SCUBA Show 2011 — June 4 - 5, 2011

Long Beach Convention Center, Long Beach, CA
The SCUBA Show, America’s Largest Consumer Dive Expo, will take place June 4-5, 2011 at the Long Beach Convention Center in Long Beach, California. This is the 24th year of this popular event. The show will consist of 76,000 square feet of diving related exhibits including new and revolutionary dive gear, equipment bargains, travel pros (many offering show discounts), and diving experts. Several exhibitors also offer free drawings for valuable prizes. The first 1,000 people in attendance on Saturday and Sunday will receive complementary tote bags and major door prize drawings will be taking place throughout the day.
Highlighting the exhibit hall will be a personal appearance by world famous artist Wyland. On Saturday he will be interacting with attendees while painting a new piece of art and on Sunday he will be painting an ocean mural with participation from children in attendance.
Legendary underwater filmmaker Stan Waterman will be headlining a weekend of seminars that include some of the most popular dive experts around. Some of the presenters include Marty Snyderman, Jack and Sue Drafahl, Bruce Watkins, Dale Sheckler, Ken Knezick, Ken Kurtis, and more. Subjects covered include underwater photography and video, marine life, dive travel, dive medicine, gear, and California diving.
A continuous underwater film festival will be running in the exhibit hall on a three-story high screen and will feature films from around the world by over a dozen underwater imaging experts.
Exhibit hall hours are Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and Sunday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Admission is $12 and includes admission to exhibit hall and film festival (seminars are an additional charge). Discount coupons are available at California dive stores, on California dive charter boats and through California dive clubs. Age 13 and under are admitted free. For information on SCUBA Show 2011 call (310) 792-2333 or visit the web site www.ScubaShow.com. Advanced registration online at ScubaShow.com is strongly encouraged to save time and money.

Thank you once again for supporting the SCUBA Show and the scuba diving community.

Christopher D. Sheckler
Marketing Director

St. Brendan Corp.
California Diving News
Scuba Show 2010
PO Box 11231
Torrance, CA 90510
310-792-2333
fax 310-792-2336

Chamber Eve 2011

Wednesday, May 4, from 7:00–10:30 p.m.

Again this year our club is sponsoring a table at the Chamber Eve fundraiser dinner at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

What’s great about this event is that all the monies raised go to the Chamber. No administrative fees are deducted from the proceeds, the local SoCal boats donate their time and services, the manufacturers donate gear for raffle prizes, the Aquarium of the Pacific donates their facility for the evening event, hundreds of volunteers donate their time, and we contribute our money by attending these fun-filled events to keep our Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber running.

Cost of the evening this year is again, $90 per person. (Folks who do the daytime and evening events will receive an extra $20 in raffle tickets as a bonus for doing both.) This event sells out consistantly, so the earlier you sign up, the better (they cap attendance at 500).  Each table seats 10 people, and dinner is a sit-down, served affair. You can sign up online.  Just be sure you click on the "Sole Searchers Dive Club" for your table preference. Once you signed up, shoot me an e-mail so we can have an idea on available seats.  As of today (3/20/11) we have 7 seats left, so don't delay and go to  Chamber Eve website now :-)

The doors will open at 7:00 and dinner will be served around 8:15. This gives you over an hour to explore the Aquarium exhibits, check out the prizes, and mingle. After some speeches and presentation of the total donation check, the evening should wrap up shortly after 10 p.m., and you’ll have until about 10:30 to wander around the Aquarium and take in any sights you missed earlier.

You’ll receive 5 evening raffle tickets, good for the special prizes. Plus there will be an opportunity to buy more raffle tickets when you get there. Total value of the evening raffle will be roughly $10,000, and prizes will include regulators, BCs, computers, and even a complete gear set.

They’ll also have a Blind Auction where you can bid on certain prizes, while not knowing what others have bid.

During the entire evening, we’ll have full access to the Aquarium and its 12,000+ critters, comprising over 550 species and representing three major regions of the Pacific. In case you didn’t know, the Aquarium of the Pacific is the only aquarium that focuses solely on the Pacific Ocean.

And if you're lucky enough to get Wednesday off to go diving, well here is the link to Chamber Day.

Hope you can join us at the Sole Searchers table!

Kaz

Shipwrecks of the Southwest presentation at the March 14 Meeting

I know this crept on us very quickly, but our next meeting is this Monday!
Not to fear, however... we have a really cool presentation by one the
cornerstone members of the California Wreck Divers, David Finnern.

David will be presenting his Shipwrecks of the Southwest presentation.

