Bill’s Reals Blog - Scuba, Travel & Gadgets

It’s time again for my annual pilgramage to the centoes of Mexico to do a little cave diving. The group will be heading down for a week of underwater exploring in the freshwater caves in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.

It’s going to be great and I plan on shooting still photographs again this year, same as last year.

Here is out proposed itinerary:

Day 1: Warm up dives at Sac Actun. Spend the day there. Do two different stage dives: 1) Box Chen up and back 2) Boca Restriction down and back.

Day 2: Naharon morning. Set-up for Jailhouse Naharon traverse. Mayan Blue afternoon. Lot’s of two team possibilities including B to E to A and A to B to E to B. Could instead do downstream Mayan Blue to Cenote of the Sun and back on a stage.

Day 3: Traverse from Jailhouse to Naharon. 3.5 hour dive.

Day 4: Stage dive in Chan Hol in the morning. Prettier the further back you go. Really good video. Dos Palmas downstream in the afternoon.

Day 5: Spend the day at Tux. Sloth Bones. Fire pit. Gamaphor bones and upstream stage dives all possible.

Day 6: Spend the day at Minotauro. Maybe split into two teams and alternate upstream and downstream. Could also split up in afternoon to get shots of Chinese Garden at Taj for example.

To divers, traveling on airlines with tons of scuba gear is almost always a pain. Add a rebreather and it can get even more complicated. You have weight issues, extra baggage fees and the fear that something will get broken, stolen or confiscate.

I saw this on San Diego Tech Diving and Rebreather World and it’s an excellent run-down of all the issues.

I work for the airlines in the US, so I will try and throw in my 2 cents.

- TANKS. you can travel with tanks (ill advised) as they can be siezed by TSA without warning and you will not get them back. They must be checked, valves removed, with absolutely nothing blocking the tank opening. They can be asses even about clear packing tape over the opening, or they can be cool. It is anyones guess. Pre-ship or make arrangement at your destination for tanks.

- SORB. Easier to pre-ship. There has been discussion on another forum about putting all of you sorb in a Kitty Litter tub and checking it in as baggage. Probably illegal but who knows. There are MSDS sheets you can print out and attach to your sorb tub. BUT while passengers have followed all of the rules on taking sorb on the plane the TSA has still chosen to confiscate it. You have no recourse for the confiscation, it is gone. Make back-up arrangements at your dive destination for SORB purchase.

- Rebreather. Carry on what you can, the delicate parts, the computers whatever you don’t want the baggage handlers or TSA rooting through (without your presence), possibly stealing or confiscating. Double check the allowed carry-on weight allowance.

- Check you airline website for weight restrictions for both carry on and cheaked baggage. All airlines are different and they change all of the time. Weigh you bags at home and work out the weight distribution before you get to the airport.

- I took my KISS CLASSIC as carry on baggage the last time I travelled, with my computer, DSV, put other parts in my scrubber. Just be prepared to take it all out and show them EVERYTHING.

Sometimes it is just easier to ship everything, with insurance.

Link to article

Bikini Atoll the sight of the famous US hydrogen bomb tests should be some of the more radioactive places on earth. One would expect a vast waste land both above or below the water.

However, this isn’t the case, Bikini’s coral reef is flourishing with life. The coconuts are radioactive as they absorbed the cesium and other particles in the soil but the background radiation in the sea is the same as anywhere else in the world.

You can dive Bikini’s coral reef and it’s nuclear fleet; a set of test ships blown up to see the nuclear affects of a nuclear attack on warships. However, it’s very expensive.

Read the article

This website/blog is written by and for woman scuba divers. It features trip reports, photos, tips and gear reviews that focus on women who scuba dive.

Pretty cool idea as most of the dive industry is male-focused.

http://www.miss-scuba.com/

1. You can translate most of the English words ending in “-ic” into Spanish by: substituting the ending with “-ico”. These words always have a written accent.
Examples: academic→ académico, fantastic→ fantástico, magic→ mágico, organic → orgánico.
Exception: mastic→ mastíque

2. You can translate most of the English words, with two or more syllables, that end in “-al” into Spanish by keeping the same ending “-al”.

