Category: Technical Diving
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Decompress Like A Boss
If someone tells you that they like doing decompression, they’re either lying or they haven’t done enough of it to know better. This is a rule. I will concede one very notable exception to this rule, and that is decompression on walls or pinnacles. On walls or pinnacles, a diver can make his or her…
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11 Interesting Facts about the USS Moody Destroyer Wreck
In San Pedro Bay, about 140 feet down, rests the wreck of USS Moody (DD-277). Moody, one of 156 Clemson-class destroyers, has a rich and interesting history. Here are 11 fun facts about the ship, its class, and its story.
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Photo of the Week: Cyclosalpa affinis
DID YOU KNOW that the salp, while it looks like a jellyfish, is actually a tunicate, a member of the phylum Chordata, and is more closely related to vertebrates than it is to jellies?
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No Wolf Eel Left Behind
On Saturday, I got up at the ungodly hour of 4-something-a.m. and made the pilgrimage up to Long Beach to catch a charter out to dive the UB-88 submarine wreck. Sometimes, I think I’m doing “leisure” wrong.
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Throwback Thursday: Salps, Underwater Poetry, and My First Technical Dive
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When dives give you decompression, write haiku.
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Throwback Thursday: Technical Wreck Training and USS Palawan
Wreck diving is the ultimate in underwater exploration. I’m ashamed to admit that I wasn’t into wrecks, at first. I didn’t see the point. They weren’t as pretty as real reefs, and it’s not like I was going to go inside a wreck, like, ever. And then I got some tech diving training, and it…
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The Missile Tower Wreck (165′), San Diego
The Missile Tower in San Diego, formerly used by the U.S. Navy to test-launch Trident submarine missiles, now rests in 165 feet of water near the Mexican Border as an artificial reef.
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Obligatory End-of-Year Post (A Summary of 2013)
Because (a) It’s pretty much in the rules of blogging to make an end-of-year summary post, and (b) 2013 was full of great diving and photo ops. From technical wrecks to nudibranchs: a photographic summary of my underwater exploits in 2013.
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Diving the UB-88 Submarine Wreck
Part of the allure of technical wreck diving is getting the opportunity to experience bits of history that very few others, not even many other divers, get to experience. This is why when I received an invitation to go dive the UB-88, a German WWI U-boat off San Pedro, California, and the only U-boat wreck…
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I saw things in the Sea of Cortez that were not nudibranchs
Despite troublesome conditions on our Sea of Cortez diving trip (on the liveaboard dive boat Nautilus Explorer), we did manage a few days where the visibility was good enough to leave the macro lens in the cabin and get underwater for some wide-angle action. In fact, the water was so clear and beautiful on our first…