Finnern has spent over 35 years searching for shipwrecks and submerged ruins.
As an award-winning writer, he has published hundreds of stories on underwater exploration
and has written on-assignment for such magazines as Skin Diver, Western and Eastern Treasures, Wreck Diver, Underwater USA, Western Diver and Immersed. Finnern is the author of several books, including The Sport Divers’ Guide to Sunken Treasure, Passage Through Deep Waters and Lost Below:
The Southwest’s Most Intriguing Shipwrecks, Sunken Aircraft, Submerged Ruins and Undersea Treasures.
He has been a featured speaker at various functions throughout the United States
and has appeared as a guest and on-air technical consultant on national and international television.
He is a member and former president of both The Adventurers’ Club and California Wreck Divers, Inc., and was elected a Fellow of The Royal Geographical Society in 2002.

http://www.cawreckdivers.org/

Thanks Shawn

Avalon Harbor Cleanup 2011

What?  Where's the rain?

The forecast was for rain with possible thunderstorms, which seemed to have scared many divers away from participating in this years annual Avalon Harbor Cleanup dive.  But at least three intrepid divers from our club was not put off by the forecast.  And whatta ya know, we were rewarded with a beautiful day on Catalina.  Blue skies with a little bit of scattered clouds, and no wind… wow.  Meanwhile, hail was falling on some parts of L.A.

Although we were here for the cleanup dive, this year we opted to just dive in the underwater park.  The reason being Andrea and I needed to tune our buoyancy since we both had new gear.  After checking our weight and trim, we started our fun part of the dive. A semi-strong current was running from west to east laying the kelp down horizontally which made us kick harder than usual.  This was not a bad thing since it helped me burn off that muffin I had in the morning.  The vis was not great, but not bad either, about 25-30ish.  Water temp was a cool 55 degrees (did I mention before how I love my drysuit?). The usual fish and critters greeted us as we swam around the park.  I did notice some individual squid egg casings around 40 fsw, but nothing in mass.  Overall, a nice Casino Point dive.  Meanwhile, the other divers were pulling out some interesting items out of the harbor during the cleanup dive, but nothing like the amount of junk we used to recover five years ago.  There are less and less junk in the harbor every year... which is a good thing right?  Oh yea, and our buoyancy check? I think I can take another 4 pounds of lead off my weight belt!

After the dive we headed over to Coyote Joe's for lunch and drinks.  The day turned out to be a really nice day after all.  Thanks to John and Andrea for being brave enough to come out to dive with me on this supposedly the worst day of the month ;-)

-Kaz

February Raffle winners, and a funny story.

A funny thing happened with our February raffle.

I've never seen this happen anywhere before, but when the ticket number 709940 was called, two people had the exact same numbered tickets.  And better yet, they're both named Bob!  Bob james, and Bob Cartier!  It worked out well since they both wanted something different. Bob James got a two for one boat dive, and Bob Cartier got a nice Ikelite dive light..  

I bet we'll never see something like that again. 

Great thanks goes out to both Hollywood Divers, Sport Chalet, and Channel Islands Dive Adventures for their generous (and I mean generous) donations to our club raffle.

$25 Sport Chalet gift card: Bob C.

2 for 1 boat dive on the Raptor (donated by Ken Kollwitz of CIDA): Bob James

Line cutter: Jimmy Quan

Signal mirror: Kaz

Defog: Jovy

Camera lanyard: Andrea

Dry bag: Jimmy Quan

Ikelite PC LED dive lite: Bob

T shirt: Laura Steckler

T shirt: Gary T.

Aqua Lung Nautilus Travel snorkel: Kaz

Mystery raffle prize: Andrea won a $25 Sport Chalet gift card.

Also great thanks goes out to Alex Broes for his assistance with the guest speaker presentation.

Meeting date changed for this February

In honor of Valentines day… and also so you won't have to choose between spending the evening chatting about diving, or taking your significant other to a night out on the town, we're moving the meeting date to Feb 21 (a week after our usual 2nd Monday of the month).  This is just for this month of February.  In March, the meeting will again resume at our usual 2nd Monday of each month.

Meeting place is El Torito Mexican Restaurant in Pasadena.
Feb 21.  6:30 p.m Social hour.  7:00 p.m. Announcements. 8:00 p.m. Guest speaker.  9:00 p.m. Raffle.

Be Mine image copyright Kaz Aizawa 2011

Sea Lions at Anacapa

Barbara and I had a great trip out to Anacapa on the Spectre about a week ago. After all the bad weather it was so good to see the sun again. The water was a little chilly (51) but the real attraction was the sea lions. We just stayed under the boat at about 20' watching 20-30 of them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsh8f-r1kHI