The 2012 Dive and Travel Expo is finally here and it’s time to catch up with my fellow divers, drool over delicious gear, and fantasize about exotics destinations.
But first, I believe we have unfinished business. If you recall the previous installment, I made itclear that weight loss as a goal is futile and thinking of exercise as fitness equally detrimental.

So what is fitness exactly? The definition varies depending on who you ask. There are two that in my opini

on encompass both ends of the spectrum.
The first one defines fitness as “A state of general mental and physical well-being” and I like it because it invokes the different components, not just exercise. Why would we forget the nutritional aspect of fitness? A good workout will make you feel good but eating junk or drinking excessively will make you feel ill. No amount of exercise will make a difference if your food is not healthy and exercise is not the redeemer of buccal sins.

By the way, healthy food has little to do with the amount of calories you should eat (another fallacy) or food supplements. I find it contradictory when healthy eating involves shoving gels, powders, and other lab-begotten atrocities down our throats. Are they useful? Up to certain extent but not when they usurp the place of real food.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! If you are exercising while sleep deprived you are doing your immune system a disservice and compromising your recovery.
You know our bodies repair when we sleep, right? Is it reasonable to sacrifice recovery in lieu of web browsing, TV, or “work”?

I don’t think so!

Fitness has many aspects, not just exercise. They are all equally important and they all complement each other. You cannot neglect one and expect to have great results.
The second concept I like defines fitness as “the state of being suitably adapted to an environment”. It funnels the broader concept into more specific physical parameters and shatters the misconceptions of what being “fit” means. The claim of “I’m fit, I run 5 miles every day” is all too common. Are these runners fit? Yes, but only for running. Watch them struggle in agility drills or when lifting their bodyweight and you’ll see how misconstrued their concept is.

Ditto for those whose claim is bench-pressing twice their bodyweight. They are fit but only for benching. Watch their assertions collapse after only a couple of sets of sprints.

The point is not condemning any of those exercises but understanding that broadly categorizing being “fit” under a single activity is shortsighted. In reality, fitness is adaptation specific so to be fit in the physical sense; you have to be skilled at many activities, not just one.

Now that we are on the same page, we can focus on the pleasantries. The Dive and Travel Expo is going to rock and I can’t wait to meet you.  My booth is 103 and if you don’t see me it’s because I’m either speaking or taking a walk to bask in the shine of new gear. I hope to see you at my presentation as I’ll be telling you how to become a fit diver once and for all!

If you have not visited the site for The Fit and Healthy Diver Project go to www.fahdp.com and check it out. You have until 9pm PST to register and be one of the selected few to who will be making history.

It is time to get the sport healthy one diver at a time. I look forward to seeing you!

by Sammy Cimeno

Strange things happen in Northern California on April 1 each year. Campgrounds and motels that were unoccupied most of the winter are now sold out. Coastal roads once empty are bustling with traffic. Large numbers of employees are mysteriously absent from their jobs. A case for the X-Files? No, it’s simply opening day of abalone season.

Northern California divers are indeed fortunate to have one of the ocean’s tastiest treats in our local waters – the red abalone. These mollusks are abundant in our State’s northern waters and, with a little bit of knowledge, they are easy to harvest and make a mighty fine meal. What follows are a few practical tips to help you collect and cook your catch.

The Rules of Engagement

Abalone may only be harvested north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The season limit is 24 and daily bag and possession limit is 3. A punch card and individual tags along with your fishing license are required. You must be within 500 yards of your fishing license and punch card at all times. Your license and punch card may be left on shore or in a boat, only if you are a diver. You must complete your punch card and tag your abalone immediately when you come ashore or return to your boat. While taking abalone you must have a legal abalone iron and measuring devise in your possession. Irons must be smooth with no sharp edges, less than 36” long, and at least 3⁄4” wide and 1⁄16” thick. Your local dive or fishing shop can fix you up with these. Abalone may only be taken by breath-hold divers and shore pickers ­– no scuba allowed.

