inside this issue m — the presidents’ corner · page 3 fcda donors the business listed on this...

FAIRFIELD COUNTY DIVING ASSOCIATION

February 2011 Volume 18 Issue 2

Inside this Issue Presidents’ Corner

page 1 New Members page 2

FCDA Donors I page 2 Secretary’s desk page 3 FCDA Donors II page 3 DAN Virtual Medic page 4 FCDA Donors III page 4 Events of Interest page 5 FCDA Member Ads page 5 Diving Historical Wrecks page 6 Next FCDA Meeting

page 8

M2 — The Presidents’ Corner “Oh the weather outside is fright-ful…..we’ve got no place to go…..Let it Snow, let it Snow….” I bet you want to strangle the guy that wrote that song by now. We all have places to go and it has not been easy to do that this winter. Hopefully those of you who have had travel plans made it out and home without much delay and safely. Tomorrow will mark the third consecutive full day of school for Connor. You may wonder why I am making a point of this; well it is February 8 when I am writing this and this will be the longest stretch of full days he has had at school since they returned from the Christmas break. Unbeliev-able, and the school has already taken away the February break and it looks like they will also be making days up in the summer. Normally I love the winter; we hit the slopes on weekends and even

get in some winter dives with good vis and no crowds. Maybe it has been the timing of storms this year but I haven’t been able to enjoy it as much. It is a time like this that I look at the dive mags a little dif-ferently, especially the travel deals sections. It is very tempting to pick up the phone and book a trip out of here for a warmer climate and get some diving in. So if you don’t see me at the next meeting I just may be off enjoying myself on a dive boat somewhere. This month we are fortunate to have Captain Hank of the Garloo for our speaker, so come on down. Also if you haven’t paid your dues now is the time since there will not be a March meeting because of Beneath The Sea and Sea Rovers. We come back in full-swing with our Easter Egg Hunt/Beach Clean-Up on April 17. Have fun, enjoy the rest of the winter and most important dive safely. Ciao.

New England D ive Center o ffers complete t raining for all le vels o f diving, f rom O pen Water t hrough t he m ost a dvanced t echnical courses. O ur in struction p rovides c ertification t hrough SSI, P DIC, TDI and IANTD.

The region's foremost source fo r sc uba a nd technical d iving g ear, t r a i n i n g a n d everything f or the r ec r ea t i o n al o r serious tech diver.

New England's Tech Diving Center!

Visit us on the Web: http://www.nedive.com

Dealer for OMS, UWATEC, O ceanic, M ares, D a c or , C r e s s i - S u b , P o s e i d o n , Scubapro, B are, O ' N e i l l a n d Henderson.

New England Dive Center 476 North Colony Street Wallingford, CT 06492

203-284-1880 Fax 203-284-1355

Draeger Atlantis I Rebreather training, certification and rental.

FCDA Donors

The business l isted on this page has donated dive gear and dive services to help support the Fairfield County Diving Association.

Internet mail: [email protected] http://www.fcda.us

2011 Board

Presidents Matt Rownin & Mike Cassetta Vice- President Mark Shannon Secretary G eorge Sharrard Treasurer Paul J. Gacek

P.O. Box 3005, Fairfield, CT 06824

New FCDA Members

Welcome aboard to th e

following in dividuals who have r e cent ly b eco me n ew members o f t he Fairfield County Diving Association:

John & Toni Morgan 14 Scott Pl Stamford, CT 06902 H: 327-1498 [email protected]

FCDA Donors


From the Secretary’s desk No new snow for almost a week! Tells me it is time to think about local diving. Here are some useful links if you’re tired of the fire truck: Block Island Sound Bill Palmer - Thunderfish www.thunderfishcharters.com/ Gery Chellis - Atlantis www.atlantis.nu/index.htm Long Island Sound Noel Voroba - Orbit Diver www.orbitmarine.com/ Long Island Hank Garvin - RV Garloo www.garlooent.com/ John - Lockness www.locknessdiveboat.net/ Shark Dives Charlie Donilon - Snappa www.snappacharters.com/index.html

FCDA Donors


Rex Dive Center Offers Technical Diving Classes

Interested in taking your training to the next level?

