By Gregg Stanton and contributors

Gregg Stanton with his catch after spearfishing.

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January 2, 2014

A Christmas Day Tragedy

By GS and TK

The fight to open Wakulla Springs to public cave diving was emotional on both sides of the debate. On one side, our human sense of adventure includes a degree of risk, which we mitigate with training and experience. On the other side, and equally adamant against allowing divers access to the Springs, was that at some point a cave diver would perish from his/her mistakes. It’s a fact that people (divers and non-divers alike) must come to terms with our mortality, after all we are mortal humans. Diving is an exercise in risk management not unlike riding a bicycle, climbing a rock wall, skiing on snow, skateboarding in a parking lot, or driving a car.
Our condolences go out to the family who lost a father and son while diving at a popular inland karts feature called “Eagle’s Nest” this past Christmas Day. The news media and Facebook are alive with articles and debates about this emotional topic. Again we see two sides to the story. That of a community of divers who know the dangers and appeal of Eagle’s Nest and now the voice of a grieving family who have already made clear their intention to close this popular dive site to the public.
Eagle’s Nest has several diving opportunities open to the public. Located in the Chassahowitzka Wildlife Management Area in Hernando County, Florida, just north of Tampa, and at the end of a 30 minute drive along a dirt road. This beautiful site has a large shallow basin accessed by a board walk and wooden steps down to the water. In the middle, a vertical tunnel drops from 40 feet to 70 feet and opens up into a huge room, that drops to a cone in the center at 120 feet and slopes down to 200 feet at the outer edges. Unlike Wakulla Springs, water flows across this room from an upstream cave to a down stream cave. Properly equipped and trained divers can find a wide range of diving opportunity, from shallow recreational open water in the basin, to cavern (within sight of light, less than 100 feet deep and 200 feet from the surface, better than 40 foot visibility), to full cave conditions that reach 200 feet within the same room. Warning signs regarding the risks of the site are posted at the landing as it is a popular site for people to recreate.
The divers who didn’t surface alive on Christmas Day are reported to have been a father and his 15 year old son. The father was not formally trained in cave diving and the son was not formally trained on scuba at all. The online forums are on fire with remarks about how people should not go beyond their training especially into caves without formal and specialized training. New divers trained in Florida are often introduced to and warned of our overhead environment for this very reason.
Already, not three days after the event, reports abound that the family wants Eagle’s Nest closed to diving because the site is dangerous. Several people have died there inthe past 30 years. Experienced divers familiar with the site, agree it is dangerous to people who lack the proper training to dive there. Several decades ago a trained father son team tragically perished while diving a shipwreck. The hazards of shipwreck diving were emphasized at the time but no public outcry resulted blaming the wreck for the tragedy.
With all due respect to the family reacting to their loss, the cave is not at fault here. Actually the cave is seldom responsible in these cases. Instead the cause is almost always a lack of cave specific training, experience and/or proper equipment for the condition of the activity. To ask for a cave to be closed because untrained divers perished is a lot like asking for a highway to be closed when a driver has an accident. Accidents are common and are tragically accepted in everyday life yet people do not cry out for roads to close.
The loss of these two divers should be a learning experience for all divers. The caves are unforgiving and deserve our respect. Like so many activities in life, only when properly trained can we enjoy them in awe and amazement.

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January 9, 2014

Ice diving 30 years ago.

On Tuesday, I will take my Wakulla Environmental Institute students taking Introduction to Professional Diving into the water during possibly the coldest day of the year.
I explained to Dr. Stringer that such is the nature of the class, and nothing like what we endured under Antarctic ice on a project I attended – nearly 30 years ago. I explained that people who expect to work underwater must overcome creature comforts with determination, technology and skill, something I hope to instill in this semester’s students. They will suffer in a heated pool, cold tomorrow only when they get out.
Back then I was 36 and full of determination that everything was surmountable. Indeed, I had developed a full face mask (against the advice of the U.S. Navy) that could tolerate the warm 27 degree F water temperature found under the ice.
I shielded the metal parts with a rubber shroud that was filled with warm hyper-saline water before immersion. My mask was fed warm air and supportive communications from the surface by way of an umbilical hose.
I dressed in a dry suit in a heated fish hut that was located over my 3-foot diameter hole that was our passage way through 10 feet of hard ice to reach our research site in roughly 60 feet of water.
Once configured in our surface-supplied rig, the hot water was delivered to the mask through a funnel, caped and in I went.
What a joy it was to breathe warm air for a short time, slowly changing to the bitter cold that my body could tolerate. Once on the bottom I would swim to the research site and sample the sponge spicuole mat that comprised the benthic community surrounding McMurdo Station.
Samples were returned to the surface to study for their bacterial content. I could then ask “topside” to send down a Nikonos 35 mm camera so that I could photo document this amazing reef quickly before the batteries froze.
We soon became very popular amongst our counterparts who were diving in more traditional dress (well, until a visiting helicopter blew away our tent and all the masks were super chilled in the 20-below-zero surface conditions).
Our first checkout dives were required on open circuit using double hose regulators and typical scuba masks.
I jumped in and had to grasp the downline as the world around me went to stars and birdies! After what seemed an eternity, my vision slowly returned as my face went numb.
We knew we had about 30 minutes before the muscles of the jaw would no longer function and the regulator would drop out of your mouth. Your face was exposed to subfreezing water which was not a pleasant matter.
Once out of the water, most folks were exhausted for the rest of the day. Soon there was a list of requests for training on our gadget that permitted up to 70+ minutes underwater in relative comfort.
The next year I was granted funds to purchase new Full Face masks that I am told is now the dominant diving technology at the station.
I am tasked now, three decades later, with finding a way to convince aspiring professionals to overlook the obvious discomfort of the task and seek out ways to make it achievable in comfort.

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January 16, 2014

Capital City to the Sea Trails

Last October, the TCC Environmental Institute hosted a group calling themselves the Capital City to the Sea Trails, proposing hiking and riding trails that will begin in Tallahassee, run through Wakulla County and terminate at the sea.
Our Rails-to-Trails program has long been very popular to the cycling community. Our rivers and wetlands have provided canoe and kayak trails for even more, attracting national businesses and enthusiasts for decades.
Not to be left out, the Farrell property was recently advertised for sale in The Wakulla News with the potential that it could serve as a diver portal into our underground river attracting another group of people to Wakulla.
Wakulla County has long been recognized as the bedroom community to Tallahassee and a natural playground to both our capital city community and a much larger national wildlife interest group.
While folks are proposing multiple cycling and hiking trails departing south from Tallahassee by way of historic rail lines and pioneering trails, I would like to propose a surface and underwater trail that follows the natural underground rivers that snake through our county. By combining the two focus groups, we serve a much larger interest community that can support each other’s needs. Let’s say, two for the price of one.
Interpretive displays will document what is going on above and underground adding to the thrill of the journey, provide way stations with information, water and shelter, and safe portals around and into the Karst along this 30-plus mile thrilling trail.
Like the Appalachian Trail, this trail, with its multiple entrances, will be supported with well-documented log books, encouraging folks to take each step of the way in comfort and safety at their own pace.
Our proposed trail may begin south of Tallahassee, perhaps near the Munson Slough and Ames Sink with trail description boards that discuss the challenges two communities currently face together in search of mutually beneficial solutions. The trail then snakes south to Sullivan Sink, just north of and then through the Leon Sinks Geological Park, home to Little Dismal and Big Dismal Sinks.
The trail then heads south past Chip’s Hole (discussing the Indian lore of these sites) to Emerald Sink, across the Crawfordville Highway to Clearcut Sink and down the long chain of shallow sinkholes ending in the Promise Siphon.
There are many trails already in place set up by the Forestry Service and Wakulla Springs State Park. Southward the trail will go through Whiskey Still, Turner, and Indian Springs (discussing the exploration of these caves) to reach the mighty Wakulla Springs.
Then southward it travels to Cherokee Sink, then Guy Revell and the phreatic crack, and south to Harveys Hole, Swirl Swamp and Hatchet (discussing the early settlers culture). The trail will then pass over and under U.S. Highway 98, to Rat, Dog and Punchbowl sinks, ultimately reaching the sea at the many vents of Spring Creek (discussing the fishing communities).
We walk on water in Wakulla County! This is an ambitious vision I am pleased to see local folks finally embracing. Perhaps our multifaceted naturalist community can come together and help each other out where fractioned individually, we faltered.
Quo vadis, Wakulla?

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January 23, 2014

A Basic Principle – Buoyancy.

While preparing for my TCC lecture this week on the History of Diving, I again encountered Archimedes of Syracuse, the Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor and astronomer of the 200+ B.C. time frame.
It seems I encounter features of this world, above and below water, every day that follow the principles he described 23 centuries ago. In his treatise, “On Floating Bodies,” his principle states that a body immersed in a fluid experiences a buoyant force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces. This principle works on most environments because of its density.
We all have weight and our bodies displace space that may contribute to that weight. We typically don’t float on land because our body weighs more than the weight of the air we displace. Get in a hot air balloon or helium filled balloon of large enough volume and our total weight and displacement may indeed be less than air, so we float.
This principle works equally well underwater. While there is no such thing as an average person weight or displacement-wise, we can use a figure of 190 pounds and three cubic feet displacement to see how this works.
Sea water weighs 64 pounds per cubic foot. Does the hypothetical person sink or float? The weight of the water is three times 64 which is 192. Since he weighs two pound less, he must float on the surface, but just barely. This same person however, in freshwater (without the salt), at 62.4 pounds per cubic foot, would sink!
Of course few are lucky enough to keep these dimensions very long, so we accommodate with added lead weights or added air in our buoyancy compensation (BC) vest.
During our winter and cooler waters, divers come in our store to find warm underwater clothing. Most seek a wet suit, which works by trapping water between a gas filled neoprene rubber garment and the body’s skin. The body warms this water and if kept from escaping, the insulating gas in the garment will keep the body warmer. But the neoprene adds displacement and has very little weight. The warmer the garment the thicker the neoprene with more displacement challenges. A person, who may have near neutral buoyancy in water, will find themselves floating at the surface when using a wet suit.
The short term solution is more lead weights. BUT
We know that pressure builds rapidly as a diver descends in the water. There is a direct relationship between density and pressure in water.
Another wise physicist who came along much later in time, by the name of Boyle, described a law of gases: There is an inverse relationship between the surrounding pressure and the volume of a gas.
Recall I mentioned neoprene rubber has bubbles of gas that provide insulation for the garment? Can you imagine what happens when the diver drops down to depth in the water? Yep, there is an ever greater pressure on his body, causing his wetsuit garment to shrink, loose some of its insulation, and some of its buoyancy.
In fact at 33 feet sea water the suit will lose approximately half of its buoyancy and considerable thermal assistance, requiring more air in the BC to stay off the bottom.
Study your past history to understand your present world.

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January 30, 2014

Instructional models.

Every year about this time I face the new summer’s training opportunities, now complicated by our participation at TCC with the Introduction to Professional Diving course.
And every year I lament the changing world of instructional models used to educate our inspiring underwater adventurers. I interview folks to find out what they want and on what to expect with current instructional standards and procedures.
When I taught at FSU for 30 years (1974-2004), we offered semester long (16 week) classes that were comprised of two hours of academic lectures and two hours of pool (skill) training every week. Admittedly, you can find no better model than 32 hours of academics, 32 hours of pool work and 16 hours with five check-out dives, for a total of 80 hours to get certified on scuba.
While at FSU, we taught over 4,000 students!
National Training agencies continue to encourage a combined minimumof 27 hours of scuba training to earn a basic scuba certification card. And this effort must turn a profit for the facility and Instructor when offered outside the confines of a college environment. Time is money and costs are rising.
If the motive for training is to sell dive technology, then the amount charged may be artificially lowered by hiding it in the price tag of the required equipment sales. We found that ratio came down to $2,000 of dive technology sold to justify free tuition (and we advertise as such).
With discounted Internet sales now (who cares about the absence of warranty anyway), many use our facility to try on product for fit and comfort only to purchase it on line whether they take class from us or anyone else. In these cases, the quality of the education and training has become of less importance than the sale of equipment, and both suffer.
Independent instructors often barter for their service, exchanging whatever you may have of interest, such as guns or an old motorcycle and the likes, for scuba training. These folks love to dive and carry their passion through their instruction because they don’t need the income. They have another job for that. And no one can compete with that situation. They are seldom affiliated with a shop, sending their students to the Internet for dive equipment.
Once you get beyond this entry level training, you find there is a better way. I call it mentoring rather than training.
Apparently, training is where a student demonstrates a skill and his/her monitor checks off a box on a form, seldom returning to it again. Mentoring is where the student is encouraged to achieve a level of proficiency before the topic is woven into the next exercise, building toward a level of excellence that develops confidence when undertaking their next adventure.
I recently attended a NAUI Course Directors workshop where we were told that in an effort to improve the education of aspiring Dive Instructors, distance learning through the internet, was now required! E-learning is available for all dive classes at virtually all training agencies. And we are told the new way now is to send the prospective student a code and expect them to get all their knowledge from this on-line class.
Once completed, the prospective student arrives at the instructor’s location to demonstrate his or her skill and get a certification card. While I am all in favor of any way to transmit information to a student, I cannot believe this model works for more than a few very self-motivated people. The library is full of self-help books that few use effectively. But I can see why it has gained traction. Now the facility can offer a weekend class by expecting the student to complete the e-learning before investing time on water work. The cost invested in a knowledgeable instructor is no longer required, and they go away, replaced by what we used to call pool instructors, very capable divers to teach skills.
The facility collects enough e-trained students by month’s end to schedule a set of economical checkout dives and they make a profit.
Is that what you want from your scuba instruction?

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February 6, 2014

Wakulla County History Trail

I realized that a record of our county’s history is located in our sinkholes while attending a recent discussion with the Capital City-to-the-Sea Trail folks.
Wally Jenkins once told me his frustration with early diving in Wakulla County was the required removal of obstructions restricting access to local caves. Our residents have been dumping all manner of artifacts in our sinks (out of sight, out of mind – right) for many, many generations.
Remember when Union soldiers fled the area southward during the Civil War, they could not carry their cannon and carriages, so they dumped them into local sinkholes.
Later Sonny Cockrell, once our State underwater archaeologist, told me to expect to find 30,000 years of Florida history in local sinkholes. While he was referring to Warm Mineral Springs, south of Tampa, the same applies here.
The volume of fossilized bone fragments in Wakulla Springs is testament to that fact. Twenty years ago criminologists in my science diving class at FSU hypothesized that every sinkhole was a crime scene. After the first three we visited, we were asked to stop because the police did not have the resources to keep up. And our county has had bodies dumped in our sinks. With over 400 of these windows into our aquifer in Wakulla County alone, evidence of local terrestrial activity should be available for the search.
Our discussion over surface/underwater trails dropping south from Tallahassee considered access to many of these portals into our aquifer, which may be located on private property, as an invasion of privacy. When we sought new species of crustaceans in the Bahamas, we were discouraged from exploring sites until we assured owners we had no interest or ability to inspect the bottom of the sinkhole. We were only interested in the cave that left the sinkhole.
Fortunately, the City to the Sea project is a decade long project, which can be started in locally interesting pockets and expand to a master plan.
Who read James Mitchner? He used a fascinating format, building stories in layers of time over a land, such as Hawaii. I envision hiking (or swimming) a trail that exposes participants to the many facets of Wakulla’s history, presented through kiosks located at karst portals (windows) into our aquifer.
Our topic periods should begin with the formation of the rock, the shifting sea levels and the formation of the caves (Speliogenesis) best located at the Leon Sinks Geologic Area off route 319.
Further to the north, we should document the water quality challenges between Leon and Wakulla, and how they are being solved together. We can include fossil animal groups before the arrival of Man, the arrival of Man (about 12,000 BP), and Tribes before Western arrival best discussed at portals near Wakulla Springs.
Just to the north of Wakulla Springs, topics about the Civil War and the battle of Natural Bridge.
Just south of Wakulla Springs could host kiosks on topics of the great plantations and slavery. At strategic locations we can present the importance of the paper company, turpentine and other forest products, the railroads, and waterways. The importance of cave exploration, water quality, the great water debate, later cave explorers, and the advent of the state park system in Wakulla should find a kiosk at appropriate locations such as Indian Springs and further south. Near the coast, displays relating to our first western explorers, missionaries, and the early pioneers along the St. Marks River can document a fascinating history.
Wakulla County is an eco-destination when set in context to our history.

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February 13, 2014

A Diver’s Valentine Gift.

