Snorkeling Blog

As one of the stars of the new Pirannah 3D action movie, Ving Rhames fights off a bunch of prehistoric monster pirannah come back to life.

But in a real-life drama, Rhames says he’s been put off snorkeling for good after coming across a bizarre “prehistoric” looking creature while snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef off Queensland, Australia.

Is this just hype to promote the movie? You have to wonder, but Rhames sounds serious about this strange snorkeling encounter.

Take advantage of a fee-free weekend at every U.S. National Park this weekend, August 14 and 15, 2010.

Read about what’s on offer here. You’ll find snorkeling in National Parks from Cape Cod to the Dry Tortugas.

Get out and enjoy the last few weeks of summer vacation!

Not only can you save a few bucks in park admission fees this weekend, lots of park concessionaires are offering special discounts this weekend too.

Here is a great story from the Isle of Man about a new training program aimed at eventually training 3,000 people as snorkeling instructors in the UK.
Seven enthusiastic volunteers have completed the Isle of Man’s first ever Snorkel Instructor Training course.
The British Sub Aqua club, the national governing body for snorkeling, recently launched an initiative to train 3,000 new snorkel instructors across the UK.

read the whole thing
This is a GREAT idea – while diving takes a much larger investment in time and money, snorkeling is simple, accessible and cheap – but many people just don’t know how to do it. We get emails all the time from people who want to go but just don’t know how / what to do.

Next time you are in Hawaii and want to hit the water, but think it may be a bit rough or that you won’t be able to see many fish – here is an option that guarantees you will see the fish up close.  The 280,000 gallon oceanarium  at the Pacific Beach hotel now offers SNUBA – $45 for 20 minutes for hotel guests, maximum 2 at a time.

Jim Cody discovered this shell while snorkeling in an isolated cove in the Bahamas.

Read the full story here.

Next time you go freshwater snorkeling in Thailand, you better hope you don’t run into this guy!

Read the story here.

The Miami Herald had another good story today about yet another invasive species on the move – this time the aggressive lionfish that has been spotted in the Florida keys.

”Lionfish are eating their way through the [Atlantic] reefs like a plague of locusts,” said Mark Hixon, a coral reef ecology expert at Oregon State University. “This may well become the most devastating marine invasion in history.”

Invasive species are a growing problem on land and in the water (both saltwater and freshwater) – hopefully the lionfish population is small and can be controlled before they really being to spread throughout the area.

Australia has a great tourism campaign going where you can apply for a high paying job on the great barrier reef, where your responsibilities are to snorkel, hike, swim and blog. Not a bad deal, huh?

The publicity stunt has gone so well the website for the promotion has crashed….

Below is the video for the promotion:

A sad story out of Palm Beach, Florida where a large reef suffered major damage – possibly from a tug boat towing a barge. Given the lack of reefs off the coast of the continental U.S., this is very unfortunate.

A huge swath of stunning corals on one of the most popular and profitable reefs in Palm Beach County has been shaved from the ocean floor — a crime almost impossible to solve and repair…..The damaged site is about a mile offshore in about 50 feet of water. It is a ”major tourist attraction,” said Ed Tichenor, director of Palm Beach County Reef Rescue. “Most tourist divers that come, that’s one of the prime locations they go to.”…

Read the fuull story here

A Maui Snorkeling Charter company was fined $400,000 after their charter sank and damaged coral reefs near Molokini:

The state Board of Land and Natural Resources in January approved a recommendation that penalties totaling $550,000 be imposed on Maui Snorkel Charters Inc., which does business as Maui Dive Shop. But settlement negotiations resulted in a reduced amount.

The 32-foot Kai Anela sank Sept. 29, 2006, after one of the its bow lines became tangled in an engine. Fifteen people had to jump overboard, and all were rescued.

Full story.

It’s nice to see the State of Hawaii takes things like this so seriously.