FAIRFIELD COUNTY DIVING ASSOCIATION

February 2019 Volume 26 Issue 2

The Presidents’ Corner by Mike Cassetta

Hope everyone is staying comfortable over the winter. To warm your spirits, come on down to the cottage and join us for the next FCDA meeting Friday Febru-ary 22nd. Capt Bill Palmer will be our guest speaker and presenting one of his many great North Carolina videos - The USS Tar-pon - Shark Boat

Thanks to Mel Rich for an awesome job at our January Meeting. Mel went over use of GoPros and showed off some of his well done video footage. De-spite the frigid temps, we had a great turnout.

The FCDA annual elections were held at our last meeting. In a shocker, our current slate of officers were re-elected. We are

in desperate need of a club secre-tary, so if anyone is willing; your help would be greatly appreciated.

We are actively scheduling speakers. If you have done any recent cool trips and would be will-ing to share, or if you know a good speaker, let Matt or me know.

I participated in a recent ice dive for training for NUSAR. It's always a cool and surreal experi-ence to see the ice from beneath. That being said, I am looking to some warm water diving off Rhode Island and Gloucester within the next few months.

Again.... please please please... we need a club Secretary.

Thanks. Mike

Inside this Issue The Presidents’ Corner by Mike Cassetta page 1 FCDA Donor I page 2 January 2019 FCDA Meeting

page 2 Are Those Bedbugs n Your Dive Gear? page 3 FCDA Member Ads page 3 Events of Interest to FCDA Members page 4

January Meeting DAN Raffle Winners page 4 The Quest for the Holy Grail of Shipwrecks by Michael Menduno pages 5, 6,7, 8 FCDA Donor II page 6 How to Identify Mountainous Star Coral by Nicole Helgason pages 8, 9 2019 Boston Sea Rovers Daytime Seminars

pages 9, 10 Arctic Circle page 10 Back by Popular Demand! FCDA Tee Shirts and Hoodies!

pages 11. 12 Next FCDA Meeting

page 13

Page 2

FCDA Donor

The business listed on this page has donated dive gear and dive services to help support the Fairfield County Diving Association.

January 2019 FCDA Meeting

Page 3

FCDA Member Ads

Hey - have you got a non retail-diving business that you’d like to share with your fellow members of FCDA? Get your business card size ad in the FCDA monthly newsletter “Surface Interval” for only $50.00 for one year. Give your business a boost and help support the production of our monthly newsletters. For more information, write to FCDA, P.O. Box 554, Fairfield, CT 06824 or email to fcda@aol.com.

Are Those Bedbugs in Your Dive Gear?

kling baking soda on bedbug-infested stuff every several days may be an economical killer . (Watch this video for some point-ers - www. youtube.com/watch?v=Wgj3LhtxsW8) . So try soaking the regulator in a strong solution of baking soda, then leave it to dry out before vacuuming away the dry residue .

There are also insecticides that might help with a BC, such as Spectre 2 SC, Crossfire Bed Bug Insecticide and Temprid FX . Naturally, you shouldn’t use any-thing so toxic on a regulator unless you are confident that you’ll be washing it thoroughly afterward .

One of our subscribers wrote to us, asking how to get rid of a bed-bug infestation in her BC and regu-lator . She’s worried that if she brought them back home in her luggage, they may now have in-fested her home .

The eggs, of which one bug can lay several thousands, can live more than a year before hatching, so professional fumigating is defi-nitely required . Throwing your clothes into warm water in the washing machine usually kills the buggers, but obviously you can’t do that with your diving equip-ment .

Insects in your dive gear can be killed by drying them out . Sprin-

Reprinted from Undercurrent, February 2019

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Events of Interest to FCDA Members

Friday - Sunday, March 8-10, 2019 - Boston Sea Rovers 2019 - DoubleTree by Hilton Bos-ton North Shore, 50 Ferncroft Rd, Danvers, MA. For more information - https://www.bostonsearovers.com/ Friday - Sunday, March 29-31, 2019 - Beneath the Sea 2019, Boston Sea Rovers 2019 - For more information - http://www.beneaththesea.org/

After Mel Rich Jr’s excellent presentation on Lights, Camera, Action with the GoPro Hero 6 Black the club held its monthly raffle to support our DAN Sponsorship.