We get a lot of folks pass through the Center who are proud to call themselves certified divers. Many seek further training, which obliges me to ask if they know anything about Nitrox. Usually they do these days, but very little, so I encourage them to refresh their training by taking a Nitrox class (enriched air).
Why, they ask? Why indeed but the Diver’s Valentine, I reply.
Several decades ago people who ventured underwater breathing air occasionally suffered upon their return undeservedly. They were experienced enough not to hold their breath upon ascent, yet they suffered what appeared to be an air embolism, or rupture of the lungs.
I found myself in the vanguard of the Nitrox revolution in diving, training folks in the UK at Fort Bovisand one day when the resident hyperbaric chamber doctor came into my class and offered to host us for an update of his research. Eager to learn more about undeserved decompression sickness propelled us to the basement of the fort for a demonstration.
The doctor asked for a volunteer and quickly got one. He then injected a solution of CO2 gas immersed in saline and turned on the echocardiogram and monitor. The image was of the volunteer’s heart pulsing along until a white flush of bubbles appeared. At that time he asked the volunteer to do a Valsalva maneuver, like he was clearing his ears going to depth in the water. While the heart continued to beat, we then witnessed a tiny stream of bubbles jump from one side of the heart to the other through a small hole.
What had we witnessed? Embarrassed, the doctor turned the monitor off as what we saw was an active Patent Foramen Ovale or PFO, something rather personal for the volunteer to now process emotionally. The volunteer saw we all witnessed the event so he told the doctor to continue the revelation, explain what we witnessed!
It seems, he said then, that about 25 percent of the population have these holes in the heart, left over from birth when we all had them in the womb. Upon birth, the doctor would hold the newly born child by the feet and slap its behind to get it to yell, which required a full lung and back pressure that would close the Foramen Ovale and reroute the blood to the lungs.
Over the next month, that window should seal up we were told. Davis, much later, found 41 percent of the adult population maintains a PFO, an opening between the two Atrial chambers of the heart. Under the right conditions of back pressure in the vascular system, blood jumps through this hole from the venous (low pressure side) to the arterial (high pressure side) and moves unconditioned by the lungs to the brain and back to the body.
We knew that divers diving to within 95 percent of their no-stop bottom times would generate non-symptomatic bubble since 1973. These same bubbles could now become symptomatic if they reached the brain! How could we protect ourselves from the Diver’s PFO?
Nitrox became the Diver’s Valentine we could give our Diver’s PFO. Like chocolate to a romantic with a broken heart, the reduced nitrogen in Nitrox reduced the number of silent bubbles and thus the decompression stress within recreational time frames. Divers with a PFO could continue to dive recreationally with greater assurance of a safe return without injury.
Meanwhile, doctors have developed a way to patch the PFO for those breathing the thinner Trimix gas used in deep diving. A probe sent up the Femoral Vein from the leg enters the heart with an umbrella, can pass through the PFO, be pulled back and with an opposing umbrella, synched off and permitted to be overgrown with heart tissue for a complete closure. What a Diver’s Valentine gift indeed.

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February 20, 2014

Spearfishing Tournament.

Our Gulf of Mexico locally has been blessed with desirable marine life like grouper, red snapper, and amberjack all of which are both edible and delicious. Our Wakulla fisherman travel between 20 and 50 miles into the Gulf for an opportunity to harvest these treasures.
I’m already seeing a renewed interest by divers in the upcoming season. Will this season be different from those past?
Each year the Big Bend area of the Gulf hosts a variety of fishing tournaments including several for spearfishing only. The “Seeing Red” tournament in Panama City defines our western boundary while the “St. Pete Open” near Tampa covers our southern boundary. Smaller tournaments have come and gone, including one hosted by dive stores in Tallahassee just two seasons ago. As the internet eats brick dive stores, so goes the services they provide.
Wakulla Diving Center has not participated in the tournaments of the past for a variety of reasons. We are a relatively new facility and lack experience offering such a tournament. There are many divergent opinions on how, when and why a tournament should be organized.
In the last week, however, requests started to come in for us to put on something, anything, to help network area divers and bring a little excitement back to the area. Gregg Stanton, who has been monitoring the impact of the Lionfish population both here and elsewhere, suggested a Lionfish harvest be a component of any tournament.
I started to look at things from a different view. Instead of asking what we should do, instead I asked what people didn’t like about other area tournaments. Several complaints were common among the groups of divers I talked to.
They didn’t want divers from Tampa or Panama City to harvest fish in those areas and drive here to take all the prizes/winnings from the local divers. This is apparently a common theme at other events.
Many of our customers are from Georgia, as far north as Atlanta, and they come down to fish several times a season so they are welcome to join in the action so long as they put in at one of our area ramps.
One of the other things I heard was a complaint about how people win. This is a topic I don’t fully understand yet and there are variances among the tournaments. Some tournaments can be won by shooting a single fish and others require several fish to be weighed. I am investigating (and solicit advice) how we will prioritize the catch.
I want to elevate a different fish in the priority list this year. Much rumor revolves around the Lionfish but what is true is it’s tasty, with numbers growing in our area by the day. If we are going to encourage divers to go offshore to bring back a bounty of fish why not incentivize them to take out the invasive Lionfish as well? Perhaps the most quantity of Lionfish will be worth more than the largest red snapper.
Wakulla Diving Center has plenty of space and parking out back so we will have a weigh-in right there at the shop instead of up in Tallahassee or several hours east/west of us like other tournaments. Hopefully we can cap things off with a social fish fry out back. It’s bound to be a bunch of fun and if we include a Lionfish Rodeo, all for a good cause as well.
We need your input. If you or your friends/neighbors/relatives are into spear fishing, please send them down to talk with me. We want to do something for the community based on community requests. I’m no expert on this and will likely be the one organizing things so I’m asking for help, ideas, and if you have a scale you don’t mind lending out that would be welcome too.
Dates will hopefully be announced in the next few week along with the other details. Summer is coming!

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February 27, 2014

The Academy Pond.

There is a 2.5 acre pond on the Tallahassee Community College’s Pat Thomas Law Enforcement Academy property near Quincy that, from the surface, seems benign.
But underwater, this karst feature is anything but friendly.
I first encountered the pond a decade ago, at the invitation of Sgt. Ken McDonnald, the Instructor for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s 40 hour Police Diving course.
He had recently joined our academic group at Florida State University pursuing a re-definition of police investigations underwater.
To get first-hand experience, he subjected us to the full FDLE underwater police course, including the Pond Experience.
I know divers enter the underwater world because they want to see the many marvels contained within, but seldom do criminals dump their crime in clear water.
Every window into our aquifer is a potential crime scene.
Our diving police are asked to enter snag-ridden, zero-visibility water as a normal environmental expectation.
The Academy Pond is just such a place, housing a plane, cars and a boat all strategically placed along a cave-divers’ line trail leading through many snares and traps along the way.
Candidates are expected to not only swim the gauntlet but solve the crime.
In our case there was a body located in the boat at the end of the trail.
Dare I say, underwater crime scene investigators need nerves of steel to do their job!
Several of my faculty were cave divers, so we were familiar with no-visibility and entanglements.
As scientists we sought to investigate the anomalies reported – a sinking vessel, loud voices heard somewhere in the back of the pond late at night.
Many law enforcement in the past gallantly dragged on shore recovered artifacts and bodies from such conditions because it was felt nothing could be done with submerged evidence in a court of law.
Not true, we argued, fingerprints and dermal tissues samples can be extracted from evidence even taken from recovered submerged artifacts.
Sgt. McDonnald agreed! Would you agree to an officer walking into a house, finding and pulling a body by the ankle and depositing it on the front lawn for the detectives to study?
Of course not, but that was an accepted protocol underwater.
Now fast forward a decade. I am discussing underwater courses to be offered at TCC and Florida A&M University in coming years and the Director of the Academy spoke of a problem they must soon resolve.
It seems they had a close call in the Academy Pond – someone got trapped in one of the obstructions and nearly drowned.
They now have plans to clean up the pond and return it to its karst origins.
I could not imagine how many hours and resources went into the construction of such a fine training facility, and the great loss it would represent because someone may have been lax in their safety protocols.
So we will collaborate between the Wakulla Environmental Institute and the Law Enforcement Academy (both under TCC) to save the Academy Pond, use it to continue training future underwater crime scene investigators and eventually create a similar facility right here in Wakulla County.
Going back to the future – again.

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March 6, 2014

Work of breathing.

We know Spring has arrived, not by the redbuds blooming, but by the increased traffic at the Center. Folks are dusting off their scuba equipment and making sure cylinders are full for the start of the summer diving season. We are also conducting rebreather training this week on a very automated rig that comes to us from Sweden called the Discovery (made by Poseidon). Recent upgrades now permit this model safe passage to 200 FSW (60 meters), a new recreational depth limit for advanced underwater enthusiasts. Rebreathers are legally used when spearing fish beyond the nine mile State of the Florida Gulf waters.
When I was young, 100 feet was considered deep. Today, 200 feet is considered shallow.
Regardless of the life support platform, open circuit or closed, we are all concerned with the performance of our gas delivery system underwater. Open circuit regulators reduce the high pressure in the cylinder down to ambient (surrounding) pressure and then pump us with breathing gas, making deeper dives easier to tolerate. Recall the gas we breath gets denser as we increase pressure while going deeper in the water column. When our lungs are full, a slight back pressure shuts a properly working regulator off. We lack such a luxury with the rebreather. Here, the lung provides all the work to circulate breathing gas through the rig. In both cases we call this challenge the Work of Breathing.
Open Circuit regulators are designed to work for a year or two before internal components ware out and need replacements. As they age, the regulator becomes more difficult to breath or leaks around critical fittings.
Eventually they either create fatigue due to resistive Work of Breathing or free flow making the dive uncomfortable or hazardous. Parts on a rebreather such as mushroom valves, counter lungs and hoses also ware out on a periodic cycle increasing the same resistive Work of Breathing.
In both cases, a good cleaning and critical replacement parts bring the rig back into compliance.
As our recreational depth increases, a change in breathing gas is used to lessen the density of the mix, from an air or Nitrox blend to a helium or Trimix blend. Helium blends are expensive for open circuit divers, but not so for rebreathers.
In both cases, the helium reduces the Work of Breathing, thus reducing the fatigue of breathing at deeper depths.
It also reduces narcosis, or feeling drunk underwater at depths below 130 feet. Unlike alcohol however, narcosis has no hangover the next morning. Those affected lose the feeling as they ascend back to the surface of the water.
Now here is the kicker: increased Work of Breathing causes increased narcosis the deeper you dive regardless of the life support platform used. Breathing poorly performing diving equipment has added consequences many don’t appreciate until they loose a trophy fish or make a foolish mistake.
Reconsider your regulator or rebreather performance as much as your spear gun or outboard engine during this ramp up to summer fun.
Minimize your Work of Breathing underwater!

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March 13, 2014

Automation underwater.

Every year I read and see more of our everyday tasks becoming automated.
In my time, the dishwashing machine, the single clothes washer/dryer, the automobile, navigation and so forth. We now anticipate the car that drives itself. I’m sure you can think of new automation in your life.
Imagine then, an automated dive underwater. Such a device has now been taught at our facility.
Before we all get high and mighty, remember your car is so automated that it takes several computers to keep it safe. Your mechanic has become a computer specialist in order to keep your car running up to specifications. My father’s car required a hand crank to start, where today we have electric starters we take for granted as required technology.
Last week we trained divers on the newly upgraded Discovery rebreather, now capable of supporting a person down to 200 feet in the ocean, breathing Trimix or air, for up to four hours using sophisticated automation technology.
Before the dive, you log into your rebreather through a laptop or iPhone to tell it what you plan to do during the dive, what level of oxygen exposure and decompression stress you want and so forth. You then install a pre-packed canister (CO2 scrubber), fill your oxygen, diluents and bailout cylinders, and pick up your battery from the charger as you head out to the dive site. The rest of the rebreathers on the market must still go through a lengthy check list to be sure the rig is functional.
Once at the dive site, you insert your battery (which also serves as your dive computer) into the lid of the machine, and watch as it goes through 40-plus tests to validate that the machine is ready to dive. The upgrade 6.5 version asks you questions about your gas mixture and canister along the way. The process ends with the start of a timer for you to pre-breath the unit and then waits for you to jump in. Gone are the days of sensor cell calibration, validation and monitoring. This machine continuously dries, calibrates and monitors your oxygen sensor health.
That’s right, just one sensor is used, with a second in reserve. Gone is sensor voting, and all of the challenges that came with that procedure. We still ask the diver to watch their display for their partial pressure of oxygen (PO2), but I can see that changing in the near future as well.
Rather that displaying a ton of data that the diver must process during the dive, like a pilot must do during a flight, the Discovery applies a “dark cockpit” concept where no flashing lights are displayed until a problem is detected.
If the automation detects a problem, it lights up an unmistakable flashing, vibrating and noisy display right in front of the diver’s mask. This alerts the diver to look at the paddle display containing data attached to his or her side.
If all else fails, the abort signal is given and the diver is sent home on traditional open circuit. There is another company that makes a mouthpiece that automatically converts the gas from closed circuit to open circuit at the first hint of a problem. It’s only a matter of time before that concept will find its way into the Discovery.
You can bet we will be diving these new user friendly rigs from here on out as automation becomes more reliable and inexpensive. Imagine the benefits of a rebreather with the reliability of open circuit!
Can it be true?

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March 20, 2014

Marine life for the diver.

My lecture at TCC this week covers marine life as it relates to the diver. This is one of my favorite topics as a marine biologist, and one I get enormous satisfaction from sharing with others.
Of course, my students are primarily interested in what is dangerous to them underwater such that they can avoid injury.
While I can appreciate our underwater world is akin to a foreign planet, the marine life represent its rich cultural inhabitants. They each have a story to tell. With today’s video technology, and research into their life histories, I find numerous entertaining examples of animal behavior on the Internet.
Most marine life can be safely handled if done gently and carefully. Those that pose a problem to us often do so in defense of boundaries we accidentally cross. There are exceptions that we cover in detail in the class such as mantis shrimp, sea cucumber, angler fish, and moray eels, just to name a few.
So I began by discussing the very colorful mantis shrimp, a curious creature, many not suited for aquariums, because they are very territorial. When they see themselves in the reflection of the enclosure wall, they strike out with flexing hammers and break the glass. A close relative uses the same arms but rather than hammers, they have spears. Any fish occupants in the tank soon become food for the mantis. Don’t be lured into exposing a finger to inspect this critter, as it will just as likely spear you as well. They live in sand borrows underwater and are very entertaining if you find one on the reef.
They do get big enough to eat, but don’t be fooled. At night they are attracted to surface light, where they go to feed. A stern light off your boat at night will attract them, where they will feed voraciously on others also attracted to your light. One night off the Dry Tortugas, a colleague decided to capture a nearly foot long one by hand, with disastrous consequences, and much hilarity by his students. A great YouTube video clip of the Mantis Shrimp can be seen at True Facts About the Mantis Shrimp.
Another creature we discuss in the lecture is the sea cucumber. Contrary to the shrimp, they are very slow and undistinguished on the reef. Some call them the sea pig, as they feed on dendrites. We alert divers to not harass them because when upset, the sea cucumber eviscerates its unpleasant sticky innards all over you. Again I refer you to True Facts About the Sea Pig YouTube.
Stone Fish have poisonous dorsal fins that easily puncture our skin if they get too close. Otherwise they are fascinating creatures to watch. Close relatives are called angler fish that use a lure to attract live food, then snapping them up. These fish do not otherwise move fast, and often use cryptic camouflage, making detection difficult, until you place your hand on them. For great entertainment see the YouTube True Facts About the Angler Fish.
Feeding fish like the moray eel is asking for a misunderstanding. Here we have a creature that is much bigger than you think, hiding most of its body in the reef. When it clamps down on your offering, it may mistake your fingers, or other body parts, as part of the treat. Its large backward facing teeth once clamped are difficult to disengage (much like a hawk’s talons). In the excitement that follows, the eel retreats into the reef taking your attached arm with it. Here is a short video clip about just such a misunderstanding. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySunWYj8lWQ. Use caution when interacting with marine life.

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March 27, 2014

LP hose diving.

My first introduction to hose diving was in 1967. I was just a college kid in Hawaii back then, diving for the Cooperative Fisheries Unit at the University of Hawaii. The boss suggested we attach an air compressor used in an automobile repair facility to the floor of our small boat, change the oil to a breathable mineral compound, attach a long hose and be sure the exhaust was downwind from the intake.
This monstrosity shook the boat mercilessly and made a lot of noise. But at 90 feet underwater, we neither heard nor felt the surface commotion. When it ran out of fuel, we made a free ascent back to the surface, just like we did with scuba anyway.
Back then, we had no pressure gauge and an unreliable “J” valve reserve. For all the trouble keeping this compressor happy caused us, it was preferable to hauling steel 65 cubic foot cylinders every dive day back to the fill station or dive store to get them refilled.
It was about this time Joe Sinks was building the Brownie Third Lung in South Florida. He took a small lawn mower engine and drove a paint compressor using an automotive fan belt. It could be mounted on the deck of the boat or eventually, in an inner tube, to float behind the diver. He only planned to use it to 30 or so feet, so the compressor was small, quiet and portable.
But hose diving has a long tradition dating back several centuries, to the bell diving of the 1700s, where pumps had a poor reputation. Haley sent weighted barrels full of air down to replenish his diving bell’s atmosphere during salvage operations. Early pumps were hand driven, evolving into rotary hand wheels and then on to steam driven wheels, allowing people to spend more time tending the line going over the side. Air driven helmets on the shoulders of Greek sponge fishing divers come to mind, as seen in Tarpon Springs.
The modern surface supplied hose diver is a far cry from those precarious days. Today, the gas is delivered from large low pressure compressors or high pressure cylinders down an umbilical complete with hot water to heat a cold person, communications, pressure (depth) indicators and, of course the gas hose. More use breathing gases other than air. And they dive deeper than their predecessors!
My next encounter with the hose was in the Scientist in the Sea Program mid 1974 where the U.S. Navy took a sorry lot of us graduate students off a Panama City pier to teach us about their diving lifestyle. Most Navy divers are hard hat divers, fed by a surface supplied hose. We became proficient with the Kerby Morgan band mask and the Supper Lite helmet, which I later used under 10 feet of ice in Antarctica, thus surpassing available bottom times available to our scuba compatriots. By then I was teaching hose diving to all my budding diving scientists at FSU in a class called Applications of Diving to Research.
So no surprise then, when asked to daily haul scuba tanks several miles in the rocky vertical jungles of Palau, I chose to carry in a 50 pound compressor Joe Sinks modified to dive to 100 feet, and after that a pint of fuel a day to operate it. These units became the most popular diving technology in our million dollar dive locker at FSU.
Lobster fisherman in the Florida Keys and clammers off the coast of Wakulla and Franklin counties routinely use them for harvest and seeding. Today, I encourage parents with young wide eyed children looking to begin their underwater adventure, to consider what I did with mine: a small low pressure compressor that keeps them on a hose, shallow, tended and with little chance of running out of air.
We are again, going back to the future.