TDI Instructor George Sharrard (# 10270) will be

offering: Intro to Tech

Advanced Nitrox Decompression Procedures

Starting in May 2011

Join us in March 2011 for an open house at Rex Dive Cen-ter’s Norwalk store to talk about schedules, class require-

ments and gear.

DAN Will Have Medic – Virtual or Live – at Every Show It Attends Have you ever wanted to talk to a DAN medic as you wandered through the DAN booth at a dive show? Now you can, and you’ll have the opportunity to do so at every show DAN attends in 2011. There will be a live medic in the booth to answer questions at se-lect shows this year; at the others, DAN is offering the chance to speak to a “virtual medic.” The “virtual” refers only to the fact that technology is used to connect you to the medic; using a com-puter kiosk in the booth, anyone with a question can be connected to a live, on-call medic to receive an answer or assistance. “DAN is constantly looking for ways to expand the service we provide our members,” said Nicho-las Bird, DAN CEO and chief medi-cal officer. “Our medics noted they receive questions at every show and event they attend and wondered how we could provide the same service even when a medic wasn’t there in person. So we worked with our show coordinators and devised this solution.” DAN launched the function at the DC Dive Show this past weekend. Several divers took advantage of the opportunity to talk to a live medic while their question was fresh on their mind.

FCDA Member Ads Hey - have you got a non retail-diving bus iness tha t you’d l ike to share with fellow members of FCDA?

Get your business card size ad in the FCDA monthly newsletter “Surface I nterval” for only $50.00 for one year. Give y our bus iness a boost a nd he lp s upport the pr oduction o f o ur monthly ne wsletters. For m ore information, write to FCDA, P.O. Box 3005, Fairfield, CT 06824 or email to [email protected].

Events of Interest to FCDA Members

February 26, 2011 - The Bos-ton Scuba Show - 9:00 AM - 3:00 PM - Holiday Inn and Resort, Junction of Rtes 495 and 20, Marl-boro, Ma. Tickets at $25 each will be available at the door on the day of the show, or in advance by writ-ing to: Cecile Christensen, 2 Ocean Ave (1-H), Gloucester , MA 01930 . Checks payable to Cecile Christen-sen. For more information: http://www.easy-diver.com/BostonScubaShow2011.htm March 4-6, 2011 - Boston Sea Rovers 2011 Clinic - Crowne Plaza Boston North Shore Hotel in Danvers MA. Over 40 Saturday and Sunday Daytime Seminars, featur-ing slide and video shows from around the underwater world! For more information: http://www.bostonsearovers.com March 25-27, 2011 - Beneath the Sea 2011 - Meadowlands Ex-position Center, Secaucus, NJ.

Workshops and Seminars. For more information: http://www.beneaththesea.org April 2, 2011 8:30 am to 11:30 am Diving Medicine Conference Danbury Hospital Nicholas Bird, MD Chief Medical Officer Divers Alert Network Charles A. Mckay Jr. MD Vice Chairman Connecticut Poison Control Center Hartford Hospital David Charash, DO Department of Emergency Medicine Wound Care Hyperbaric Medicine Danbury Hospital Dr Bird will review diving Hospi-tal physics and review common diving emergencies Dr Charash will review assess-ment of diving medical fitness Dr Mckay will present an over-

view of marine envenomation. ACCREDITATION 3.5 Hrs. Category 1 CME REGISTRATION [email protected] [email protected] Advance Registration by March 31, 2011 May 21-22—DUI DOG Rally & Demo Tour Dutch Springs, Beth-lehem, PA nota bene: this is the only DUI Demo Days event in out area this year. There is no event scheduled at Brownstone Water Park. If you want to ‘try dive’ a DUI dry suit—this is your event.

