Coral Reef Resource to bookmark

Online Coral Reef Resource Now Available at reefrelieffounders.com

Dear friends and Reef Relief founders Craig and DeeVon Quirolo retired from the Key West based grassroots organization last July, only to begin a comprehensive effort to provide an online resource on coral reefs.  Their new website provides all the award-winning educational tools, grassroots strategies, project reports and images of coral reefs assembled during their work over the past 23 years in the Florida Keys and throughout the Caribbean protecting coral reefs.  You can find it at www.reefrelieffounders.com.
“We just wanted to insure that others can learn from our experiences and continue the important work of saving endangered coral reefs,” noted DeeVon in a recent note.  “Craig’s image archive from all the years he monitored coral reefs, especially those revealing new coral diseases, are invaluable to researchers, students, media, divers and the general public to learn about coral reefs.  We hope to inspire a new generation of sea

Ocean ambiance, relaxed presentation,
our 2009 DVD get HD2O online.

U.S. Coast Guard|by PO3 Walter Shinn

November 18, 2009 - JUNEAU, Alaska – The Coast Guard Cutter Polar Sea, the world’s most powerful non-nuclear icebreaker, will moor at the South Franklin Pier in Juneau and is scheduled to open for public tours.

The Polar Sea is returning to its homeport in Seattle after completing a 101 day deployment, 60 which were above the Arctic Circle. Although the crew of the Polar Sea has conducted multiple patrols in the Arctic, this would mark the cutter’s first science deployment in more than a decade concluding the cutter’s Arctic West Fall 2009 deployments.

The first phase took place over the course of two weeks in mid-September and involved 34 scientists from the Naval Research Laboratory led by Dr. Richard Coffin. The scientists met the cutter off Barrow, Alaska and conducted coring operations to study sediment composition. They were also involved in taking water samples to study temperature, salinity and levels of oxygen at varying

Madrid — The Oceana Ranger catamaran is equipped with a robot that has dived down to 500 meters depth to film species that are rarely spotted, or have never even been seen, in the Canarian archipelago.

[caption id="attachment_631" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Click image!"][/caption]

The goal of the expedition is to identify areas that should be turned into marine protected areas. Only 2.7% of the EU’s marine surface area is protected, but the United Nations calls for 10%.

Oceana has found around a dozen species in the Canary Islands whose existence in the archipelago was unknown until now. Glass and rock sponges, ball, white and black coral, and armored searobin are some of the species that have been found. A wide variety of rare species, or species for which hardly any biological information is known, were also able to be filmed live, including channeled rockfish, anglerfish, silver and pink gallo fish, fan coral, bathyal sea fans, Venus fly-trap anemones, and lollipops sponges.

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Shipwrecks have captured the imagination of scuba divers with each person alone with their thoughts to wonder what may have happened, who was on board, how many died, and if other divers may have tempted the interior to find a watery grave since. Most wrecks are as safe as underwater safety can be, and most divers use extreme caution when entering a ship’s interior, totally aware of what could be. This wreck is mostly skeletal with very few interior spaces to explore, but that doesn’t diminish the experience.

The BENWOOD was sunk in 1942 after WWII. Some say she was hit by German U-boat torpedoes and could not limp back to port. Other say she was laid to rest and used for target practice. Either way the BENWOOD is a shallow dive in reasonable current in the Florida Keys Marine Sanctuary as a wonderful artificial reef to explore… and wonder.

Choose the 640 or 960 HD clips, or better yet jump to our HD PodCast on iTunes for the best viewing experience.Music by Garry Lee Rosenberg, appropriately titled; Sea Anemone.

Help protect deep water coral, from North Carolina to Florida, from destructive fishing methods including trawls, bottom long-lines and dredges.  This collection of deepwater coral is one of the largest deep reef ecosystems in the world!

[caption id="attachment_617" align="alignright" width="281" caption="Corals are in danger. You can help."][/caption]

But it can’t survive without NOAA’s effort to regulate the fishing industry through cooperation, and that can’t happen without help from caring residents of planet Earth. This isn’t a crazy scheme to stop all fishing, that would be ridiculous.  Click the image for a closer look.