Winners were: Full Face Snorkel Mask donated by New England Dive Center - John Hill; InBloom Diver Decal donated by New England Dive Center - Pat Walker; 500 PSI Mask Defog donated by New England Dive Center - Pat Walker; Solar Soap do-nated by New England Dive Center - John Hill; Reef Safe R e h y d r a t i n g Gel donated by New England Dive Center - M i c h e l l e Lapin, Orbit Marine Slap Strap donated by Orbit Marine Dive Center - Jeff Susa, Acou-Stik do-nated by Orbit Marine Dive Center - Jeff Susa; Cell Phone Jacket-donated by Or-bit Marine Dive Center - John

Hill and a Regulator Bag donated by Orbit Ma-rine Dive Center - Bob Sawczuk.

Thanks to New England Dive Center and Orbit Marine Dive Center for donating to-night’s raffle prizes for our DAN raffle.

Remember, you can't win if you don't buy tickets and you can't buy tickets if you don't get up and come out to FCDA events and meetings!

January Meeting DAN Raffle Winners

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Internet mail: fcda@aol.com

http://www.fcda.us

2019 Board

Presidents Matt Rownin &

Mike Cassetta

Vice-President Lisa Jarosik

Secretary vacant

Treasurer Paul J. Gacek

P.O. Box 554 Fairfield, CT 06824

In 1708 British warships sank the Spanish galleon San José, dubbed the "holy grail of ship-wrecks," near the port of Cart-agena, Colombia, during the War of the Spanish Succession, killing all but 11 of its 600-person crew. The storied 62-gun, three-masted warship was thought to be carry-ing six years of accumulated taxes and profits — more than 200 tons of gold, silver and emeralds — collected from Spanish colonies in Latin America to help finance the king's war effort. When the ship met its fate, it was the largest warship among a Spanish fleet sailing to Cartagena from Panama before a planned return to Spain. Its cargo is estimated to be worth as much as $20 billion, 50 times that of the famed Ato-cha wreck, which would make it the richest treasure ship on record. Various entities have endeavored to find the sunken galleon, espe-cially with such a treas-ure presumably some-where on the seafloor.

In 1979 the ocean salvage company Glocca Morra requested permission to explore for the San José and other valuable ship-wrecks lying off the Colombian coast. Colombia's maritime au-thority, Dirección General Marítima (DIMAR), in January 1980 awarded the company a li-cense to conduct a two-year, three-phase exploration and re-connaissance operation to locate shipwrecks within a specified area. The license entitled Glocca Morra to 50 percent of any treas-ure that it found as per Article

The Quest for the Holy Grail of Shipwrecks by Michael Menduno

701 of Colombia's civil code but required that government officials be present to monitor every step of the operation.

In the first phase, which began in June 1980, the company spent four months surveying the area with side-scan sonar and identified dozens of potential targets from the sonar's paper printouts. The crew and their government moni-tors returned in October to expand the survey area and investigate areas of interest using side-scan sonar, a continuous transmission frequency modulation (CTFM) so-nar for continuous scanning, a subsoil profiler to measure sedi-ment thickness, and an underwa-

ter remotely operated vehicle (ROV). Equipped with a TV cam-era, still camera and specimen basket, the ROV was maneuvered by remote control from the ship and attached with a 5,000-foot-long umbilical, making navigation imprecise. Over the next 10 months the crew identified several promising areas that contained wood debris and other man-made objects and recovered a wood sample that was determined to be at least 300 years old.

In October 1981 Glocca Morra (Continued on page 6)

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FCDA Donor

The business listed on this page has donated dive gear and dive services to help support the Fairfield County Diving Association.

