Posted by Tribes on September 30, 2003 at 09:54:15:
What’s going on with our ocean? I was talking to a long time friend yesterday about the state of today’s diving industry (how bad dive instruction has become and how the attitude of instructors has changed) and the subject of our brown water came up.
Both of us can’t remember the red tide lasting this long. Both my friend and I have been diving since the late 60’s. We both have been teaching scuba since the 70’s. My friend is a Marine Biologist(he has a BS in Marine biology).
As I said, we were BS about this subject (there is always a lot of BS in a dive shop especially around lobster season).
The theories (BS) went from pollution, to a Navy experiment gone bad, to no big south swell this year (to mix the water), to a change of current (where the colder artic current has shifted and is bring up that cold San Diego water up here).
Both of us felt that the ocean has just been strange this year. Surface temp. in the high 60’s and then 30 to 40 feet down the water is in the 50’s. And it’s not just the coast, Catalina has been brown and cold (in the deeper water) all summer to.
My friend and I both had a bad feeling about this, we just hope that this is not a change in our ocean. We have seen lots of changes in our ocean caused by over fishing and pollution. But if this keeps up it could be catastrophic to our way of life.
Tribes