During August of 2011 most invertebrates, including abalone, off the Sonoma Coast experienced a massive die-off due to an abnormally heavy plankton bloom. This prompted the DFG to close the abalone fishery in Sonoma County; while Marin, Mendocino and Humboldt Counties were only moderately affected and were not closed. The DFG will reopen the season as normal April 1 this year, with two new rules. Due to heavy diving pressure, Fort Ross area will remain closed until June 1. The DFG has also clarified its position on how abalone are kept – each diver’s catch must be in a separate container. Consult the DFG’s website or the current Ocean Fishing Brochure for a complete description of the fishery’s complex rules, www.dfg.ca.gov.

The Gear

First you will need a good fitting 7 mm or ¼ inch wetsuit. Of course, a good fitting mask, fins and snorkel will also be needed. Weight yourself so you are neutral around 10 feet. You will also need a float, a way to hold your catch, and a way to anchor your float while you are diving. A mesh covered inner tube works well as a float and game bag; otherwise an inflatable mat or boogie board (diver’s mat) and goodie bag will work. Generally, it is easier to swim longer distances on a diver’s mat or boogie board. You may anchor your float with a kelp anchor (a length of line with a brass clip) or a small bottom anchor. The latter is preferred in the early season when there is little kelp.

Finding Your Abalone

The next task is to select your dive site. Depending on your skill level, every cove, beach and rocky point is a potential dive site. You will need to check with the Department of Fish and Game and avoid taking game in the new Marine Conservation Areas. If you can dive to 30 feet, you will get your limit of abalone at any entry on the North Coast. If you can only dive to 10 or 15 feet you will have to select your sites more carefully. In the early days of the season many abalone may be found in shallow water right off the area’s most popular beaches. Later in the season, you will have to swim, hike, paddle, or motor a bit further to find plentiful abalone in shallow water.

Once in the water look along drop-offs and at the outer edge of kelp beds. Try following the drop-off or kelp to the bottom and begin your search there. New divers tend to hover well above the bottom and don’t see any abalone – you must get close to the bottom, usually in the deepest portion of the local terrain. Look on rocks at the edge of sand channels or in cracks. Often abalone are found upside down, back in cracks. Once you spot your abalone, make an estimate of its size with your gauge. Don’t touch the abalone at this point or it will suck down and you will never get it off the rock.

Try grabbing a piece of kelp and calming yourself while you consider how to pluck your abalone. This allows you to hold your breath longer, and gives you more time to select the optimal ab iron placement. In one swift motion insert your abalone iron between the abalone’s foot and its rock, and pop the ab off. Remember, you are not prying the abalone off; you are simply breaking the suction that holds it to the rock.

Once on the surface, remeasure your catch. A legal abalone will not fit through your gauge in the longest dimension. Replace short abalone where you found them, and hold it to the rock until it sucks down. Remember this is supposed to be fun. Try to resist the urge to take the first ab you see; it is often shorter than ones you will find later. Also, try to take some time to explore the reef, you will be surprised what you will see when you are not focused on abalone.

Cleaning Your Catch

Abalones are gastropod mollusks – non-segmented invertebrates with a mantle, gills, a rasping tongue, and a muscular foot. Gastropod translates to “stomach-footed”, and cleaning an abalone is a small lesson in marine biology. First insert your abalone iron on the flat side of the abalone and separate the muscle from the shell. The large dense part of the abalone is the foot. The largest organ surrounding the foot is the reproductive gland (girls are green or blue, boys are pink or beige); so these mollusks should really be called “reproductive gland-footed”. The digestive gland is underneath the reproductive gland and wraps around the foot. Abalones are considered primitive animals since the digestive tract is circular and they defecate on their own head. Most of us trim away all of the organs and black skin, although they are all edible.

Cooking your Catch, or Not.