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April 3, 2014

A promising lead

By Joerg Hess

Although the water temperature is a balmy 68 degrees all year round in this area, sunny days and spring temperatures lure for a splash. Due to recent rain, the groundwater table is high, flooding most freshwater systems in northern Florida with dark, tannic water from rivers and swamps.
We were invited to explore a small sinkhole on private property, reported tidal and clear. Considering the overall conditions such reports seemed biased, and we were not disappointed by the dark surface waters. Since we made the effort to drive all this way (about 200 yards worth!) we gave it a try anyway. Gearing up in side-mount equipment, we wear two small 50 cubic foot cylinders on the sides. Compare this to 80 cubic foot cylinders or larger commonly used in diving.
This, and a 5mm wet-suit rather than bulky dry suit favored by cave divers make for light and easy equipment. We still had no idea what we were going to find, other than a 10-foot alligator guarding the entrance from a nearby mudbank.
Running a guideline is vital for any cave environment, as it may be the only sure lead back to the surface, especially in near-zero visibility.
We expected muddy bottom, which was easily stirred up, and within minutes the whole underwater area was pitch black even inches below the surface. So we kept the guideline in hand at all times as we approached the sinkhole itself. Using only touch and feel we found clear water flowing from a wall of timber blocking any way into what could-be cave.
In cave diving, this is a promising lead, and we decide to spend some effort removing any logs and debris preventing progress. As it turns out, it required the land owner’s enthusiastic support using heavy chain and a tractor to yank out some tree trunks.
In the end, probably half a ton of timber ended up on the shoreline to create an opening barely big enough for a single diver to pass through. Combine that with tar-black water, lots of mud, a by now reversed tidal flow sucking black water into the hole, as well as an agitated 10-foot reptile in close proximity, and you end up with two thrilled cave divers having a blast!
After several hours of hauling debris and logs we were very excited to find big cave behind the opening, with a flat ceiling at approximately 32 feet of depth. We waited for the system to clear, and the mud to settle, before exploring the cave itself. Based on the flow, as well as other features we feel certain that it is big cave, and maybe part of a bigger system found a few miles away that we started exploring at the end of last summer.
But, as the saying in cave diver circles goes: We won’t know if we don’t go!

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April 10, 2014

Dr. Sylvia Earl’s presentation

I hope you had a chance to attend Dr. Sylvia Earl’s presentation last week at FSU’s Ruby Diamond Auditorium.
Her presentation was sponsored by the FSU Marine Lab, located down here on our coast – in Franklin County.
The place was packed with students mostly, who were kept transfixed by her message and pictures of a past ocean now changing dramatically. Her message was simple: You have the power to change the deterioration of our oceans to what otherwise will leave your children a world’s ocean unrecognizable by her generation.
She mixed humor with frightening statistics, of coral loss worldwide to the significance of a single celled ocean resident alga. She made her point.
Dr. Earl is homegrown, attending FSU as an undergraduate student in the early 1950s and diving at our FSU Marine Lab. Her introduction and training on scuba was simple: don’t hold your breath. That pretty much summed it up!
A decade later, things had changed a lot. I was trained in 1964 by UDT soldiers returning from Vietnam, expecting me to complete a 60-hour rigorous course.
She is obviously a quick learner. She went on to complete her masters and PhD at Duke University as a Botanist.
After her degree at Duke, she became a research fellow at Harvard for a year before returning to Florida to become the Director of the Cape Haze Marine Lab. During this journey she also served on an all female saturation team for the NASA Habitat called The Tektite, located in St. Croix, Virgin Islands. Our own Dr. William Herrnkind (FSU retired) also attend the Tektite Project and became my mentor during the Scientists In The Sea Program in the Hydro-Lab Habitat. In 1976, I presented the research I began with Dr. Hernnkind in the Hydro-Lab at the International Coral Reef Conference in Miami. As it was, my paper was the last on the docket and chaired by Dr. Earl. How many ways can our paths can cross?
Dr. Earl has more than an interest in plants. In 1979 she dove the JIM suit in Hawaii, becoming the deepest (1,250 feet) diving female at the time. She also began her tenure as the Curator of Phycology (the study of algae) at the California Academy of Sciences, where she served until 1986. During this time period she, with husband and engineer Graham Hawkes, also founded Deep Ocean Engineering, built Deep Rover, a research submersible that dove to over 3,000 feet in the ocean. In 1990 she became the Chief Scientist for NOAA, the first woman to ever hold that position. Not satisfied, she founded Deep Ocean Exploration and Research, which is now run by her daughter Elizabeth, who designs, builds and operates equipment for deep-ocean environments.
Between 1998 and 2002 she became a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, and led the Sustainable Seas Expeditions on their behalf to study the United States National Marine Sanctuary. And the list just keeps going.
Last week, her message was aimed squarely at the upcoming generations that must engage in the restoration of our oceans. The tools are there, the need is obvious, and the time is neigh. Her mission is motivation and she obviously does not give up easily.
Now if I could just remember that most common algae species she asked us to get to know better….

“People ask: Why should I care about the ocean? Because the ocean is the cornerstone of earth’s life support system, it shapes climate and weather. It holds most of life on earth. Ninety-seven percent of earth’s water is there. It’s the blue heart of the planet – we should take care of our heart. It’s what makes life possible for us. We still have a really good chance to make things better than they are. They won’t get better unless we take the action and inspire others to do the same thing. No one is without power. Everybody has the capacity to do something.” – Sylvia Earl.

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April 17, 2014

The Instructor.                      

In a world of instant gratification, what with rapid electronic communications, online purchasing, and Zero to Hero qualifications, it is difficult to find seasoned service at virtually any level. 
We suffer these problems in our diving world as well.
I fear the consequence will be the departure of the bricks-and-mortar store in favor of the “Click Store” in much the same way as academia is headed with in-class training verses online training. 
Already Tallahassee is down to one fading brick dive shop, now more an archery shop and for good reason.
Try filling your scuba cylinder on-line! 
Where are we going?
I have always felt the success of any activity is predicated upon the quality of the service. And quality is not something that is acquired quickly.
I have also felt that a person’s success is often based upon his or her training. The better the training, the better the experience, the better the outcome of the effort, the better the reward. 
That is why our facility has always been training- centric. Our facility is made of metal and brick, and revolves around training at all levels. 
The store, like the repair and the blending station, are conveniences in support of the training.
We have embarked upon a long range training mission with the colleges and universities in Tallahassee to train future divers in this area. 
Over a decade ago, I supervised a half dozen instructors teaching up to 100 students each semester, in the art of underwater activities. And that was at just one of the universities in Tallahassee. We are in concert with Bob Ballard of TCC’s Wakulla Environmental Institute to eventually form a department of diving, teaching diving at all levels. But this will take time and cooperation.  
With the Introduction to Professional Diving class drawing to a close and the next class forming for the fall semester, increased momentum can be seen everywhere. 
Dr. Olaves, Director of Aquatics at FAMU, is training up himself to become an Instructor for the fall class.
Dr. Kepper, M.D., is hosting the class this week on a hyperbaric chamber dive at Capital Regional Medical Center. 
Dr. Hess is reviewing options with for future UCSI training at the Institute.
Summer interns are lining up to take the Dive Technologist course at Wakulla Diving Center. And David Young just became our facility Store Manager, in concert with Travis Kersting.
These folks are all experienced and dedicated Instructors, at various levels in diving, contributing to an exciting, refreshing new momentum in our county.  
David is the newest recruit, a retired pilot and experienced (20 year) NAUI Instructor working at a dive center along the eastern seaboard. He brings a seasoned professional perspective to our college and recreational  classes. 
Like so many of our instructors, he is also multi-talented. I am a Marine Biologist, Dr. Olaves is a swim coach, Dr. Hess is an engineer, Dr. Kepper is a physician, and Travis and David are experienced Dive Technologists.  
We all teach because we love the share our passion for the profession. Watch closely as our county’s environmental institute grows with increasing momentum.

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April 24, 2014

Science Diver Training.

My first course offered at FSU was Introduction to Science Diving. I had recently graduated from the Scientist-In-The-Sea Program and was determined to change the way we taught aspiring scientists to work underwater.
I landed on a practical solution, that each student must design, and implement a pilot project of their own making, convince the rest of the class of its validity and over a weekend, conduct the research using the rest of the class as their staff.
I hosted over 300 such pilot projects during my career, such as the future of artificial reefs in Wakulla County, which I have already presented in this column.
I learned early on not to discourage anyone, but to let their peers help develop each plan. I would tell myself this one or that one simply could not work, only to proven wrong many times. Others I thought were sure fire success stories go down in flames once in the field.
Success (and thus the grade) was determined by how well they went about conducting their project.
In one year, a group of Navy engineers took the class. They proposed building and launching a simple- to-use habitat (underwater living quarters). When they presented their design and concluded it was much too ambitious for a simple weekend pilot project, I intervened to suggest they expand their literature research to include Wakulla Springs State Park and Dr. Bill Stone’s Deep Cave Diving Team.
When they did they were amazed to find a design that met their criteria.
What they did not know was that all of the components of Bill’s Habitat had been thrown out into the forest near Wakulla Springs to waste away in time. With calls to Dr. Stone and Wakulla Springs State Park for permission to recover the technology, and track down the missing canvas dome, I had but only line up available transport of the thousands of pounds of ballast this contraption required for “easy deployment.”
Once acquired, the habitat disappeared into the Navy base in Panama City, to be tested against Dr. Stone’s blueprints. They flipped the thing over and filled it with water, a hydrostatic test of sorts, and it passed with flying colors.
When the weekend came to conduct their pilot study, we were taken to Vortex Springs north of Ponce De Leon and participated in the U/W assembly of this “portable” habitat.
Not to leave any doubt by anyone else, they then occupied the habitat for 24 hours using both open and closed circuit life support technology.
We were fortunate to have (Captain) Dr. Claude Harvey (Retired) serve as our program physician. He attended and monitored all students while they saturated at 16 feet in this student project.
Now many were concerned that this was not science, the deployment of a habitat, but in fact it was. The engineers served as scientists measuring the technology before deployment, the efficiency of the deployment, and the viability of the structure over a 24 hour period. The report was complete with many tables of data documenting the science of this project. The rest of the class learned a lot about data collections under a very real environment.
And of course the project data was then absorbed into the military program, but not before this habitat was donated to the Man in the Sea Museum located in Panama City, where it is on display today.
Thank you Dr. Bill Stone, Wakulla Springs State Park, the U.S. Navy and FSU for the synergism that brought such opportunity to aspiring students of the sea.
And thank you Bob Ballard, TCC and FAMU for the opportunity to offer this class once again through the Wakulla Environmental Institute.

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May 1, 2014

The authority.

Wikipedia defines the word authority, which is derived from the Latin word auctoritas, to mean invention, advice, opinion, influence, or command.
These days authority is most often described as a government statement of control. Police have the authority or the Port Authority controls the bay.
But I prefer the earlier interpretation as more along the lines of a keeper of knowledge. We often seek someone for information and if useful, define them as an authority. We start out in life seeking authorities, such as teachers and mentors, only to ultimately become an authority in some small or grand way in later life.
There is great pride in sharing knowledge, something that an authority does not lose in the giving. Authors are people who write and thus share knowledge with others, becoming authorities on selected subjects. We are all authorities in our own way.
As a scientist, I am thrilled to investigate marine behavior. As an engineer, I am thrilled to develop new diving technology that will enhance my marine observations. As a teacher, I enjoy sharing.
This week we both finish and begin anew the sharing of our underwater knowledge. This is finals week for the TCC PEN 2136 Introduction to Professional Diving class, taught in cooperation with FAMU’s Aquatics Department under the leadership of our Wakulla Environmental Institute.
Like thousands of students before, I send them out into the marine world to become, in due time, authorities in their respective disciplines. In one semester they learned about working underwater, from Air to Trimix breathing gasses, from side mount to back mount technology, from open circuit to closed circuit rebreathers. They manage details of diving physics, physiology and marine life, and complete dives in fresh and salt water. We will hear from them again.
This week we begin a new program with the Boy Scouts of America. A Tallahassee troop will begin a Scouting merit badge that will culminate in junior certification, and the start of a new orientation to the aquatic environment. The class is a family affair! A parent and a child are required to participate, both to create better bonds and share in mutual memories.
In 1964 I was required to bring my father to Pearl Harbor so that we could get trained by UDT (Underwater Demolition) divers on R&R from Vietnam. I find that class not only created a lifelong bond with my father (I take care of him at age 95), but it lead me into Marine Biology, diver education, a faculty career and now ownership of a dive center over the next 50 years. Later this summer we will offer a similar set of courses at Wallwood Scout Camp near Lake Talquin.
Bob Ballard keeps telling me I am his authority on diving and related subterranean resources that pass under the Wakulla Environmental Institute. We have a broad spectrum of diving possibilities here in Wakulla County, all of which make for good times ahead. I hope to chronicle the collaboration currently planned and underway in future columns.
Stay tuned…..

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May 8, 2014

Underwater Life Support Technology

By Travis Kersting

Pick a hobby, most start the same way. You need a piece of equipment for which you exchange money. Sometimes, as in scuba, you also need training.
Sports like golf, shooting sports, racing, and even beekeeping or knitting take some upfront investment from you. How often have you thought, “I’m just starting out so I want to just get the basics”? Or how about you walked into a store and a sales associate offered you an “entry level” item. You think you will save money especially if you don’t stick with your new found hobby and the sales associate thinks he/she is going to sell you upgrades later on.
I think there is a better way.
You come to me as a new student in scuba. I have a choice to sell you a $350 entry level Buoyancy Control device (looks like an inflatable jacket) which is good for typical recreational diving. I might assume you will come back to upgrade to a back plate system (a more technical specialization) for spear fishing because it’s less clutter and more durable, if you find spear fishing interesting later on. This would mean I sell you an item that serves essentially the same function TWICE.
After you find cave/wreck diving or spear fishing, your dive kit turns to a back-plate with wing and then you find you’ll need a side-mount harness to get to the far inner reaches or depth of that reef, cave or wreck.
During the past recession, we have witnessed folks visiting the used market of eBay, Craigslist, forum classifieds or asking at our facility. This equipment is attractive to new divers on a budget so instead of buying from a dive store, they get these used dive bits at a fraction of the price you would pay. Is this a good deal? Not really, once you factor in rebuild, upgrade and old age (antiquated) costs.
In today’s economy, the dive stores struggle to sell equipment as determined by the equipment manufacturers, who increasingly pressure stores to order more product to keep prices low. This practice eventually will bankrupt the small retail stores when they can’t sell to the volume required to keep the line.
I have long argued from an environmental standpoint that the mass consumption of dive gear is immoral. Considerable chemical waste is the result of the byproduct of what we call “soft goods” in diving technology. When I began selling scuba gear a few years ago, I encouraged customers to buy dive gear once and allow it to grow with their diving experience. If you should fall away from diving the gear holds value better because there is a wider used market. Unfortunately I’m an anomaly in the scuba retail sales arena, because I don’t push equipment on the customer and I don’t want the customer to walk away thinking they were sold substandard equipment.
This past semester I worked with Gregg Stanton and his Introduction to Professional Diving class at Tallahassee Community College. We developed a high quality Buoyancy Compensator/harness/cylinder mount that can be used from basic training all the way up through the many configurations a diver may desire in their lifetime without being replaced.
As they say, the last BC you will ever purchase! The students gave the concept high praise.
If you are in the market for new equipment, or just looking into scuba as a new hobby, please take some time to weigh your options and don’t be afraid to ask questions. You will save money in the end by buying equipment to grow with you. And if you drop away from diving for any reason, at least your equipment will be of greater value to other divers, instead of something that tragically ends up in a landfill.

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May 15, 2014

An alien world.

While preparing for my summer curriculum to teach Family Diving, I inquired into the expectation of our young diving candidates. What I found was fascinating.
Many of our kids see our world through the virtual imagination of others. They know, for example, about coral because the TV or a book had a picture of one and called it coral. This same learning tool has a wide variety of science fiction crowding into the same educational time frame. They accept these creatures because they have seen pictures. And what is portrayed as from another world is called alien. Is coral a group of alien creatures?
James Cameron, the film director of “Titanic” and “Avatar,” is also an ocean explorer. He recently gave a TED talk last October regarding his passion in which he said his drive to explore and document the ocean is because it was an alien world.
He argued this underwater world is poorly understood but relatively easy to study considering we humans don’t need to travel through the vacuum of space to get there. The creatures in this ocean are as strange as any other alien creatures in that they exist in a very different environment, not easily occupied by us humans.
The physics of an environment 800 times denser than on dry land, creates evolutionary adaptations of its occupants that are as alien as any portrayed on Star Trek, Star Wars, or other science fiction virtual reality show, except that they are real. And more to the point, we can visit most them.
My basic scuba training requires an early motivational message when offered to universities. In the past, I have focused on a reality that if you want to join NASA or other space agencies (and many do), then learning to dive is a pre-requisite since they all must train in the neutral gravity simulator. This facility is a huge pool that contains a replica of the Space Shuttle, and the Space Station underwater. Astronauts don a space suit and must perform their missions underwater that they expect to perform in space. I have trained graduate students who are seriously applying for the mission to Mars! But something was missing when I focused on the younger generations in my Family Diving classes.
An alien is a creature that is different from what we recognize from our surroundings. Wikipedia spends much of its talent on defining the film “Aliens” (also by Cameron) before defining an alien as extraterrestrial life (not of this earth). I suspect we think of extraterrestrial as not of this land.
Last week I began my Family Diving class by introducing aliens (in picture form) that my young students will meet in person later this summer. What was to be a short motivation statement became a discussion. All the challenges of mastering water physics and human physiology now had a reason, not to satisfy their parents to try out something new, but to become explorers into an alien world.
In an expanding USA population, recent statistics portray our world of divers as shrinking. There are more divers in the age group from 45 to 70 than in the age group from 18 to 45. Dive shops are routinely failing. We are down to two in a 100-mile radius. We entertain many more older divers at our facility than younger ones. Our spearfishing tournament this weekend is untested!
We older divers have become accustomed to the aliens we encounter in the underwater world and do not generate the thrill of exploration we once had when younger. Perhaps, we as a diving community have lost the reason for the training: preparing the next generation of underwater explorers, not selling equipment. There is still hope. I have four opportunities, Family Diving classes on the books!

