Table of contents for First Quarter 2017 in Sources

NAUI Worldwide remains a true membership association. Our standards, policies and ethics are governed by the association’s Board of Directors, who are members themselves. The Board of Directors are elected through a democratic election process — each eligible member gets a vote in his or her association. This year’s voting was again performed online and with paper ballots available upon request. The third-party host website Votenet (eBallot) was prepared with the candidates’ information, biosketch and answers to common questions posed to all of the candidates. During the voting period, members accessed an eBallot through Votenet to cast their votes. A total of 7,968 NAUI members were eligible to vote in the 2016 Board of Directors election. A total of 913 members cast ballots. The tally of votes in the election…

NAUI’s motto of “Dive Safety Through Education” has never been more relevant than when it organized the annual International Conference on Underwater Education (ICUE). This event was highly regarded as the best educational experience available in the international diving community. NAUI leadership has decided to bring this unique educational experience back, and the 2017 NAUI ICUE will be held in conjunction with the 2017 Scuba Show in Long Beach, California, on May 6 and 7, 2017. ICUE 2017 promises to be a rewarding educational experience for all attendees and will offer a wide variety of presentations designed to reach a broad spectrum of interest. A sampling of speakers and topics includes: Effects of Extreme Cold Weather on Rebreathers — Antarctica Expedition by Jeff Bozanic. DCI Incidents — UCLA Study of…

The NAUI Service Center Mercosul has been active in Brazil since 1996. They held their 20th international meeting of instructors and dive leaders in Jundiaí, São Paulo, on August 23-28, 2016. The intensive six-day event was attended by more than 100 participants. NAUI Executive Director Dallas Edmiston also came to the conference and met and interacted with the NAUI members, all of whom were very much looking forward to his first visit. “Despite a difficult year for Brazil, a country of continental dimensions, there is great commitment and determination among our NAUI leaders,” said Alvanir S. “Jornada” Oliveira, who has been in charge of NAUI Service Center Mercosul since the end of 2008. “NAUI Mercosul continues to unify the NAUI spirit, promoting our twin philosophies of safe diving and environmental…

Michael Aw is an author, explorer and conservation photographer. His accolades include winning more than 65 international photographic awards and being named as one of the world’s most influential nature photographers by Outdoor Photography. In 2013 he was the first Asian to receive a NOGI Award from the Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences. Michael’s mission is to use pictures to inspire love for our ocean and all its inhabitants. He strives to portray his subjects and scenes in their truest forms.“As the seas sustained my livelihood and my family, my stewardship takes on an even greater responsibility. It only makes sense that I give back by contributing more in the preservation of our natural world,” Michael stated. Michael Aw’s essays and pictures have been published in BBC Wildlife, National…

In partnership with the Center for Open Exploration (C4OE), the Green Diver Initiative (GDI) has been awarded a Tampa Bay Estuary Program (TBEP) grant to fund a surveying and coastal clean-up project (Gasp–Our Beads of Tampa Bay) in partnership with the Hillsborough 100 Conservation Challenge during the week of April 22, 2017. C4OE Director Erica Moulton began partnering with GDI several months ago when a brief conversation sparked an idea and generated questions about how the impact of plastic party beads and trinkets linked to Tampa’s Gasparilla Festival, one of the largest events in the Tampa Bay region, might impact coastal waterways. Each year, hundreds of thousands of party beads/ necklaces and other plastic trinkets are exchanged by parade participants and the public. These exchanges occur on both land and…

Traveler’s diarrhea is fairly common among traveling divers. Most cases are mild, but diarrhea, cramping, pain and sometimes nausea are uncomfortable as well as inconvenient. A common cause is food and water infected with bacteria like Escherichia coli (E. coli or ETEC), Salmonella, Shigella, Vibrio or Campylobacter. Other sources are worms, amoebas and protozoa like Giardia and Cryptosporidium. Diarrhea is one of the body’s ways of trying to get rid of pathogens. Sometimes divers take antibiotics prophylactically, hoping to prevent bacterial diarrhea. But antibiotics are not recommended for prevention, and they can create problems, even when properly taken for illness. These are not infrequent or trivial side effects. In deciding about treatment with antibiotics, several issues need to be considered. Several illnesses — for example, those caused by E. coli…

Have you ever wondered how all that spectacular underwater footage of the aquatic sports events at the 2016 Rio Olympics and Paralympics was created? It was quite a feat, and to see all the work that went into it, you would need to go back to well before the events even started, strap on your scuba and get wet in the official pools. I served as the 2016 Olympics director of photography for aquatics as well as a photographer of the Paralympics, and weeks before the opening ceremony you would find me and my team painstakingly setting up and exhaustively testing the huge variety of underwater and above-water cameras, tracking systems and cabling that fed the international broadcasts. From the dive cam used to capture the long panning shots of…

