In Reply to: The ocean is the last frontier? How familiar are you with it? posted by kylecawazafla on February 25, 2006 at 18:22:49:

Like Max, I had a similar experinece over a couple of hundred dives over 10 years at Refugio State Beach, especially on the harder to reach west reef off the point, which for a while the dive shop where I worked referred to it as "Jim's Reef" because of all the time I had spend on it. And yes, it became quite familiar, but this familiarity also allowed me to discover the uniqueness of it, like where the sheep crab would show up every spring and so on. I discovered something new every dive and as it became more familiar I was liberated to see the depth of marine life on the reef, not just its breadth.

This aspect is something that contributes in part to what the scientific community has called "shifting baselines" refering to our inability to notice change in an area because we are so familiar with it and may fail to notice small but gradual changes that year to year make no difference but cumulatively may result in a majpr change.

Kyle, if you are interested in discussing this concept further off list, just substitute covediver for nospam in the above email address. I am alway interested in different points of view on this and other subject but think the rest of the list might find an in-depth discussion boring. But maybe not.

• http://www.geocities.com/cove_diver

• Re: Re: The ocean is the last frontier? How familiar are you with it? kylecawazafla 20:54:59 02/26/06 (0)