Helping Submariners Avoid a Watery Grave

This was a cool article from Wired Magazine on how the Navy is training submariners to avoid a watery grave. This isn't exactly scuba related but it is pretty cool.

Spearfishing: The best way to fish

People ask me all the time why I love spearfishing so much, and my answer is simply this.....Try it for yourself. Spearfishing to me is the most personal and spiritual way you can take what the sea has to offer and still be responsible. To me there is no other way to connect better to the sea than spearfishing, next to surfing of course.

There are THREE different ways to spearfish:

1) Standing on either coral or any other rock formation

2) S.C.U.B.A.

3) And lastly, my favorite and most popular....FREEDIVING.

Freediving in my mind is the best way to hunt your ocean prey. The reason for this is that you don't give off any bubbles when your under the water, therefore not scaring any little fishies away. Not to mention you don't have any bulky equipment keeping you from being agile underwater. While scuba lets you stay under for a longer time, you run the risk of scaring the fish you are hunting.

When I spearfish/hunt I like to use the HAWAIIAN SLING due to the challenge. The sling is the more traditional way to hunt, variations of the sling have been used since the beginning of spearfishing. The first ever used were regular Spears made of many different kinds of wood with bone spikes or wooden carved spikes.

Service time for my Mares Abyss Regulator and Octo

A few months ago I purchased a new regulator and octopus because... well... it was time for a change. My old ones, a Mares Abyss MR22 Regulator and Mares Octopus (shown below) have held up well over the past few years, but I purchased them from a friend (used) and besides I was already Pro-Dealing a few other things..



The manual says the Abyss MR22 was designed for a "2 year or 200 dives" service interval. (Note: Other regulators and manufacturers have different service intervals.) Now that I'm getting ready to sell it, it's probably as good of a time as any to get it serviced again. Maybe I'll even get a higher price!

Generally I take my gear to Sports Chalet when it needs to be serviced, but any reputable dive shop should be able to take care of it. Getting paperwork as proof never hurts either.

What Nitrox actually means

Nitrox definition: Nitrox is any nitrogen-oxygen gas mixture which includes blends that have more or less oxygen than air (21%). So while traditionally used to abbreviate Enriched Air Nitrox, using just the word Nitrox is not technically accurate. Good to know, right?

Sea Life

Sea life is a very important aspect of the ocean, it is something that we need to work harder on to keep safe from over fishing and illegal poaching practices. None too often we neglect what makes our oceans so beautiful and important to us, that is why we will be posting information everyday on a different type of sea creature from the seven seas. Every day we will look at one specific animal and one specific coral. We hope this will be educational to all and hopefully spark an interest in the wonderful underwater world.

Read up on the ocean

I recently went through my personal library and thought maybe I should share some great titles that I have collected over the years. If you love to dive, or just love the ocean why not learn all you can about it? (At least that's how I feel about the subject). Nowadays you have unlimited sources to find the information you seek, whether it be the internet or the library it's all there for you to find. You just have to go and look for it. As well as the typical ocean encyclopedia, there are many books that shed light on the dangers of the ocean and scuba diving. These books aren't meant to scare you away from the underwater world and scuba diving, but to inform and help keep you safe while exploring the great oceans of the world. Below you will find a few titles that i would recommend to all who enjoy the ocean and all the wonderful lifeforms that call it home.

Ocean: The World's Last Wilderness Revealed w/ introduction by Fabien Cousteau
Ocean: Revealing the Secrets of the Deep
Diver Down: Real World Dive Accidents and How to Avoid Them
The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks

These books as well as many different PADI course books fill my book shelves at home and I never get tired of going back and looking through them now and again.

Old Website

The old website has been moved back to it's original location, from http://www.searchnrecovery.com, to http://ckenst.tech.officelive.com/default.aspx. We have no immediate plans to shutdown the old site, all existing information will remain; at least until we can merge over all the relevant information.

Enriched Air Nitrox

Enriched Air Nitrox definition: Enriched Air Nitrox (also abbreviated as Nitrox or EANx) is a gas mixture traditionally of about 22-40% oxygen and 78-60% nitrogen. It is used in scuba diving to reduce the proportion of nitrogen in the breathing gas mixture by increasing the proportion of oxygen which helps reduce the risk of decompression sickness and allows extended dive times without increasing the need for decompression stops.

When Enriched Air Nitrox is abbreviated as EANx it is appended with the oxygen percentage like EANx32 or EANx36 (which also happen to be the most common blends). Enriched Air always requires special cylinders and labeling and should only be used by those trained to dive on it.

Nitrox Specialty for me

Last month I signed up for PADI’s Enriched Air Diver certification specialty class through Sports Chalet. Learning to dive on Nitrox has been something I’ve wanted to do for a while so I can extend my dive times and decrease my exposure to decompression sickness, especially when wreck diving. A lot of my friends dive purely on it and it would be nice to know what the special considerations are in case they have a problem.

I do enjoy learning new specialties and this one doesn’t require much more than some book work and classroom time. Plus my current gear allows me to use multiple types of gases and it would just be a waste of technology not to use everything I’ve been given! Now if I can just get Ryan to take the class with me!

What does Nitrox mean? Look here. What is Enriched Air Nitrox? Look here.