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Streamline equipment and keep hoses, gauges, alternate air sources, knives, etc. close to your body. Divers who wear dive knives attached to their legs usually wear the knife on the inside of the calf, where it is less likely to become caught on kelp. Kelp divers will also configure regulator first-stages so that they are less likely to get caught on kelp. Certain piston first-stages are less likely to snag kelp when they are mounted with low-pressure hoses below the tank valve opening.
Try to plan your dive so that you descend and ascend at the edge of the kelp bed. With this mindset, you treat the canopy as an overhead environment. You can break a kelp stipe as you would break a stick in half. Kelp is very elastic and difficult to pull apart, but it can be broken like a pencil without much effort. Do not try to free yourself by swimming vigorously against the kelp or even worse, by inflating your BC. The former will exhaust you and could precipitate panic. The latter could result in an uncontrolled, dangerous ascent. If your air supply or equipment problems prevent you from descending in thick kelp, you can crawl out of the canopy to clear water by inflating your BC (once you’ve untangled yourself) and pulling yourself over the top of the canopy on your belly. Don’t inflate the BC so much that it constricts breathing. You may want to flip your octopus and gauges behind your back to keep them from getting intertwined in the canopy. Kelp blades will drift in the direction of the current. This is particularly important when diving from a boat in windy conditions, since often the boat at anchor will tend to line up with the direction of the wind rather than the tidal current. |
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Our Reefs are Fragile, Too!
From 70’ on, the wall at Snowflake Island, the array of soft corals, sponges and tunicates continues into the abyss. "Second of third best in the World," according to the experts. Well, relaxing here in the slow changeover tide, its definitely "Number One." As we drift, we notice something odd. The beautiful finger sponge of usual amber to rust brown in colour is black from its attachment to the branching fingers. Closer inspection shows a neatly placed slash at the sponge’s base. having only 3 layers to its body, bacteria and parasites have entered and death is slowly working its way to the top. This beautiful sessile (unmoving) creature has been ravaged by an accidental flip of a fin, probably done unawares.
When admiring the sights of our sites, lets take a little extra time for buoyancy control and kicking water rather than bottom. We all want to keep our dive sites pristine for the future use of everyone. |
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Copyright Starfish Consulting, 2004.
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Brightly coloured plastic hose wraps make it easier to distinguish your hoses by sight and by touch from kelp stipes of similar diameter that may be caught on your tank valve or regulator first-stage. This is especially important if you decide to use your knife to detach kelp from your equipment.
Directly below us on a small ledge, red Irish lords and a grunt sculpin lie camouflaged in the debris. The “debris" turned out to be giant barnacles and bryozoans(some divers refer to them as hard coral). They are still intact, but are now deposited out of their life giving current. They have been broken from their perch, again probably unintentionally by a diver fin kick or just taking a hand hold to relax. We all know that our waters are temperate (let’s be honest here, they are cold!!). Animals grow slowly because of temperature, but grow "en mass." Hence, the incredible diversity and our high rating. Even though we seem to have an abundance of everything, our reefs are fragile too!! We have probably all heard or read about the destruction of tropical reefs due to diving activities. Lets not have our reefs publicized in that manner.