Most of us slice, pound and fry our abalone. Marleen’s recipe below is my favorite. Also included is a recipe for pickled abalone, a kind of ceviche. Here the abalone is cooked with acid and not heat. Another way to serve abalone is simply not to cook it at all. Slice the abalone thin (perpendicular to the direction you would use for steaks), do not pound, dip in a little wasabi and soy sauce and enjoy.

Sammy’s Marinated Abalone

For those seeking something different I urge you to try this recipe. The abalone should not be pounded! Slice the ab with the grain (perpendicular to the direction used to slice stakes) about 1/8 inch thick.
   1 bottle Pickappeppa (mild pepper sauce from Jamaica)
   1/2-cup white or red wine vinegar
   Juice of 4-6 limes (1/2 cup bottled lime or lemon juice will do)
   1 sliced medium onion
   1/2 sliced sweet pepper (or hot peppers if you prefer)
   3-4 smashed cloves of garlic
   Tabasco sauce to taste (skip if you add hot peppers)
   1 cleaned abalone
   Combine all ingredients and refrigerate for 4 to 48 hours. It’s better after 24 hours, but the impatient among us may consume it earlier. This was adapted from a recipe for Cayman conch.

Marleen’s Fried Abalone

My favorite way to prepare abalone was invented by one of my dive buddies, Marleen Sacks. First remove the foot from the shell and trim off the black “slime.” Next slice into ¼ inch steaks, and pound until tender (not until mush). Dice the pounded steaks into about ¾ inch squares, and discard any bits that were poorly pounded and hard. Dip into beaten egg (seasoned with salt, pepper and lemon zest), and then into cracker crumbs. Fry in hot oil until golden brown, about a minute on each side, and drain on paper towels. Do not overcook. The lemon zest adds a bit of character.

California Abalone Season to Open With Two Changes

In spite of the invertebrate die-off Sonoma County experienced in August of 2011, the 2012 abalone season is scheduled to begin April 1 in Northern California as usual. This year, there are two small changes to the law governing the taking of abalone. One clarifies how divers can store abalone prior to tagging, and the other delays the season for part of Sonoma County for two months (April 1 to June 1). The text of the new law follows:

Open Season: In the Fort Ross area bounded by the mean high tide line and a line drawn due south true from 38°30.63’ N, 123°14.98’ W (the northern point of Fort Ross Cove) and a line drawn due west true from 38°29.45’ N, 123°11.72’ W (Jewel Gulch, south boundary Fort Ross State Park) abalone may only be taken during the months of June, August, September, October and November. In the remainder of the geographic area defined in subsection (a) above, abalone may be taken only during the months of April, May, June, August, September, October and November (see map below).

Abalone Possession and Transportation: Individuals taking abalone shall maintain separate possession of their abalone. Abalone may not be commingled in a float tube, dive board, dive bag, or any other container or device, until properly tagged. Only after abalones are properly tagged, as described in Section 29.16 (b), Title 14, CCR, may they be commingled with other abalone taken by another person.

Click the map to zoom.

On July 2, 2011, Seattle area divers Laurel LaFever, of Bellevue, Greg Oliver, of Kirkland and Steve Martino, of Bothell made a dive at the Mile Marker 4, between Sekiu and Neah Bay, on the Olympic Coast of Washington. This dive was one of five that a group of Bubbles Below staff completed as part of a three day weekend to this spectacular area. Curley’s Resort, a well known Sekiu diver-friendly facility provided air and accommodation.

Mile Marker 4 is a shallow shore dive and on this day, the threesome took advantage of about 40ft (12m) visibility and enjoyed a 70 minute dive to a maximum depth of 21ft (7m). While exploring a zone of red and brown algae near a large bed of eelgrass, they found a single swarm of small crabs that numbered at least a couple of hundred. Laurel obtained the accompanying photograph and forwarded it with questions about an identity for the subjects and what this gathering might represent.

