Undercurrent Online Update for Subscribers

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

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August 18, 2023

Maui is Open, Just Stay Away from the West End: West Maui councilwoman Tamara Paltin said, "We don't want to be seeing people on vacation when we're trying to pull our lives back together. We don't want our roads closed because tourists can't follow directions. If you're a tourist, don't come to Lahaina. I don't care if you have reservations, now is not the time. Go someplace else, please."

Maui Snorkeling, which just a few days after the Lahaina fire took tourists to snorkel in waters off the main highway into Lahaina – the same waters crews were searching to find missing residents who jumped in the sea to flee the flames -- was lambasted on social media. They issued an apology, adding their intent was to donate 100% of the proceeds to the Maui Food Bank. Several snorkeling and scuba boats have been delivering supplies to Lahaina.

The Mayor of Maui, Richard Bissen, says, "Don't go to West Maui. There's so much going on with trying to rebuild it, but the rest of Maui is still open." So the leaders are saying that someone could be on vacation 20 or 30 miles away from the burn zone and not negatively affect the recovery. That means Kihei, where several dive operations have reopened, is a safe bet. Maui needs your business.

If you want to aid recovery, click here for groups that can use your financial aid.

Trouble at Wetpixel? Wetpixel.com, a website for enthusiastic underwater photographers, runs many dive trips just for photo buffs. We received complaints recently that divers who paid in advance saw their trips canceled without notification and haven't been refunded, and that some dive centers and liveaboards haven't been paid for completed trips. If you have an issue with a Wetpixel trip, we'd like to hear about it. Write to BenDDavison@undercurrent.org, not forgetting to provide your name, town, and state or country.

Divers Relocate Marine Life. To build a new breakwater in Port Townsend (WA), an old one had to be removed. But what about all the invertebrates that made it home? In July, sixteen volunteer divers came to their rescue, relocating 1,450 critters. They carefully removed shiny orange sea squirts, sponge clumps, anemones, six-rayed sea stars, leafy hornmouth snails, mussels, crabs, and other invertebrates from their old haunts on Hudson Point's south, relocating them to basalt stones explicitly placed to create a rock nursery.

A Living Legend Lost. Stan Waterman, the iconic underwater cameraman who shot footage for Peter Gimbel's 1971 classic Blue Water, White Death, The Deep with Jaqueline Bissett, Nick Nolte, and Robert Shaw, as well as other big Hollywood movies, died at the age of 100 on August 10. He hung up his fins at a youthful 90 after a trip to dive with Great White Sharks around Guadalupe Island. No diving dignitary has been as well-loved as Stan, and the diving world will miss him. More in the next issue of Undercurrent.

Florida Dive Instructor Disappears. A scuba diver separated from his dive boat off the Florida Keys had a lucky break in late July thanks to two vigilant law-enforcement officers (see Undercurrent August) -- but a Keys diving instructor, Tommy Faulkenberry, 44, disappeared while diving on the wreck of the U.S. Navy Vandenberg off Key West (FL) on August 2. (More on this and other incidents in the next issue of Undercurrent.)

Invasive Coral found in Oahu. About 100 acres of non-native coral is spreading in shallow waters off Pearl Harbor; when it was initially spotted in 2020, it covered only ten acres. A spokesman for the U.S. Navy said the species are known to be in Hawaiian home aquariums. Owning any coral --whether native or invasive to Hawaii -- is illegal in personal aquariums, and the Navy is asking residents not to dump it in the ocean. It is currently working out a multi-million-dollar contract to eradicate the invasive species, which could take a year or more.

Military Museum Sunk in Egypt's Red Sea. To keep divers from degrading the Red Sea coral reefs, the government is preparing to divert their attention to 15 examples of obsolete military hardware, each with its own unique history, which they will carefully sink in the next few years. They will create three underwater military museums off Hurghada, creating new fish and critter habitats and protecting the Red Sea's marine ecosystem. Jordan has already sunk several armored vehicles near Aqaba.

Check it In. Some divers mistakenly believe it's safer to take regulators and dive computers in carry-on luggage, but the baggage hold is at the same pressure (between 6000 and 8000 feet) as the passenger cabin, so nothing gets damaged by pressure changes. Some divers believe carrying them on board is safer in case their bag goes missing. It may be, but you can always rent a regulator and computer at your destination. Two things you may not get at your destination: a wetsuit that fits you properly or a mask with your prescription lenses. While taking your suit as carry-on might be onerous, think about it.

Breath-holding Sharks. Scalloped hammerhead sharks hold their breath to keep their bodies warm during deep cold water dives to hunt prey such as deep sea squids. That they hold their breath was unexpected, said researchers whose study was just published in the May issue of Nature. The University of Hawaii researchers studied the deep-diving scalloped hammerheads by fixing them with devices that measured their muscle temperature, depth, body orientation, and activity levels.

Shark Bytes by Undercurrent's John Bantin. With first-hand quotes from the likes of Peter Benchley, Stuart Cove, George Burgess, Marty Snyderman, and many more acknowledged experts, Shark Bytes is 220 pages of first-hand experiences, fully illustrated with the author's photos, from three decades of diving with sharks. Available on Kindle ($21.59) or hard copy ($29.79) from Amazon.

It May Not Seem Deep to a scuba diver, but a 35-foot bottom is out of reach to a non-diver. So when a woman swimming in Bass Lake in Madera County, CA, lost her $9,500 wedding ring in July, she searched online for a scuba diver and found Mike Pelley, aka Merman Mike, who searches for belongings in lakes and rivers. Unable to find it in the silt in zero visibility, he removed his gloves. "After pulling a couple of sticks and cans out of the thick silt, I pulled out what I thought would be another bottle top or pull tab, but instead, I was looking at a giant diamond." Phewww!

Subscribers Need Your Reports. Independent reader reports are your opportunity to tell it like it is. Unedited and unmoderated, your reports can tell other subscribers of your experience of dive resorts you've visited recently and liveaboards you have traveled on. Don't hold back. You can tell both the good and the bad and everything in between. For more than 40 years and 10,000 entries, these reports have become essential reading for traveling divers. Nowadays, you can post photos too. So don't forget to post a report of your last dive trip. It's easy to do, and you can have several goes at it until you are satisfied with what you have written. Other subscribers depend on the information you provide. File your report at www.undercurrent.org/SubRR.

Ben Davison, editor/publisher
BenDDavison@undercurrent.org