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SUSOM Students
Take the Plunge
In the Dark!
Saba's
Newest Advanced Students:
Ryan, Kamilla,
Jeff, Vlad, Tristan, Jason
To
commemorate the last Lunar Eclipse until 2010, six students jumped
in at Hot Springs on Saturday as part of their PADI Advanced Open Water
class. After a thorough academic review, students added a compass and
underwater light to their normal scuba equipment. As the night
grew darker, a host of critters and nocturnal hunters emerged
allowing the divers to get close and personal with this new
environment.
and the chance of a
'green flash'...
The night dive was the fifth and final dive conducted to complete
the course. A deep dive and navigation dive are required by
PADI. In addition, these students chose an introductory nitrox
dive as well as a fish identification to round out this confidence
building experience.
On
this particular night dive,
the usual suspects made their appearances: brittle stars and spotted lobsters; tiny shrimp
found within the opened and feeding coral polyps. It wouldn't
be a Saban night dive without the opportunistic dog snapper and a solitary nurse shark (who
we think needs a name)trying
to use the divers' lights to cheat at nocturnal hunting games. But the
most incredible part of the dive was the safety stop.
Sea Saba's Head Instructor Vivi
Pimental told everyone to douse their lights for the last few minutes
of the dive. Then the show began! Bioluminescent algae
and plankton in the water column lit up the dark water as everyone
looked around in awe at the fireworks display.
"That was amazing! It looked
like the sky on a moonless night, I was getting dizzy - we were
surrounded!"
Did you know that
bioluminescence is one of the primary ways that underwater creatures
communicate at night? Many species of crustaceans use it to signal when
it is time to mate; other critters use it to find food or ward off
predators. Look for more on bioluminescence in future newsletters...for now,
check out UCSB's
Bioluminescence website or HBOI's Living Lights.
And stay tuned for a Sea Saba Creature Feature on our "Night Lights."
What's that
Noise?
Some interesting songs you may
hear on your next dive.
Have
you been diving lately and heard some strange rumblings, moanings, and
even some squeaks - noises that stands out from the usual crustacean
cracklings? From January through late March, it is common to hear Humpback Whale songs. As you get into deeper water on
Ladder Bay sites and out on the pinnacles, the songs of these migrating
whales get louder.
March 2 2008: 2 whales spouted off Tent Reef:
approximately 2 p.m.
On board: Vivi, EJ and Kat
and 4 lucky new diving students
Pods of
Humpback whales
routinely make the trek from the cold waters of the Northern Atlantic
to the warmer waters of the Caribbean. The northern areas are rich with
marine life in the summer, and these baleen whales feed on krill and
small fish for most of the year, eating up to 3,000lbs (1,360kg) per
day to bulk up for the winter breeding season.
Come January they are well on their way south to mate and calve in the
comparably barren - but much warmer - waters of the winter Caribbean.
The songs they sing are only sung by the males in the pods, and believe
it or not in multiple pods in the same geographical location, all the
males sing the same song. The entire whale song can last 15-45 minutes,
is made up of up to 5-7 separate themes and can be heard for almost 10
miles around. And, the song changes slightly
from season to season - and somehow all the males know which version to
sing. Perhaps there's some kind of Humpback Whale Idol happening
here...
So keep your ears peeled on your next dive for some whale song. Keep in
mind that March is the time of year that whales
are most often seen passing near Saba on their way back up north. All
eyes to the horizon on your
surface interval and
maybe you'll be lucky
enough to see a spout!
For more information on Humpback Whales go to MarineBio.org's Humpback Whale page where you can listen to some songs without getting wet. Still curious, try this article on Whale Song breakthroughs from 2006 and stay up-to-date with Google Scholar's recent articles on Humpback whale songs.
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Creature
Feature:
The Sharks of Saba
Sharks
are definitely not mammals. But they’re technically not fish
either. Sharks are Elasmobranches, or cartilaginous fish, meaning their
“skeleton” is made purely of cartilage. But
that’s not the only thing that sets sharks apart –
and makes them possibly the most fascinating creature in the
sea.
Read more
below in our monthly Creature Feature.
Stump the Crew of Sea Saba
We dare you to come to us
with your weirdest and wildest creatures
We've got some
fish and critter junkies on our
staff and we're challenging you to find a fish or invertebrate that we
don't know. We warn you though, we come armed with an arsenal of
resources - the Paul
Humann books for sale in the Sea Saba office being our first
line of defense. New to the army is an interactive DVD with over 2,700
photos and videos of Caribbean fish, and it allows us to search for
every little detail you might present to us. With this software we can
tell you all the fish that have purple spots in the Caribbean. Combine
these resources with more than 100 years of combined diving experience
among our staff and you're looking at quite a
challenge.