What Laurel and her buddies had encountered was an impressive cluster of juvenile Dungeness crabs (about an inch across) Cancer magister huddling upon some brown algae.
Like a majority of other Arthropods (crabs, shrimps and their relatives), after hatching, a Dungeness crab spends the first few months of its life as a pelagic (floating) larva. The last version of several stages, bearing no resemblance to an adult, is called a megalops. Barely visible to a diver, this form recruits to the typical adult bottom habitat and then metamorphoses into a recognizable young crab.

The tiny crabs Laurel and her buddies encountered were survivors of this process, possibly released by the same female. For those of us who enjoy watching and eating Dungeness crab, this encounter bodes well for a good population of Cancer magister along the Olympic Coast several years hence. ■

Every diver should be prepared to recognize symptoms decompression illness (DCI). Are you?

The term DCI actually encompasses two separate conditions: decompression sickness (DCS) and arterial gas embolism (AGE). Both conditions should get the same treatment, which in most cases is oxygen first aid and hyperbaric oxygen therapy. You probably learned most of this in your entry level diving courses, but it never hurts to review this essential information as it could save a life.

Symptoms of DCI

• DCS symptoms include muscle or joint pain that does not subside, rash, dizziness, numbness or tingling, paralysis, muscle weakness, bladder or bowel dysfunction and fatigue disproportionate to the diver’s exertion. The diver may also have trouble walking.

• AGE symptoms typically occur while the diver is surfacing or immediately afterward. The diver may suddenly go unconscious or exhibit neurological symptoms, such as confusion, disorientation, personality changes, unsteady gait, weakness and paralysis. AGE may be associated with pulmonary barotrauma (a condition that occurs when air sacs in the lung rupture, typically during a rapid or breath-hold ascent) which generally manifests as difficulty breathing and may also involve a bloody froth in the mouth or nose.

Symptoms generally occur from within 10 minutes to up to 12 hours after surfacing. If any new symptoms appear after 24 hours, DCI is not likely to be the cause. If the diver flies after diving, it is possible for delayed symptoms of DCS to occur during flight. The recommended preflight surface interval after multiple dives or multiple days of diving is a minimum of 18 hours.

Responding to suspected DCI

If you suspect a diver has DCI, assess and continuously monitor vital signs (circulation, airway and breathing), activate emergency services (911 or the local equivalent), administer oxygen first aid if you are a trained oxygen provider and call the DAN Emergency Hotline at +1-919-684-9111.

Remember, if you need some help or are unsure how to respond you can always call DAN or take the diver to the nearest emergency department. It is not advisable to take an injured diver directly to a chamber without first contacting DAN because the closest chamber may not be open, operating, staffed or properly equipped to meet the injured diver’s needs. DAN maintains a continually updated database of chambers to determine the most appropriate chamber for treatment and the coordination of care.

While DAN cannot make a diagnosis over the phone, DAN can be an essential resource for helping recognize the signs and symptoms of DCI, advising you and emergency medical personnel on proper management and coordinating transportation to get an injured diver to a higher level of emergency care as quickly and safely as possible.

Be prepared

There are a lot of ways you can prepare to handle a diving emergency. If you are not a trained oxygen provider, enroll in the DAN Oxygen First Aid for Scuba Diving Injuries course. You can also complete the DAN Dive Emergency Management Provider (DEMP) program, which encompasses automated external defibrillators, emergency oxygen including bag valve mask and manually triggered ventilator, and the treatment of hazardous marine life injuries. Or enhance your knowledge with DAN online seminars, such as the Pathophysiology of Decompression Illness and test yourself with the DCI Quiz on www.AlertDiver.com. Dive safely, and remember, DAN is here for you.

Divers Alert Network (DAN) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the safety and health of scuba divers. DAN operates a 24-hour emergency hotline (+1-919-684-9111) to help divers in need of medical emergency assistance for diving or nondiving incidents.