Making it count – November 2011
Making It Count – November 2011 GIVE THANKS TO OUR OCEANS BY DONATING TO REEF By Paul Humann, REEF Co-Founder I am excited to announce the launch of our Winter Fundraising Campaign. During this holiday season, please consider a contribution to protect and conserve our marine ecosystems. Donate today using our secure online form, call REEF HQ at 305-852-0030, or mail in your donation to REEF, PO Box 246, Key Largo, FL 33037. Members who donate $250 or more will receive a limited, signed, and numbered print of a beautiful Peppermint Basslet. This year, we give thanks to all our supporters and donors who have made REEF’s programs in 2011 successful. Your donation supports a database of over 154,000 fish and invertebrate surveys, marine conservation research, Nassau Grouper and Goliath Grouper protections, lionfish invasion … Read entire article »
Scuba Extreme Adventure Sports & Travel
Scuba Extreme Adventure Sports & Travel It is the second annual Small Business Saturday, come show support for your local dive shop and remember everyone who comes in gets a FREE gift from us to show our appreciation! We will be in the store until 3:30 this afternoon. … Read entire article »
Filed under: Diver, Events, Featured, Instructor, Open Water, Photography, Promotions, Reefs, Reference, Report, Specialties, Training, Travel, Videography, Wrecks
Venice Florida Magladon Shark tooth hunt
It was Friday Nov 18 when I began the trip towards Venice, Florida. Stopping to pickup the owners of Scubaextreme and one other diver, the four of us in two vehicles begin our adventure. Along the way, we pit stop in Zepherhills to eat dinner at Outback Steak House, mmm mm mm. After dinner, I put the truck in cruise and we sleep the rest of the way there. Now, after checking in 6 of us head out to find a place to … pahtey… Finding most places close at 9AM on a Friday night we find the Pineapple Express. Two live bands that played until Midnight. At 2AM, they tell us it’s time to go. Was it because we reached our limit? No… Because they are closing. We all head back to … Read entire article »
Filed under: Open Water, Reefs, Report, Sharks, Trip Report
Coast Guard cutter Mohawk set to be sunk off Lee County, Fla
The 165-foot Coast Guard cutter Mohawk, now a floating museum in Key West, should be an artificial reef off Lee County by June 2012. Mohawk was involved in 14 attacks on German U-boats during World War II. / Photo by Brian Lapointe/Special to The News-Press By mid-2012, a significant piece of maritime military history could be resting on the sea floor 15 miles off Lee County. Miami-Dade Historic Maritime Museum Inc., has agreed to donate the 165-foot World War II Coast Guard cutter Mohawk to Lee County to be scuttled as an artificial reef. Lee County has also been awarded a $1.5 million grant from West Coast Inland Navigation District to pay for towing the vessel from Key West, cleaning and sinking it. The preferred destination for Mohawk is the ARC Reef site in … Read entire article »
Filed under: Artificial Reefs, Boats, Events, Featured, Reefs, Reference, Report
Lionfish Workshop
[singlepic id=216 w=430 h=350 float=center] FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: MEDIA CONTACT: REEF: 305-852-0030 Lionfish Workshops to be held in Southeast Florida First Workshop on November 14th (MIAMI, October 31, 2011) – The Miami-Dade County Cooperative Sea Grant Extension Program in partnership with the Reef Environmental Education Foundation (REEF) will host a series of lionfish workshops open to the public for the Southeast Florida area. These workshops cover the history of the invasion, lionfish biology/ ecology/ impacts, how to safely collect and handle lionfish, lionfish venomology and first aid for stings, and recommended techniques for filleting lionfish. The first workshop of the series will be held Monday, November 14th, from 6:30 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School, in the Cosculluela Hall, located at 500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL. Belen … Read entire article »
Filed under: Events, Fish, Lionfish, Reefs, Reference, Report
Making It Count – October 2011
Putting It To Work: REEF Advanced Assessment Team Member Co-Authors Publication on Barracuda By Christy Pattengill-Semmens, Ph.D., Director of Science REEF Advanced Assessment Team Member, Dave Grenda, recently co-authored a paper documenting behavioral observations of young Great Barracuda occurring on live bottom sub-tropical reefs primarily at Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary off the coast of Georgia. For the past three years Dave assisted University of Connecticut researcher, Dr. Peter Auster, in studying behavioral interactions of piscivores and their prey. During REEF surveys on these cruises, Dave and the other researchers documented young-of-year (YOY) Great Barracuda (those individuals that had very recently settled to the reef, and were between 2-3 inches in length) hunting YOY Tomtate and Silverside that were taking refuge under ledges. Groups of YOY Barracuda would attack, capture, and consume … Read entire article »
