The Presidents Corner by Mike Cassetta

Transcription

1 FAIRFIELD COUNTY DIVING ASSOCIATION November 2013 Volume 20 Issue 11 Inside this Issue The Presidents Corner by Mike Cassetta page 1 FCDA Donors I page 2 October Meeting Raffle Winners page 3 Events of Interest to FCDA Members page 3 FCDA Member Ads page 3 Carolina-hammerheadshark-debuts pages 4 FCDA Donors II page 4 Your personal $849 underwater 'drone' page 5 Underwater pioneer recalls years when scuba was young page 6 & 7 Annual FCDA Holiday Party page 8 Next FCDA Meeting page 9 The Presidents Corner by Mike Cassetta Congratulations to Andy & Julie on their marriage. A diver s prayer for many years of happiness, May the seas be calm, the waters be warm and the viz be excellent.. December 7 th is the Annual FCDA Holiday Bash. It will again be at Cinzano s, and should be a good time as always. Advanced reservations are required by November 30 th. Cost $32 per person and $64 for 2 (what a bargain). I will be making a presentation at our November meeting, Friday the 23 rd. I will be discussing the taxonomic classifications of sharks, theories of evolution (briefly) and special adaptations of different species of sharks to thrive in a wide variety of marine environments. I know it may sound boring, but it s a very fascinating topic and I have lots of neat pictures of very strange looking sharks. I guarantee it will be more exciting than the Mooray Wheels. January will be our annual elections. If you are interested in running for office, please let us know. Happy Belated birthday Earth 17 th century Anglican Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher, calculated the date of creation to be October 23, 4004 BC and Dr. Charles Lightfoot of Cambridge University further proclaimed the precise time of creation to be 9:00 am. I hope that satisfies any Creationists out there who may be upset by my upcoming talk.mike

2 Page 2 FCDA Donors The business listed on this page has donated dive gear and dive services to help support the Fairfield County Diving Association. New England's Tech Diving Center! New England Dive Center 476 North Colony Street Wallingford, CT Fax Dealer for OMS, UWATEC, Oceanic, Mares, D a c or, C r e s s i - S u b, P o s e i d o n, Scubapro, Bare, O ' N e i l l a n d Henderson. P.O. Box 3005, Fairfield, CT Internet mail: fcda@aol.com Presidents 2012 Board Matt Rownin & Mike Cassetta Vice-President Mark Shannon Secretary Treasurer Charles Blanchette Paul J. Gacek The region's foremost source for scuba and technical diving gear, t r a i n i n g a n d everything for the r e c r e a t i o n a l o r serious tech diver. Draeger Atlantis I Rebreather training, certification and rental. New England Dive Center offers complete training for all levels of diving, from Open Water through the most advanced technical courses. Our instruction provides certification through SSI, PDIC, TDI and IANTD. Visit us on the Web:

3 Page 3 October Meeting Raffle Winners After a video presentation on Diving Utila by Paul Gacek the club held its regular raffle to support our DAN Platinum sponsorship. The winners were: OMS Tank Band donated by New England Dive Center - Jason Giannaras; Ikelite Dive Light donated by Orbit Marine Dive Center - Tom Thomes; Mares Dive Hat donated by Rex Dive Center - Jason Giannaras; Henderson Dive Hat donated by Rex Dive Center Jason Giannaras; Oceanic Fin Bag donated by New England Dive Center - Tom Thomes; Dry Suit Kneepads donated by New England Dive Center - Jason Giannaras; Mesh Back Pack Donated by New England Dive Center - Daniel Shannon and an Oceanic Pioneer Dive Mask donated by New England Dive Center Paul Gacek. Thanks to New England Dive Center, Rex Dive Center and Orbit Marine Dive Center for donating tonight s raffle prizes for our DAN raffle. Remember, you can't win if you don't buy tickets and you can't buy tickets if you don't get up and come out to FCDA events and meetings! Events of Interest to FCDA Members November 16, 2013-Explorers Club Sea Stories December 7, 2013 FDCA Annual Holiday Party 7pm Cinzanos Restaurant. FCDA Member Ads Hey - have you got a non retail-diving business that you d like to share with fellow members of FCDA? Get your business card size ad in the FCDA monthly newsletter Surface Interval for only $50.00 for one year. Give your business a boost and help support the production of our monthly newsletters. For more information, write to FCDA, P.O. Box 3005, Fairfield, CT or to fcda@aol.com.