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May 22, 2014

The spearfishing tournament.

Divers have a long tradition harvesting fish and other marine life for food and sport. Breath-hold diving (snorkeling) began the sport centuries ago. All marine collections in the Bahamas is currently limited to breath-hold diving.
In Florida, limitations are placed on scuba diving collections underwater, principally forbidding the spearing of selected species such as spiny lobsters and a few recreational fish species, and the use of rebreathers to spear fish within state waters (in the Gulf out 9 miles). Everyone (line and spear fishing) must follow the established fishing rules for Florida (out 9 miles) and Federal waters beyond 9 miles out in the Gulf.
The unfortunate truth about line fishing is that every fish brought to the surface can be injured during the ascent. Many, if not most, never make it back to the bottom alive, making catch and release practices somewhat limited. Undersized catches that must be released become prey to other predators attracted to the boat.
Spearfishing, as opposed to hook-and-line fishing, is far more selective. The spear fisherman selects the fish of choice and takes his prey, leaving undersized fish to grow up. They do learn about spear fishermen and thus become more difficult to catch when they do reach legal sizes.
There is a bit of a conflict between the two groups, but they usually each respect the other’s rights to a fishing site. Line fishing is often accompanied by chumming the waters with bait. Sharks are attracted to the blood at places shared with divers, like “K” Tower, making diving less desirable. Many divers line-fish first to find fish before expending the energy to get into the water. Many non-divers fish using lines while divers hunt for the big boys below.
To my knowledge, we just held the first Wakulla County based spearfishing tournament, at least in recent history. Dive shops in Tallahassee have sponsored tournaments in the past. Folks asked us to step in and sponsor a local tournament when another shop went out of business. We have no experience doing a tournament, but Travis Kersting took it on anyway.
The theme was an aggregate tournament with an effort to learn more about the Lionfish off our coastline. Any three of the largest fish were weighed in at one time, of course the largest fish, and the most/largest Lionfish. We then asked everyone to donate fish to the fish fry, including the Lionfish – they were delicious! The largest fish was a Cubberra Snapper at 89 pounds! The largest Lionfish was over a foot.
The weather cooperated! The seas were a bit rougher than expected but, by all accounts, everyone did a great job and had a great time. We had 30 registrations with 90 folks (lots of kids) attending the fish fry after the check in on last Saturday.
We set up over $5,000 in prizes, spent the evening with an abundance of music and fish stories. I was asked to make this an annual event, with volunteers to help guide the next one. Yes, we learned a lot! Next year there will be fun things for the kids to do (not just eat fresh fish), better advertising, live music, more tents and more tables.
Thank you to all the volunteers this year. Hey, we had to start somewhere!

  • Biggest Fish:
    1st- Richard “Todd” Langford
    2nd- Matt Paarlberg
    3rd- Murray Baker
  • Aggregate:
    1st- Damon Jasper
    2nd- Todd Thompson
    3rd- Jeemiah Slaymaker
  • Lionfish:
    1st- Brian Bond
    2nd- Josh Reynolds
    3rd- Desmond Kieser

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May 29, 2014

Talk underwater?

Communications underwater is fundamentally the same as in air, with the obvious difference that the density of water is 800 times greater than air.
We are so used to talking while standing as our primary form of communicating on land that swimming prone while breathing from a regulator inserted in the mouth seems awkward.
Sound travels four times faster underwater than in air. Cousteau’s Silent World is also far from silent, providing amble distractions to interfere with a discussion anyway. How do we cope?
First, you must get the ATTENTION of our intended recipient or the effort is useless. Many a surprised fish has wondered what the diver is trying to say to his unsuspecting buddy. And why would your buddies spend much time looking at you? They are here to see the reef and share the adventure.
We find touch is the easiest way to get someone’s attention. You could rap on your tank using a rock or knife, but the sound is not easily directional. We evolved to locate sound in air. In water we would need to move our ears four times further apart to echolocate a sound. The density of the water results in such sounds travelling a great distance and sounds loud.
Whales can use low frequency sounds to communicate for thousands of miles. Some divers have attached a power inflator driven whistle on their BC to attract attention. Just remember, all you need to attract is your buddy, and not the local cruising shark or whale.
Once you have their attention, a common LANGUAGE is best, to deliver a clear message. Underwater sign language is available in books and is generally understood, but local dialects are common. We might all agree that a hand motion across the neck signifies out of air, but in Jamaica it means dangerous marine life in the area. Some have adopted the American Deaf Mute sign language, where each letter is spelled out. I used this method when I lived underwater. It takes time to master, is slower spelling out words, and can be humorous if your spelling is poor.
Of course you can write on a slate. Write big letters that are easily seen. There is an underwater Etch-a-sketch device exactly like the child’s toy that works well but is bulky. Several years ago we used an underwater scroll, rolled up in a device secured to one’s arm. I could be fitted with any number of options from just blank paper to fish identification lists for fish survey.
My favorite is a small notebook, carried in a pouch, with pages of underwater paper that I can flip through at will.
Beware what you write to your buddy. I once had a group of early divers with me on a checkout dive in the Florida Keys. I found a Snook under a ledge, not something you might usually see on the reef. I lacked the ability to write or sign what I saw so I got everyone together and began writing on the sand. I did get them to recognize the letter “S” before they bolted for the boat, and got out.
The third requirement for underwater communications is a REPEAT of the signal. The purpose is to assure the giver that the buddy knows that there is a shark over there. Put the open hand up and move it forward (shark), two fingers point to your eyes (look), then point in the direction of the incoming creature. Command signs require immediate action, such as I need air. The correct response is to push a regulator mouth piece toward the requesting diver, NOT pulling your hand across your neck again.
Rebreather divers just talk! Our large ambient pressure hoses vibrate like a speaker permitting close contact communications. And that is when you realize the inability to talk underwater is one of the reasons diving is so delightful.
Enjoy the “Silent World” with all of its sounds (but missing the chatter of words) and economize your signs to just what is essential. Oh, and laughing is allowed, but expect your mask to flood.
By the way, we need a new hand sign for LIONFISH. Any ideas?

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June 5, 2014

Force of nature.

By Joerg Hess

I moved to Florida, many years ago, pursuing a dream of developing new technologies, all while following my passion of cave diving. Humble beginnings consisted of simple and reliable open-circuit dive technology.
More and more often I find myself mentioning “the old times, when we didn’t have –.”
Today, knowledge and technology has evolved much further, alongside the infrastructure making training and service easily accessible. In order to undertake a dive that, a few years back would have been considered record breaking, all you need now is mostly money, unfortunately. It is tempting to go on a rant about vocal chest-pounding wannabes who became instant experts by purchasing the latest greatest. Nature, however, is impervious to such self-grandeur, and the lack of this basic understanding more often than not means money spent without achieving the increased performance.
To use an analogy, you can spend thousands of dollars on a bicycle, but don’t be surprised if you still have to hit the pedals yourself.
A week ago we experienced nature as the great equalizer. Gregg Stanton and I only rarely have a chance to go fun diving together, without obligations to students or protégées. Last Wednesday was one of those rare occasions, greatly cherished, when we returned to our old training cave, Jackson Blue, in Marianna. Some of our equipment needed a shakedown dive, meaning an easy dive to test its performance and identify possible improvements. The goal was to get submerged, which for us usually means reaching the “stop light” at 2,100 feet into the cave, where literally an old stop light has been placed on a rock. So we were not deterred by local reports of greatly increased water flow at the site. Others have aborted their dives due to the high current making progress impossible, despite expensive underwater scooters pulling the diver. We did not bring any fancy dive gear beyond our rebreathers, our standard of choice.
Visible on the surface of the cave was the broil of uprising water, usually close to shore, now much further away, providing an indication of the increase in magnitude of flow. Water levels were also about one foot higher, again an indication of much more water being pushed through the system.
Entering the cave required pull and glide, a technique of carefully placed handholds to pull yourself along, rather than just swimming. This reminded me of the conditions encountered 15 years ago in Jackson Blue, something Gregg and myself were very much used to. Since then, the flow had gradually subsided over time, only to now be restored to its original level almost overnight for reasons yet to be determined.
Following the cave, most passages are large enough for a two-lane highway. On a few occasions however the cave narrows, increasing the flow, slowing our progress almost to a halt. I felt more like a mountain climber going vertically up rather than floating along horizontally, using arms to pull and legs to push. Mainstream technology cannot assist in this situation. What is required is the skill of streamlining and using the local terrain to hide behind as much as possible, as well as sheer determination. The flow was such that using a scooter would have resulted in moving backwards rather than forward, and looking sideways pushed the mask off the face. On a few occasions the cave leads straight down. Negative buoyancy would normally allow the descend – now however we had to climb downwards against the flow!
We can usually reach the stop light in 45 minutes, 60 with students. It took us over 90 minutes, with a welcomed rest stop at the end. Although this may sound exhausting, but we were exhilarated, and even laughed. The way out of the cave was a simple rollercoaster ride in the current, the main concern not hitting the cave, otherwise free to just relax and ponder the revelation of technology not determining the application, yet again.
Needless to say, we had the cave to ourselves.

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June 12, 2014

New Artificial Reefs

By definition, a reef is the basic platform upon which underwater creatures live, either by encrusting, residing around, or hiding within. A Japanese description of a reef included digging a hole, the absence of structure, or dumping piles of rock, the presence of natural materials, which provided many of the attributes listed above.
Artificial is a descriptor to suggest the structure was placed there by humans, not a “natural” feature such as a coral growth or limestone outcropping.
Artificial reefs both attract and promote increased biomass, permitting denser populations of more biomass of human desired fish and shell fish, and making humans more efficient at collecting them. To mitigate for this challenge, humans have placed regulations on the taking of animals from our waters. Overall, while not a perfect solution, one that seems to work. Until recently, all artificial reefs were common property, fished by humans (with fishing permits) equally.
Our involvement with artificial reefs off our coastal counties has been primarily in two areas: unintentional and intentional. During World War II, the British tanker Empire Micca was torpedoed off Franklin County and exploded creating a fiery display before sinking in 100 feet of water. Today, the wreck is a popular unintentional artificial reef, slowly dissolving away.
In 1964 Dr. Mathews (then a graduate student) built a reef out of car tires and intentionally deployed it off the Ochlocknee Shoals in 18 feet of water. After a survey in 1983 by students in my Applications of Diving to Research, that successful reef was expanded with a $64,000 grant from the state Department of Environmental Protection to now build a reef site 2,000 feet long by 300 feet wide. I have already described that very successful, all-volunteer project in a previous column.
For 30 years the Organization for Artificial Reefs has continued to deploy and monitor – using a sophisticated in-house research diving team – artificial reefs along our Big Bend area. They deploy concrete, surplused vessels and all manner of targeted species modules on carefully permitted sites. Just as our early efforts, this volunteer organization has brought tremendous reward to our county, providing and maintaining new reefs, reef information, fishing contests and educational programs for a who but ask. We sell their maps describing available reef locations and fish found in our waters. Go ahead and search for them on the Internet!
What is a fish (or crab) trap, but a target-species artificial reef with a door on it that is privately owned. Many species associate with the trap (temporary artificial reef) and may even get caught within and unintentionally harvested. Deployment of traps, however, is not permitted like other artificial reefs because they are temporary, and seldom become a hazard to navigation.
And now, thousands of vertical water column cultured oysters cages are becoming a part of the new aquaculture of our near shore bays. These sites are more stringently permitted by Coast Guard and others, sites now leased to private owners who own and farm the marine species grown within.
This new incentive is part of a grand experiment to save our oyster industry, and many of our friends and neighbors who have made Wakulla home for many decades, providing us with the seafood delights we all so enjoy.
Welcome to the greater artificial reef community of Wakulla County. How may we help?

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June 19, 2014

Living History

By Joerg Hess

We had a number of international visitors from Europe and South America last week.
This is always a great opportunity to play tour guide, and to present the living history of cave diving.
As we collaborate with many other dive facilities on the cave diving trail that leads all over Florida, we also visited Cave Excursions, an early cave diving center in North Florida.
The center is situated a few miles from Wes Skiles Peacock State Spring Park, about an hour-and-a-half east of us.
During the 1990s the park embraced the rowdy cave divers rather than chasing them off, and has since enjoyed both financial support and the volunteering work associated with the group.
The collaboration resulted in board walks to protect nature, as well as gazebos, interpretive signs, benches, etc.
Bill Renacker, owner of the Cave Excursions dive center and an avid cave diver, was instrumental in this good collaboration.
As he personally gave us the tour of his facility, and discussed its development and history, he reminded me of the many little steps he undertook into the unknown at the time.
Most profoundly, he managed to derive a system that allowed him to offer nitrox, an air-oxygen gas mixture.
Although nitrox was already well-known, only when Renacker had it “on tap,” meaning readily available at no wait time, and even at low cost, did the sleepy little village become a destination for nature lovers.
Not only did Cave Excursions provide such an outstanding service, but Renacker was always happy to share the “secret” to his success with anyone who asked.
We have since worked very well together, and have included many of the concepts into our own facility. Many a diver is very surprised to hear our gas price policy, derived from Renacker’s model: Almost all dive shops charge flat fees to fill a scuba tank.
For example, a standard aluminum 80, containing 80 cubic feet of breathable gas, will cost $7 to fill.
The Renacker model however only charges for the amount of gas filled into the tank, just like when filling up your car.
If the tank is completely empty, it will cost the full fee, but if the tank is half-full, only half of the charge is applied.
This may seem like a minor detail, but history shows that if you treat people fairly, they will respond in kind.
In the case of the state park to our east, it made the difference between constantly having to beg for money and donations, and having an active interest group provide support before it is needed.
Having such a good collaborator to share experiences with, and thus avoid repeating mistakes, is priceless.
The synergistic effect, that is the benefit to all involved, goes beyond what we imagined in the beginning.
We now see similar centers established all over the world.
Yet we still find that North Florida is unique. Which is why people from all over the world would like to come here.

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June 26, 2014

Cherokee Sink.

Our favorite swimming hole has again become the center of attention over a proposed lease of the surrounding property to the Tallahassee Community College’s Wakulla Environmental Institute to be used as a training ground for future park rangers, public land and water managers, and park facility managers.
As I listened to proponents and opponents duel over the future of the property, I could not help but reflect upon what Cherokee Sink has meant to me and my family over our residency here in the county.
My wife and I moved to the area to attend FSU in late 1974. By 1977 we had purchased five acres in Beechwood, just down the street was a fabulous swimming hole called Cherokee that we frequented often.
On a summer’s weekend day the sound of hundreds of people frolicking shoreside, floating on inner tubes out in the middle or swinging from perimeter trees was infectious. We became regulars, bringing our pet dogs, then later our kids, and still later our students to share in the glory.
Cherokee epitomized Wakulla County life.
I brought my family to cool off and unwind, a place for the kids to play on the shoreline, then learn how to swim, learn how to dive and socialize with our many neighbors. The music was loud, the water cooled down the area and everyone could be assured of a good time.
I brought my students to Cherokee Sink to conduct underwater training in science diving. In 1984 we trained in surface supplied technology (hard hat diving), only to discover an inverted submerged new BMW. After our report to the police, it was dragged out on its roof (contributing to shoreline erosion) and hauled away, now destroyed. We documented the piles of bottles and beverage cans on the floor of the sink, the motorcycle, and various other probably stolen items contained within, supporting a student theory that most Florida sinkholes represent crime scenes.
We built and tested platform deigns for deployment to the lakes of Palau, in Cherokee Sink. Left overnight, one was sunk when riddled with bullets by locals with trigger-happy fingers. We even trained on early rebreathers in this place. There are many happy memories many of us “locals” have of Cherokee Sink.
In 1999 the state purchased the property to better manage our swimming hole and preserve the watershed. I supported the purchase even though access was temporarily denied. Decks were built, parking provided away from the damaged banks, erosion control was implemented, and for a short while, it seemed our swim hole would be available again. We returned to using the site for rebreather and other technical training, and the relaxing mid-summer’s swim.
But Health Department and designated swimming facility regulations soon shut it down again. Austerity measures of our times resulted in a dim forecast to provide the required bathrooms to reopen Cherokee. And there we languished for several years – until TCC came along with their win-win proposal: build the required bathrooms, manage an ecologically sound best practice policy that future facility managers can be trained under, and not cost the Wakulla Springs State Park precious funds.
As I approach retirement, I’d like to think I can take my grandkids to our local swim hole down the street and cool off in Cherokee Sink.
Yeah, I know, first I need to get grandkids, but that’s out of my control.