The Quest for the Holy Grail of

Shipwrecks by Michael Menduno

(continued)

returned with a surface vessel and the repurposed passenger subma-rine Auguste Picard, which formerly carried tourists to the depths of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. It had three observation windows and was equipped with side-scan sonar, CTFM sonar, a subsoil profiler, a magnetometer and an underwater TV camera to investigate potential targets. Glocca Morra also de-ployed a transponder system for the sub to communicate with the surface and to help determine its position underwater.

On Dec. 10, 1981, the Picard's side-scan sonar and magnetometer recorded a major target, which was investigated on subsequent dives. The crew found several large de-bris fields that they believed to be the San José. "It was right where our archival researchers said it should be," recalled Jack Har-beston, managing director of Sea Search Armada (SSA), a partner-ship formed by Glocca Morra and other investors in November 1981 to help finance the mission. "The sub crew could see wooden ship spars, square nails that had rusted out and a cannon." A second wood sample confirmed the wreck was the right age.

Glocca Morra filed a report of its findings with DIMAR in February 1982; the report included a map with the approximate coordinates

(Continued from page 5)

of the San José. Civilian long-range navigation (loran) systems or GPS, which is generally accu-rate to within 33 feet, were not available at that time, so the company had to use less-precise methods. The 1:80,000-scale nautical map (1 inch = 1.26 miles) was made using sextants, which are accurate to only 1 mile to 3 miles, and underwater trian-gulation. DIMAR subsequently acknowledged the find, and a year later the government ap-proved the assignment of rights to Glocca Morra.

By that time the company had invested more than $6 million and was nearly out of money. In 1983 Glocca Morra transferred its rights to SSA, which raised an additional $5 million and took over management of the project.

SSA was granted permission to revisit the target along with

Colombian government observers in 1983 with the hope of making a positive ID. The company shot video from the sub that showed the remains of a wooden ship ap-

(Continued on page 7)

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proximately the size of the San José, but it was unable to make a definitive identification. Harbeston acknowledged that the evidence of the find was circumstantial, but the government would not let SSA re-

turn to the site for further verifica-tion and repeatedly denied SSA's requests to salvage the artifacts the sub had found. SSA also filed claims on five other targets based on sonic and magnetic analysis. It was SSA's last expedition to the site, so the San José remained offi-cially undiscovered and the con-tents of its hold an enigma for 32 more years.

On Dec. 5, 2015, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos an-nounced that an international team of researchers working with his country's Ministry of Culture had found the San José on Nov. 27, 2015. More than two years later, after having been released from a nondisclosure agreement, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) revealed in May 2018 that

(Continued from page 6) it was responsible for finding and identifying the 300-year-old ship-wreck at a depth of approxi-mately 2,000 feet using its RE-MUS 6000, an autonomous un-derwater vehicle (AUV) designed for searching the ocean floor. The prestigious nonprofit re-search organization conducted the search under the direction of British firm Maritime Archaeology Consultants (MAC) and in coop-eration with the Colombian gov-ernment aboard a Colombian na-val research vessel.

Rob Munier, WHOI vice presi-dent for marine facilities and op-erations, first discussed the San José project with MAC's lead ar-chaeologist, Roger Dooley, while attending a conference in late 2014. In early 2015 they traveled to meet with representatives of the Colombian government and inspected the proposed Navy re-search vessel, ARC Malpelo, as part of WHOI's due diligence.

It was not the first time the venerable 88-year-old scientific institution had been asked to find a high-profile target. WHOI found the wreckage of Air France Flight 447 off the northeast coast of Brazil in 2011, retrieved the data recorder from the cargo ship El Faro that sank during Hurricane Joaquin in 2015 and recently par-ticipated in the searches for Ame-lia Earhart's plane and the miss-ing Argentine submarine San Juan. Their highest-profile dis-covery to date came in 1985, when a WHOI team — in partner-ship with the French oceano-graphic institute IFREMER — dis-covered the remains of the Ti-tanic. WHOI also produced a photogrammetric map of the Ti-

The Quest for the Holy Grail of Shipwrecks by Michael Menduno (continued)

tanic in 2010. The San José would be the latest in WHOI's history of using their considerable technology and experience to conduct difficult searches.

