Reef Seekers Dive Co. Home Page

*** PLEASE NOTE THAT OUR PO BOX NUMBER HAS CHANGED - IT WAS 11634 ***

P.O. Box 634 • Beverly Hills, CA 90213

(310) 652-4990
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THIS WEEK (March 2-9) AT REEF SEEKERS DIVE CO.
(Please scroll down a bit for all the info, text, pictures, & links.)

• • • REEF SEEKERS REPAIR DEPARTMENT • • •
Contact our repair guru Robert Stark directly at 310/947-8523
or via e-mail at ReefSeekersRepair@gmail.com
(Ask Robert about our unique concierge "Repair Pickup & Delivery Service")

SAVE 33% ON YOUR REG, OCTO, OR BC REPAIR - CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT HOW

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Upcoming local dives & classes in 2015 (call us at 310/652-4990 to sign up for any of these activities):

• Saturday, March 7 - Divers Day at the Aquarium of the Pacific (9A-5P - free admission for certified divers)

SAVE $10 EACH TRIP AS A MEMBER OF OUR "FREQUENT DIVER" PROGRAM

Need rental gear? Get a 20% discount at Hollywoodivers (near Universal City) or Scuba Haus (Santa Monica).
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Want to travel??? Upcoming 2015 vacation trips:

• March 6-15, 2015 - Yap with our good friends at Manta Ray Bay Resort (leaving this Friday)
• March 15-22, 2015 - Palau (Blue Corner, Peleliu, drift & reef diving at its best) aboard the Palau Aggressor II (SOLD OUT)
• June 20-27 (NOTE DATES HAVE SHIFTED BY ONE WEEK) - Bonaire
• July 11-22 - Indonesia (includes Bunaken, Lembeh Straits, & Bangka)
• July 31-August 5 - Great White Sharks at Guadalupe Island aboard the Belle Amie (I NOW HAVE AN EXTRA SPOT AVAILABLE ON THIS ONE)
• August 15-22 - Isla Mujeres and the Whales Sharks (plus cenotes and MUSA)
• October 21-26 - Great White Sharks at Guadalupe Island aboard the Nautilus Explorer (single male spot in a triple has opened up)
• November - TBA

GET MORE INFO ON ALL OF OUR VACATION TRIPS HERE: www.reefseekers.com/foreign_trips.html
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It's that time of the year again . . .

NO, IT'S NOT CHRISTMAS - Although we are looking for gifts (of a sort) from you. The "time of the year" I'm referring to is Chamber Day 2015, which is happening on Wednesday, May 6. Since I just sent you the newsletter yesterday I'm not going to go through all the details again but suffice it to say that we are centrally involved as always and are very happy to be sponsoring boat spots again (on the Cee Ray), will be encouraging you to sign up for the Flying Dutchman if you can't get the day off, have a table reserved for us at Chamber Evening, and hopefully will also see your name(s) on the donor list for the Chamber Challenge. This will be your gentle nudge. I'm sure you'll be hearing from me . . . maybe once or twice more . . . on these issues between now and May 6.

DIVERS DAY THIS SATURDAY - Hopefully you're making plans to attend the annual Divers Day at the Aquarium of the Pacific this coming Saturday from 9AM to 5PM. Your certification card will get you through the door free of charge. There will be the regular Aquarium diver shows and feeds and such, as well as oodles of animals to ogle, but there will also be numerous ocean-related groups with informational tables spread throughout the Great Hall, as well as some special presentations and demonstrations throughout the day. It's a lot of fun and hopefully you can attend. The official flyer is attached.

R.I.P. EUGENIE CLARK - I mentioned it in the newsletter but there was also a very nice and extensive obituary in the L.A. Times as well: http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-eugenie-clark-20150301-story.html#page=1 .

THE GOOD OLD DAYS WHEN THINGS WERE SIMPLER - I know I'll sound like an old fogy but I miss the good old days when things were simpler. As part of our upcoming Yap/Palau trip, I decided to upgrade both my GoPro and my Nikon housed camera systems. The GoPro wasn't all that tough, upgrading from the Hero2 to the Hero4 Black but the change from my trusty old Nikon D200 to a new top-of-the-line Nikon D750 is a much bigger jump. The new camera comes with an instruction book (not bookLET but BOOK) that's FIVE HUNDRED pages long. Makes me long fro the old days of firing up the camera, loading the film, and off you went. Hopefully the images ands videos I come back with will be worth the investment although I will say at the outset that with all new stuff, there's a learning curve so be gentle with your comments if I'm screwing things up.

MUCH-NEEDED RAIN - We got thunder and lightning too, at least in Westwood Sunday afternoon. The storm whipped up the seas a bit and I did get a good chuckle out of one boat's spin on it when they said they were going to do a "rare day of coastal diving" on Saturday. That's code for "We're going to get our butts kicked crossing to Catalina so let's try PV instead." Not sure if they made it or not. I did see that the swell in the channel on Saturday was seven feet at seven seconds which does not sound fun at all. It had calmed down significantly by Sunday.

GREAT WHITE SHARK SPOTS OPEN - Although both of our Great White Guadalupe trips sold out quickly, it looks like I may be able to get one more spot on our July 31-August 5 trip and one more spot on our October 21-26 trip as well. These should be two interestingly different trips as the July trip is early in the season when you get a lot of males coming in, and the October trip is late in the season when the pregnant females are cruising the waters around Guadalupe. Both should be interesting in their own unique ways. If you're interested in joining us, let me know and I'll fill you in on the details.

LEAVING FOR YAP THIS FRIDAY MORNING - At least I'll have some time to read that Nikon instruction book for the D750 during the 22 hours of travel. We have nine people doing our week in Yap and ten people doing our week in Palau (seven people are doing both) and I'm looking forward to both weeks. Yap, as you may know if you've read my previous trip reports, is a place I simply adore. Good-to-great diving, great people, and it always feels like home. And I not only have a great relationship with Bill Acker at Manta Ray Bay, but it's also the nicest dive-dedicated resort I've ever seen. I can't say enough good things about their operation. The mantas getting cleaned at Stammtisch are simply amazing (looking forward to shooting those with the new GoPro), the Mandarinfish will hopefully be frisky, and the sharks will be hungry when we do that feed. I'm really looking forward to Palau as well, not only to see some friends on the Palau Aggressor 2 again, but also because we haven't been there since 2007 and I'm curious to see what changes have transpired in the last eight years. (One change I already know about is that Hector's hair has turned gray.) And it'll also be interesting to see if the hot spots of years gone by are still the hot spots today. For instance, one site I'd love to get back to is the Buoy 6 Wreck, which I always thought was a fantastic dive but which wasn't always on the regular schedule. This will be my 10th trip to Yap and 6th to Palau and, since we'll have Internet connections all week in Yap and at least the first two days and last day in Palau, I will be touching base with you directly from both places. I'll also be posting a "Daily Top 10" each day from Yap and whatever I can whenever I can from Palau.

And that's it for now. Have a great week and let's go diving soon (or dive with me vicariously for the following two weeks).

- Ken
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Ken Kurtis
Owner, Reef Seekers Dive Co.