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July 3, 2014

Archaeologist of our shores.

While we debate the merits of leasing Wakulla Springs State Park lands to TCC, a quiet and continuing invasion of archaeologist and paleontologists have been searching our rivers and off shore sites for more evidence about the nature of our land’s earliest human inhabitants.
Starting in 1959, Dick Ohmes and other divers began retrieving artifacts and Pleistocene animal bones with butcher marks from the lower reaches of the Aucilla River.
A team led by archaeologist James Dunbar and paleontologist S. David Webb began a survey of Half-Mile Run in 1983. Navy diver Buddy Page, showed them a site where he had found elephant bones. A 20-inch-deep test pit yielded elephant bones, bone tools and chips from tool making.
Radiocarbon dating of organic material from the pit yielded dates from 13,000 to 11,700 years Before Present.
The owners of the land surrounding Half-Mile Run, the Ladson family, granted permission to the team to access and camp along Half-Mile Run. The Site was therefore named Page-Ladson.
Excavation of the Page-Ladson site spanned the period from 1983 until 1997.
The Page-Ladson prehistory site (8JE591) is a deep hole in the bed of the Aucilla River between Jefferson and Taylor counties in North Florida that has stratified deposits of late Pleistocene and early Holocene animal bones and human artifacts.
A group of eleven artifacts have an average age of 15,405 to 14,146 calendar years Before Present.
Mike Faught, then a graduate student from the University of Arizona, was investigating early man occupation sites off shore in the 1990s. He collaborated with Dr. Joe Donaugh, geologist from Florida State University, who was conducting a survey of subsurface river beds in Apalachee Bay. They identified oxbow and other features of this under-sand Aucilla river bed, where land sites have previously found early man occupation sites.
After Mike joined FSU’s Anthropology Department, they set up field schools digging these sites and finding evidence supporting their hypothesis.
While I was the FSU Dive Officer, I would visit the residence vessel Mike would anchor over his shallow site and bring them water, food and recycle students.
In 1996, an Early Archaic Bolen habitation level was found at the Page-Ladson site. Hearths and various stone points, scrapers, adzes and gouges were found and identified, as well as antler points used to press flakes off the stone tools.
Three wooden upright in the ground stakes, and a cypress log that had been burned on the top side and hollowed out were found with radiocarbon dating of around 10,000 years BP.
Archaeological excavation at the Page-Ladson site resumed in 2012 with the intention of validating the dating of human artifacts obtained in earlier work, and of finding the oldest dates for human remains and artifacts at the site.
The excavation was funded by the Center for the Study of First Americans, and carried out by archaeologists from Texas A&M University and Indiana University of Pennsylvania and local volunteers.
Today, the research continues at several sites both inland and off shore.
They represent research teams from several universities both here in Florida and Georgia.

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July 10, 2014

Current Offshore Wakulla Archaeology.

By Jessica Cook Hale

The sites along the rivers and offshore in the Big Bend along Apalachee Bay are probably best known for their extreme antiquity. Some of the oldest sites in North America can be found in the Aucilla River, for example.
However, our project is focused on a later period that is perhaps less well known, but is equally interesting for very different reasons. We are investigating a period known as the Middle Archaic, which in Florida dates from around 8000 radiocarbon years before the present (BP) to about 5000 BP. This was a period during which the climate was more seasonal than today, with warmer summers but somewhat colder winters, and it is also the period during which some very interesting behavioral changes can be detected in the Southeastern U.S.
For example, recent research within the last 20 years has emphasized the ceremonial aspects of shell mounds and shell rings along the St. John’s River valley and nearby watersheds from the Middle Archaic (~8000 BP to 5000 BP) into the Late Archaic (~5000 BP to 3000 BP).
Research over the last 25 years in these areas of Florida has shown that, contrary to earlier assumptions, these mounds are not simple household middens (garbage dumps normally containing food and artifact remains) deposited over long periods of time but instead appear to have been created rather rapidly during the course of ritual feasting.
In some cases, burials are also found within these mounds. This is in addition to the appearance of burials within ponds and sinkholes, and is a departure from earlier cultural traditions.
There is one other characteristic of these sites that is highly interesting: evidence for reduced mobility in the people who lived at these locations. Earlier populations appear to have moved around the landscape exploiting various resources, probably in patterns tied to seasonal changes.
The Middle Archaic groups, however, appear to have settled down by comparison.
In other areas of the world, other coastal populations are also known to have done this as well. One example would be the Mesolithic groups living along the Baltic Sea after the end of the last glacial period, where the Ertebølle culture living in what is now Denmark lived in year round villages and lived on an almost wholly marine-based diet of shellfish, fish, and other aquatic resources.
A more recent example would be the historic tribes in the Pacific Northwest such as the Tlingit and Kwakiutl, who had permanent villages, but who also traveled to sites along the rivers at certain times of the year to harvest migrating fish such as salmon.
The common thread that appears here is that all of these groups had excellent access to very rich marine, estuarine, riverine, and terrestrial resources, all within a relatively compressed area.
It is also quite interesting to note that these permanent settlements were able to sustain themselves without using domesticated plants or animals, which is contrary to what earlier scholars believed was the vital link between sedentary settlements and the development of agriculture.
For this reason, a great deal of work in recent years has been focused on exploring the link between ample coastal resources and the development of permanent settlements by the people who exploited those resources.
To be continued.

Jessica Cook Hale is with the Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia.

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July 17, 2014

Current Offshore Wakulla Archaeology, Part 2.

By Jessica Cook Hale

Reduced mobility and localized diet seems to have developed in Florida by the Middle Archaic at both inland and terrestrial sites, and eventually confirmed sedentism can be deduced by the Late Archaic.
What we are exploring here in this project is the hypothesis that groups in the Big Bend were also becoming more sedentary during the Middle Archaic, just as their neighbors along the Atlantic coastline and south of Tampa along the Gulf shore were, using rich coastal resources just as the Late Archaic groups later did.
We do know that shell deposits exist at Middle Archaic sites along the Big Bend, both in terrestrial contexts and submerged ones and this begs the question: were groups living along the Big Bend at this time also starting to use and possibly occupy sites year round?
Our study seeks to gather more data, then, that could suggest to us what sorts of activities were taking place at these submerged sites in Apalachee Bay.
We also hope to compare conditions within the Big Bend to conditions along the Georgia coast, and see if we can tease out any suggestions as to why there is ample Middle Archaic here, and so very little there.
To address this, I am beginning new excavation and analysis of various submerged Middle Archaic sites in Apalachee Bay. These sites were initially identified and explored by the Aucilla River Prehistory Project (ARPP), beginning in 1983. Four seemingly simply questions will be asked during this study:
1) How quickly did these shell middens accumulate? Long-term use of a site might lead to more shell, deposited over a longer period of time, whereas an equal amount of shell that was rapidly deposited might indicate discrete events, such as feasting.
2) When did they eat it – were they using the local resources all year round, or just during specific times of the year?
3) How do artifact assemblages compare to the larger regional context?
4) When were these sites occupied? These kinds of questions can be answered by submerged sites, just as they are for terrestrial ones, and are all the more important when one considers the fact that large areas of the southeastern U.S. are now submerged. Without the inclusion of datasets gathered from submerged sites, our understanding of this period will remain woefully incomplete.
It is also worth noting that during this period when climate change and sea level rise appears to be again impacting our world, we would do well to pay attention to how prehistoric groups reacted to their own shifting geography as their coastlines retreated to their modern positions.
This can offer us insight into how modern coastal communities may react to encroaching seas, and in our modern globalized and interdependent economy, we need all the insight we can get.
Furthermore, additional survey of submerged sites will allow us to understand how archaeological sites are affected by submergence. This is critical knowledge that can help us assess how we might best deal with the ongoing erosion of coastal sites along our modern shores, so that we can best preserve and protect the invaluable information they contain about the prehistoric people who lived there.

Jessica Cook Hale is with the Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia.

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July 24, 2014

Sunday spear fishing

Our pre 4th of July week included many 16 hour days, so I was pleased to be offered a berth on Dwayne and Karen William’s boat for a Sunday spear fishing trip off shore. Conditions were near flat calm all day with a humidity below 50% and temperatures in the 80s F. We love both hook and line and spear fishing. We completed only three dives between 60 and 40 feet, with water temperatures in the 85 degree down to 30 feet and a bit cooler below a thermocline to the bottom. Visibility above the thermocline was 50 feet and below around 40 feet, all on a falling tide.
Our first dive, breathing open circuit Nitrox for lower decompression stress (and longer bottom times), was for around 30 minutes. We had plenty of opportunity to spear fish, but missed every shot.
I can’t say what challenges faced my dive partner. But we were very embarrassed to return with nothing but tales of the usual Goliath Grouper (protected) and a sighting of a large nurse shark, both clearly amused at our futile antics.
During our surface interval between dive sites, we reconfigured our kit, with new shafts, larger bands for me, and better placement of resources while on the dive. Dive #2 was in a similar depth with similar profile, a near identical site, right down to the thermocline. Maybe it was our determination, perhaps our reconfigured kit, or just plain luck, but in a little over 30 minutes, I landed a 12 pound Red Grouper, and two similarly weighted Gag Groupers. OK, I admit, one Gag I had to spear 4 times to finally catch (never leave an injure animal if possible). I left many more, even larger fish unchallenged because I did not want to exceed our limit and yes, my partner was low on breathing gas. He too collected his limit of Gags. The attached picture is of me and the catch of that 30 minute dive.
Dive #3 was in shallower water but still in federal waters. Gag Grouper was off the menu by now. Those fishing from the surface were returning large Gags to the sea, available for the next visitor to the site.
I dropped down through warm water, a sudden chill as I pass through the thermocline, to see an ever more clear landscape below. I load the bands on my spear gun. I make out details of the rock outcropping below, a ledge here, a protruding spire there, silver bait fish swirling around as Spanish mackerel and Amberjack dart in and out of the school. I am so mesmerized at the scene that I am unprepared as a large King Mackerel swims right past me. I point my gun and pull the trigger with a sure shot, only to find the safety on, and the fish gone before I can recuperate. Lucky devil I think, but not upset at all. For 40 minutes I poke my light, affixed at the end of my gun, under every ledge, chasing Gags out of the way. Vociferous booming rewards me under the largest ledge, Goliaths communicating their displeasure of my penetrating light. What I don’t find on any of the dives are Red Snapper, legal sized Hogfish, and Lionfish. I decide to take a few Mangrove Snapper, and then, like shooting a bird, one Spanish mackerel. This results in a lot of blood, which of course captures the attention of larger predators. Within a few minutes of my shot, I look behind me to see a bull shark swimming at my fins, clearly looking for supper. I lift up in time to let him (her?) under me and rise up under my partner who is reaching for his Shark Shield, an electronic shark repellant, which I will be purchasing next.
And I am too old for a fishing license!

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July 31, 2014

A visit from the Remora

While visiting the ocean floor, a visit from a specific fish is considered by many as a subtle sign of danger. That fish is the Remora, a long slender gray striped creature with a somewhat “deformed” head, which includes a sucker device to permit suction attachment to another creature (including humans).
I have seen Remoras as large as adult Gag Grouper, but around here they are usually smaller. Why are they a sign of danger? It’s because of the company they keep.
Remoras swim and even attach to large sea creatures to be available when feeding occurs such that they can share in the meal. Animals with which they cohabit include manta and sting rays, whales, sharks and people.
Let’s start with the people. We appear to be predators more than capable of leaving scraps of fish when we spear fish. I often see Remoras move in and take bits from my fish, usually the parts that fall off on a messy kill. We also represent food opportunities. During one summer research project off Dog Island, Remoras attacked our ear lobes trying to get the obvious loose tissue hanging below the ear. We finally posted a diver with an air driven mini spear gun to chase them away. Even with that assistance, divers climbing back aboard the boat after their work, occasionally had Remoras attached to their back.
When on the sea floor and especially when spear fishing, the appearance of a Remora usually means the arrival of larger creatures to follow. While on my last trip out, I was alerted to a shark in the area shortly before it came up from down current in search of my catch. I was already on the lookout, and lifted up under the protection of my partner’s Shark Shield with no further concern for my safety.
While I am seldom happy to see a Remora show up at the party, I must admit, they are better than the unannounced arrival of unwanted predators. I now consider them the Cattle Egret of our terrestrial ecosystem. On land a white bird either stands on top or slowly walks along side cattle as they forage in the field. Insects that are displaced by the cattle are quickly seized by the bird, thus cementing the communal relationship.
In 1974 I trained on a fisheries two person tow sled, a rather large pipe frame with hydroplanes out front. A decade later we built another one (after the original was lost at sea) and after a few trials, labeled it the Remora. Our students noted that no matter where the tow vessel went, the Remora followed. Indeed, Remora do follow slower vessels like sail boats, so the name stuck.
While we surveyed vast stretches of the ocean floor in support of BLM projects off Cedar Keys, all manner of creatures came up and swam in unison with our sled, including Remoras. We were particularly fascinated with porpoises that would swim in unison and touch their pectoral fins on the hydroplanes, perhaps a form of communication.
And yes, the Remoras would routinely attach to us observers laying prone on the sled’s frame as camera and collecting bags prevented us from swatting them away.
Such was the life of a diving scientist.

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August 7, 2014

Like-minded spirits.

By Joerg Hess

In contrast to popular belief, I realized a long time ago that like-minded spirits attract each other.
There is a good reason that we find a number of intellectuals as well as industry leaders and high-ranking professionals knocking on our door. We attract these people not only from the surrounding areas, but from all over the world.
Visitors from south America are quite frequent, as well as Europe, Japan, etc. They come to us for training and advice, sometimes in topics where none is available from anyone else, and not necessarily limited to diving.
I believe that, as a result, or maybe as a reason, the classes we teach are exceptional, at every level. My personal favorite are the high-end classes of deep-cave-rebreather, which give me a chance to discuss details, and challenge the students and myself. Every class is different, yet once in a while the candidates make a course stand out from the rest.
Recently we taught such as class for two students. Chris, a very intelligent and quick-thinking logistics manager was breezing through all the discussion and physical challenges, for the most part.
It certainly was delightful to see him latch on to abstract concepts, and apply them in the real world.
A shining student in any other class, Chris was nevertheless dwarfed by our second student, Manu, a young physics professor from Colombia. Merely hinting at a thought had him continue the concept, which at such a high level I have never experienced before.
I found myself discussing details of decompression theory as well a carbon dioxide absorption with him, which is usually borderline mind bending with any industry leader.
As you might imagine, the other student Chris was left shaking his head and throwing in the towel. Chris must have felt like a C-student rather than the A-student he is.
As misfortune had it, and after traveling thousands of miles to attend a course with us, Manu fell ill and had to sit out on the in-water portion of the training.
We never found out if his skill level translated into the water as well. That is the law of the real world, which we usually accommodate with a day off during the class for the candidates to recuperate.
But reality did strike on this one, despite mastering all the theory and formulae. Or maybe because of it, as we found that most people may be good at one thing, but not another.
We try to cater to all.

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August 14, 2014

That fish is an eel.

Did you ever swim down one of our rivers and see the head of a fish sticking up out of the sandy bottom? This fish is actually an eel, one of 19 species worldwide, of the Anguillidae family, the genus Anguilla. These creatures live their lives in fresh water rivers, lakes and our caves, only to return to the sea to spawn.
This creature has been studied since the days of Aristotle. He thought they grew up from spontaneous generation like earth worms. In 1777 Mondini described them as fish but in 1876 a young Sigmund Freud could not find male eels and moved on to other topics, now better known to history. Schmidt in 1904, began a series of cruises from Europe westward collecting the clear Leptocephlis larvae. He found the further west he sailed, the smaller the eel larvae were in his nets until he arrived in the Sargaso Sea. He concluded without seeing eel spawning that the tiny larvae originated from this location.
Young eel larvae, called leptocephali eat small ocean particles called Sea Snow. They travel in the Gulf Stream and as they approach the coastline, they become a glass eels before entering the estuaries for their life in freshwater as a pigmented fish. Eels entering the Atlantic Ocean from Europe or the Americas spawn in the Sargasso Sea, but the homing ability of their returning larvae is poorly understood. Today we believe the American eel is a different species from the European eel.
Adult eels, after a growth period of many years, will head back to sea, sometimes climbing over land bridges, through wet ground and over sand dunes moving much like a snake. Using radio transmitters, Tesch followed the European eels migration to spawning grounds and found they can move up to 15 km per day. That means it would take the eel 165-175 days to reach the Sargasso Sea from the English Channel.
European eels have been heavily harvested with populations diminished by as much as 80 percent since the 1960s. Most eels consumed in the USA are from farm-raised populations but not bred in captivity. The glass eel phase of the Anguilla is often caught in Maine and exported around the world to be grown out and sold as food particularly in Asia where the fish is considered a delicacy. But around 1997, glass eels arriving at estuaries dropped to 10 percent of their previous levels, forcing prices skyrocket to over $1,000/kg.
But here in North Florida, Anguilla eels are a source of entertainment. Caverns along the Cave Diver’s Trail from Ponce De Leon to High Springs see an annual influx of these slim creatures which quickly become tame when divers feed them. I have seen our Anguilla eel reach lengths of over a meter long.
Once tame, they swim right up to a diver and probe for food. They feed on small fish and other meat. They have a small mouth with small spike-like teeth that surprise more than hurt when a finger is mistaken for a morsel of food. Otherwise, keep your hand closed when they are around.
Divers can usually find a tame population out in the open in Morrison Springs Cavern or down the river from Morrison Springs buried in the sand. Morrison Springs County Park is located just south of I-10 off Rt 81 north of Bruce.
Netflix has a great PBS documentary on the eels of the world, and well-worth watching.