The NAUI Technical Division was created in 1997 with the intent of providing a high standard of technical diving training by codifying technical training standards. The original advisory team, led by Tim O’Leary, was comprised of diving professionals, physicians, engineers and researchers. NAUI was the first mainstream recreational scuba agency to adopt technical training and, therefore, set the pace at a time when recreational nitrox and trimix gas use — in rebreathers and wreck diving — was just beginning. Today, teaching NAUI technical diving programs is fun, adventurous and profitable. Where does an instructor candidate start? NAUI’s Introduction to Technical Diving is a course that was created to introduce a diver to the skills and knowledge of getting into technical diving and to truly sharpen a diver’s skills. Thus, the…

Seventy-one percent. As we all should be aware, approximately 71 percent of Earth’s surface is covered by water. What a boon for divers! While the vast majority of that 71 percent is ocean water, there is still a fair amount of water that is not. Part of that remaining water is at higher elevations — elevations greater than 305 meters (1,000 feet). For many divers, higher altitude ponds and lakes are the common dive sites. Let’s take a look at a few of the differences divers need to consider when diving at altitude. The first, and probably the most obvious, is that most water at altitude is fresh water rather than salt water. (A notable exception would be the Great Salt Lake in Utah.) This means divers will need less…

DIVING OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY RISKS: BOAT OPERATIONS In the previous issue of Sources , we had a look at some of the various health and safety risks that dive operators are exposed to while looking after us when we go diving. In this article, we will try to identify a number of risks that divers need to consider when we want to help operators to make their tasks easier and safer. Think of the role you are playing in adding to their tasks. Capsizing/Sinking — The Red Sea, for example, has hundreds of small rocky outcrops and reefs scattered everywhere. The captain must know where the dangerous reefs are located so that he does not inadvertently hit one of them and become the next wreck. He must also ensure that when…

After 22 years at NAUI Headquarters, Randy Shaw (NAUI 9102) retired as NAUI Director of Training on Jan. 31, 2017. Randy began working at NAUI in 1995, when NAUI Headquarters was still in California, and he was a key enabler in the 1997 move of NAUI Headquarters from Montclair, California,to Tampa,Florida.Although Randy has worn many hats in his NAUI career, training has always been a central facet of his responsibilities. Like many others in the late 1950s, Randy was first attracted to scuba diving from watching Lloyd Bridges (a.k.a. Mike Nelson) on TV’s “Sea Hunt.” He had his first “dive” in 1959 — a Try Scuba experience at a boat show in his native Oklahoma. He was certified as a diver in a YMCA course in 1960 (months before NAUI…

In November 2016, the Board of Directors, on the recommendation of the Training Committee, voted to rename several NAUI Specialty Courses: Underwater Photographer, Underwater Videographer, Underwater Ecologist and Underwater Environment Diver. These courses are being combined and renamed in the 2017 NAUI Standards and Policies Manual as Underwater Digital Imaging Diver and Underwater Naturalist Diver, respectively. The Underwater Digital Imaging Diver will be an amalgamation of the former Underwater Photographer and Underwater Videographer courses. This allows the NAUI Instructor to teach either underwater photography or underwater videography, or both. And why not? Today’s camera technology allows easy transition between “still” and “video” modes, along with many overlapping techniques, such as lighting, framing and composition. These capabilities make the combination of these courses an easy and natural fit. Look for this…

NAUI is breaking the cardinal rule associated with Las Vegas: “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!” No way. No how. There was simply too much fun, excitement and enthusiasm not to share with everyone. So, here’s a quick recap: NAUI conducted 11 different presentations, covering everything from technical to educational and youth engagement. More than 400 members attended the reception at the Stratosphere, enjoying a spectacular view of the city that never sleeps and the fellowship of NAUI members from around the globe. For some in attendance, the fellowship just wasn’t exciting enough and they looked for a greater rush by riding roller coasters and bungee jumping. Then there was the member update where nearly 250 heard of the great work being done by our Board of Directors and…

Five NAUI Instructors were in Antarctica as part of a United States Antarctic Program (USAP) diving team to test and evaluate the use of rebreather equipment for scientific diving research of the National Science Foundation Polar Program. The project is being led by NAUI Instructor John Heine, who also acted as the USAP Diving Safety Officer. The first dives in the USAP program were made in October at McMurdo Station using rebreathers and a gas supply other than air (in this case, a nitrox mix). If their use in Antarctic conditions proves feasible, they will have many potential scientific uses because rebreathers are virtually silent underwater and emit very few bubbles. Possible benefits will include behavioral studies of marine life without the presence of disturbing bubbles, under-ice collections and sampling,…