4 Page 4 Carolina Hammerhead Shark Debuts FCDA Donors The business listed on this page has donated dive gear and dive services to help support the Fairfield County Diving Association. (UPI) -- A new species of hammerhead shark discovered off the coast of South Carolina previously eluded researchers because of its similarity to the common scalloped hammerhead. Ichthyologist Joe Quattro, a biology professor with the University of Carolina, came across the new species while looking at hammerheads in South Carolina. The scalloped hammerheads they were following displayed two different genetic signatures. On searching through literature they found that Carter Gilbert, curator of the National Museum of Natural History from 1961 to 1998, had described a scalloped hammerhead to have 10 less vertebrae, the distinguishing feature for this new species. Quattro was drawn to Carolina after his work documenting species in the rivers of South Carolina led him to the ocean. South Carolin is well-known a pupping ground for several species of shark, including the hammerhead. The female hammerheads would birth their offspring close to coast and remain there for a year while the pups grew. After publishing in 2006 genetic evidence of this new species, they followed it up with making measurements of the new species and named it Sphyrna gilberti, named in honor of Gilbert. While shark populations have dwindled over the years Quattro hopes his work will go a long way to help document this dying species and increase awareness about the taxonomy and evolutionary history of sharks. "The biomass of scalloped hammerheads off the coast of the eastern U.S. is less than 10 percent of what it was historically," Quattro said. "Here, we're showing that the scalloped hammerheads are actually two things. Since the cryptic species is much rarer than the lewini, God only knows what its

5 Your Personal $849 Underwater 'Drone' by Ryan Bergeron, CNN November 6, 2013 (CNN) -- "Live every week like it's Shark Week." Those immortal words come not from the Discovery Channel's marketing department but from Tracy Morgan on "30 Rock." Believe it or not, there once was a time when there was no Shark Week. It wasn't until famed oceanographer Jacques Cousteau's 1956 documentary, "The Silent World," that people began to see what the world under the sea was really like. "Jacques Cousteau changed the way ocean exploration was done," said Eric Stackpole, who along with partner David Lang is behind a submersible robotic watercraft -- sort of an underwater drone -- that could open a whole new world of undersea exploration. Cousteau "invited people to explore along with him, and so for us it's the same thing," said Lang. Their invention, called an Open- ROV, is a submarine-like robot that you control with your laptop. It gives scientists, explorers and other users a glimpse of what lies below the surface, without them getting wet. "R-O-V stands for remotely operated vehicle" Stackpole said. "It's got a video camera on it, so you can see what it sees live. So I can put this in the water, fly it around and see what it sees." The OpenROV is about the size of a toaster and is engineered to go to depths of up to 100 meters. Underwater ROVs have been used for research for years. But the biggest difference between the OpenROV and the one, say, James Cameron uses, is the price. The OpenROV sells for $849. It's not what everyone would call cheap, but you don't need a grant to get your hands on one. This affordability is how Stackpole and Lang hope to bring OpenROV to the masses, turning average people into Cousteau-like undersea adventurers. Plan for a new kind of spy plane "If you think about ocean exploration right now, it's something that a lot of people think, 'Oh, well, you know, what that's something that professional scientists do, that National Geographic explorers do. That's not something that I get to do,' " Lang said, "I think that's what we're trying to instill back in everyone." The two met when Stackpole was interning with NASA and Lang was between jobs, and both immediately bonded over the idea of a new way to explore the ocean. "When we first met almost three years ago... within 10 minutes Eric told me a story about this underwater cave," Lang said. "Within a half an hour we were talking about, 'Well, what if we could build an underwater robot that could go and roam the ocean and anyone could go on and control it from the Internet?" The project started in their garage in Cupertino, California -- home to some other famous tech innovators: Apple. But once they turned to Kickstarter last year, they saw how many people were truly interested in taking the plunge. "We set a goal for $20,000 and ended up raising that in about two hours, which is really exciting," Lang said. "It's fun to watch the kind of dollar amounts go up, but then you quickly realize, 'Oh my God, we have to build all these things.' " There are over 500 OpenROVs in use now around the globe. Even though the project is growing, Stackpole and Lang are sticking with their do-it-yourself ethos. The OpenROVs are an open-source project, meaning that anyone can hack them to create new features or uses for the devices. Lang and Stackpole sell the ROVs as kits, and customers put them together themselves. Meet your friendly neighborhood drones It's a process that helps get everyone involved in the production and design aspect. "We have people from well over 50 Page 5 countries in our community who can all contribute to how to make the design better and how to use it better," Stackpole said. Among those interested in Open- ROVs are conservation groups who want to check on invasive fish species and teachers who want to use them in the classroom, Lang said. Building a community of users to provide input is another way the OpenROV is unique. It also explains the first half of the name. "OpenROV is an open-source community," Stackpole said. "If the ROV is having some sort of a problem and we can't figure out how to handle it, I can go onto the forums and post, 'Hey, this is a problem I'm having,' and as I sleep, the problem is going across Europe and people who are experts are answering it because they find it interesting. "By the time I wake up, it's going to cross the U.S., and by lunch I can have five or six good solutions." With a flow of new ideas coming in from all over the world, Stackpole and Lang have decided not to get a patent for the OpenROV -- at least not yet. This makes it easier for them to upgrade with new tech and designs. "For us, we want to innovate as quickly as possible. We want to come up with new designs and revolutionize how underwater exploration is done rather than committing to one design," said Stackpole. "We've been designing the ROV around parts that are not even in existence yet, but that we know are emerging." As the OpenROV evolves and improves, this approach may allow for more exploration in uncharted waters. "People often ask, 'Is it something that's just kind of a toy that's fun to build and play with, or is it something that you expect to be used by real researchers?' And our answer certainly is, 'both,' " Stackpole said. Jacques Cousteau would certainly be proud.

