Barbary Coast Dive Club Newsletter

News and Events

p2

Next Dive Club Outing- Memorial Day:

Alder Creek Public Access, Manchester State Beach,where San Andreas Fault enters ocean

Copyright © 2002 Kenneth & Gabrielle Adelman. All rights reserved.

May 28th through 30th Manchester State Beach, Mendocino : Group Camp Site

The park has 760 acres of beach, sand dunes, and flat grasslands, with nearly 18,000 feet of ocean frontage. The beach line curves gently to form a "catch basin" for sea debris, which accounts for the volume of driftwood found here. Five miles of gentle, sandy beach stretches southward towards the Point Arena Lighthouse.

Dive Boat Conception Stolen, Run Aground
The popular dive-charter boat Conception was stolen from its dock in Santa Barbara, CA at 1 a.m. on Wednesday, March 23rd. The perpetrator(s) broke into the wheelhouse, started the engines, and motored through the harbor, colliding with three other vessels, sinking one. Hours later the Conception was found grounded on a secluded beach near Point Arguello, about 50 miles north of its home port. Salvage efforts are being coordinated and Truth Aquatics remains optimistic about the vessel’s chances of being fully restored.

as it sits now recovered

more info may be found at http://www.truthaquatics.com/conception_news.html

Oil Platforms Proposed as Fish Farms
Under a plan backed by the Bush administration, some 3500 unused oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico may be alternatively used for fish farms. For years now scientists and oil companies have experimented in using oil platforms for the bases of mariculture, but have not made progress because of reluctance of the federal government to open federal waters to farming. Traditionally, companies farmed in state waters because permits were easier to get. President Bush proposed to open federal waters to fish farming, something that has been encouraged in states like Texas and Louisiana, because of their high concentration of offshore oil rigs.

Ocean farming is already becoming a booming industry in Asia, specifically Korea and China. Seafood now accounts for $7 billion of the nation’s foreign trade deficit and opening the ocean to fish farming would bolster seafood production and employment among coastal communities, proponents say. Environmental opponents point to problems with current fish-farms, such as pollution, resource depletion and escaped farmed fish interbreeding with wild fish stock. Critics also worry about turning the oceans into huge feedlots, replacing cattle and poultry for fish.

 

Japan sub part of Hawai'i ocean 'junkyard'

A scuttled Japanese submarine discovered last month by an undersea research team on the sea floor off Pearl Harbor will remain at rest with thousands of other submerged vessels and debris in Hawai'i's waters.

The I-401 was one of 3 aircraft carrying submarine built in 1944. These were the largest diesel electric submarines ever built comparable in size to the largest present day nuclear submarines. They were 20 years ahead of their time. The wreck sits upright on the bottom 5 stories high and 400 feet long. The war ended before the I-401 could accomplish its mission of launching its 3 folding wing planes to attack and destroy the Panama Canal. The submarine was brought by a U.S. crew back to Hawai‘i (story at www.pacerfarm.org/i-400/ ). The I-401 was sunk by torpedoes in a target practice exercise in 1946 to prevent its technology being surrendered to the Russians under a war end agreement. The cold war was just beginning.

 

Researchers with the undersea team, which happened upon the I-401 during test dives, said raising the sub from almost 2,700 feet below the sea surface and towing it ashore would likely cost tens of millions of dollars.

"I don't imagine anyone would want to do anything like that," said John Smith, science program director at the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory. "It's down deep and big. And it's broken. The bow section is torn off and there's a large debris field."

read more at http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/HURL/I-401.html

 

Everest Summiters Set High Altitude Scuba Diving Record

Everest and K2 Summiter Ricardo Torres-Nava and his climbing buddy Fernando Lozano just achieved a new world record scuba diving in Chile's Licancabur volcano's lagoon at 5916 meters one of the highest lakes on Earth. They have proof of the new record on eighteen minutes of underwater film and photography.

The Licancabur is a very high mountain and if diving tables are well-known in the ocean, there are no real tables for this altitude. Licancabur is a majestic volcano located near San Pedro de Atacama, in the Chilean-Bolivia border line. It boasts a beautiful salt lake and Inca remains in its crater.