Flotsam & Jetsam

Saving the Red Handfish from Extinction. It's tiny, about two inches, the size of a man's thumb. A species of marine anglerfish, it walks rather than swims and travels no more than 30 meters per year. Alarmingly, just 100 of these beautiful fish now survive on two small reef patches off Tasmania, affected by pollution, runoff, increased sedimentation, and human interference FAME, the Foundation for Australia's Most Endangered, needs your financial support to save these little guys from extinction Here's a video on the handfish and their effort to save it https://tinyurl.com/srf9m9bc

Dangerous BCDs Recalled. Huish Outdoors sold about 7,445 Oceanic OceanPro, Hera, and Excursion BCDs throughout North America and now have discovered that the handle for the QLR4 integrated weight pockets may break if you try to dump them during use. If this happens in an emergency, you may be unable to conduct an emergency ascent If you have one of these BCDs with any of the following numbers, do not use it and return it to where you purchased it 608262 through 695909, 1170357 through 1180342, 1200001 through 1200070, and 20031001 through 22082698. More details: https://tinyurl.com/5henaf8p

Are Butterflyfish Spreading SCTLD? There appears to be an association between foureye butterflyfish and Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease. Research scientists in the Florida Keys have found that the foureye butterflyfish foraged significantly more often on diseased corals than either healthy or recently dead corals when compared with the other species of butterflyfish. They were observed feeding directly on the SCTLD line of infection, while other butterflyfish were not. The researchers suggest that by feeding on the SCLTD corals, they may contribute to the progression and/or transmission of this insidious coral disease. https://tinyurl.com/563wsshd

Feeling Unwell on a Dive? You may think that the hand signs for "Something's Not Right" followed by "Let's Go Up" was sufficient to signal to a buddy to surface, but it seems that's not good enough for PADI, which has invented a new signal to replace the two. Take your hand, point your fingers toward yourself, and draw a big oval. If you adopt it, be sure the person you're signaling to knows what it means. Of course, new divers are taught they can "thumb up" a dive for whatever reason at any time, so maybe this new signal is redundant, just one more thing to confuse people. www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2aKSfZxeSw

New Dream, Old Nightmares. In keeping with the Egyptian diving industry's habit of considering their liveaboards disposable, on June 7, the captain of the MY New Dream (formerly known as Orion), with 26 divers from Poland onboard, ran the craft onto a reef near Marsa Alam in Southern Egypt's Red Sea. The vessel was a total loss, but no one was hurt. The liveaboard was heading back to port with a suspected bends case onboard. Instead of calling a Mayday, the crew and passengers sat it out in the vessel's dive tenders for four hours until recovered by another liveaboard at first light. Egyptian authorities are investigating.