6 KITCHENER Suffering through a slow recovery from hip replacement surgery, 86-year old Jack Youngblut is confined to an easy chair where he wiles away his time reflecting on a remarkable life. "I started diving in 1958, and once you start diving, you always want to do something better," said Youngblut, an awardwinning underwater photographer and one of the founding members of the now defunct Trident Diving Club in Kitchener. What makes Youngblut's story compelling is that he started diving just four years after the first scuba certification course was offered in California. In 1956 renowned underwater explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau shot the documentary The Silent World. The film was one of the first to use underwater colour cinematography and went on to win several prestigious awards including an Oscar. Scuba, particularly underwater photography, was virgin territory. Don Wilkes, retired manager of Fathom Five National Marine Park and the Bruce Peninsula National Park, has known Youngblut for years and calls him "one of the grandfathers of scuba diving in Ontario. "He built his own split lens camera in 1960 when scuba diving was new." The lens allowed Youngblut to shoot photos above and below the water's surface simultaneously. Youngblut was on the cutting edge of an activity that had, up to then, been confined to the military. Much changed after National Geographic magazine ran an article in 1953 about Cousteau's underwater archeology near Marseille. Underwater Pioneer Recalls Years When Scuba Was Young Youngblut now The public suddenly started demanding diving gear. Around the same time the term SCUBA was coined, an acronym for "selfcontained underwater breathing apparatus." Youngblut recalls those days with nostalgia the excitement of doing something few others attempted and the fun of building equipment that wasn't available, including a housing for his underwater camera and the camera itself. But his experiences weren't always fun. "We dove for the police, like once when a child drowned in a gravel pit," he said, the image of that dive near Waterloo still vivid. In those days, police relied on volunteers like Youngblut who would swim back and forth in a grid pattern while tethered to lines hanging above the water. This method ensured systematic coverage of the area. But in this case, something was odd. "I was going back and forth, back and forth, and the brass ring on the line kept getting caught in the same place," he said. "It wouldn't slide." Page 6 Youngblut rose to the surface to question if one of the police officers was stopping the ring. But no one had touched it. He soon discovered why. "That was where the body was, where that brass ring wouldn't move anymore," he said. Youngblut has no idea why it happened. And he questioned the possibility of an outside force leading him to the boy something unexplainable. His other police dives included searching for at least two cars stolen from Toronto. The vehicles had been driven out onto the surface of the ice one in the Elora Gorge and had plunged to the murky depths. It was the divers' job to find the vehicle and hook up a tow line. These ice dives were not for the faint of heart. "Diving under the ice was a specialty for me because I had no fear," he said. "Twenty, 30, 40 feet down, it's dark, and if you lost the end of the rope you don't know which way is home. That's what I had to worry about." When the police trained their own divers, Youngblut and his fellow enthusiasts were no longer necessary at crime scenes. But there was still plenty of work to do, including laying pipes for hydro and shooting photos for marine researchers. He filmed fish spawning, various species of crayfish and sea floor scrapings resulting from glaciers that had retreated thousands of years ago. A father of four who worked as a plumbing inspector by day, Youngblut spent all his weekends and holidays on dives. Continued on next page.