Larry Madin, WHOI's deputy director and vice president for re-search, said their criteria for third-party projects are twofold: The request must come from a respon-sible party with appropriate legal authority and should require WHOI's unique capabilities repre-sented by its AUVs and operational expertise. "We have been ap-proached by treasure hunters over the years but never engaged," Madin explained. WHOI agreed to take on the San José project on an at-cost basis for services, time and equipment, just as they would op-erate under a research grant. "We were paid the same as if we had found rocks," he said.

Created with support from the U.S. Navy, WHOI's REMUS 6000 is designed for autonomous long-duration mapping and surveying operations to depths of 6,000 me-ters (19,685 feet or 3.73 miles). The bright-yellow, torpedo-shaped vehicle — measuring almost 13 feet long and weighing close to 2,000 pounds — is equipped with a

(Continued on page 8)

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titanium pressure hull and re-chargeable lithium-ion battery pack. It can travel at speeds up to 4 knots for up to 22 hours and fol-low the subsea terrain at a fixed depth.

Munier described the San José search operation as "mowing the lawn." Flying 230 feet above the seafloor at about 3 knots, REMUS uses side-scan sonar to image suc-cessive overlapping swaths of sea-bed. In addition to its inertial guid-ance system, the AUV relies on a series of deployed transponders that act like an underwater GPS to fix its position with an error of 1 meter per kilometer. At the end of an 18- to 22-hour run, the crew retrieves the vehicle and removes the hard drive, which can contain up to a half terabyte of imaging data for expert analysis. They can then send back REMUS to photo-graph items of interest with its high-resolution digital camera. "It can literally find a needle in a hay-stack," Munier said. This search, however, would be attempting to

(Continued from page 7)

The Quest for the Holy Grail of Shipwrecks by Michael Menduno (continued)

find a very old needle in a very deep haystack.

The WHOI team spent a week and a half aboard the Malpelo in June 2015 unsuccessfully search-ing for the San José based on a map provided by MAC. Unfortu-nately, they had to discontinue the operation because the vehicle was scheduled to be elsewhere.

A few days after the team re-turned and resumed operations in November 2015, REMUS found what looked like a promising tar-get. At that point the AUV had searched approximately 80 square nautical miles, an area slightly larger than Orlando, Flor-ida. They redeployed REMUS to the site the next day and took high-resolution photos from about 30 feet above the wreck. A marine archaeologist was able to identify the San José from the dolphins carved on the cannons. The rest was history. "Finding the wreck wasn't that big of a chal-lenge," Munier said, citing the relatively flat seafloor. "The hard-est part was keeping it under

wraps." Nearly 40 years after the first

searches began, WHOI leveraged its technology and methodology to find what had eluded previous ex-peditions. There are still many un-answered questions about what will become of the San José; many claims of ownership have been made, and what should be done with the treasure and artifacts aboard is hotly contested. In a press conference alongside Colom-bian President Iván Duque Márquez in August 2018, Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez voiced his hopes for a resolution: "The solution lies in finding a way to contribute to the intellectual en-richment, culture and history of humanity." Although the outcome remains to be seen, delving through 300 years and nearly 2,000 feet of water to find the San José is the first step in uncovering an incredible piece of maritime his-tory.

Reprinted from Alert iDver Fall

2018.

Orbicella faveolata is an impor-tant ­reef-building coral that forms large, ­mountainous colonies. Ju-venile corals are rather mundane, while adult colonies can grow to an impressive size.

Orbicella grows by encrusting. A new colony can start from a single polyp, which grows outward from the base. You can see a slightly lighter color on the growing edge of the colony where new polyps

are emerging. Orbicella grows into thick,

hearty ­colonies, which make the ideal candidate for ­fragmentation and coral restoration. Small 15 mm to 20 mm fragments can be cut from adult colonies using a dia-mond band saw. These fragments can be glued onto ceramic frag plugs and grown in salt water until they double or triple in size.

