The dive season is going really strong right now.  We've had eight club dive trips to the Gulf of Mexico and one to the Florida Keys this year.  Our first club trip to the Oriskany is scheduled for August.  Visibility locally has been as good as 100+ feet and as bad as 15 feet.  Water temperatures are now in the mid 80s on the surface and upper 70s on the bottom.  We’ve been seeing large numbers of fish and lobster (only shovelnose so far) this year, with huge juvenile fish populations, which bode well for next year.  The weather has also been great for diving, so if you haven't been out yet, you're really missing a lot of fun.  We now have over 120 diving members in the yacht club and that’s increasing almost daily.  Our biggest limitation is a shortage of rental equipment, which we are working on.  Hopefully we’ll have 15 new regulators by the time the next Sea Notes is published.  We also have a line on a new compressor and plan on buying more nitrox tanks and some 63 cubic foot tanks for those who want smaller and lighter tanks.

Now that spiny lobster season is upon us, we’ll see even more divers out in the Gulf.  Please be careful.  Florida has recorded several diving fatalities this year, one on the first day of the lobster mini-season.  A lot of people wait until now to start their personal diving season, just because of the lobsters.  They don’t check their scuba equipment, but make sure their catch bag and tickle stick are in good order, because they’re focused on getting the bugs.  They splash down without a good buddy check because they want to be the first on the bottom.  They leave their buddy behind because they don’t want to share the lobsters.  They stay too long on the bottom to get that one last lobster that’s hiding back in a deep hole.  They reach way back into that deep hole to get said lobster without looking around first, and are quite surprised when Mr. Moray bids bites them hello.  They skip their safety stop because they’re low on air, they’re bleeding profusely from the moray bite, or they feel they need to get their catch to the surface sooner to show everyone what a great hunter they are.  They cut their surface interval short in order to get back in the water sooner because they know that those devious lobsters are evacuating the area because they heard a genuine lobster hunter is about.  They exceed their no decompression limits on the second dive but skip the deco stop because they stuck a lobster inside their wetsuit when they ran out of room in the catch bag (or they forgot their catch bag because they were in such a hurry to get back in the water), and now it’s turning their upper torso into hamburger.  And to top it all off, they want to take the lobsters to the emergency room and into the recompression chamber with them because some evil doer might steal the bugs while they’re going through a Table 6 profile.  So, be smarter than the lobsters.  Think before you dive.