Read the latest announcements about Diablo Sea Bears Dive Club and our Activities.
The 2010 Club Officer elections were held at the 2009 December member meeting. See the About Us page for the results.
The 2010 Camping Schedule was determined at the August and September outings. The weekends were primarily determined by the tide schedule. The best tides for our purposes are rising in the morning. The tide schedule is available in book form or as software for PalmOS® PDAs.
The 2009 Newsletters and Dive Reports are linked from here.
In 2008, the state and federal governments began a series of hearings and meetings for the purpose of getting public input towards the creation of marine sanctuaries - the Marine Life Protection Act - along the California coast. For the latest schedule of these meetings follow the link to the California DFG’s MLPA site. For maps of the North Central Regions MPAs follow this link to the CDFGs maps. This year the MLPA Blue Ribbon panel will be discussing and making MPA recommendations for the North Coast Region (from Point Arena north... that’s us folks.)
The following text was excerpted from a posting by local dive professional Francesca Koe to the Bay Area Diving user list on yahoo.com. It has some good advice for those of us who want to have a say on the selection of the Marine Protection Areas:
“-if you want to be heard or have an impact at the public workshops, you should get intimately familiar with the make-up of the 4 drafts, AND you should come prepared with support for a specific proposal or come with a specific suggestion to improve a specific proposal.
if you come to just bellyache and complain, you won't win any votes or friends and most likely won't be heard.
But if you come and say something like:
"you know in draft proposal #3 it would really be better for the diving community if you moved the northern boundary of the MPA X down to this point because there is a cove in your current boundary and it is not only highly frequented but it is the only safe place to launch a small boat."
this way your idea can actually be heard and possibly incorporated. alternatives have to come forward.
to give an example of how much maneuvering there is, in the literal draft # 3 proposal, our Black Salt mpa idea grew to the north from what it originally was because the commercial fisherman couldn't live w/o salmon and crab fishing in the area. inclusion of salmon and crab fishing brought the protection level down. in order to meet the DFG criteria to even be considered at all, our MPA size had to grow. Obviously many ab divers etc. in our group didn't want to go south to Fisk Mill, so we went north toward but not quite in sea ranch. i bring this up just to demonstrate that there are subtleties and caveats at every corner.
bigger is not always worse and the extremes will most likely not win. it's all in the context.
to be truly useful and productive at the public workshops do your homework, and come with solutions. it would be great to have more diver voices at these public workshops, as the public comments over the past few months have been mostly cranky residents, or cranky fisherman. so i encourage anyone who can come and be a positive voice to do so.
if anyone has any other questions or wants to see even more laborious detail let me know, i've got loads!
and subjectively, IF you do want to come and provide support for a specific proposal I'd suggest drafts #1 or #4 as they provide the highest levels of protection for our wonderful resource.”
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