Examples: cultural→ cultural, capital→ capital, cereal→ cereal, dental→ dental
Some Exceptions: continual→ contínuo, magical→ mágico, terrestial→ terrestre.

The small island nation of Kiribati has created what looks to be the world’s largest marine protection area. The purpose of this 410,500 square kilometers preserve is biodiversity and will be off limits to commercial activities like fishing.

Fishing concessions make money for the Atoll based nation but they have a plan:

Protecting the Phoenix Islands means restricting commercial fishing in the area, resulting in a loss of revenue that the Kiribati government would normally receive from issuing foreign commercial fishing licenses. NEAq and CI are helping Kiribati design an endowment system that will cover the core recurring management costs of PIPA and compensate the government for the foregone commercial fishing license revenues. The plan allows for subsistence fishing by resident communities and other sustainable economic development in designated zones of the protected area.

Basically, they are hoping for eco-tourism. This new reserve is bigger than the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument west of Hawaii (137,797 square miles) and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia (345,000 sq km.)
If you want to read about life on Kiribati , you should pick up, The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific by J. Maarten Troost, who lived on Kiribati and recounts his experience living in a nation that is far removed from most other countries. It’s hilarious, he’s a good writer.

Well, I got back yesterday from my cave diving trip and here are my results that I posted on Flickr, at least until I can get them on my own photo server. Next time, I’ll be bringing a slave strobe and sensor, which will help out a lot but I got some decent pictures.

Water Temp: 80 degrees
Vis: virtually unlimited or as far as our lights would shine
Bottom Time: Each dive was at least 100 mins but one of them was 2 1/2 hours
Depth: Avg was approx 30 feet with some centoes being a little deeper

Besides American Airlines canceling and then lying to me on the flight out and delaying my flight back, it was a perfect trip.

Gran Cenote:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42515098@N00/sets/72157600667411699

Cenote Dos Ojos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42515098@N00/sets/72157600666114224/

Cenote Chan Hol (Southern Tulum)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42515098@N00/sets/72157600664954107/

Cenote Jailhouse:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/42515098@N00/sets/72157600667858716/

So, I’m in Akumal, Mexico for a short cave diving trip. I’m shooting still pictures this time around, so I brought along my laptop, which is something I usually never do.

American Airlines screwed the pooch on this one, they canceled my flight and then lied to me about another flight that I knew was available. I ended up just getting onto a Aero Mexicana flight, that criss-crossed Mexico but brought me to Akumal after 15 hours of traveling. So Day 1 was travel hell.
I did two dives at Taj Mahal Cenote, which is just north of Akumal. These were warm up dives for the rest of the trip but were most excellent.

More dives tomorrow, this time with camera in tow.

What is awesome is my room has DSL for $5 a day, which allows to me call American and bitch at them.

The Discovery Club 1080, which is the Discovery HD Channel, is having a Shark week sweepstakes. The Prize is a shark dive trip to the Bahamas.

Discovery Club1080 invites you to join us as we head down to the Bahamas to shoot and create shows for the upcoming 2007 Shark Week. It’s a unique opportunity to join the Discovery HD Theater crew as we go beneath the tropical waters in search of one of nature’s most feared, yet misunderstood, creatures – SHARKS! Only Discovery Club1080 brings you up close with exclusive access like this!

You can enter once a day until Sunday, June 3rd. The winner is announced on June 5 and you would then travel, to the TV shot, in the Bahamas, for the week of June 18. It seems that you will be a feature on the show.

You need to be a certified diver.
Details/Signup:
http://dhd.discovery.com/sweepstakes/sharkweek20

A treasure hunting company has recovered an estimated $.5 Billion USD of gold and silver coins from the haul of a ship wreck in the North Atlantic. I’m guessing on the location since they, obviously, aren’t releasing that information.

While the $ amount is staggering, it’s good to remember that they are basis this value on the price a collector might pay for each coin, which are estimated to fetch $1,000 a piece. But “17 tons of 400-year-old silver and gold coins” is an amazing find.

They flew all of the gold to Tampa, Fl in sealed plastic tubs. The stock price, of Odyssey Marine Exploration, doubled this morning when the news hit Wall Street