Scuba With Bill

Wow, what a story. I’ve always found the sea lion pups to be very playful but the adults can be a tad aggressive.

The Marine Protected Areas (MPA) website has been redesigned and contains a lot of goodies for those of you who are interested in our underwater protected areas.

Check it out at:

http://www.mpa.gov/

Scuba diving with manta rays in Yap. Sounds like a blast. I have a few friends who have run into schooling mantas in Hawaii and say it’s amazing.

Well written story about the Pelagic group which seeks to protect sharks.

An excellent story over at The Guardian about dolphin intelligence. At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, Kelly the dolphin has built up quite a reputation. All the dolphins at the institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a trainer, when they can trade the litter for fish. In this way, the dolphins help to keep their pools clean. Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on. This behaviour is interesting because it shows that Kelly has a sense of the future and delays gratification. She has realised that a big piece of paper gets the same reward as a small piece and so delivers only small pieces to keep the extra food coming. She has, in effect, trained the humans.

We were finally able to get to Santa Barbara Island this last weekend. Several previous trips had to be scrapped due to poor weather conditions but we toughed it out on the Encore and made it despite some pretty big swells. Unfortunately, upon arrival, the viz was pretty poor and there were some ripping currents so the dive conditions were less than optimal.

But, how can a day of diving with the sea lions be bad? Our first dive was the rookery where we had a small group of underwater friends to play with. Second dive we headed up to The Anchorage and our friends were there as well. Last dive we made back at the rookery where it seems conditions had improved slightly.

All in all, not a bad day of diving though it’s a little early in the season for the full sea lion experience as most of the females are just birthing pups and they are too young to come out and play. In a few months when those little guys and gals are more free to roam it should be one heck of a dive.

I’ve recently been given the thumbs by PADI up to teach a course that I authored called the Sea Lion Awareness Specialty Diver.

The course consists of an educational session where we’ll discuss the Pinniped family of sea mammals before going in-depth into the life of the California Sea Lion. The open water component of the course includes 2 dives at Santa Barbara Island which hosts on of the largest sea lion rookeries in the Southern California area. During our dives we’ll observe and interact with the magnificent and playful sea lions and discuss the behaviors we’ve observed.

The first (of many) Sea Lion Awareness courses will be conducted on June 15th on the Encore. We’re scheduled to go to the sea lion rookery on Santa Barbara Island so we should see more than our fair share of the playful pups.

Cost is $50 plus the cost of the boat spot on the Encore ($105).

If you have an interest, please contact Ocean Adventures Dive Co. (310-578-9391) and tell them you would like to sign up for the Sea Lion Awareness course with me.

Get the scoop on Great White shark diving in North America.

National Geographic News is running an excellent little story on sharks and shark attacks that’s worth a read.

According to Reuters, Canadian scientists have concluded that 90% of the most commonly consumed fish by humans are gone. Overfishing has driven populations almost to extinction and the fish that remain tend to be smaller than they were in the 1950’s.