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August 21, 2014

More on the Echinoderm

Last week’s Natural Wakulla column by extension director Les Harrison had a very enjoyable piece on Sand Dollars, but there is another dimension in our waters.
Echinoderms (called “spiny skinned” creatures), which include many groups of marine animals, are distinguished by their use of “tube feet.” They move around by hydraulically latching these feet on to the substrate and pulling. Some groups will also hold rubble or shells to their body thus providing camouflage (a way to hide). Just pick one up (carefully) and look underneath and you will see small translucent tubes waiving around trying to find a substrate to suck on to. This predatory group has no blood, relying on its Vascular Water System to multi-task.
You know this group of marine invertebrates by their common name, such as Starfish, Sea Urchins, Sea Cucumbers, Sand Dollars and Sea Biscuits. Last I recall we have at least five species off our coast. Divers are most concerned about the spines of the Sea Urchin because they can easily penetrate your skin and break off. Some, like the Diadema, a black long spined Urchin found in the Florida Keys, have fine spines that will penetrate through gloves and wet suits. Around here, our Urchins have shorter robust spines. Lytichinas is red, and found on sand. The smaller Arbacia is black and is found on rocks.
In basic scuba class you are taught to maintain horizontal trim and not land on the substrate to avoid damaging fragile creatures and driving these spines into you knee (as happened to a recent student on the jetties in Panama City).
Starfish are the stuff of countless beach combing, especially with kids. These five-legged creatures are known to regenerate appendages when lost. Some have many more than five, come in many colors and become ornamental features when carefully dried and mounted in fish nets. When diving the Antarctic, we called the local starfish marauders. They are very powerful, capable of opening clams and in our case, experimental vials, with ease!
Sea Cucumbers look like the vegetable, but pull themselves along from the front. Like the Starfish, they eviscerate their stomach to feed. Unlike the Starfish, if threatened, they will eviscerate the sticky, slimy stomach at you. So here is another critter to just observe, don’t touch.
Sand Dollars, Heart Urchins and Sea Biscuits reside under the sand locally. They are not easily found alive unless you probe with a knife or gloved hand. These creatures congregate so when you find one you find many. Echinoderms are plentiful on “K” Tower, in 40-60 feet, 17 miles out from Dog Island. The urchins are on the tower, the sand dollars and biscuits are under the sand.
But you can also find them as fossils in the Miocene deposits in our caves in North Florida. As the limestone in caves is dissolved by acid rain, fossils drop from the walls and ceiling. I know of sites where the floor is littered with spines and tests (the body) of these creatures. We encourage folks leave them in place because they will collapse when removed from the water.
Of course many of these fine creatures or their remains are washed in on the tide and become the treasure of many salvors….

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August 28, 2014

Perhaps Not This Year…

Our summer began very slowly this year. Every year seems different. Two years ago the summer season began in March and carried strong with a good Scallop crop and clean water off shore through August. This year with all the rain, the water quality off shore was poor early on, holding folks back until July. Fishing has been good ever since. Spear fishing boats that frequent our facility report fulfilling their limits quickly and often in relatively shallow water. Lionfish are on the increase west of Dog Island, but not so eastward into Apalachee Bay. Both times I had a chance to get off shore this season, I caught plenty of fish in our toasty 86-87 degree water, and never saw a Lionfish.
But experience has taught us over the past 5 years that the crowd will collapse after Labor Day, from our average of 15-20 down to less than 5 per day. I can understand that with the start of school, parents are preoccupied with tighter schedules, new structured activities such as after school games, theater, and setting good homework ethics, and ramping up to hunting season. We know, since we continue working closely with the Wakulla Environmental Institute teaching TCC’s Introduction to Professional Diving at FAMU’s Aquatics Center beginning this week. And the Scallop season has been lackluster east of Lanark this summer.
With improvements in availability, training and delivery of a healthier breathing gas known as Nitrox, folks are diving longer, deeper and returning to shore more refreshed than ever. I hear the frustration over limits on fish, the abundance of Goliath Grouper taking harvested fish, and those pesky sharks. But once the stories are told, most agree the thrill of the dive may keep folks diving later in this year. One patron of ours was involved in a dispute with a Goliath who took his speared fish, and the shaft, and his arm, all the way up to his head. The diver did get a bent shaft back, and his lacerated arm, but lost the fish to this demanding creature. He will be good as new in a few weeks and ready to back at it again. More and more folks are using the electronic Shark Shield which is keeping the aggressive sharks at bay as well.
This Fall may be a new one for our local diving interests with a continued off shore emphasis (barring any unforeseen hurricanes). Alas however, I will be absent in September. With my wife Ann recently retired, we journey to Sitka, Alaska for an American Academy of Underwater Sciences meeting. As usual, we will drive there (as far as we can since Sitka is on an island). I leave Wakulla Diving Center in the capable hands of Travis, Dave, Dr. Hess and my visiting older brother for the month we will be gone. Dave will be developing dive destinations for the fall, working with local captains for periodic local dive trips. Travis will install the upgraded hydro testing facility such that we can manage industrial cylinders this fall. Dr. Hess will monitor the growing TCC course and my brother will enjoy talking flying with everyone. We may even retain some interns this fall!
Now who will write my column when I am away?

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September 4, 2014

Change of the Season

The summer is still in full swing, with colder temperatures far off. I was just swimming in the gulf in bath-tub water. Based on previous years’ experience, however, we expect the diving community to shift its focus. After the summer break, the kids are back in school, and business in general is busy again. This usually means less time for the weekend diving trip. It is yet still too hot out for the cave diving community to emerge, as they prefer the colder days in the then warm springs.
For the Diving Center this means a less hectic daily schedule, trying to satisfy the customers on the spot. We still have long days of checking equipment, and filling tanks, but start again on long-term projects. With the increase in personnel, and services offered, so rose the demand for our IT infrastructure. We barely fended off a cyber-attack from China earlier in the year. Our server was not breached, but everything became really slow. The whole system just received an upgrade, with additional high-end safety systems (called fire walls), and faster network connections. The transition went without a glitch. We could now manage over two hundred employees at multiple locations– not that we would want to. Gone are the days of simple home-style computer equipment. We learn, and we grow, and it is a lot of fun. Unlike the general trend, however, to have all the data “in the cloud” and internet-based, we stick to the basics, for safety reasons. The tank-logging database with customer information, and the cash register, will not get connected to the internet at all, and never have been. And, as any cave diver will know, everything has a back up, ready to be deployed should the first unit fail. The financial investment is substantial, however the cost of failure much higher.
Our hydro-station, the pressure-testing facility, is about to receive the latest addition. It has been in the works for over a year, but had to be put off during the busy summer. Although we had had help from four interns, there was no time to bring this urgent project to its conclusion so far. With the new addition, we will be able to test tanks up to the size of K-flasks (the “welding” tanks). Once finalized, we will also get our drive-through back.
Research at the center happens all year long. Four long-term projects, and two medium-term projects are running simultaneously. It is tedious, and usually happens quietly in the background, but the next year promises to become interesting. The Center is much more than just a dive store, as the avid follower of Gregg’s column has figure out by now. In fact, the store is by far the smallest component.
Speaking of Gregg, he is finally taking some well-deserved time off, and travels cross-country to Alaska. Compared to Florida, Alaska is probably about as diagonally opposite as it can possibly be, and not just in a geographical sense. The American Academy of Underwater Science (AAUS) presents Gregg with a life-time award for his contribution to underwater science – long overdue if you ask me. Unlike most self-promoters who are rather vocal about their perceived achievements, as long as I have known Gregg, he has always been quiet about his contributions. Especially at times like these, we need more people like him, don’t you think?

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September 11, 2014

Somewhere between Wrangell and Sitka, Alaska.

Yes, occasionally we must escape from the Dog Days of Wakulla County.
This year, I am invited to Sitka Alaska for the American Academy of Underwater Sciences meetings. My wife and I are aboard the Alaskan Ferry Taku somewhere along the high islands that comprise eastern Alaska. We just passed by a very small floating block of ice in the channels between islands. I’m guessing the water is cold.
The folks in Sitka invited me to join them on a dive. Well, we’ll see. The weather outside is bright, warm and requires only a thin jacket to protect from the breeze.
I have been brought to northern diving research sites before, and for two seasons, near the South Pole. So I understand the hand-crippling, bone-chilling, difficult-breathing, exhilarating nature of such work.
Earlier today we slowed to pass by a vessel with obvious problems with their rigging, but did not stop. I’m sure the captain offered, which is more than I got when stranded off Bamf, Vancouver Island several decades ago. I had been left to serve (impromptu) as the Dive Officer for a marine lab when the standing Officer unexpectedly left for a vacation. The project I was assisting was otherwise left high and dry for the two weeks of his absence, so I agreed to assist.
They had a great heated support facility down on the water front. Cold water required that we dress in dry suits and the open boats required we dress before leaving the dock. Our research sites were located among small islands near the coast, which left a sense of obvious security. But the weeks I was attending were far from ideal, what with one gale after another passing through the area. The need for specimens and data pressed the group out in conditions we Floridians would not dare trod. But the locals were not fazed by such weather. Not wanting to appear an obstructionist, I agreed and dressed out for the dives. For several days, we seemed to do just fine.
We stayed out longer each day as the research ramped up. Sea Urchins were very large and numerous in this area. We were both collecting and surveying the many species that occupied the near shore down to the deep channel rocks. I would drop off a pair of researchers in a bay and pull out to drop the anchor such that they could be picked up more easily. We would rotate and I would get dropped off and later swim out to the anchored boat.
Fortunately I was aboard one day when I casually noticed the anchor had slipped and we were caught in the outgoing tide. Since the boat operator was underwater this shift, I tried to start the engine, with no success. It would not turn over. When the divers surfaced and saw we were adrift (the anchor line was very short) and headed for Japan (between islands), they swam back to the unoccupied island to await rescue. I then reached for the radio, to find it had been left back at the heated facility! I was later informed the radios lasted longer this way before replacement was required. I was at first left with waving at passing ferries, none of which even slowed down to offer assistance. I then tore into the console of the boat and hot-wired the engine, which promptly fired off and thus began our diver rescue efforts.
I thought I would return to the dock a hero, but instead found the dock master furious that I had violated his console. He admitted the wiring was problematic, that diver stranding had happened before, but after a while, he would have considered coming out to look for us. He did finally fix the longstanding faulty ignition switch.
These days I always look carefully when passing a vessel not underway to see if I might help.

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September 18, 2014

Glass Ball.

During my short acceptance speech for the prestigious Conrad Limbaugh Life Time Achievement Award for Leadership in Scientific Diving, hosted by the American Academy of Underwater Sciences in Sitka Alaska, I commented on my journey which lead me to this point in time. Destined to be a diplomat by my parents because I could enculturate easily, my parents took me for a visit to the Bay of Siam in 1962. With a mask and one fin, I became mesmerized by their reef, and dragged away after 8 hours of sheer exploration. I was hooked on the sea. But today those reefs are gone!
By the age of 16, I resided in Hawaii, became a certified diver at Pearl Harbor trained by R&R UDT sailers and soon spent every weekend either diving or surfing. In 1966, a newly formed NAUI offered an 8 day instructor exam. I passed but was only provisionaly certified because of my age. During my freshman year at college, I began my first collegiate dive program. With a degree in Zoology, several years working for the Cooperative Fisheries Unit monitoring Hawaiian reefs and now married, I departed the Islands for Florida. By 1972 I began my second college program at Indian River Community College in collaboration with Harbor Branch Foundation Lab, where I worked as a Diving Lab Tech.
I turned my professional career around when I joined the Scientist-in-the-Sea (SITS) Program in 1974, taught by Captain (Dr.) George Bond in Panama City, where I met my mentor Dr. William Herrnkind from Florida State University. All this time I sought to define a Diving Scientist, and here I found one. I soon began developing my third collegiate dive program, which came to be called Academic Diving, and was emulated by six other institutions in later years.
With graduate degree and a faculty position secured by the end of the decade, I settled into an aggressive multidisciplinary research and training agenda, resulting in producing thousands of highly dive-qualified college students based upon aquatic research on Earth – from Antarctica to the equatorial islands.
In 2000, I moved to the FSU Panama City campus to collaborate the the U.S. Navy and teach the SITS Program and set up my fourth college dive program. By 2002, we were developing the standards for Underwater Crime Scene Investigations.
After I retired from FSU, I continued to pursue rebreathers, cave research and mixed-gas deep diving, ultimately opening a large private facility in Wakulla County, and soon found myself developing my fifth college dive program with the Wakulla Environmental Institute, this time as a consortium. I continued my work with other universities from around the country, Europe, and as far south as Bogota, Colombia, studying the reefs of our ocean.
I ended my comments at the awards banquet by reflecting upon a recent and very bright graduate student that came to me for cave training. When asked, she very confidently said she was going to Mars and fully expected to dive the caves of that planet. I believe her. She is currently at Stanford University studying Astrophysics. I offered to the room full of Diving Officers at most of the Universities that support underwater science, that they too will have the opportunity to train the next generation of extraterrestrial diving scientists.
There was a momentary silence as disbelief settled in to the audience. I now better understand why we face great loss to our marine reefs worldwide. Few can take what we know now and project ahead to logical conclusions.
I now understand what happened to the first reef I visited, the one that so completely changed my life’s journey.
See AAUS story here: http://www.aaus.org/2014_cl_award

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September 25, 2014

Coral.

We heard plenty about the challenges facing corals worldwide at the American Academy of Underwater Sciences last week. Keynote speaker Dr. Charley Veron from Australia, presented picture of vibrant reefs followed by pictures of the same reefs just a few years later, only very dead.
He went on to describe the coral triangle which occupies that area of the world, from Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to the south, the Philippians to the north and the Solomon Islands to the East. Here he speculated is the epicenter of coral species, boasting the greatest diversity, and thus presumed origins of coral worldwide. He pointed to our Caribbean as greatly lacking in coral species by comparison. That got me thinking of the few hard corals I have encountered in the northern Gulf of Mexico, where soft corals such as the Gorgonians, dominate our rock outcroppings.
He went on to discuss why coral reefs are dying at an alarming rate. Higher carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, at almost 400 ppm (.04 percent), up from .03 percent a century ago, has increased the global green house effect which has caused an increase in ocean temperatures.
Corals, especially hard corals, have a delicate relationship with algal symbionts that lives in their tissues call Zooxanthellae. Under the right conditions the coral provides a home for the algae while the algae provide nutrition to the coral.
It seems that when the temperature of the water becomes excessive, the algae, through photosynthesis, generate too much oxygen causing oxygen toxicity to the coral. The coral in turn must pump them out; the coral then loses its color and may die. This blanching condition permits more damaging algae to overwhelm and erode the reef.
Other challenges affect the reef and it’s inhabitants as a result of higher carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. The ocean is a great CO2 sponge, possibly the greatest on the planet, but in doing so, the ocean’s pH is becoming more acidic. With increased acidity, marine organisms such as shellfish are impeded in their efforts to pull calcium from their environment to build their shells. The coral reef is made of calcium carbonate, another component diminished by the increased acidification of the ocean. The oceans are already stressed due to the pollution of man from oil spills to terrestrial runoff to add this increasing environmental pressure world-wide. When will it end?
Dr. Vern was not optimistic. He seemed resigned to the fact that our atmospheric CO2 will continue to escalate in the decades to come. No one at the conference could provide encouragement, having seen first-hand the decline of virtually every coral reef. My first encounter with a beautiful reef off Ban Satahepe, in the Bay of Siam, is reported to be gone, completely! Our Florida Keys have been in decline since I first visited them in the early 1970, when I saw Elkhorn and Stag Horn Corals, now a rare treat. When I recently dove Curacao on a research project, we saw a lone Stag Horn Coral head up against a breakwater, something our team commented on all day.
Dr. Vern has been criticized for his prediction, which he sincerely hopes will not come to pass, that his Great Barrier Reef will be gone in 20 years. Think about it and think about what can be done to prevent it! A coral reef is a tragic loss with dire greater consequences.

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October 2, 2014

Back to Another Future.

For more than a week now I have been diligently working with my gentleman farmer youngest brother way out west in Oregon. He lives in a ranch-like home with boardwalks that overlook the Sauslaw Valley, very near the Pacific Ocean.
During our lunch break we could watch the salmon fishing boats run up and down the river, a thousand feet below. I am a frequent visitor, driving further west after the DEMA Diving Convention every two years, to visit vendors and his farm. Yes, I drive across the country often.
Every year he shows off his crop of corn, apples, tomatoes, beans, various berries and now artichokes! His Rhode Island Red chickens are almost pets, following him and the deer that invade the property looking for a stray apple thrown their way. The eggs are so fresh and delicious; I better appreciate the trend these days for many in Wakulla to have a flock at home. And they keep the place clear of bugs! He tells me he’s considering cows in his pasture next year, what with the price of milk and beef these days.
He is more than just a subsistence farmer. He has embraced photovoltaic power on his roof, and recycles just about everything. Many years ago he told me about making biodiesel. I researched the idea out and found economy in the technology. I built my first Appleseed reactor within the year and when I next visited him, I was driving a diesel Jetta and pulling a trailer with all my fuel for the entire 6,000 mile trip. I then taught him how to blend fuels on my next visit. But he carried it much further. Ever heard of an oil furnace? He now uses the same oil from local restaurants to heat his home in the winter. He has a diesel generator coming on line and expects to exceed his power requirements using recycled energy very soon.
Two years ago I arrived to find he had taken the next step converting his car into a grease car. Rather than blend fuels, he simply burns the raw oil straight. He captured my attention when passing through that year, and yes, my Jetta is now a grease car. We returned from Oregon, a 3,000 mile trip, on one very large tank of used cooking oil.
Of course this was all several years ago and things improve. One could say we were barnstorming back then. But today, automation and computer control is the next best option.
I found myself at his place during this year’s pilgrimage out west, after dragging an old sailboat across the country for my daughter, Nicole. She has a new job as an engineer for a Department of Energy funded laboratory in Washington State. It took the diesel Sprinter to accomplish this task! I then left my wife to visit with relatives in Washington and I lit out for Oregon. When my brother heard I had brought this vehicle, he suggested we convert it to grease as well. New, computer controlled kits are available in Seattle, so as I passed through, I picked one up.
The proposed weekend project took more than a week of 16 hour days, but in the end, we did a fine job and made up a stock of 150 gallons of cooking oil to get home with. As I progress into retirement, I find myself rediscovering values that our ancestors knew a long time ago – how to stay warm, get around and live well using recycled materials as just one example.
Now, what am I going to tell my wife when she finds out what I did with the Sprinter!

