easy to repair as most of the parts are off-the-shelf from places like REI/HomeDepot
It lacks:
the modular scrubber
integrated HUD
tool-less maintenance chassis, the KISS needs tools
These units are about the same in cost but know that both of these units are sold in units other than the USD so the price for these units fluctuates as the United States Peso Dollar moves.
Scientific names for species are the generally two-word Greek/Latin names that are used to identify a species more precisely than a common name might. Usually this left up to the first scientist to describe the species; sometimes it’s descriptive while other times it’s named after a colleague, friend, spouse, girlfriend or mentor.
For example, a local nudibranch is named Doriopsilla spaldingiafter local diver San Diego scuba diver George Spalding , who helped collect the samples used in describing the species.
This is the permanent name for the species and now Scripps, which is one the premier oceanography institutes in the world, is going to be selling them to the highest bidder. The funds will go towards maintaining their collections department which lost it’s Federal funding a number of years ago.
I think it’s an interesting idea but my main concern is large company’s coming in and naming things like Chromodoris goldenpalace.com or Doriopsilla pepsi.
From what I’ve heard unofficially, this woman was finishing her Advanced Open Water course and during her second dive on the Yukon, something went wrong and she was unconscious on the surface. The life guards were called and able to wake her up. So, this story has a happy ending, the woman walked off the boat.
The woman was exploring the the former Canadian destroyer Yukon when she “had some difficulties and made a rapid ascent,” Lt. Nick Lerma said. “When she surfaced, she was unconscious.”
Her instructor and the crew of the charter diving boat Marissa pulled the woman from the water and rendered first aid, and called lifeguards around 11:20 a.m., Lerma said.
She was able to walk off the rescue boat when she returned to shore, the lieutenant said. She was taken to UCSD Medical Center.
Salvo Diving Equipment (Salvo) has come out with a new line of LED-based diving lights. LED lights sip power and are incredibly durable. but that usually came at the cost of being difficult to focus. Salvo has sourced a LED-emitter that they feel have fixed this limitation.
This line of LED-based lights have a 6 degree focused beam which is rated @ 50,000 hours. The light also has 5 output levels the diver can choose from, 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100%. These means that battery bur- time can range from 4 to 20 hours depending on output setting.
They were so impressed with these LED emitters that that discontinued all of there 10 watt HID lights! They are also working on some versions for video lights but as of now, if you want bright video lighting, you are better off sticking with HID or HMI as LEDs haven’t developed into this space yet.
Rebreather Pro has a nice video review of the rEvo rebreather. It’s a manual closed circuit rebreather that has been on the market for a year or two and has been getting pretty good reviews for it’s users.
Features:
Manual user controlled closed circuit rebreather
Unique twin scrubber system, two are sometimes better than one
Integrated Heads Up Display (HUD) with redundant oxygen monitors
This wreck/artificial reef was used as a missile tower test platform for submarine based warfare. They would load a missle into it, sink it underwater and launch the missile. Of course, when the Navy was finished with it, the ceremoniously dumped it into the ocean as an artificial reef, very close to the Mexican Border.
MIAMI (Reuters) - An eagle ray leaped onto a boat off the Florida Keys on Thursday and stabbed a woman with its barb, knocking her to the deck and killing her, a Florida wildlife investigator said.
“It’s a bizarre accident,” said Jorge Pino, an agent with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The woman and her family were aboard a boat in the Atlantic Ocean, off the city of Marathon in the Florida Keys, he said.
“A large ray jumped out of the water and collided with the victim and somehow the barb penetrated some part of her body, which caused her to fall back and hit her head on some portion of the vessel,” Pino said. “We don’t know exactly which one of those things caused her death.”
Local media said the animal’s barb had impaled the woman through the neck.
Eagle rays are common in warm or tropical waters and are often seen near coral reefs. The spotted creatures can grow to more than 8 feet across and have two to six short, venomous barbs near the base of their whip-like tails, according to the Florida Museum of Natural History’s Web site.
The rays often swim near the water’s surface and can leap out, especially when pursued, but are generally shy of humans.
“All rays leap out of the water from time to time but certainly to see one collide with a vessel is extremely unusual,” Pino said.
….
Let’s hope people don’t start killing rays because of this.
A new rebreather is now on the market, the Poseidon Discovery which is also called the Cis-Lunar Mk VII. This new automatic rebreather was designed by Bill Stone with Swedish-based Poseidon Diving Systems.
From the product decription:
The diving is simple. Open the tank valves, wet the switch on the back of the display, wait for the systems check and off you go. Forget about everything you ever heard about PO2, scrubber life and oxygen cells. Our system will handle all that. Just remember to breathe.
You don’t adjust anything, and the mouthpiece vibrates and blinks to alert you of a malfunction. There is an integrated bailout valve in mouth piece that allows you to breath open circuit and return to the surface. There is also an integrated gauge/computer to track your decompression obligation and how much time you have left. You can read the manual here.
An Austrian diver was attacked by a shark while participating in a cage-less shark dive in the Bahamas. It’s tragic, but now questions are being raised on the safety of a cage-less shark diving in the area.
The leader of a shark tour whose customer was mauled to death Saturday was warned that his practice of allowing people to swim close to hungry sharks could lead to tragedy, a colleague said.
I’m not sure I would be in the water, without a shark cage, while they were feeding sharks for these types of dives. However, that’s doesn’t mean that it’s something that should be banned, it simply is getting lots of attention because it’s a shark killing a human.