At this point, tiny Orbicella colo-

nies can be transplanted back to the reef. As they grow, their skele-tons add a considerable mass to the reef, and over time they can help stabilize loose rocks or decay-ing reef structure.

The common name for this coral is mountainous star coral be-cause of its size and characteristic peaks and ridges. Polyps are small at about a half-inch across. When

(Continued on page 9)

How to Identify Mountainous Star Coral by Nicole Helgason

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How to Identify Mountainous Star Coral by Nicole Helgason (continued)

polyps are retracted, Orbicella corallites have tiny grooves that give it a ­starlike ­appearance.

Orbicella is coral that could be overlooked. From a few meters away, you might think this coral is just a rock or simply consider it as part of the reef. Divers are often more focused on looking for fish, turtles, rays and eels than trying to describe coral. But Orbicella is an important coral to the overall health and growth of the reef.

To really see the beauty in this coral, look for large colonies or colonies of contrasting colors growing next to each other.

Until recently, Orbicella was classified as part of the Montastrea family. You can still find this coral listed as Montastrea faveolata,

(Continued from page 8)

The Boston Sea Rovers are the proud sponsors of the “Longest Continuously Running Dive Show in the World,” a distinction made possible primarily due to the excellent quality of speakers that have continued to grace our stages. We take great pleasure in hosting the best educators, explorers, scientists, divers and speakers in the world. The purpose of these lectures help us to achieve our club our mission, “To educate the general public about the underwater world.”

Our daytime presentations form the backbone of our show. In two days we host over 40 speakers covering a myriad of diving and marine related topics. Each hour there are three simultaneous lectures being held on Saturday and Sunday from 9am to 5 pm. You get to choose which speaker or topic you would like to see based on your interests. Saturday 9:00-9:45AM Diving and Drones by Peter Venoutsos The Bumpy Road to Personalized Decompression: Where Are We Headed by Frauke Tillmans On the Precipice of War: the Legacy of U-53 by Captain Joe Mazraani and Jennifer Sellitti 10:00-10:45AM Oceans Phone Home by Richard Morris Children and Diving by David Charash Mapping Revolutionary War History by Steve Nagiewicz 11:00-11:45AM The Art of Black & White Photography by Chuck Davis Does Scuba Diving Have A Retirement Age? by Dan Orr Past, Present, Future. The Centenary of the Scuttling in Scapa Flow by Thomas Easop 1:00-1:45PM Taveuni and the Kingdom of the Tonga by Andrew Martinez Never Smile at a Crocodile…Except in Jardines de la Reina by Nancy McGee and Patrick Madden Off the Beaten Track by Faith Ortins 2:00-2:45PM Diving South Australia by Jonathan Bird Chasing Unicorns in Alaska – The Elusive Salmon Shark by Ron Watkins The Glow Below – Fluorescence Diving and Science around the World by Charles Mazel

however, the current description is Orbicella.

