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

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August 8, 2020

Galapagos Marine Life in Danger. These are lights from the 265-vessel Chinese fishing fleet that threatens the Galapagos. The boats are now operating at the edge of the protected marine reserve taking fish and sharks from the major migration route between Cocos and Malpelo, and the world is up in arms about it. The fleet of Chinese “ghost ships” were falsely reporting their location within New Zealand waters while they fished off the Galapagos Islands. Six of the fleet are transmitting false information via their Automatic Identification System transponders. The Ecuadorian Navy has deployed its limited fleet to protecting the reserve but with little hope of stopping the fishing and protecting the animals traveling past. This includes the largest female whale sharks In 2018, scientists equipped with Thruster units on their scuba tanks, managed to make ultra-sound recordings on the distended bellies of three of these pregnant giants, aiming to unravel one of the ocean’s great mysteries -- where do they give birth? But, more research is needed to untangle the significance of the area to whale shark reproduction. “Unchecked Chinese fishing just on the edge of the protected zone is ruining Ecuador’s efforts to protect marine life in the Galápagos,” the former Quito mayor Roque Sevilla has said. (BBC)

Silly Season in the Keys. At the close of July, a North Carolina man, Christopher Curlee, who was in the Florida Keys for lobster mini season, was cited for stealing large specimens of staghorn coral from a reef he had dived. A few days later, Justin Stuller, 38, a Florida resident and experienced spear-fisher, who had previously been bitten by an alligator in similar circumstances, was attacked by an 8-foot lemon shark while attempting to recover an injured fish. He required two dozen stitches and now sports a slight limp. (Miami Herald & Fort Myers News-Press)

Your Old Dive Gear and Memorabilia Wanted: Blain Roberts, founder of the legendary Lahaina Divers, and his wife Kim are breaking ground for the nonprofit Mermaid Museum, right next to their award-winning Westport Winery in Aberdeen Washington. Their mission is to teach ocean ecology from seashore to seafloor, immersing the experience in mermaid mythology. If it’s time for you to downsize and clean out that garage while getting a tax deduction for your contribution, contact Kim Roberts at kimroberts2@hotmail.com to see if they can use what you have. Specifically, they are looking for any large taxidermy specimens of fish and crustaceans, black coral (and jewelry), larger shells, historic dive equipment, mermaid collectibles from movie costumes to posters, and any items that are marine or vessel related they we can weave into the mermaid stories, like a sextant to discuss celestial navigation. www.mermaidmuseum.org

The US Navy Thumbs its Nose at Orcas. The number of Orcas is rapidly declining in the Pacific Northwest, but the U.S. Navy still wants to undertake seven years of military exercises ranging from testing torpedoes to firing projectiles into the sea at seven times the speed of sound, to piloting mine-detecting undersea drones, and deploying underwater sonar and exploding 1,000 pound bombs across a vast ocean area from northern California to Alaska, including Puget Sound in Washington. Scientists know that the tests would interfere with Southern resident orcas’ hunting, feeding, socializing and breeding. The Navy estimates the orcas would be disturbed 51 times a year. All sorts of marine mammals in Washington, from seals to humpbacks, gray whales and more would also be affected nearly 2 million times to Level B disturbance during the life of the program, according to Navy estimates. The governor of Washington, agencies and environmentalists want NOAA to take back its assessment of negligible impact, and to incorporate new limits to significantly reduce harm to orcas and other marine mammals. See more here.

Travel for American Divers Still Limited. At the moment it looks like American divers are still limited to the Bahamas, Turk & Caicos, Mexico (Cozumel and Baja California) and some parts of the Caribbean for foreign travel destinations. Since restrictions are subject to change, check local regulations concerning entry before you book. If you are planning to visit or travel through European countries, we urge you to check the websites of the relevant U.S. embassies or consulates for information on restrictions, foreign quarantine policies, and urgent health information provided by relevant authorities. (travel/state/gov)

A Few Divers Are Traveling: Mexico is still viable for divers. Glen Madsen (UT) wrote of Costa del Sol on Cozumel this July, “The island looked like a movie scene of an abandoned town when we first arrived,” and dived with Dive-With-Cristina. He reports being on “the only dive boat in sight.” Bobby Munno (NY) went to St.Croix (USVI) also in July and rented an entire dive boat from Cane Bay Dive Shop, for his exclusive use, thereby avoiding any social distancing problems. He said the Cane Bay team “were a delight to deal with.” Otherwise, the wrecks of the Florida Keys beckon. If you’re looking for a place to go, read recent reports from our readers at www.undercurrent.org

Underwater WiFi? It’s challenging to create high-speed wireless connections in water but a team from King Abdullah University in Saudi Arabia, has built an underwater wireless system dubbed Aqua-Fi. It uses light from the electromagnet spectrum. The prototype uses green LEDs and a 520-nonometer laser. Aqua-Fi would use radio waves to send data from a diver's smartphone to a ”gateway” device attached to his gear. Much in the same way that a WiFi booster works, this gateway either sends the data via a light beam to a computer at the surface that is connected to the internet via satellite or back to another diver by the same laser-system. (interestingengineering.com)

