Next Club Outing:

July:

Sunday, July 13th - Halibut diving and Beach Picnic Monterey. Del Monte or Otter's Cove (Outside Lover's)

Representin' time:

Bring t-shirts and sweatshirts for silkscreening of the club logo to the next meeting - or drop them off to Carol sometime in July.

BCD Abalone Cook book

Send your recipes to Curt lingking@sbcglobal.net

or Dan seawindowz1@yahoo.com

In other news:

NOAA Proposes Rule To Require Saltwater Angler Registration

Washington, D.C. -- NOAA's Fisheries Service is seeking comment on a proposed rule that requires anglers and spearfishers who fish recreationally in federal ocean waters to be registered before fishing in 2009.

The proposed rule satisfies the National Academy of Science National Research Council recommendations to establish a national database of saltwater anglers, and meets the requirements under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. The proposed rule is part of a larger initiative of NOAA's Fisheries Service to improve the quality and accuracy of data on marine recreational fishing and catches. The registry will also help measure the economic benefits of recreational fishing on the national and local economies.

"The national registry of saltwater anglers is the key to closing a major gap in information on recreational fishing," said Jim Balsiger, NOAA acting assistant administrator for NOAA's Fisheries Service. "It will help us conduct surveys to get a more complete picture of how recreational fishing by an estimated 14 million people is affecting fish stocks. This will lead to better stock assessments and more effective regulations to rebuild and manage these valuable fish."

NOAA may exempt anglers from registration if they already have a state-issued saltwater fishing license or registration, and the state provides sufficiently complete information to place in the national registry.

States on the West Coast (including Alaska), the Gulf Coast, and the South Atlantic offer saltwater fishing licenses. Hawaii and the states from New Jersey to Maine do not.

The national saltwater registry will enable surveyors to interview only those people who fish, and will reach all anglers, not only those who live near the coast. To read the proposed rule, go to the National Saltwater Anlger Registry.

Comments on the proposed rule will be accepted until Aug. 11. They can be mailed to:

John Boreman Director, Office of Science and Technology NMFS 1315 East-West Highway Silver Spring, MD 20910 Attn.: Gordon Colvin

Comments also can be submitted electronically.

Divers Find Oldest Known Marble Bust Of Caesar; Rhone River Discovery May Date To 46 B.C.

Paris, France -- Divers trained in archaeology discovered a marble bust of an aging Caesar in the Rhone River that France's Culture Ministry said Tuesday could be the oldest known.

The life-sized bust showing the Roman ruler with wrinkles and hollows in his face is tentatively dated to 46 B.C. Divers uncovered the Caesar bust and a collection of other finds in the Rhone near the town of Arles, founded by Caesar.
Among other items in the treasure trove of ancient objects is a 5.9 foot marble statue of Neptune, dated to the first decade of the third century after Christ.
Two smaller statues, both in bronze and measuring 27.5 inches each also were found, one of them, a satyr with his hands tied behind his back, doubtless originated in Hellenic Greece, the ministry said.
"Some (of the discoveries) are unique in Europe", Culture Minister Christine Albanel said. The bust of Caesar is in a class by itself.
This marble bust of the founder of the Roman city of Arles constitutes the most ancient representation known today of Caesar, the ministry statement said, adding that it undoubtedly dates to the creation of Arles in 46 B.C.
Among other things, researchers are trying to uncover in what context these statues were thrown into the river, said Michel L'Hour, who heads the Department of Subaquatic Archaeological Research, whose divers made the discovery between September and October 2007.
The site has barely been skimmed, L'Hour told The Associated Press, adding that a new search operation will begin this summer.
He said the Arles region, in the Provence region of southern France, with its Roman beginnings, and the Rhone are propitious for discoveries.

Hugh Bradner, renowned physicist and inventor of the wetsuit dies at 92

Bradner's scientific career incorporated both science and ocean exploration to design many notable ocean technologies, including the first neoprene wetsuit.
During his distinguished career as a nuclear physicist, Bradner worked at the U.S. Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington D.C. and the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory at UC Berkeley. He was also one of the founding scientists of the Los Alamos National Laboratory working on the Manhattan Project and a faculty member at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UC San Diego. It was at Los Alamos that he met Marjorie Hall, his wife of 65 years.
Bradner had a lifelong passion for the ocean. He enjoyed diving and sailing and was one of the first Americans to make a deep-water SCUBA dive. In 1951, while working at UC Berkeley, he decided to spend some 'weekend time' improving diving equipment for navy frogmen, which began his pioneering research on the wetsuit. Bradner focused on the design of a wetsuit for military underwater swimmers and developed a foam wetsuit using a unicellular material known as neoprene.
'He was an adventurous man who enjoyed travelling,' said Walter Munk, professor emeritus and director of IGPP during Bradner's tenure at Scripps. 'He built a successful career by combining his geophysical work with his South Pacific adventures.'
Bradner collaborated with scientific divers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who were experimenting with the new SCUBA regulator invented by Jacques Cousteau and Emile Gagnan. Scripps divers first tested his wetsuit designs at their SCUBA training classes held in the pool of the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club.
'Brad's neoprene wetsuit was a tremendous contribution to scientific diving,' said James Stewart, professor emeritus at Scripps. 'He was a great guy and a lot of fun to work with.'

NOAA Study Shows Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean Dolphin Populations Improving

The numbers of northeastern offshore spotted and eastern spinner dolphins in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean are increasing after being severely depleted because of accidental death in the tuna purse-seine fishery between 1960 and 1990, according to biologists from NOAA’s Fisheries Service.

“These estimates are encouraging because they are consistent with what we would expect to see if these stocks are recovering, now that reported fishery mortality has been dramatically reduced,” said Dr. Lisa Ballance, director of NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center protected resources division. “However, we have to be careful not to jump to final conclusions. We need to resolve the uncertainties around these estimates before we can definitively say these stocks are recovering.”...

Between 1960 and 1990, the northeastern offshore spotted and eastern spinner dolphin populations dropped to 20 percent and 30 percent, respectively, of their pre-fishery levels when dolphins were caught and died in tuna purse-seine nets. Since the early 1990s, however, the number of reported dolphin deaths has been very low because of severe restrictions on the fishery.

“We expected to see these populations begin their recovery years ago, because fishermen have been so successful at reducing dolphin deaths,” said Tim Gerrodette of NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “The new data are the first to indicate the beginning of a recovery, but these initial indications are not enough to be confident that the populations will continue to grow.”

Today’s report stems from a series of research cruises conducted since 1986. It presents new estimates of abundance for 10 dolphin stocks for each survey year between 1986 and 2006. These estimates may be found at