Undercurrent Online Update
for Subscribers

For Subscriber David Denson Whiteside (with username 'dwhitesi' exp: 2024-08-20', at dwhite95815@hotmail.com )
April 17, 2014

We're doing a story on making overseas dive trips easier by cutting the costs - and the weight - of dive travel. Luggage charges are out of hand, so how do you trim the weight that you carry when it comes to dive gear, photography hear, and your personal gear? We're looking for your personal stories, comments and advice on how you trim weight, travel costs and all those obnoxious fees that come with it. Write them up and send them to me at EditorBenD@undercurrent.org.

American Airlines and US Airways have just followed in the footsteps of United and Delta in doing a dramatic shakeup to their mileage programs, increasing the number of miles for certain award tickets starting in June. We found some good summaries of American and US Air's airlines' changes at Milecards.com and Seth Miller's Wandering Aramean blog.

Our undercover travelin' divers review dive resorts and liveaboards in Cozumel, Maldives, Roatan, and Indonesia's Raja Ampat . . . when do divers cross over the line between "helpful" and obnoxious? . . . how to trim the weight and cut the costs of dive travel . . . and much more.

Sign up for the May 12-23 trip and save $1,000 when you book through the dive travel agency Reef & Rainforest. The Pindito sails the straits between Alor and Pantar, and you can expect to get close encounters with sunfish and sailfish, thresher and hammerhead sharks, giant mantas and humpbacks. Go to Undercurrent's Special Offers page for more details.

In our March issue, we wrote about divers who had recently discovered a primeval underwater forest teeming with fish 10 miles off Alabama's coast, but they weren't telling anyone the location due to research purposes. Well, those researchers are now using Kickstarter to fund a documentary called The Underwater Forest about the underwater site. The Weeks Bay Foundation, dedicated to protecting coastal Alabama, needs to raise $15,000 by May 1 to fund their efforts. If you pledge $2,000, they'll take you and another diver to the site. Based on their description of the site - hundreds of snappers, friendly triggerfish - it could be a unique experience.

A research team headed by Jacques's grandson and Jean-Michel's son Fabian will live and work in the Aquarius Lab for one month. Aquarius, deployed 63 feet off the coast of Key Largo, is the world's only underwater research lab, and Cousteau's Mission 31 project will be the longest-duration mission in the lab's history. Cousteau wants to do research that highlights climate change, ocean pollution and the decline of biodiversity. His divers will spend up to nine hours diving a day while his production team will be shooting footage for documentaries. In the meantime, the Weather Channel will give live coverage of Mission 31's progress via its Weather Channel App on iTunes.

A 13-foot-tall bronze sculpture named The Guardian of the Reef was just sunk at a sandy flat off Grand Cayman's Northwest Point. Divetech, which just celebrated 20 years of business, bought the sculpture from Canadian artist Simon Morris, to sink as an artificial reef to commemorate the anniversary. The half-warrior, half-seahorse was taken out by two boats to be perched onto a 4-foot pedestal at 60 foot depths. Divetech says one dollar from every dive made at the site will go to a local conservation education program, and it hopes to raise $20,000 the first year (that's about 55 divers a day).

The World Wildlife Fund says that Hong Kong, which used to be the world's largest importer of shark fins, has seen the number of fins drop by nearly 35 percent. The volume of imported shark fin products fell from 8,285 metric tons to 5,412 metric tons last year. China has traditionally been the largest market for shark fins, but demand there appears to have declined significantly, perhaps due to campaigns by environmental groups and government austerity measures. Vietnam has now taken China's place, although it's a mystery why, as there's no culture of consuming shark fins there.

A Costa Rican judge in Puntarenas ordered the country's government to reimburse businesswoman Kathy Tseng more than $6,600 for the 650-plus shark fins it seized from the hull of her ship and destroyed in 2011. Tseng's case involved the first-ever prosecuted use of a technique known as "spining," where shark spines are kept intact with the fins attached by strips of skin and the remaining flesh cut away. This slice-and-dice finning method was devised to slip through a loophole in Costa Rican law, which requires fins to arrive "naturally attached" to the sharks' bodies. Judge Franklin Lara absolved Tseng of all charges, saying she had not broken the law, and ruled that because Tseng did not unload and sell the finned sharks, she had not committed a crime. In addition to forcing Costa Rican taxpayers to foot the bill for the destroyed fins and Tseng's legal fees to boot, Lara's ruling essentially has once again legalized shark-finning in Costa Rican waters, conservationists say.

Ben Davison, editor/publisher
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Website News

Some of you have probably heard this past week about the "Heartbleed" bug in security software that affected many websites worldwide. Fortunately the Undercurrent website was not affected, because we use different software that did not have this notorious bug. Also our ecommerce vendor, PlugNPay, has assured us that all our transactions were NOT subject to this bug. So none of your confidential information was in danger.

Dave Eagleray, webmaster
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