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October 9, 2014

Toxic algae, a threat to our shores?

By GS and TK

This summer brought a bountiful harvest of fresh fish to our local spearfishing community. While late to get started due to the heavy early summer rains, the water cleared and warmed up compared to the last two summers. Everything was looking up for a strong fall season of spearfishing and open water diving offshore.
That all changed, sometime mid-September, when reports reached us of a toxic algal bloom in the Gulf and dead fish floating on the surface. The organism responsible for red tide is called Karenia brevis. This bloom has been observed extending in patches from the northeast Florida Gulf of Mexico down to St Petersburg.
This algae can kill fish, cause health problems to swimmers, and is known for discoloring the surface water with a red or brown color.
The state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has a website with an up-to-date map of where these algae bloom patches are taking place off our coastal boundary. They report the bloom is concentrated closer to Hernando County, with many grouper, snapper, hogfish and crabs floating on the surface.
K. brevis is a microscopic, single-celled, photosynthetic organism who’s population can explode under the right light and nutrient conditions frequently along Florida coastal waters. This algae naturally produces a suite of potent neurotoxins which cause gastrointestinal and neurological problems in other organisms (including people) and are responsible for large die-offs of marine organisms and seabirds. Some sources say Florida red tide blooms are about 10- to 15-fold more abundant than they were 50 years ago. Red Tide outbreaks have been known to occur since the arrival of the Spanish explorers of the 15th century, although not nearly as common, or for as lengthy a duration as they occur now.
Patches of alga blooms are routinely observed offshore along the west coast of Florida this time of the year. The University of South Florida and the FWC are collaborating to track these patches and develop a predictive model to better advise the public as to what to expect. Satellite images from the University of South Florida show only the northernmost section of the bloom extending offshore between Franklin and Citrus counties approximately 5 to 35 miles offshore, dependent on location.
They are currently tracking patches of the algae southward between Wakulla and Taylor counties and east-southeast of Franklin County which are predicted to continue to move west. Offshore of Pasco and Hernando counties, the surface patch is predicted to move northwest, and bottom waters are predicted to move northeast along the coast.
At the moment the bloom is not reported to be on our local beaches but offshore divers are still reporting floating dead fish to us. Fishermen and swimmers should stay informed before heading out for a day on the water until this seasonal menace completes its cycle.
I wonder if the Red Tide affects the booming Lionfish population?

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October 16, 2014

Time Underwater

I hear about this topic with every class I teach, and I just finished another Rebreather class last week. The common statement is “where did the time go?”. Coupled with such an observation comes the challenge I face to fit a long list of skills into 800-1000 minutes that most of my rebreather classes demand to reach an acceptable proficiency. It’s all about an efficient use of time underwater.
My rebreather class begin with two 12 hour days of lectures and shop/pool practicals to just introduce the basic concepts to an already qualified scuba diver. We know that only 25% of what we lecture will stiay with the student, perhaps 50% if they study their books at night. So we repeat critical concepts often and include these points on a final exam. What I have found however, due to the context of the dry classroom and shop having little in common with the underwater environment, very little information carries over when we go underwater. My students tell me time drags while in class.
Day 3 through 8 are spent driving (and lecturing) 1000 miles out of the county to spend a minimum of 120 minutes underwater training critical skills each day. By the end of the class the underwater time is up to 240 minutes. Why so much time in training underwater? I must re-train the concepts because the student does not remember what we said in class. They hardly remember what we say just before getting in the water! And conversely, they hardly remember what was done when they were in the water, after they get out. The problem is known as contextual learning and is responsible for the many times you get up to get something in another room and once there forget what you were looking for. Time.
I have therefore devised many educational tools to permit my students the opportunity to discover learn (even though we have discussed it before), skills and knowledge while underwater. And soon after we exit I spend time reviewing the skill so that we can keep it on the mind once dry. These techniques are repeated often day after day building from simple skills to complex as I proudly watch the student “mature” underwater. Example? Sure.
Rebreathers are wonderful machines, but like every machine, they fail. When your car shuts down on the freeway, you coast to the side and call for help. When a rebreather shuts down, you “bail out” and return to the surface, or move your life support to another system you carry at all times, but seldom use, called open circuit gas. Day one of the training, I ask the student to remove his small bail-out cylinder and put it back on underwater. I ask them to switch from the rebreather to the bail-out cylinder while at the surface. By day 2, I ask them to bail-out at depth using their built in rebreather regulator (called a BOV). By the third day they are bailing out to the cylinder independent of the rebreather. And the rest of the class they expand to swapping the cylinder with their buddy, conduct diagnostics of the failed rebreather, and locating alternative ways to get valuable oxygen while at depth. My students are busy when underwater.
Students routinely ask for more time underwater every day until exhaustion sets in by day 6 or 7. People learn more slowly when exhausted. But lessons set to muscle memory become apparent when exhausted, which is why we teach using such saturation techniques. There is never enough time!

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October 23, 2014

Trim underwater.

Trim is defined differently by many while underwater. Many UW instructors will say a diver is trim when neutrally buoyant, thus capable of staying in the water column without much effort.
Indeed, such a condition is greatly desirable, but it is called being neutrally buoyant. Trim does have a buoyant component. A trim diver is found to be laying horizontally in the water column, without effort. That is to say, the diver requires little effort to kick or (please don’t paddle your hands) to stay neutrally buoyant laying flat on his or her belly.
Why do we want to be trim? Water is 800 times more dense than air. We walk through air easily, but not so underwater. To move through water, we need to present as small a surface area as possible to the oncoming water, to slip through this denser medium with a minimum of effort. Being out of trim is asking for grater expenditure of energy, resulting in breathing more precious breathing gas, resulting in shorter dives and getting more fatigued as the dive progresses.
Yes, with more effort expended, you also absorb more inert gas (nitrogen), which increases decompression stress with a commensurate increase in the risk of decompression sickness.
But we are human! We learn how to locomote (walk) early in life, once we graduate from crawling to a biped modality. The lighter density of air usually permits us to move rapidly, unless facing a stiff headwind. We are so well trained that when we go underwater we are naturally inclined to change our trim and go vertical in the water column, especially when we are stressed. There are many reasons NOT to be vertical underwater. Oh, let me count the ways!
Vertical divers damage fragile benthic (bottom) creature such as coral, invertebrates and algae. Vertical divers are often injured by sea urchin spines, sting rays, and coral, all acting defensively. Vertical divers seem to always be kicking, which causes a large volume of water to be sent to the bottom. Most of our sea floors have sediment that is easily kicked up, thus reducing the visibility for everyone around.
With the loss of visibility, comes increased stress and since vertical divers are heads up, the tendency is to rocket to the surface, exposing dangerous barotraumas (gas spaces expanding with limited escape possibilities), and decompression sickness (to fast an ascent).
Trim became a critical challenge this past weekend during freshwater checkout dives. Students, taught in the pool to conduct exercises on the floor of the pool returned to their training when stressed in an unexpected limited visibility of the real underwater world. They went vertical, kicked down and made conditions intolerable very quickly. I look forward to our next class when I introduce marine life to the mix. Can you imagine kicking up some very poisonous Lion Fish below you as the visibility drops? Yeah, thought you might get the drift….
So what might be considered ideal? Work at laying flat while underwater. Add weight to you equipment that permits you to relax while horizontal. This may require moving your cylinder up further or placing small weights on the harness. Choose fins that are neutral in the water. Use a BC with integrated weights kept in small waist pockets. Practice the skill of smoothly swimming horizontally using a resting kick like the frog kick. Don’t use your hands to paddle.
And stay off the bottom! You will be a happier, more relaxed and safer diver for it. Become a trim diver!

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October 30, 2014

Stone Crab

Our Stone Crab Festival brought recollections of a time long gone by when Dr. William Lindburg (UF Professor) and I applied for and received a Sea Grant to study the reproductive habits of Minippe mercenaria , the Florida Stone Crab. The objective of our study was to better understand the mating strategy and use of habitat of these creatures by placing target specific reef rubble piles in several carefully considered patterns in areas where they frequented but not anywhere near existing reef habitat. Two sites were selected, one off Wakulla and one of Cedar Key, Florida. After a presentation on the proposed project in Wakulla County, we were “discouraged” to pursue the reef by local commercial fisherman. So we moved ahead to enlarge the Cedar Key sites.
I found and secured surplus broken construction cinder block from Hansen, Wood, and Houle, just south of Tallahassee, Florida. Our design consisted of a single vertical rebar surrounded by intact cinder block, set in a circle and filled in with rubble. Cinder block had previously been found to be viable habitat for Stone Crab. We spent the entire summer (mid 1980s) deploying and building over 200 of these piles in various configurations from congested to widely separated. As we rested to make our fist observations, a hurricane came in over our site and stalled for 2-3 days, washing back and forth. When we finally got out to inspect for damage, the reefs were all GONE! Nothing but sand dunes…..
I knew the rebar would provide me with the magnetic signature of each rubble mound, so I borrowed a magnetometer and sure enough, found them under 4-6 feet of sand dunes. The rebar was sand scraped shinny clean on one side. The rubble was swept in the opposite direction 3-6 feet on those sites I dug out. Needless to say, we were devastated at the loss, applying for additional funds to continue the three year project. This time I went to an engineer, my father (who I currently care fore at 95 years old). After a good laugh at our expense, he informed us we needed to “float” our reef or the off shore sand dunes would surely swallow them up again. He took the cinder block design we used and placed them facing outward in a wooden mould such that the holes were kept intact and filled the mould with surplus concrete. I added some wire as a rebar to help hold the module together.
Over the next winter, my students and I built over 200 of these wooden modules at the same Hansen, Wood and Houle facility, and worked with their concrete truck drivers to fill the modules with left over concrete. We then secured several flat bed railroad cars and using a fork lift, loaded them for shipment down to Cedar Key. Bill secured a barge and loaded them on for deployment the next summer. The next hurricane did not bury our reef, nor have they ever since! The improved module design floated, with block open at the sand line, over the sand dunes as the dunes moved along with the wind driven current.
During the next three years, we discovered that food, not mating strategy limits the distribution of the Stone Crab. Every isolated module developed a hallo in the sand that represented the distance the crab was willing to venture for food, beyond the protection of a secure habitat. When modules were congested, the hallo extended from the collection of modules. And the Stone Crab appeared to appreciate the habitat, packing our modules with up to 10 critters each at times. When the food ran out, the crab simply moved on to better habitat.
I was ready to suggest that we feed the reef! All that Blue Crab waist that at the time was filling our land fill sites would do nicely, but alas, folks though that would sound too much like garbage ocean dumping.

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November 6, 2014

Air Water Interface

Our semester long PEN class, taught at Tallahassee Community College twice a year, has a lecture dedicated to the Dangers Above and the Dangers Below in diving. I spend time with a focus on deep diving and on overhead diving (underwater Caves). But there is another approach to this topic, best called the dangers of the Air-Water Interface; something we must pass through as we transition from land creature to water creature.
We are most familiar with our land creature form. This creature walks upright on two feet, wears clothing to stay warm, uses very little technology to breath the abundant air around him/her, and with little regard as to its quality or quantity. This creature can usually see very well and for great distances. During our summer, this creature may live in “air conditioned” enclosed environments; during the winter, they may live in these same environments that are now heated. Gravity plays a large role in the locomotion of this creature, indeed in most aspects of its life. Falling down is of great concern for most, often resulting in injury when loss of balance happens.
Unless you have spent time in the underwater world, you may not be aware of the challenges (adaptations) that present themselves with the water creature. Most do not “walk” vertically, but rather move about in the horizontal inclination. Since the environment is 800 times as dense as the air above, creatures must be streamlined to efficiently move against such resistance. Insulation for water creatures is in the form of a skin fat such as what we find with porpoises. Most water creatures however, are “cold blooded”, a term that refers to their maintaining their body temperature close to the ambient temperature. Most water creatures must migrate to warmer environments if they cannot stand the current conditions. Oxygen in the water is extracted by gills or through the skin, unless you are an air breather, in which case you must return to the surface to gulp air. Vision in the water is seldom very good, so most water creatures have evolved much improved sense of taste, electronic disturbance and/or pressure changes (sound). Gravity to many water creature is accommodated with an air bladder to maintain a neutral buoyancy, which reduces effort when moving. But most stay or settle on the bottom and move very little. Falling down is of little consequence.
When our land creature ventures underwater, there is a period of care and adjustment required. I once watched a Pelican dive for a fish, only to break its neck in the 6 inch deep water. Divers are injured when they jump on top of other divers swimming just below the water. The denser water becomes hard to penetrate when entering fast! One of our staff years ago jumped off a conning tower and slapped the side of his head, only to find he ruptured his internal ear structure. Once safely underwater, our land creature must then adjust from vertical to the horizontal. Penguins do this easily, walking vertically up to the ice edge and plunging into the water horizontally, remaining so until they exit. People find this exercise difficult! Descending in the water monitoring breathing gasses, breathing slowly and deeply, clearing pressure in the ears, staying horizontally while searching for navigation aids in limited visibility keeps our land creature very busy. At least they don’t need to rush back to the surface for every breath!
Thermal and decompression clocks limit their visit underwater, so soon enough, they are returning to the surface, which may not have remained as calm as it did when they jumped in. If on a boat, the climb aboard may seem an unexpected challenge. The heavy back mounted cylinder makes climbing the ladder precarious especially in a rough sea. My balance is always precarious during this time as I transition slowly to the land environment requiring a vertical stance.
But that is what training is all about: guiding students through portals into and out of a foreign environment that we call the underwater world.

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November 13, 2014

Wilburn “Sonny” Cockrell

You may have heard that Sonny Cockrell passed away last month at the age of 73. He was a resident of Tallahassee in his retirement, but hardly inactive in his passion for underwater archaeology.
He was, for a while, Florida’s Underwater Archaeologist.
I first met Sonny back in the 1970s when he worked near Venice, Florida on the Warm Mineral Springs human occupation site. My wife, once an archaeologist, spent the 1976 field season working for Sonny, during the excavation of the 70-foot ledge where they found a human burial site. Her team also mapped springs creating a three-dimensional map. I was a graduate student at FSU back then, and would drive down to visit her. I was honored when he invited me to help on the site. I held the underwater camera mostly, but it was a thrill as Sonny’s research used advanced underwater research technology and techniques I would later incorporate into my classes.
When he joined the faculty at Manatee Community College, he took the research project with him. With legislative funding, he expanded the project and pressed deeper into the 200-plus-foot deep site. He began excavating at the 160-foot depth near the top of the debris cone in the middle of the spring. Warm Mineral Springs has a temperature of 90-plus degrees at that depth, with preserving minerals that stabilized cultural materials in its 30,000 year old deposits.
Sonny invited me down to dive and photograph the cave entrance. On air, which is all we had back then, the narcosis was challenging. After a few pictures, we drifted off topic and only when my watch alarm woke me up, did I realize we both had fallen asleep in the deep, dark, warm spring. After a lengthy exit, we agreed never to take such risks.
One of his staff, before we knew anything about the challenges of decompression stress, returned from depth to the 30-foot decompression stop, coughed, and passed out. He was recovered to the surface and rushed to Shands Hyperbaric Chamber in Gainesville and survived, but with deficits. The ensuing funding period saw his project moved by the Legislature to FSU and under my risk management care. Much of his budget went to medical bills which pressured his staff to regroup.
Our friendship was strained and then lost when I began to exert safety management practices that Sonny was not comfortable implementing. But over the following year, these changes were put in place: A resident Dive Safety Officer, a resident hyperbaric chamber, as yet untested (back then) Trimix and Nitrox breathing gas, and more. He would rail at me that we were making history on every front, then expect less supervision. I devoted several of my years to supporting his project, but could never satisfy him. Eventually, the state funding dried up and he moved on.
One day, out of the blue, two 18-wheeler trucks pulled up to my FSU facility and unloaded tons of dive technology. I was asked to sign for it, sight unseen! For the next two weeks I took graduate students into a complete inventory of the Warm Mineral Springs technology. We discovered many interesting masteries, such as why pumping 100 percent through an air compressor is not advised (we found the ruptured pieces). We recorded serial numbers and photographed (with my personal camera) the entire $30,000-plus inventory.
Six months later, an anonymous call to the Comptroller’s Office accused the FSU Marine Lab Director and me of selling off this inventory for personal gain. I was never thanked for my thoughtful move to conduct the inventory, but I was escorted off campus until the investigation could review the thick binder that I had placed on my office shelf.
Sonny and I met one last time as friends years later at the surplus sale of much of the once grand University’s Dive Program inventory after we were both retired. Neither one of us bought a thing.