Clearing Up Misconceptions About Diving Historical Wrecks. by: SpiralBound In the world of archeology there are no digs more difficult than those lying beneath watery depths. Digging underwater has in fact, proven so difficult that most ar-chaeologists find more reasons to avoid these sites than to dig them. When an underwater site is taken on the team will sometimes resort to extremely complex and costly ends to make it a dry site. They may, for instance, attempt to di-vert or drain the water from a shallow site, effectively making it a dry land dig, avoiding the chal-lenges involved with a submerged site. Techniques like these are not cheap, and require massive amounts of time and planning so the fact that they are done in the first place tells us that if at all pos-sible any archaeological project is best dug on on dry land. This gives us a hint as to how complex and challenging an underwater dig must be. Why is it so difficult? Shouldn’t a team just be able to put on some scuba gear and head on down to the site? After all, the bottom of the ocean is silty and soft; should-n’t that make it even easier to dig? In almost all cases, projects that involve digging in shallow water (15-50 feet) are the simplest. They render only slight physiological complexities and divers are usually able to stay down much longer than on deeper dives. This is, how-ever, not to say that they aren’t without their challenges. How for instance, does an archeologist re-move the silt covering the artifacts

without causing the water around him to become so clouded with sediment that he can’t even see? One might think that you could just brush the silt aside and the water would carry it away but it doesn’t. Once the visibility has been ruined it can take several hours for it to settle again. Un-derwater archaeologists have had to invent techniques and tools that literally suck up silt, leaving behind the covered artifacts.

Of course if the site is at the bot-tom of a river or in an area of the ocean where there is a current, the silt is simply washed away by the moving water, but how does the team keep themselves and the ar-tifacts from being washed away as well? I can say from my own ex-perience that fighting against a strong current gets to be exhaust-

Continued on page 7

ing and frustrating after only a few minuets. Archaeologists have gone so far as to build structures around a shallow site that divert the cur-rent. This technique does not actu-ally emerge the site, but rather acts as a shield against the current much as a car’s windshield diverts the strong wind from the driver’s face. So where does an archaeologists begin to take on a project of this magnitude? Well, as it would logi-cally follow, the first challenge is actually finding the wreck. Need-less to say, not every archeologist has access to a research vessel

and cutting edge Navy sonar and submarine technology, so clearly this type of research is left to those with the highest budgets. Since we can’t have a shipwreck to explore without a wrecked ship, and since the action of a ship wrecking tends to kill peo-ple, archaeologists, have to be sensitive to the idea that in most cases these sites should be treated as graveyards. Some ar-chaeologists take great care not to disturb the wrecks he finds. He refuses to bring any artifacts at all to the surface and focuses in-stead on mapping and charting the sites. This “take only pictures, leave only bubbles” mentality shows great respect for those who have perished and their

families. The archeologist is still able to discover and learn key facts about the history of the ship or the way it went down but the wreck is left intact. If our base of knowledge is to con-tinue to grow with respect to mari-time history and ship construction, it is absolutely essential that ar-chaeologists are allowed to con-tinue exploring both the very shal-low and the very deep wrecks alike. For this to happen, universi-ties and research institutions must be willing to finance these pro-jects, and there must be some world wide provisions put in place to eliminate the trend of treasure hunting so that countries will be able to trust this delicate research to those most qualified.

Continued from page 6

Fairfield County Diving Association P.O. Box 3005

Fairfield, CT 06824

Address Service Requested

Next FCDA Meeting

Friday - February 25, 2011 - 8:00 PM Coast Guard Cottage - South Benson Marina - Fairfield, CT

Northeast Wreck Diving a presentation by

Captain Hank Garvin

Captain Hank Garvin will speak about decompression diving, the RV Garloo, the San Diego and the Oregon. Hank has been diving since 1962 and has been a divemaster since 1976. He has written arti-cles for several different dive magazines. Hank has mated on two different boats and currently owns

and operates the RV Garloo after diving on her since 1982. He has been on a several major dive expe-ditions (the USS Monitor, the Black Sunday wrecks (off Cape Cod) and the Andrea Doria. The RV Gar-

loo is one of the true live aboard dive boats in the Northeast.

Don't Forget To Pay Your Dues 2011

inside this issue m — the presidents’ corner · page 3 fcda donors the business listed on this...

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