It’s easy; click this link and send the formatted note to our leaders.

http://takeaction.oceana.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25222

Want to see more coral? Get our DVD at hd2o.tv

Kind regards,

Paul

HD PodCast - Got KIDS? Too bad.

Too bad more television shows are not produced for young kids. I hear complaints from parents who state most children programming is animation cartoon based. One DVD called The Reef has animated fish, but they don’t teach anything about the Ocean. The fish character speak English, have human-like roles, engage in social situations about every aspect of life with little to nothing about the reef or fishes. Have you ever seen a fish talk? So what is the educational message?

How about a television show about the Ocean in a format kids can enjoy? Young kids can’t experience the reef so let’s bring the reef to them.

Perhaps there is enough kids programming to satisfy the federal mandate, but few are designed to engage kids with science on their level or drive them to the local aquariums. Just more of the same after school cartoons. Boring…

With the exception of the host, this is a concept for kids. Unfortunately I missed the awesome opportunity to attend this year’s National Geographic Producers Workshop @ WGBN Boston. Gives my team a year to wait and hope we are selected next time. What a team!

• Host: Paul Dymon (temporary, cheap, stand-in for real talent)
• Voice of GOD: Bob Cummings (free labor)
• Announcer: Garry Lee Rosenberg (illegal alien)
• Music: (stolen from) Garry Lee Rosenberg
• ICE: Remote from Key West (slave labor)

NO ACT OF KINDNESS SHALL GO UNPUNISHED!

Best view is the HD PodCast on iTunes:  “CLICK” or try the pop-up player.

The second video is seven minutes filled with fun and laughs.

sub titled: Get your fat white ass outside of the cage with that hand full of chum for a real shark thrill!

Video Podcast - While researching the Hawaiian monk seal for a potential documentary with NOAA I stumbled on the ugly exploitation of sharks in the region. It is shocking to realize with all the research on sharks shark tours are becoming an even MORE popular visitor attraction. A recent scuba-moron to Oahu’s North Shore called it ‘exhilarating’. With an attitude, “I just wanted to do it once.” They headed for the hotel with a small polite group of Native Hawaiians on their heels. They were explaining to the fat backsides that Hawaiians consider the shark to be ancestral Gods. Feeding them for entertainment is disrespectful to their culture. Heck, it’s disrespectful to all things in the Ocean, in food chain and the ecological balance. Hawaiians and Hawley alike want the operators to stop.

To be clear: There is nothing wrong, in fact it is smart to use a shark cage. It is very wrong when a dive operator is feeding sharks for people in a cage.

[caption id="attachment_582" align="alignright" width="280" caption="No food today? Let's head to the beach for a bite."][/caption]

Surfers and environmentalists fear the tours will teach sharks to associate people with food. When the sharks don’t find tourists in the little ‘happy meal’ steel cage what do you think will happen next?  While the tourists watch the news from the Lazy Boy some surfer or diver will be missing a limb. The sad part is sharks don’t even like the taste of human, but when confused and taunted the shark will snap and strike at anything.

Sharks sit at the APEX of the World Food Chain. Sharks will gather in areas of tour feeding. The additional shark population will also create great competition for natural prey and cause stress or deplete other marine life in the process.  But that’s of little concern to the impatient tourist who wants a rush right now.  Want a rush? Go down without a cage, see how a shark reacts to a hand full of chum.  Oh, that isn’t as pleasurable? The disrespect may seem temporary by the ‘only once’ gang o’ fools but the damage lives on long after the thrill is gone.

Joe Pavsek, owner of North Shore Shark Adventures, said, “If you read the law, you’ll understand that I’m not breaking any laws.”  (Dhaaaa, why am I an idiot?)  Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Joe Pavsek then revealed this jewel, “We don’t have to feed the sharks. We do it for the customers.” That’s why Joe is an idiot. What would be wrong with the anticipation that you might be lucky and see a shark? Not stimulating enough for an over-stimulated couch potato. The same potatos think they are great athletes because of their dozens of hours with a video game.

More than 400 Hawaiian residents packed a town hall meeting and successfully launched the anti-shark tour movement. State lawmakers have vowed to draft legislation to shut down the tours. Listen to world renowned underwater photographer Stephen Frink has to say about the state of this magical animal.

