Oceans of Opportunity

Author: oceanopportunity

DPV Toolbox Finally Gets Wet

A few folks close in my circles have been asking, even prodding, when I expect to be back in the field exploring and studying the deep. Well, as I’ve come to appreciate over the years, there isn’t much sense going back “just because”. Certainly, we could have been out there annually or more often for…

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Lurking in the Shadows of September 11

Today will forever be one of those days where every American will reminisce a bit and contemplate where and how we are moving forward. In my case, today the dive supervisor reminded me that this was the 4th anniversary of Lyle passing away. Lyle Smith was the owner of Coastal Diving in Middletown, RI –…

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Boring worms aren’t that boring

Ahh, the glamour and high life promised to we commercial divers – international travel, becoming part of fabled sea stories, mega-buck paychecks –  boils down an inconvenient truth; boring worms aren’t (or at least shouldn’t) be that boring. For every one of those fabled sea stories that turns into a reality, there are at least…

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a diver’s life hangs in the balance

Acceptable risk. This is something that is widely variable from person to person, from diver to diver, and can ebb and flow based on the current state of affairs, and even day to day state of mind. Earlier this week, while conducting a fairly routine activity underwater – fully accepting the risk – I was…

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the ‘S’ word : Standards

Re-hashing an oldie with some fresh perspective – Standards. We all hate to love them, and love to hate them; ‘standards’ are the cookie cutter codes of practice that everyone follows in some form or fashion – be it standards by which we educate, standards by which we are obligated to meet for occupational health…

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Making waves, in Compost!

Yesterday, our local news featured a piece about Stop & Shop’s regional compost facility in Assonet, MA. This is such an amazing facility, and hopefully becomes a model of efficiency for other large companies: http://turnto10.com/news/local/stop-shop-facility-turns-food-into-energy Some might ask how in the world this seems to excite me? Well, environmental advocacy aside, I’ve been up close…

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Is Genesis History? | a Review

On the rare occasion that I get some tube time, I tend to shy away from the reality tv that seems to have plagued even the highest echelon of American society and culture and go for some real grit…typically along the lines of Ancient Aliens or the like. During tonight’s Netflix browsing session I stumbled…

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the new 60 for 60 in diving

This past week I made a dive that I hadn’t made in some time – 60 [feet] for 60 [minutes]. This is one of those marks within diving space that is well-recognized given the US Navy dive table’s no decompression limit at 60 feet…you guessed it – 60 minutes. The depth isn’t a challenge, even…

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don’t drink and drive; and don’t drug and dive

I am always amazed at the pace of progress, particularly in diving, where it seems a 10-20 year cycle is in play for better understanding new technologies, new techniques, and their implications on human factors. A recent article from the Divers Alert Network about pseudoephedrine and diving illustrates this point quite well… http://www.diversalertnetwork.org/medical/articles/Pseudoephedrine_Enriched-Air_Diving Rewind twenty…

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diving in the background

This week was one of those weeks – a marathon stretch of hard mud diving every day which equated to just shy of 30 hours underwater within a 5 day stretch, with one day including a 7 hour dive. I’ve had lots of weeks like this, for better or worse, and they always manage to…

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