Sunken treasure: Croce & crew uncover Drake shipwrecks missing for 400-plus years
BY WILLIAM BENDER Philadelphia Daily News benderw@phillynews.com 215-854-5255 IF JIMMY HOFFA were a pirate, Pat Croce would have found his body by now. What you might not know about Croce, the hard-charging former 76ers president, physical therapist, TV commentator, motivational speaker, writer and entrepreneur, is that he’s also a hard-core “pirate aficionado.” And he just discovered Sir Francis Drake’s burnt shipwrecks off the coast of Panama – a monumental breakthrough in underwater archaeology that solves a 400-year-old mystery. “Explorers have been trying to do this stuff forever, and here I am, a homeboy from Philadelphia in the Caribbean and we score!” Croce told the Daily News last night. “It’s pretty wild.” Leave it to a Philly guy to channel Vince Fumo’s WGSD attitude (remember the “We get s— done” shirts the senator’s aides used to wear?) and … Read entire article »
Resilience Webinar: Resilience Assessments and Management Decision-Making
Call Date & Time: Thursday, October 27th 20113:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time Register Here To join the Resilience Practitioners Network, email us at resilience@tnc.org For more information about The Nature Conservancy’s Reef Resilience Program visit www.reefresilience.org This Webinar is brought to you through the generous support of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and NOAA’s Coral Reef Conservation Program. Distributed by the Resilience Practitioners Network Reef Resilience Webinar: Using Resilience Assessments to Inform Management Decision-Making Operationalizing the powerful and popular concept of resilience has proven difficult for reef managers. Many are unsure as to how to best streamline building resilience into their daily activities, as well as how to identify the high resilience sites in which to invest limited resources. Recently, colleagues from TNC, WCS, GBRMPA, NOAA and the IUCN have collaborated to build upon the coral reef … Read entire article »
Filed under: Artificial Reefs, Events, Reefs, Training
Pacific Paradise – Palau – November 20-28
Palau live aboard opportunity. Please join me on a pacific adventure. One of the best regions in the world to dive. Book before Sept 3, 2011 and you may save $700 off the charter rate. Contact me here ~ Rates are based on double occupancy. ~ All prices quoted USD. ~ Rates are subject to change without notice. ~ Single Supplement rate is 1½ times the charter rate if an individual traveler prefers a private room “Master” staterooms are larger and can have different configurations depending on the yacht. They can have a double bed, a queen or 2 singles that make into a queen (couples preferred). “Deluxe” staterooms have a double bed and one single bunk. “Twin” staterooms have two single bunks (singles preferred) and share a bathroom with one other stateroom. “Quad” staterooms have four single bunks … Read entire article »
Filed under: Adv. Open Water, Boats, Diver, Events, Open Water, Photography, Promotions, Reefs, Travel, Trip Invitations, Videography, Wrecks
Palm Beach Florida Bring in over 1000 lionfish to help control population
Filed under: Events, Fish, Lionfish, Reefs, Reference, Report
New Artificial Reef off Coast of Deleware/NJ
CAPE MAY — Some of the sailors who served on the Navy destroyer USS Arthur W. Radford gathered today to watch it be pushed to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to become part of a manmade reef. “It’s sad to see it being sunk,” said Lee String, 46, of Westville who served on the ship in 1985 as a welder, pipefitter and plumber. “It was once a proud-looking ship, but it’s better to see it go to that purpose rather than razor blades.” Officials say the 563-foot ship, which was decommissioned in 2003, will be the longest vessel ever sunk as an artificial reef in the Atlantic Ocean. Plenty of manmade objects, including several retired New York City subway cars, are already submerged in the Atlantic to create habitats for sea life … Read entire article »
Filed under: Artificial Reefs, Boats, Reefs, Reference
Cozumel Lionfish and Whaleshark Expeditions + More
You are invited to join a group of divers on a number of expeditions September 3-10, 2011. The adventure begins Saturday September 3rd when you arrive on the island of Cozumel Mexico. Your all expense paid package includes an all inclusive week of 8 days, 7 nights hotel with meals and drinks, plus 10 dives. Sunday we are offering an all inclusive adventure to the whaleshark migration. This is an all day event where we shuttle over to the mainland and are brought up north to the boats to be shuttled out to locate migrating whalesharks. You will have the opportunity to get into the water an film the majestic creatures and they feed and migrate. You are then brought to an island where we will enjoy a delicious lunch before heading back to Cozumel. Monday offers an opportunity … Read entire article »
Filed under: Adv. Open Water, Boats, Cavern, Diver, Drift, Events, Featured, Fish, Lionfish, Master Diver, Open Water, Photography, Promotions, Reefs, Reference, Sharks, Specialties, Travel, Trip Invitations, Videography, Whaleshark