So rent a camera next time you go out on Sea Dragon or
Giant Stride and go for a hunt for the tiniest,
strangest, and most obscure creature you can find, and bring back a
picture for us to figure out. In the meantime, the first student to properly identify all
three of the pictures in this article can swing by the shop for a
free T-shirt!
And if you're
looking for a break from studying
and want to hone your fish identification skills, take the Reef
Fish Quiz and see how you fare. Or ask at the shop about a
PADI Fish ID specialty course.
Get Away
Without Leaving
Dive in rather than jump off...
Getting
off the island doesn't always have to translate to an expensive plane ticket
or a long boat ride to St. Maarten. After hours, days and weeks of studying, you
deserve a change of scenery. You don't have to leave "the
rock" to escape.
Camille - a SUSOM student,
Lambee's place resident, and amazing brownie baker has changed her recharging
method this semester. "It's better than a weekend
getaway to St. Maarten. When I get back I feel more relaxed, like I've
really gotten away from it all, and didn't have to drop a load of
money."
Even Dean Duckworth escapes the real world and dives in. On weekends you
can find him backward rolling off Sea Dragon or Giant Stride and
returning from
a dive with a big smile on his face. "That was wonderful! So relaxing,
just what I needed."
So
peel out of your desk chair and in to a wetsuit. The
creature crackles will put you at ease, the weightlessness will take
the edge off and after
only a few hours off the island, barely outside of Fort Bay, you'll
feel like you visited another world, a world much more interesting -
and less expensive - than a short trip to St. Martin.
Making our lives even
easier
Diving is
about relaxing, about getting away from your usual
routine, letting your mind wander, listening to the yogic rhythm of
your breath,
watching all the pretty bubbles and swimming with the fish. In order to be safe
while diving, we must monitor our time and depth. It is no
longer necessary to neurotically calculate dpeths and times, trace
your finger all over this little plastic dive table...nor is it
really necessary to spend your entire dive following the
divemaster's every move and watching your depth gauge and timing
device.
Divers are known for being ingeniously lazy which is why there
are so many inventive ways to make our dive-lives easier so we can
enjoy diving
more – weight-integrated BCDs, super-powered fins that all
but kick for you,
and the quintessential diving tool, the dive computer, which is quickly
becoming the first thing new divers buy after their mask, snorkel,
and
fins.
So
what
does a dive computer do? It is your own personal
customizable set of underwater dive tables. When you calculate your
dive time
and depth using dive tables, the tables assume that your entire dive is
spent
at one depth. But that rarely ever happens, right? Dive tables
assume
“worst case scenario” and always round
conservatively. Dive computers have dive
table calculations built into them and every time your depth changes
– even by
just a foot! – your dive computer will adjust your
no-decompression limits instantly. So
when you plan a dive at Man O’ War Shoals, the dive tables
will only give you
40 minutes based on the maximum depth of 70 feet, but your dive
computer will
adjust as you start your dive at 70 feet at
the bottom
of the sea-mounts and slowly make your way up to
shallower water. You’ll
run out of air before you run out of time.
One quick look at your dive
computer
will tell you your no-decompression time, your current depth, your dive time and maximum depth so far, and often some other
interesting information like water temperature, and your personal
nitrogen
load levels. Dive computers also help you with your ascent –
the built in
ascent rate monitor and alarm makes sure you’re ascending safely.
Not
only do
you not have to remember exact dive times and
depths during the
dive, you also
don’t have to remember them after the dive. The
computer’s log will keep all
that information stored for you, so on your surface interval you can
spend
more time gushing about all the amazing critters and behaviors you saw
instead
of worrying about whether or not you or your buddy will remember how
long you
were down for to write in your log book. Relax. Medical Students do enough
thinking.
Dive computers do it for you so all you have to do is dive. (But
remember, its always a good idea to back up your computer dives with
tables, just to have a back-up in case of failure and to stay fresh on
your table calculations).
Come by the Sea Saba office to
see a dive computer in person
or rent one ($10/day) and take it for a test drive on your next dive. And
don’t worry, if
you fall in love, basic dive computers are very affordable and worth
every
penny for that little piece of mind.
Show Off Saba to your Friends and Family
Don't tell your friends to view this if you expect them to have
sympathy for you living here. A 6-minute promotional film was
created and produced by
Chizzilala Productions, a
new company formed by Adam and Sabine Watkins. Better yet, the
film can be viewed or downloaded from the
Saba Tourism website
or simply click here.
This relaxing film is a great
resource to send to friends and family while you're attempting to
explain all the intricate and hidden secrets of Saba. For more
entertainment, check the footage from Adam and Sabine's
incredible shark encounter highlighted in the February SUSOM Newsletter.
See the video here!
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