Irony: I work in a dive shop but have no time to dive.

So it's been a long time since I've updated the blog and a lot has changed. I finished my Education program, bought a car, and moved to Ottawa. I've been looking for a teaching job but haven't had much luck. I've been working at Sharky's Scuba Supply since May and it's been a lot of fun. The people I work with are very knowledgeable divers and I've learned a huge amount about equipment, the industry, and about diving in general from these guys. I've become a certified VIP inspector but of course, I need more practice before the next logical step, where I get my certification number tattooed across my back. Things have been great. The pay however, has not been so good. I think I made more money when I graduated from my undergrad degree back in '99. Geez....Well, I'm hoping I'll at least be able to pick up a decent amount of supply teaching and then it's only a matter of time before the money starts to roll right in....*lie/sigh*.

So I get free gas at work but I work on weekends and Wednesday nights so I can never get out for charters. I have access to all kinds of great dive buddies and equipment and opportunity but I have no time to dive when other people are free. I have a few dive friends who have similar work days as me so that works out sometimes but when it doesn't, I'm stuck waiting for a holiday to get someone who has the day off. Bah! This is extremely frustrating.

I've taken precious few photos this summer so this entry won't have any visuals but I do have some videos from some past dives over the summer. I'll post those in the coming days when I get more time to do some writing.

Thunder Water in Thunder Bay (hahaha...sorry)

Ok, so I'm starting to settle in here in Thunder Bay. I'm into my classes at the University, I've got some pictures on my bedroom walls, beer in the fridge and most imprtantly, I got out diving this weekend. I headed out with the good people at Thunder Country Diving who were kind enough to show me around some of the local dive sites. First dive was with Sam at the Silver Harbour wrecks. She's a Dive Control Specialist candidate which is kind of like a Divemaster/Assistant Instructor wth Scuba Schools International.

It was a shallow dive at about 12m max depth but there was lots to see. There are 3 small boats sunk to liven up the site and an old pickup truck that apparently went down in an ice fishing accident. These attractions are all linked by guide ropes. You just follow the ropes from one attraction to the next. I had a great time and a very nice introduction to diving in Lake Superior. The water was 20 degrees on the surface and 18 at depth. I'm told this is very warm for the Lake. I wore my drysuit but would probably have been ok in my 5mm. The second dive was with a couple new divers out to a small little speed boat sunk at a training site(Lakeview Lodge) in about 4-5m of water. Not real challenging but fun to dive nontheless. I had a great time and I'm looking forward to getting out again in 2 weeks.


Here's a little video of the pickup truck.

Thunder Bay, Sept 18, 2006 033
Video sent by jacktar

Dry

Sunday's trip to Ah Yah Jin was cancelled. Bah!!! I'll have to wait for Thunder Bay. I head home in 7 days.

Jeju Island, South Korea

I'ved logged about 70 or so dives in Korean waters but diving Jeju has been elusive for me. It is an island located on the South East coast and takes about an hour by plane from Seoul. It has the reputation as the best diving area in the country and while I've planned several trips, something always seems to prevent me from going there. This past week, I finally made it down there. I dived with Ralf Deutsch of Big Blue 33. They provide professional service in English and several other languages. I was very impressed by how laid back they were. For the first time in a long time I didn't feel rushed on the dive boat. Maybe it was because we only had a maximum of 6 divers on the boat at any time I was there but we were encouraged to relax and take our time. I appreciate that very much when I'm on vacation.


(Click on the photos for bigger views)
I didn't really expect a lot. I assumed that the diving was exaggerated by overzealous Korean divers and dive magazines. No way. The diving was excellent. I didn't see a huge amount of fish diversity but the corals were excellent. Some hard coral and lots of soft corals in shades of orange and purple. They literally cover the boulders and crevices of the dive sites. Large walls of little orange trees.





Lots of pretty anenomes and nudibranches to see. I found most of them in shallow water. There were quite a few photos opportunities that were wasted because I had condensation on my housing lense. On land, it's a simple thing to correct but underwater you have to wait until the dive is over. My problem seemed to be that I left my camera in the sun and when we hit the water, the cold caused the lense to fog. The water temps were pretty warm (20-22 degrees) but cold compared to the 35 degree air temperature.






Of course, I can't forget to mention that I hit a milestone on this trip. I did my 200th dive. It was mostly a solo dive in about 5-8m of water starting off with a front roll entry. Ralph was doing a discover scuba dive with another person so I stayed in the shallows under the boat and puttered around for about 30 minutes. It was a great dive in Supsom Little Bay. Lots of light for my camera and lots of little critters to watch playing around.

