It had momentum. I could use it to assert my presence in a chum of divers. It could stop a submarine. I felt safe. Now I have gone digital and have a camera that weighs nothing and has tiny strobes that light up the planet but that could be swallowed whole by a Goby. First I thought being light was a good idea. Airlines are becoming paranoid about baggage and aggressive in their collection of fees for any excess. By going digital I would cheat them of hundreds of dollars every year! But now I am feeling vulnerable. Divers kick sand in my face. I need a weapon. So I immediately thought of buying a knife. PADI tells us that the Divers Knife is a “general tool and safety device. In the latter case, you use it in the unlikely, but possible, situation that you’re entangled and need to free yourself. It is not a weapon.” But they can’t fool me. Then I started to look at the dive knives on offer. It was a shock. Some were so small that if you took a good grab at one with big hands like mine you would slice off your fingers. That is if they were sharp, but sharpness is not a feature of most dive knives. If you think it is, I suggest you get yours out and sharpen a pencil with it. See? I was advised that you did not need a knife, dive SCISSORS (shears?) would do. Huh! You try ripping the guts... More »
Speak Up!
Most married men understand selective deafness. This is attained by training over many years to automatically tune out sentences with the words "washing up", "garbage", "shopping" and so on, and tune in to sentences with words such as "dinner", "wine", "sex" etc. Long serving devotees can become quite expert, tuning in to "Dinner is ready" but out to "help with dinner" or "go out to dinner" or "clean up after dinner". It is important that women understand that this is actual, real deafness developed as a kind of defence system that enables men to survive marriage. I am reporting on this since male divers have an additional problem to contend with. In solidarity with Global Warming believers I will check on the facts later but, at the moment, I will just say what I feel. My feelings are that men seem to suffer from this affliction rather than women and the problem is that male divers develop a high frequency loss, due to diving damaging their ears, which makes conversation around the dinner table difficult if not impossible. I used to sit around thinking of witty replies to conversation, now I just wonder if someone said what I think they did. This problem advances with age, number of dives (we are talking in thousands here), and whether the diver has done much free-diving - or only used scuba. Free divers are notoriously prone to ear damage probably because it is harder to clear ears when head down, and, because they are breath-holding, have not got time to hang around if one of their ears is slow to clear. Free divers, but also some scuba divers, may damage their inner ears quite seriously if they fail to clear regularly and easily, and end up with Tinnitus. This is a persistent "ringing" sound in the ears... More »
When You Least Expect It
When I look back over my 42 year diving career and more than 10,000 dives, I realise how few dive-related injuries I have sustained. A few infections from coral scratches, a nasty sting from a bunch of Corallimorpharians, nothing really and a little care has cured me from repeating these injuries. I have had a few aches, pulled muscles and minor pain but I always say "a little pain won't hurt you", and these niggles rapidly disappear. Perhaps I have some deterioration in my hearing - but that is a function of old age, as is "selective" hearing where we males recognise words such as "sex" and "dinner" but not "garbage" or "washing up". Certainly minor compared to injuries inflicted on my friends, particularly those who partake in the supposedly healthy life-style choice of bicycling. They always crash and end up in hospital with broken bones, missing teeth and skin-free areas of flesh leaving life-long scars. [caption id="attachment_1229" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Titan Triggerfish -- Beware"][/caption] So it was a bit of a shock when, out of the blue as it were, a fish bit me and I started bleeding. Strangely, exactly the same thing had happened to my dive mate Rodney Pearce when we were diving a Zero wreck in Rabaul Harbour just a month previously. Was this a coincidence? Or was it Divine Intervention or, as the Gullible Greenies would inevitably claim, another manifestation of Climate Change? Fortunately I am rational, and well versed in science, Occam's Razor and cause and effect, and I can tell you that Rodney's bite was the result of a Coral Cod mistaking his fingers for food in the billowing silt stirred up investigating Japanese markings on the aircraft, and mine the noble efforts of a large Titan triggerfish protecting freshly deposited eggs in its nearby nest. [caption id="attachment_1227" align="alignright" width="400" caption="Kirtley... More »
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