The Down Under Dive Club (DUDC) is located in Melbourne on the sunny east central coast of Florida. Formed in 1984 by a group of enthusiastic divers, DUDC currently has about 100 members. Our mission is to promote safe, organized dive events, provide a social setting comfortable to everyone, and encourage environmental responsibility among the diving community. Our past dives covered the Atlantic ocean, from Georgia to Bonaire. We organize all types of dives: drift dives, wreck dives, shore dives, live-aboards, spring dives, and even shark dives! Our members include a diverse group of divers. There are men, women and kids, ages from 11 to 65+ with all certification levels from new Open Water divers to Instructors.
Meetings are held on the 2nd Wednesday of every month at 7:00 PM at the Indian River Lagoon House, Located just south of University Blvd. on US1 in Melbourne. Door prizes are awarded each month and we book a fascinating assortment of guest speakers. We invite everyone interested in SCUBA diving to stop by for some stimulating conversation, meet our group, and have some fun!
WPB Chamber closing to divers!
Monday, July 02 2007
By
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Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
WEST
PALM BEACH — St. Mary's Medical Center is discontinuing emergency
hyperbaric oxygen services next week, which means people suffering from
decompression sickness and carbon monoxide poisoning from scuba diving
accidents now will have to travel to Miami or Orlando to be treated.
St. Mary's cited low demand and difficulty having staff available
around the clock as reasons for its decision, which takes effect June
30. It had fewer than 50 emergency patients a year. The hospital will
continue to offer hyperbaric services to wound care patients during
normal business hours Monday to Friday.
"These measures will ultimately free up resources
that could be used to support new or expanded programs in other service
service lines that meet our community's needs," said St. Mary's
spokeswoman Patti Patrick.
St. Mary's is not the only Palm Beach County hospital that offers
hyperbaric services, but it is the only one that offered it for
emergencies. Wellington Regional Medical Center and Bethesda Memorial
Hospital in Boynton Beach also offer hyperbaric services on an elective
basis.
Two factors that likely influenced St. Mary's decision was that many
divers who get hyperbaric services are uninsured and the two physicians
overseeing the hyperbaric services did not like being on call without
being paid by the hospital, sources said.
Patients undergoing hyperbaric treatment are placed in a chamber
where 100 percent oxygen is circulated. The oxygen is pressurized so
that air pressure may be 2-3 times greater than normal. This allows the
lungs and skin to absorb more concentrated oxygen in a shorter period
of time.
Hyperbaric oxygen treatment is used to relieve scuba and deep-sea
divers of a dangerous condition called decompression sickness or "the
bends." While ascending from underwater, nitrogen gas bubbles may form
in the lungs, tissues and bloodstream. Blood flow may be blocked, with
disastrous results, and blood vessels may be damaged. Hyperbaric
treatment neutralizes the effects of nitrogen.
Hyperbaric oxygen treatment is increasingly used to accelerate wound healing, particular in patients with diabetes.
Divers Explore Civil War Ship's Watery Grave
Monday, June 18 2007
By STEVE KORNACKI The Tampa Tribune
Published: Jun 10, 2007
EGMONT KEY - There is little sign of the horror U.S. Navy crewmembers experienced offshore of this island on Jan. 3, 1866, when the Union Civil War tugboat the USS Narcissus ran into a shoal during a storm and exploded. All 29 perished and were never found. However, the remains of the 115-ton tug are nestled above and beneath the ever-churning sands northwest of Egmont Key. The vessel's shattered steam engine boiler - which burst like a bomb when the cold Gulf waters hit it - is about three miles from shore, along with its A-frame engine, drive shaft, huge propeller, double walls and other parts now covered by barnacles, sponges, algae and worms.
The tugboat graveyard, home to feeding saltwater fish for the past 141 years, now has frequent visitors wearing dive tanks, masks and wet suits. Divers from The Florida Aquarium have been studying it since last summer when the downtown Tampa aquarium received grant money from the state's Bureau of Historic Preservation. Mike Terrell, the aquarium's dive training coordinator, is supervising the project along with contracted St. Augustine archaeologist John W. "Billy" Morris. Terrell says The Florida Aquarium plans to replicate the wreckage for display in its 93,000-gallon Shark Bay exhibit. They also hope to have it declared an underwater archaeological preserve by the state. "There is so little Civil War history in this state," Terrell said, "and now everyone will be able to see some of it without getting wet."
Divers have discovered almost two miles of vast new watery cave
passages extending northwest from Wakulla Springs close to caves
extending from Leon Sinks in southern Leon County.
The narrow cave system grew as large as 50 feet across when the divers
had to turn back because of lack of air, said Casey McKinlay, one of
the divers.
he discovery, announced today, almost
completes a quest begun in 1990 to find a link between Leon Sinks and
Wakulla Springs State Park, McKinlay said. The cave systems now could
be separated by as little as 1,000 feet or perhaps as much as a mile.