7 Page 7 Underwater Pioneer Recalls Years When Scuba Was Young (continued) Youngblut then Sometimes he dove in the U.S., but mostly in Canada, particularly Portuguese Cove, half an hour from Halifax. He said that while he understands divers who prefer warm, exotic locations, Canadian waters have their own unique beauty and danger. "The furthest was Newfoundland, I filmed a study of plant growth in the ocean," he said, recalling the strong currents he had to fight. Youngblut's family often tagged along on these journeys but preferred to busy themselves on land. "My wife was afraid of water," he said. Youngblut's interest in underwater photography started in Given that there were few role models at the time, much of what he learned was by trial and error. He had mechanical aptitude that allowed him to problem solve, and he possessed a tenacious attitude. "It they said, 'You can't do that,' I did it," he said. And he did it so well a workshop wall in his Kitchener bungalow is plastered with plaques, certificates and ribbons from such organizations as the Underwater Photographic Society and the Ontario Underwater Council. He placed third in 1980 for an ice-diving film at the 16th annual International Underwater A copy shot of a photo Jack Youngblut made of a diver examining the Christ of the Abyss in the Florida Keys. Jack Youngblut travelled the world and was considered one of the world's best underwater photographers. Youngblut's photos are also in the Fathom Five National Marine archival collection, and many pieces of his equipment are part of the permanent display at the Bruce Peninsula National Park's Visitor Centre, just outside Tobermory. Cameras, housings and a hand held device that pulled divers through the water what Wilkes called an underwater scooter are all a testament to Youngblut's innovative mind. Yet he admits, he never set out to earn money. "They would ask what I intended to charge and I'd say, 'No, I do it because I like it,'" said Youngblut, who was motivated by the adventure. "Every time I went out, I'd find something new." "From 60 to 70, I was still diving by myself," he said. "I'll still go out, with a snorkel and wet suit, but now I've got these stupid (painful) hips." Wilkes remembers Youngblut with fondness and great respect. "He was passionate about his hobbies," said Wilkes. "Jack has always been reserved, generous. He never looked for the limelight." Reprint from The Record.com By Valerie Hill October 12, 2013

8 Page 8 Annual FCDA Holiday Party Saturday, December 7, :00PM Ristorante Cinzano's 1920 Black Rock Turnpike Fairfield, CT Buffet Menu: Tortellini Carbonara, Chicken Marsala, Roast Tip Sirloin, Broiled Salmon Vegetable, Roasted Potatoes & Melange of Field Greens, Coffee, Tea and Dessert; Cash Bar $5 Grab Bag All this for only $32.00 per person! Advance reservations required!! Good Company Dive Raffle Music I want to have a great time at the 2013 Annual FCDA Holiday Party! Name(s) Number of $32.00 per person= Make your check payable to FCDA and mail to: FCDA, PO Box 3005, Fairfield, CT postmarked by November30, 2013.

9 Page 9 Next FCDA Meeting Friday, November 22, :00 PM Coast Guard Cottage, South Benson Marina, Fairfield, CT Taxonomy, Evolution and Adaptations of Sharks a slide presentation by Mike Cassetta Mike is a current co-president of the FCDA and an active member of the Maritime Aquarium Dive Team and Newtown Underwater Search and Rescue Team. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame with a BA in Anthroplogy and was a member of the Anthropology National Honor Society and areas of study focus included theories of evolution and animal behavior. Fairfield County Diving Association P.O. Box 3005 Fairfield, CT Address Service Requested