Saturday, February 21, 2009

2009 Utah Spearfishing Schedule

From the folks at Utah Spearfishing the 2009 Organized shoot Schedule.
Did you know that there are a number of species of fish in Utah that have yet to be recorded for a spearfishing record. There are nine alone in Lake Powell. See the July 18th record shoot. In 2008 the record was recorded for cutthroat trout. What will be recorded for 2009 and who will record it?

May 23rd – Starvation Carp shoot.
June 20th – Deer Creek
July 18th – Lake Powell “records shoot”
August 15th – Bear Lake Carp shoot
September 26th – Flaming Gorge
October 17th – Fish Lake
November 21st – Flaming Gorge Reservoir
Pop-Up shoots as well
Pot Luck BBQ
Cash donation Bucket for Prizes

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Under the Sea 3D Reviewd

As I mentioned about a week ago Under the Sea 3D was coming to the Clark Planetarium at the Gateway. Janine and I went to see it on the opening day. All I can say it WOW. The videography was remarkable. The Hall's truly provided some great footage. It really goes to show that you can just cruise the reef and miss so much marine life. Slowing down and being neutral will allow you to see micro marine life along with the 'big stuff'. I don't think I saw the camera wiggle or bounce the entire movie. Those guys have buoyancy control down. LOL
OK you know why? Here is the type of camera they used. Not your typical hand held DVR.


While it was great to see all sorts of marine life in 3D I thought they did a real good job of showing the environmental stress that is happening to the reefs. They showed bleaching and mucking and talked about the marine life moving further south to coolers waters. Now since most of this was shot in Australia, any further south would be the south pole. Ouch! Without giving it all away the seals at the end make you go 'awww how cute'.
Jim Carrey wasn't his normal obnoxious self so that was an added bonus.
Get out an see it. Great for a date or family. Keep your ticket stub also. Sport Chalet is offering tuition discounts 25%? on Open Water and Advanced Open Water if you signed up before a certain date. March 31?

Why Do Mask Clears

During your training you were given a value of having to do mask clears. While it may be common for another diver to kick your mask causing it to flood or even making it come off completely. There are other reasons of a more natural flavor. While this may not happen on every dive there is always the possibility. Please note that in both videos the seal is just playing - it is NOT attacking the diver! In fact the seal was very gentle.
I know Janine has played 'monkey see monkey do' with the seals in California but has never had one want to wear the mask.



Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Google Earth Goes Back and Below

With Google Earth 5.0, you can now travel back in time to see historical imagery, dive below the surface of the ocean and record a tour of your journeys.
Not as cool as doing it live, but hey when you're snowed in or can't get to a warm body of water you can always travel and dream with the next best thing.
You can add some cool add-ons to make cyber dives way fun.
Alvin submersible dives to illustrate your next deep-sea mission. The .kml file will let you
pinpoint each of nearly 5000 deep-sea dives around the world. Very sophisticated. This and
other files are hosted by digital Mecca MGDS. You can explore.
Shipwrecks - The doubloons. We’re not talkingBenjamins. We’re talking
sunken treasure. Look for gold among 1000+ European shipwrecks off the coast of France in the hot-links over at Just Magic. Its just sitting there waiting for you.

How about the bottom contours of Lake Tahoe?

More way to make Google Ocean a blast can be found at Deep Sea News