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November 20, 2014

Inspiration.

With 95 percent of the planet’s surface covered by water, how can students safely experience this underwater world and find inspiration to pursue a career there? For the past year, several of us have been offering glimpses of this world through a Tallahassee Community College Wakulla Environmental Institute (WEI) course called Introduction to Professional Diving. Yes, of course, the WEI is all about preparing students for aquatic jobs, but basic skills and inspiration are pre-requisites.
We began with weekly lectures opening as many black boxes about working underwater as possible. The basics included topics in oceanography (wind, waves and currents), physics (environment density), human physiology (cells under pressure), marine life (hazardous and otherwise), and the tools (Nitrox breathing mixtures, & management of decompression stress) needed to avoid the harmful effects of an aquatic existence. We offered skilling in buoyancy control in a three dimensional environment, trim with improved propulsion, and underwater sight. By adding stored breathing gasses, our intrepid students stayed underwater longer than ever before, at first with one cylinder on their back, then two, then one on each side, then gasses supplied from the surface. With each improvement came a realization that working in this alien world was not only possible, it was exciting! They began by building structures underwater, then surveyed creatures underwater, performed rescues and ultimately conducting work without sight.
Last week we finally introduced commercial diving, both in lecture discussing the nature of underwater employment as a diver, and in the pool, diving the hard hat called the Superlite 17. We were able to rebuild several surplus hard hats and a Dive Control Station (DCS) for surface supplied communications and gasses delivered through a 4-cable umbilical to the Superlite rigged divers underwater. Students rotated through the role of DCS manager, Tender, Diver and Standby such that by the end of the day, they experienced the full potential of the technology. Yes, they talked underwater to and from the surface, through 150 feet of umbilical.
Several days later they were conducting checkout dives off the St. Andrews Jetties in Panama City, part of the required exposure to the real underwater world, to become a certified diver. But the best is yet to come. This week, with the assistance of the Leon County Sheriff’s Dive Team, these same students will be asked to solve an underwater (sham) crime scene, using the tools they have been provided, and a new tool called the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV). Dr. Joerg Hess from Rebreather Solutions will discuss Underwater Criminology and the tools used by that discipline, before turning the pool over to the students to resolve their next challenge. FAMU’s Criminology Department is expected to participate since the (mock) crime scene is in their pool!
This exciting WEI course winds up with lectures on Closed Circuit Rebreathers and pool dives using the latest Rebreather technology (5 hour bottom time and no bubbles!). The final pool session is actually a visit to the Hyperbaric Chamber located at the Capital Regional Medical Center, under the direction of William Kepper, MD.
Every step of the way, students are exposed to employment opportunity, from a Dive Technologist, to Recreational Leader (AI, Dive Master & Instructor),to a Diving Scientist, to a Commercial Diver, to an Underwater Criminologist, to a Hyperbaric Specialist, just to name a few.
Our motive is to inspire these students to seek a career underwater.

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November 27, 2014

A tall tail (not really) .

This summer I have been fortunate to join various spearfishing boats as an invited guest. Over the past decade I have listened to stories of various fishing techniques using various technology, all quite exciting.
But only in the last few seasons have I been able to engage again in this marvelous activity.
We began in 2010 to carry spearfishing equipment that was promoted by diving distributors. That slowly changed as our customers described what worked in our region. Now we support three lines and use them ourselves.
The guns started out with a single shaft and band, but now can have multiple shafts (free shafts) and bands for multiple shots and greater power. They have become very technical, with kill spikes, lights and even cameras.
Even so, the hunter’s skill is more important. Last year I spoke of one group that spends no more than 20 minutes on a site, hovering above a reef and spearing downward. Their advantage of surprise works until the fish have fled or taken cover in crevices.
What they don’t get in that short period is abandoned for another day. They also leave before the sharks can find them. These folks make up to eight dives in a day and are very effective bringing in the largest fish.
I however, enjoy a different strategy: fewer but longer dives. I settle into the reef and observe for the first 10 minutes, scoping out the reef, and letting the fish adjust to my presence. I watch to confirm preferred holes they duck into when I approach. When I select a fish, I do not chase it, but rather move diagonally looking away from it until I am in range.
Once I have caught and subdued a fish, I place it on a metal stringer, pin the fish to the reef and back off to observe. Within a few minutes, life returns to the reef as most return to inspect the stringer for available food. Surprisingly, even bigger fish come out and swim over to the stringer.
Again, I observe and make my next selection. After a while I will make a large sweep off the reef in search of those fish that may have moved off site and blanched to match the sand. They seem to think they are invisible and usually let me approach close enough to decide, or not, to take a shot.
I am selective as I know my limits and want the maximum pounds for the day’s effort. While the sport is thrilling because we are underwater, I spear fish because I love to eat them. But so do other fish in the sea, namely sharks.
Increasingly, I am visited by sharks invited to my table due to the blood in the water. The development of the Shark Shield has reduced this problem, but only if you are close to such a repellant. Since I don’t own one (yet), I dive with folks who do.
During the summer, the water is warm (86 degrees), and the fish are plentiful. The sharks I saw were small and fled when my partner’s repellant was activated. But now the waters are cooling, (last weekend was a cool 62 degrees), the fish are on the move and I must now wear a thick wet suit to stay warm.
Friday, I became separated from my partner (the guy with the repellant) and soon looked up to see the tail (the best part of a shark to see while underwater) swimming away from me. It was a tall tail (not a story), three times the height of the reef, with the distinct shape of a very large Bull Shark (my first encounter of this species). I immediately decided I needed to do more hook and line fishing and took a diagonal trek to the boat and exited the water.
My partner soon came to the surface, having seen no shark, and also got out. We shot nothing that day.

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December 4, 2014

Dive Computers.

By Travis Kersting

It seems like electronics technology is changing every day. New phones, computers, operating systems, GPS, etc are popping up regularly and the older technology becomes less expensive and more widely distributed. In scuba we see similar trends with new products coming out all the time but there is a caveat.
The technology you touch every day usually becomes faster, more streamlined, added features to match the upgraded performance, and usually in a pretty new aesthetically appealing package. In diving the same technology just pops up with a new name as one company sells its old designs to another. Something thought as revolutionary by Dacor in the 1990s, a company now defunct, is a popular new feature on regulators from Mares.
It’s uncommon to see anything truly new in scuba. Dive computers calculate and log dive, temperature, and oxygen profiles, some even gas pressure. Typically, items like dive computers just get some basic upgrades, firmware changes, and maybe a new color before being released again at a higher price. The dive computers of my generation in diving, about the last 15 years, have all looked essentially the same and come with the same complex user interface. There are outliers whom are very easy to read and operate but they come with a price tag that is outside of what most divers are willing to spend, especially initially.
It’s rare that I can pick up a “puck” style computer and make it work straight away and I work around computers all the time. Some only have one button for the user to navigate menus and modify variables. Though these one, two, and even 3 button computers range in price from only a hundred or so dollars to nearly a thousand they can still be complex to operate and limiting in their abilities. Features like digital compasses are not uncommon these days on the mid-high priced models and “air integration” via wireless or console connection is increasingly popular.
Your other option is a dive computer that is marketed to the “tech-diver” but which is actually easier to use. Companies like Shearwater Research have even made user changeable modes for recreational or more technical diving. The words on the computers screens are easier to see, via OLED or color LED displays. Menu options feature complete words instead of acronyms. The computers are easy to read day or night without backlit displays. Batteries are user changeable. Really the list of positives is pretty long but you have to get around two obstacles, size and price. Ordinarily these computers are a bit less ergonomic and larger but their easy to read screens account for the size. The price usually starts around a thousand dollars and goes up from there depending on brand, features, etc.
The computer from Atomic, called the Cobalt, is the iPhone of dive computers right now and is targeted to the recreational diver. I’m sure a 2-year-old could program in a nitrox mix and change the date/time without supervision. The cobalt is currently a console computer only but they keep telling me a wrist mount unit is in the works. This model ships from Utah too so there are no concerns with delays from international shipping.
This is the time of year to watch for specials and if something like a Shearwater is on your Christmas list it’s a great time to buy. Shearwater products are produced in Canada and the Canadian to American dollar exchange is currently in your favor. Shearwater’s ship to us via UPS and arrive the next day from Canada so there are no delays from them either.
Recreational or technical, it doesn’t matter, if you are serious about your diving hobby don’t skimp and buy a dive computer that will require you to read the manual before every dive. Look for something that will grow with your needs and that you can have confidence in.

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December 11, 2014

Have We Become UW Gas Junkies?

On our drive back from the current Rebreather Cave with Trimix (helium) three hour training dive today, my student asked how we could expand his short termed wonderful feeling he was enjoying.
Without hesitation, I said just increase the partial pressure of oxygen during the dive. The oxygen window, a period of youthful energy felt by many after an enriched gas dive, seems to depend upon how much oxygen we consume underwater. How odd, I reflected a short time later, that I would jump to such a conclusion, without also pointing out the risks of exposure to dramatically elevated oxygen, let alone any of our breathing gases.
Years ago, many of us concluded that the appeal to recreational diving was based upon the narcotic effect on our brain by the elevated partial pressure of nitrogen in our breathing air at depths below 100 feet. Back in the 1960s, when I was training to dive, we were taught “Martini’s Law.” It held that for every 33 feet of depth exposure (14.7 psi of pressure) or increasing the ambient pressure by that of the atmospheric pressure above sea level, our brain would be affected similarly to drinking one Martini. Therefore, 66 feet would be like drinking two martinis, 99 feet like three and so forth. I think you get the picture.
Numerically, realize air has 79 percent nitrogen, which builds up rapidly as we dive deeper, as does its neurological effect on our brain. Most divers obsess over the increased decompression stress which requires more time decompressing at shallow depth to safely off gas this nitrogen.
But quietly, they revel in the resulting cheap narcosis at depth with no hangover when we return to the surface. At 200 feet with 60 degree water, I felt no pain and no cold during a long dive, only to suffer hypothermia when I returned to the sunny Bahamian surface. Ah yes, and we call it the “Rapture of the Deep.”
It is also called Hyperbaric Oxygen (HBO), when at 132 feet breathing air you are exposed to an equivalent gas to pure oxygen when breathed at the surface. Breathing a 50 percent Nitrox blend at 70 feet will expose you to 1.6 times that pure oxygen, with comparable therapeutic effect! Hospital based hyperbaric chambers routinely take advantage of this therapeutic feature that divers take for granted. The internet has sites that boast of exercise protocols (on treadmills or bikes) while breathing pure oxygen. Are we divers healthier for it?
For the past three decades we have added oxygen to our breathing air to reduce the nitrogen and decompression stress. With such blends we can stay down longer, and we feel so much better when we return! Let me blend you a “happy gas,” limited as it is to depth, that will let you enjoy the undersea adventure even more (than air) while invigorating you once you return. And now with rebreather technology, we control the partial pressure of the oxygen throughout the dive. Now, you can increase or decrease the dose of oxygen to suit your objectives: more or less decompression stress and after dive oxygen rejuvenation. You may even control the narcosis with a Trimix blend using some helium, tuned to a predetermined narcotic depth. Will we all soon be breathing Trimix for the best predicted effect?
AnchorThis boutique of breathing gasses carries a warning label. Enriched air has toxic exposure variables within the recreational depths if not kept within safe limits. Long exposure to elevated oxygen can cause free radical damage to tissues. Trimix, as a gas, is less forgiving than oxygen/nitrogen gasses when mistakes are made. It’s a new world out there, divers.
If you don’t know how to blend these brews, know the quality of your brew master!

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December 18, 2014

On the Road Again

Travis and I spent the past week ramping up for another Science Diving project, this time in the exotic Islands of San Andres. Over the past two years, we have been training a team of scientists from the University of the Andes out of Bogota, Colombia, in the art of rebreather diving. At first, the adventure was cautiously attended, small and hesitant steps permitting silent data collections (mostly fishery surveys) down to 40 meters (130 feet). But soon they were spending 3 to 4 hours underwater at a time, collecting more and better data than expected. A year ago I was asked to continue the training in Curacao, now down to 64 meters (200 feet) on Trimix (a helium air mixture). By then, the team was excited, sharing their new found capacity with the Venezuelans and Brazilians attending the Carmabi Marine Lab; we surveyed from depth up to the maximum depths the Venezuelans and Brazilians could survey downward. And the word spread. New faculty came to Wakulla for basic rebreather training over the past year, while experienced faculty came for Cave rebreather training.
Over a week ago we got the call that even more faculty want the basics on rebreathers, but could we conduct the class in San Andres? Colombia owns the San Andreas Islands, even though they are located off the Nicaragua coastline. The islands are tropical, with clear water and walls exceeding 100 meters (300 feet) in depth. Just to dive these deep sites will require helium, a very costly and thus hard to find commodity. The invitation was to not only train the next wave of diving scientists, swelling their ranks to 8, but to begin the construction of a marine lab on the island. The process will take more than a year, but will open another research station in the Caribbean, one dedicated to deep research and the technology required to get to depths below 64 meters: the Mesophotic Zone.
Travis and I just spent the day securing needed supplies for the upcoming class, palatalizing inventory for shipment via the Port of Miami, on their weekly supply boat to the Islands. We are up to our eyeballs with invoices, customs forms, Bills of Laden, shrink wrap, training manuals and tied down straps. But, by 11 PM the Sprinter van was filled to capacity with rebreathers, exotic gasses and tools to be delivered tomorrow in Miami, to make it to San Andres by January 3, when everyone convenes to start training. The project will last 3 weeks, reach depths of 100 meters and the survey of several reefs. Already, a second trip is scheduled in May to continue the lab’s build-up, placing exotic gas blending technology not routinely found at most marine labs in this country. Deep diving scooters will be added to the in-water survey technology as soon as the University’s evaluation council approves the next phase of the project mid-January.
We, from sleepy Wakulla County, are proud to participate in Dr. Juan Sanchez’s vision of the new marine biology, now extended to 100 meters and beyond. Once built, these facilities will function much like the Carmabi Lab does in the south Caribbean, a resource for all interested research parties to use/share. Yes, I will send pictures of our progress and faithfully report from 100 meters in the New Year.

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December 24, 2014

The Christmas Tree Wreck

Every year the schooner Rouse Simmons would arrive just before Christmas in the port of Chicago, loaded with Christmas trees from the upper Michigan forest. Herman Schuenemann, captain of the 123 foot Rouse Simmons (built in Milwaukee in 1868), would spend the fall north of Lake Michigan cutting trees for transport to the docks of Chicago aboard his schooner. There, customers would visit Captain Santa, as he was affectionately called, and would buy his trees directly off the schooner’s deck.
But this year, 1912, he lingered, some say because he was also hunting venison far too late into the winter. The Rouse Simmons, a vessel now 44 years old, well past its prime and worn out from hauling many heavy loads of lumber, was described by dock observers as heavily loaded with as many as 5,000 trees filling the cargo hold and covering its deck. She pulled out on Nov. 22, coinciding with a tremendous northern storm that was to send three other vessels to the bottom of this lake. The next day, off Kewaunee, Wis., the Life Saving Station observed a Schooner with flag at half mast, a sign of distress, 5 miles off shore in a NW gale. Surf men from Two Rivers, just to the south, dispatched a power boat but found no trace of the Rouse Simmons. Over the next few weeks pine trees would float ashore along the western coastline of Lake Michigan. In 1924 Herman’s wallet was retrieved, caught in fishing net and returned to the family.
As I descended into cold Lake Michigan waters in 2006, as part of a forensic study by the Wisconsin Historic Society of the recently discovered wreck site of the Rouse Simmons, I was awed by the clarity of the water (thanks to an invasive zebra mussel that can be found encrusting everything hard). And there laid out in front of me is a schooner just like it looked after impact with the lake floor at 170 feet, facing north with all of its rigging spread out in front of the bow. With me is the last of the schooner riggers, Dr. Jim Garey, now a microbiologist and fellow rebreather diver. State UW Archaeologist Keith Meverden and his very capable staff have mapped the vessel creating a mosaic, now awaiting a forensic evaluation as to why the ship went down.
For two weeks we identified and located rigging in the debris field that might explain what happened. At night we would scour Jim’s rigging manuals and begin to lay out scenarios to explain what we found. The mizzen was sheared off 8 feet above the deck. The massive main mast was sheared off at the deck. The foremast was lifted out of its cradle and laid next to the main mast both pointed forward off the bow. The rest of the rigging still attached lay with corresponding masts. The hull was intact, but the steerage was missing and reported found some distance away by other divers. The anchor chain was pinned in place and stretching off the bow along the masts.
We concluded that the captain lost steerage with the loss of his mizzen and steerage, which were located beside each other. The captain would have deployed his anchor, knowing the shore was close by. When the anchor bit into the lake floor, the overloaded schooner was violently pulled around to face the gale and with such large fetch crated waves, the bow was suddenly plunged deeply into the water. The main mast snapped at the deck, falling forward placing even greater weight on the bow. Further waves now swamped water over the bow. As the flooded ship began its descent, the foremast buoyed up by the water slid up out of its cradle and also fell forward coming to rest laid out as we later came to inspect it almost a century later. Yes, the wreck still had Christmas trees in the hold, and remnants of past passengers, now properly laid to rest. Months later the anchor was found right where we predicted it should have been.
The technology that made this study possible was provided and taught primarily from our sleepy little Wakulla County.

http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2006/winter/christmas-tree.html

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December 31, 2014

Phew… A week without a column!