"Probably in the 17-year history of exploring Wakulla Springs,
this is the big one," said McKinlay, project director for the Woodville
Karst Plain Project.
McKinlay announced the discovery at a meeting of the Wakulla Springs
Basin Working Group. Springs supporters said the discovery was an
important step in understanding and protecting the water flowing to
Wakulla Springs. For more on this story, read Wednesday's Tallahassee Democrat.
Officials act to prevent scuba, snorkeling deaths
Sunday, May 13 2007
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
KEY WEST - Officials in the
Florida Keys are teaming up to prevent what they say are unnecessary
scuba diving and snorkeling deaths.
The so-called "Dive ALIVE"
initiative is gearing up in advance of July's lobster mini-season. Last
year, officials saw five deaths and numerous injuries that they said
were largely preventable during the two-day season. The mini-season
allows recreational divers to harvest legal-sized spiny lobsters before
the commercial season begins.
Officials plan to show a video on
common but deadly diving mistakes on local TV before and during the
mini-season. In addition, divers are being invited to a diving skills
and lobster-diving event at Florida Keys Community College on July 23,
before the July 25 opening of the mini-season.
The "Dive ALIVE"
initiative will remind divers of important safety elements using the
acronym ALIVE: air, lead weights, inspection, verification and escape.
Monitoring the air supply, dropping lead weights in an emergency,
inspecting gear, verifying a dive plan with fellow divers and escaping
from entanglements with a dive knife are all crucial to dive safety.
The
U.S. Coast Guard, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, Monroe County
Sheriff's Office, Florida Keys Community College, Florida Fish and
Wildlife Conservation Commission, Lower Keys Medical Center and Key
West Police Department are all sponsors.
"No, I didn't see the damned seahorse, thank you very much." Nor, it
seems, the cleaner shrimp or the spinyhead blennies or any of the tiny
wonders that those other divers are chattering about on the stern
deck--those divers who seem to be able to glide and hover like fish,
poking their heads into holes with perfect ease. Meanwhile, I was
playing tunes on my power inflator buttons trying to avoid crashing
into the reef.
Can we put two and two together here? The reason I wasn't seeing as
much down there was that I was preoccupied with those "elevator
buttons." I had lousy buoyancy control. "A lot of divers have trouble
with that," says PADI instructor Len Wittrock. "But those who have
really good buoyancy control tend to see a lot more, probably because
they're not so distracted." Bingo. Oh, I could get neutral alright and
I could control my ascents, so I got through the dive OK. But I was
concentrating so much on diving, I wasn't getting much out of the dive.
In those days, my buoyancy required constant maintenance
because I was overweighted. Like many of us, I got my load of lead
close enough to the right amount to function, but I never fine-tuned
it. Ballpark weighting allowed me to get by, whereas precise weighting
would have allowed me to forget about my buoyancy and enjoy myself. I
should have spent the first few minutes of my dive at the platform
getting my weighting right, but that sounded too much like cleaning my
room before going out to play. Who wants to waste good dive time on
chores? "Good enough, let's go!" was my motto then.
I got
smart only when I learned I could use the dive time that's bad, or
anyway less good, for the housekeeping. I'm talking about the minutes
"wasted" on that mandatory buoyancy check, usually from the resort's
dock or off the beach, where there's rarely much to see anyway. And the
three-minute safety stop at the end of the first real dive, when we
often just stare at the countdown clock. Call it maturity, but I've
learned to spend the time on a buoyancy check that gets me within a
couple of pounds of my best weight every time, and a fine-tuning drill
during my first safety stop that makes my buoyancy control practically
effortless for the rest of the week. I think of it as doing my chores
on their time, not mine.
Foolproof Buoyancy Check
Many of us
shortchange the buoyancy check, partly because we're fresh off a plane
ride from hell, still disoriented by the soft breezes and the warm
water, and partly because nobody told us how to do it better. So we
just pile on the lead until we sink and call it good. Of course it's
not good, because we're juggling too many variables at once to come up
with an accurate weight total. Our restless body, our wetsuit, the air
trapped in the BC, the BC itself, and even the tank all have varying
and unmeasurable effects on our buoyancy. Talk about herding cats.
Instead, take it in stages:
By STEVE KORNACKI The Tampa Tribune
"No, I didn't see the damned seahorse, thank you very much." Nor, it
seems, the cleaner shrimp or the spinyhead blennies or any of the tiny
wonders that those other divers are chattering about on the stern
deck--those divers who seem to be able to glide and hover like fish,
poking their heads into holes with perfect ease. Meanwhile, I was
playing tunes on my power inflator buttons trying to avoid crashing
into the reef.