 

 Legendary Photographer Stephen Frink on Sharks: Play Now | Play in Popup

For the record: Federal law clearly prohibits feeding sharks 200 miles off Hawaii to include the Pacific territories and Samoa. The only exceptions are made for fishermen who harvest them for food, and scientific research for the benefit of the shark.

Ever hear of unintended consequences? Joe is dead wrong and needs to be stopped before someone innocent is declared dead right.

It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature!

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I am a huge fan of reduced consumption, pollution, and localizing commerce in an effort to reduce human impact on the planet. When Al Gore took an interest in Ecology it was time for the rest of us to worry.  Politicians make promises that are impossible, make snap decisions without all the facts, and spend money they don’t have. Imagine for a moment the Post Office and Dept of Motor Vehicle merging. That the future of socialized medical when the federal government gets hold of it.  Wait until we see the new Government Motors line of autos; don’t be surprised if there is a horse involved, most likely pushing.

[caption id="attachment_540" align="alignleft" width="360" caption="Fjords of Western Iceland click to view several more"][/caption]

Attention Mr. Gore, the Academy (not of science; of moviegoers), and the brain-a-holics at Nobel (again not of science; of peace): Ice is supposed to fall off a glacier. That’s how the system works. Can you say FJORD? Some are hundreds of meters deep. Please tell me, how did that happen?

Al Gore doesn’t know if the glaciers are broken, or if they need fixing. If ice didn’t fall off the glaciers we would be back into an ICE AGE. What Gore did was insight fear and panic into the public opinion for personal gain and glory. Instead he is reward him with an Oscar and Nobel?

Here’s the good

Spring is in the air.  Summer around the bend. Video at the end of this post! It won’t be long until I will try to squeeze one more year out of that wetsuit. Either way I need to get in shape for the scuba season.  This is also a good time to GREEN UP around the house and rethink our personal consumption of material and space.

• Reuse - no explanation necessary.
• Reduce - no explanation necessary.
• Recycle - no explanation necessary.
• Rethink - what we show our children.

As you use up a spring cleaning product consider replacing with friendlier products or better yet; make you own household cleaner.

Sweep out the garage and get rid of old paint cans, motor oil, propane tanks which are potential bio-hazards. They may require a call to your municipal recycling agency.  You may have to drop the junk off, but hey - who had the stuff in the garage in the first place?

Don’t miss the SHARK clip in this

I don’t like being negative, but I recently read an article that a soup of plastic debris floats off the coast of California, a testament to humanity’s reliance on plastic and the failure to dispose of it properly, which is why we Ocean lovers must be diligent and set the ecology example.

I first heard of this plastic-rich portion of the ocean way back in the 1970’s. It is a product of swirling currents, known as the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, that gather and concentrate debris. Like an iceberg of debris floating in the Pacific Ocean, the mass usually isn’t visible on the surface, but lurks just below. You can’t walk on it.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has become an early symbol of what some say is a looming trash crisis. But this floating mass of is hard to measure, few agree on how big it is or how much plastic it holds. That makes it difficult to determine what to do about it.

That hasn’t stopped activists and the media from using only the biggest estimates of the patch’s size to warn of an environmental catastrophe, which really captures the publics imagination, but to characterize it inaccurately is wrong and prone to exaggeration and mis-characterization. One thing is for sure; it is human trash and so it can be controlled.

It is difficult to know how to extrapolate the findings. The borders of the gyre shift between seasons, and some scientists argue that the high-plastic area is concentrated and confined to a relatively small part of the gyre.  So what let’s fix it, RIGHT?

[caption id="attachment_149" align="alignright" width="240" caption="color correction is crucial to true beauty in Nature"][/caption]

For the Mel Fisher fans, “Today is the day.”

HD2O Cameraflyer and Crew worked long hours underwater shooting this documentary. We only did the u/w camera work for one vessel.  Tune in to tru TV on Wednesday, March 18th at 10pm EST to watch the epic battle across the coast of the Florida Keys, as two treasure hunting vessels battle each other in a race to uncover half a billion dollars of treasure scattered across the sea floor.

In this image Joe “ICE” Berg is shooting a color chart for me to reference in post production.