New NAUI Instructors in Spain Two brothers from Barcelona, Raül and Andreu Lara, completed their path to NAUI membership by earning their NAUI Instructor certifications on Nov. 1 at the NAUI Europe office and training center in the Netherlands. Their choice for NAUI was simple — they wanted the best system available for their dive center in the Barcelona area. With NAUI, they can now provide their customers with the best scuba training available. Raül and Andreu were well prepared for the Instructor Training Course and are now proud new professional NAUI Instructors. NAUI Korea Celebrates With 2016 Year-End Party Closing the year, NAUI Korea held a “Night of NAUI Korea in 2016” in Seoul’s Yongsan I’Park Mall, one of the largest shopping and entertainment malls in Asia. The party…

No human has gills yet, nor can any of us alive walk on water. Clearly, our species has developed the technology to accomplish a fair approximation of the former, as diving leaders certainly know. As for the latter, we can swim, paddle or row under our own power, drift or sail using nature as the motive force or, finally, use myriad kinds of boats equipped with power provided from sources as diverse as atomic energy and steam to cross over and even under the widest oceans. What hasn’t much changed over the time we’ve ventured off the shoreline is our unfortunate tendency to not pay quite enough attention to the details necessary to ensure that we get out there and back in one piece and not much the worse for…

It was 2 a.m. on Nov. 29, 1966, when crewman Dennis Hale awoke to two very loud crashing noises. He thought the noises might be the anchor of their 183-meter (600-foot) freighter, the Daniel J. Morell , slamming against the bow as it battled its way through a terrible storm. He knew something was wrong the moment he tried the light switch by his bunk and the lights didn’t work. Wearing only his shorts, Hale woke his cabin mate, donned his life jacket and peacoat and headed to the deck to see what was happening. To his horror, Hale watched as 52-knot winds and 12-meter (40-foot) waves tore their ship in half. From the time he had awoken until he found himself plunged into the freezing water, only eight minutes…

Who’s your best salesperson? I’ll tell you who it should be: your customers. Word-of-mouth and personal recommendations are the most effective tools that you have to compete and build your business. But there’s a lot more to this concept than just having satisfied customers. It’s not difficult to simply “satisfy” your customers. You can do that by taking good care of them through their training, buying decisions and taking them diving. Happy customers will say good things about you when asked, and that is a good thing. But don’t you think it would be much better if your customers talked about you often and not just when asked? Personally, I want my customers to talk about diving and boast about their challenging achievements during their NAUI training — to everyone,…

Your new scuba student has practiced descents in a confined water pool. Perhaps the pool was 5.5 meters (18 feet) deep. Maybe it was 3.5 meters (12 feet) deep. Possibly it was just 2.5 meters (8 feet) deep. Now it’s time for the open water dives! Is your new aquanaut diving in a cold quarry outfitted in a full 7 mm wetsuit complete with gloves, hood and a belt laced with 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of lead weight? Or is the diver at a tropical island giant striding off of a boat into the salty sea with what seems like endless depth below and a feeling of smallness in a vast ocean? That first plunge into the unknown can be disconcerting. The environment, water conditions and diver’s psyche all play…

A BRIEF LOOK AT THE ADVANTAGES OF DRYSUIT USE AND TRAINING One of the things that has always left me stumped is the number of divers who pursue a variety of certifications after their initial Scuba Diver course, but when it comes to making the transition from wetsuit to drysuit, don’t even consider any kind of formal training. They plunk down a lot of money for a drysuit and then hope for the best, usually with less than desirable results. First off, why dive dry? The obvious answer, especially for those of us who dive in areas where the water can get quite cold, even frozen, is that a drysuit gives the diver the opportunity to extend their dive season far past the typical four or five summer and fall…

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” - Plutarch “Always Learning” is the motto for the NAUI Business Institute (NBI), and judging from the responses of those who attended the inaugural core course sessions at DEMA 2016 in Las Vegas, the fire was lit. A diverse group of students from across the U.S., South Africa, Brazil and Europe gathered to learn about business requirements and practices. A group of experts from across the industry served as instructors and discussion leaders. Two days of intense courses culminated with a workshop to draft or refine business plans and marketing plans for the participants. The underlying goal of the NBI is to provide an engaging course that affords graduates the enhanced skills they need to manage…

On May 10, 2016, a honeymooner from Japan became the 200,000th person to walk the Australian Great Barrier Reef at Green Island. Satoshi Miwa from Nagoya, Japan, was surprised when Seawalker staff greeted him at the bottom of the seafloor with a plaque acknowledging the milestone. Karl Kuhle (NAUI 12673), owner of Seawalker Green Island, said: “It has been an incredible experience working with a fantastic crew in what has to be the best tourism destination in the world. Two hundred thousand guests have now had the Great Barrier Reef experience of a lifetime with us, and that is just amazing. Seawalker first set foot on the sands of Green Island in 2003. On our first day, we took six customers; today we have over 17,000 customers annually.” Although visitors…