I had a great time on this trip. I've always enjoyed the East and South coasts but Jeju surpasses those places by far. There are so many things to see. I didn't make it to many of the dives sites and I'm a little disappointed that I didn't dive Munsom. But it'll be there for next time. Hopefully I'll be able to make it back here sometime.

Moving Pictures

I found out that I have some video editing software on XP so I've been playing around with it a bit. I put together a compilation of a bunch of videos I took while diving this year. You're only as good as your material so I didn't have a lot to work with. Here's what I came up with.

Korean East Coast Diving 2006
Video sent by jacktar

It may be slow to load. If it's choppy or you don't want to wait, a faster version of this video can be found here: VIDEO: Korean East Coast Diving 2006

More From Korea's North East

We were up in Korea's North East again this past weekend. We visited Kojin (Map of Kojin, Kangwon-do KR) for some dives with James' new Open Water students. First dive was a shore dive next to a large barge that was moving the huge cement structures (pictured) that make up the breakwaters that are so common here. Not a lot to see but I got to use my new MEC underwear because the water was warmer. Got my weighting in these figured out for salt water at least. The second dive was a boat dive on the actual breakwater. Was a little cold at 14m and 12 degrees celcius. It was on this dive that I learned the limit for the MEC Expedition weight undies is about 15 degrees. Anything under that and I have to use my heavy Bare ones. Third dive ended up being much shallower than we expected. Only about 3-5m so I was overdressed and sweaty. Still, the vis was good and I got some shots of the new divers. I'm sure they appreciate having their first dives photographed. I wish I had mine better recorded. ....On second thought, maybe I'd rather not have this kind of buoyancy control recorded. VIDEO: New Divers
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Should I have said that? That's not nice. Oh well, when they become expert divers they can share a chuckle with me. The trip to Kojin took a little over 3 hours but the return was about 8 because of the totally insane Seoul Sunday traffic. I've seen it that bad before but this was the worst this year by far. Thank God were in a bus and can have have a few on the way back. Overall, the diving wasn't great this weekned but I still enjoyed the trip. I got sorted on a few things and even did some drills while in the shallow water. The scenery was nice and it was great to get out of the city and into the mountains again.

Closer to the Border

Well, this week it was a day trip to Ah Yah Jin. It's so small, I can't even find it on mapquest. It's north of Seokcho and just a little closer to Kim Jong Il. Everyone was tired and a little down after Korea's loss to Switzerland in the World Cup. Pretty much the entire country watched despite the fact that it was on at 4:00am and ended in Korea's first round elimination. In someways, these dives are like therapy. And I have to say that these were some of my favorite shore dives ever. The conditions were great. Our max depth for the first two dives was around 10m and we had calm seas and decent vis in the range of 6-10m. There were so many small things to see and I was really excited to get out. Lots of crabs, and jellies and snails. Little kind of conical shaped egg-type-things and little 1cm transparent sacs amongst the grass filled with little orange eggs. One small nudibranch and a whole lot of yellow and green seaweed. At the end of the first dive, I saw an "octopus armed starfish". I counted somewhere between 25 and 30 legs on this blueish-gray starfaish that measured about 45cm in diameter. Never saw that before. Too bad I didn't take my camera on these dives because the first 2 dives (both shore dives) were the best.

The last dive was a boat dive with a max depth of 18m. The vis was decent but not as good as in shallow water. Thankfully it was warm. The coldest the water got all day was 13 degrees and it went as high as 19. It'll soon be time to switch to my thinner drysuit underwear. I took my camera on this one so I have a fiew pics.




This first one is my buddy Mr. Lee. He was good on air which is fine by me. Our dives didn't go past 45 minutes but often they don't go longer than 30. He was diving wet but was a trooper and didn't complain about the cold once. Hardier than I and a great insta-buddy as farm as I'm concerned.





Here's another of the kelp. It's kind of strange for it to be so high this late in the year. Usually the plankton blooms would have cut them down by now. This particular plant is somewhere in the range of 6 meters. It went from the top of a submerged island, almsot to the surface. It gave me something to look at on my safety stop.





Here's James driving the bus. He's a great guy and runs the Scuba Green Peace outfit. He provides me with a couple of the lovelies in the shot below for long drive back home. Because of Sunday Seoul traffic it took more than 6 hours to return which was more than 2 longer than the trip to there.





Notice the advertising blurb on the bottom of the can. Gotta love OB Lager. As we departed Ah Yah Jin, it the sun was out and the sky was blue. It was a long drive home but the diving made it worth it. About 5km outside of Sanbon it started to rain. I have about a 20 minute walk from where James drops me off and I can never get a cab from there. It was no big deal though because I had an umbrella. All in all, a very fun day.