Hawaii Extends its Quarantine Rule. Hawaii delayed its plan to allow out-of-state visitors to return to the vacation hot spot by a month because of an increase in coronavirus cases in the state and on the U.S. mainland. In late June, the governor’s office announced that travelers could visit Hawaii beginning August 1, no quarantine required, by presenting a negative Covid-19 test taken within 72 hours of boarding a flight. Without one, passengers arriving from the mainland would have to strictly quarantine for 14 days, a policy in place since March that has scared away most tourists and wrecked Hawaii's tourism industry. The state has now extended its mandatory quarantine for all visitors until September 1. (Hawaii Tourism Authority)

Los Angeles Tide Pools Attract the Wrong Kind of Attention. An unprecedented number of people have been harvesting edible sea creatures from the San Pedro tide pools of the Palos Verdes Peninsula in LA. Some people took out licenses, but others have not. Overnight, the largest and most accessible tide pools in the country had become decimated by people using a plethora of different gardening equipment and tools to rip mollusks off the rocks, despite an annual six-month quarantine on mussels issued May 1 to protect the public from toxins, due to red tide conditions, that may be present in bivalve mollusks such as mussels, clams, oysters and scallops. (LA Times)

Dive Center Owner Found Not Guilty of manslaughter in Malta, after 61-year-old Brit, Petrina Owens, died while swimming on the surface after surfacing from an uneventful dive. Although her rented regulator had been later discovered to be defective it was determined by the Malta coroner that she died from SIPE (scuba diver’s immersion pulmonary edema) or drowning from the inside. It was also noted the Owens was obese and had an enlarged heart muscle. The two instructors accompanying her had said that there was no evidence of any breathing problem during the dive.

Red Sea Ecologically Threatened. The UN Security Council is to meet to discuss the threats posed by a rusting oil tanker off Yemen's Red Sea coast. The MV. FSO Safer is loaded with more than a million barrels of crude oil and experts have warned of an environmental catastrophe if the vessel breaks apart. The tanker has had virtually no maintenance since the start of Yemen's devastating civil war five years ago. The Red Sea is a unique eco-system formed by the African Rift and supports a burgeoning scuba industry in Egypt. (BBC)

Ultra-Black Fish in Deep Water. Alexander Davis, a biologist at Duke University, has found what may be the world’s best-camouflaged fishes in the ocean’s deepest depths. These animals are so keen on not being found that they’ve evolved the ability to absorb more than 99.9 percent of the light that hits their skin. Among sixteen types of deep-sea fish that are so black, they manifest as permanent silhouettes -- light-devouring voids that almost seem to shred the fabric of space-time. (NY Times)

Good News for Raja Ampat Sea Turtles. A conservation group in West Papua’s Yenbekaki Village in East Waigeo reported that it has released 2,000 turtle hatchlings of multiple species since June at the Warebar Beach. Head of the Yenbekaki Village Turtle Conservation, Yusuf Mayor, explained that there are five turtle nests left at the beach which are being guarded by group members from predatory activities and poachers. (Tempo.co)

Bitten on Her Day Off. A 29-year-old woman who had been making a documentary about sharks near Fitzroy Island, close to Cairns, was bitten by a shark during a rest day on July 13. Rescued by helicopter, she was transferred to Cairns hospital with injuries to her lower leg, a possible fracture to her ankle, and some lacerations. (The Guardian)

A Roman Settlement Under the Sea. Baiae, a Roman town that sank beneath the waves centuries ago, lies close to the volcanically active area around Naples. It was once the ultimate vacation spot for rich and aristocratic Romans. In 2002, the 177-hectare underwater site was declared a Marine Protected Area. Over the last 2,000 years, much of the site has sunk between 4-6m; in some places, it’s now up to 10m deep. About 50 percent of the built-up area is under the sea. While licensed scuba divers can explore the site, they must do so with one of the registered local dive shops and guides, who see themselves as the first defenders of their heritage. (BBC.com)

Mantas Venture Deep into the Ocean but scientists are unsure why. A male manta has broken the deep diving record previously held by manta rays tracked in the Red Sea by diving 2,184-feet deep in the South Pacific. Biologists affixed tracking tags to 11 mantas, recording light levels, depth and water temperature at three locations in New Caledonia. The dives were deeper and more frequent than expected. All of them dived deeper than 1,000-feet. Around the world, reef manta populations are in decline because of human activity, predominantly fishers harvesting their gill-rakers for use in traditional Chinese medicine. (Hakai Magazine)

A Cousteau Hopes to Create an Underwater Space Station. Accomplished explorer and environmentalist Fabien Cousteau -- son of legendary marine biologist Jacques-Yves Cousteau -- is teaming up with Northeastern University to build the world’s largest underwater laboratory. Kind of like the International Space Station, but in an aquatic environment. Officially named Proteus, after the prophetic Greek sea god, the lab’s plans are being finalized to construct a comprehensive habitat 60 feet below the waves near the island of Curacao in the Caribbean. At this depth engineers are hoping to decrease the amount of diver topside time and diminish the degree of health hazards due to the lethal effects of nitrogen narcosis and the bends. (SYFY Wire)

Stay Safe –

Ben Davison, editor/publisher
BenDDavison@undercurrent.org