Reprinted from Scubadiv-ving.com December 25, 2018

2019 Boston Sea Rovers Daytime Seminars

Page 10

3:00-3:45PM Wine Diving in Croatia by Paul Cater Deaton The Mind of the Mako Shark by Joe Romeiro Wild Alaska: Diving Prince William Sound by Christopher Weaver 4:00-4:45PM Arabian Adventures – Exploring Oman by Michel Labrecque / Julie Ouimet Has Jaws Come Home? by Gregory Skomal Bali, A Divers Paradise by Jim & Pat Stayer Sunday 9:30-10:15AM Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates by Eric Dolin Down Under!! Over 20 Years of Expedition Participation and Experiential Learning with the Cambrian Foundation by Amy Giannotti Hot Times in the Gulf of Maine – Effects on Seagrass and Kelp Communities by Phil Colarusso a and Jarett Byrnes 10:30-11:15AM The Gulf Stream Orphan Project by Mike O’Neil Acing the Shot by Hergen Spalink Hot Times in the Gulf of Maine – Temperature Change Effects on Subtidal Rock Wall Communities Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) by Ted Maney and Amy Giannotti 11:30-12:15PM Diving the Shipwrecks of Martha’s Vineyard by Donald Ferris The Wily Octopus: New Facts and Findings by Roger Hanlon Hot Times in the Gulf of Maine – The Future of Fishing in a Rapidly Warming Gulf of Maine – Climate Change, Rescue Effects and the Unseen Role of Habitat Variability by Marissa McMahan and Brian Helmuth 1:00-1:45PM Exploration Diving in New England: Off the Beaten Path by Ryan King and Danny Allan Diving Deep Into A Career by Betty Orr Sunscreens and coral reefs…a toxic mix by George Buckley 2:00-2:45PM Captain Kidd, Petroglyphs, Elephants & Guns: Finds in the Connecticut River by Annette Spaulding Painting With Light – Cenotes and Chuuk Wreck Photography by Berkley White Boston Sea Rovers Intern Update by Jake Stout 3:00-3:45PM 2018 Undersea Adventures of Mini-Ed by Ed Monet Dive Travel by Carrie Miller Improving Performance in Diving by Emmett Krupczak and Giorgio Caramanna

(Continued from page 9)

Arctic Circle

2019 Boston Sea Rovers Daytime Seminars (continued)

Page 11

Back by Popular Demand!

FCDA Tee Shirts and Hoodies!

Graphite grey shown - Cotton/Polyester blend - Adult Sizes SM - 3XL $25.00

Also available with long sleeves (not shown) $30.00

Both available in choice of ten colors

Get your FCDA Tee Shirts and Hoodies with a high quality embroidered FCDA logo on the front and an embroidered dive flag on the back. Available in sizes from Small to 3XL.

Gildan Heavy Cotton T-Shirt

The Endurance Poly Hoodie

High quality embroidered FCDA logo on the front and an embroidered dive flag logo on the back.

Hoodie also available in Grey with Red Insets.

Available Colors for Tee Shirts and Long Sleeve Shirts

NO LONGER AVAILABLE

Page 12

NO LONGER AVAILABLE

Name _______________________________________________ eMail ________________________________________________ FCDA Tee Shirt with Logo and Dive Flag No. _____ Size _____ Color _______ @ $25.00 = $_________

No. _____ Size _____ Color _______ @ $25.00 = $_________ FCDA Long Sleeve Shirt with Logo and Dive Flag No. _____ Size _____ Color _______ @ $30.00 = $_________

No. _____ Size _____ Color _______ @ $30.00 = $_________ FCDA Hoodie with Logo and Dive Flag No. _____ Size _____ Black Inset @ $35.00 = $_________ or No. _____ Size _____ Red Inset @ $35.00 = $_________ No. _____ Size _____ Black Inset @ $35.00 = $_________ or No. _____ Size _____ Red Inset @ $35.00 = $_________ Make your check payable to FCDA and mail to: TOTAL $_________ FCDA, P.O. Box 554, Fairfield, CT 06824

FCDA Shirt/Hoodie Order Form

Please note that all items are custom made and must be prepaid. Items will be ordered as soon as we have the minimum quantity for an order and will generally be available at the next scheduled meeting.

Page 13

Next FCDA Meeting

Friday - February 22, 2019 - 8:00 PM

US Coast Guard Auxiliary Cottage - South Benson Marina, Fairfield, CT

“The USS Tarpon - The Shark Boat”

a video presentation by

Captain William “Bill” Palmer

Built in Groton, Connecticut at Electric Boat in 1936, the USS Tarpon was the first all welded Submarine. She made 12 war patrols, her first was on Decem-ber 9, 1941 and her last was in October of 1944. During her tour of duty she earned 7 battle stars. The Tarpon sank in 1957 while being towed. Today she

rests in 145 ft of water and is probably one of the best dives off the North Carolina shore.