Hidden in a backyard corner of Catalina Island, California, is a breathtaking spectacle. Its name is Farnsworth Bank. Home to one of the Pacific Coast’s largest garden patches of purple hydrocoral (Stylaster californicus), this underwater pinnacle has been a hot spot for divers and fishermen alike since the ’70s. It is for that same reason the once-thriving marine haven is now under increasing threat. Farnsworth Bank endures over 200 visits by boat every year. As its popularity surges, so does the human impact on its ecosystem. With every anchor drop, the fragile substrate is scarred, losing precious hydrocoral that — unlike kelp — takes hundreds of years to grow. Before Farnsworth Bank was designated a marine conservation area in 1972, its hydrocoral was harvested in gratuitous quantities. Though the harvesting…

Regardless of how advanced or specialized your favorite type of specialty diving is, it is important to recognize that the vast majority of preventable dive accidents are caused by a small number of quantifiable risk factors and a diver’s reaction to them. It is our responsibility as dive professionals to understand what these risk factors are and recognize our role in educating our students and customers on how to prevent or properly react to them. Here are three common contributing factors that lead to diver injury or death, and what you can do to minimize your students’ (and your own) risk of a dive accident. LISTEN TO YOUR EARS: One of the most common causes of dive injuries reported to the medical staff at Divers Alert Network (DAN) is trouble…

This past November, I had the privilege of presenting a seminar, Youth Engagement in Diving: An Invitation to the Next Generation, at DEMA Show 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. As a NAUI member with the majority of my teaching experience coming from youth training programs, I feel responsible for sharing that experience with my fellow NAUI leaders and the dive industry as a whole. As the Communications Coordinator for NAUI Worldwide, supporting and promoting youth training programs and initiatives takes that responsibility even further. As a youth-focused dive instructor, I have personally witnessed the transformative power that participating in scuba diving can have on an individual, especially teens and young adults. As a communications professional, presenting at DEMA demonstrated firsthand how simply creating a platform for discussing industry issues like…

Perhaps the technology that is changing most rapidly in the dive industry is the dive light. You may not give your trusty light a second thought, but it’s an essential piece of gear, and in some subsectors of diving, it’s an absolute necessity for your safety. Helping your students and clients understand the features found in today’s dive lights and how that aligns with the kinds of diving they want to participate in will not only better prepare them for their preferred underwater pursuit but also produce more successful sales. Two technologies are driving the rapidly changing dive light market — LED bulbs and battery technology. As a result, lights are becoming brighter, smaller and have a longer burn time per set of batteries or charge. Even 10 years ago,…

Diving during the winter when the air and water temperatures are cold increases the risk of equipment malfunction, particularly for rebreather divers. Cold temperatures affect the functionality of most components. The addition of water, especially fresh water, compounds these problems. Thoughtful equipment preparation and management, such as keeping it dry and warm as long as possible, can minimize the risk of equipment failure malfunction when diving in the cold. Cold Temperatures Affect Materials and Reactions: • Many materials change dimensions. Materials and mechanical components have an increased risk of failure or malfunction (e.g., gas leaks), and it is often difficult to resolve these problems without heat. • Many materials change physical properties. Components become more rigid (e.g., O-rings) and brittle (e.g., plastics) and are more likely to fail or break…

Throughout the years I spent as a police training officer, I had the opportunity to spend some serious time teaching new officers the “ins and outs” of a difficult and demanding career. Spending hours breaking down complex and difficult skills often required a different approach to many of the standard training guidelines or norms. With this experience, I looked at the concept of teaching with small sets of goals or benchmarks in order to either help a trainee conquer the tasks or, oftentimes, identify the shortcomings and document them as to why a new officer wasn’t going to complete training. Documenting the details is one of the critical components of any successful program, be it police officer training, scuba certifications or any other formal training program. I wrote a comprehensive…

It was a stunning week on a far-away island, a smidgen of a jewel between the East China Sea and the vast Pacific Ocean. Despite its disappearing act on most maps, Amami-Oshima was first mentioned in Japanese literature in the seventh century. The tiny, remote island was chosen as the re-birthplace for the Handicapped Scuba Association (HSA) Japan, the newest revival to the HSA’s Training Centers. Last year, HSA founder Jim Gatacre (NAUI 6969) flew from the organization’s California headquarters to Amami-Oshima to train three HSA Course Directors (CDs) and supervise the HSA Instructor Training Course (ITC) for four NAUI Instructors taught by these newly credentialed HSA CDs. This was not the first time Jim had visited this island with its waters of many moods. Twenty-seven years ago he taught…