... or soon will be.  Crusty, like roughly 7,000 other Florida gators per year, will be killed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation commission.

    what did Crusty do?  nothing.

    well, he ate food that people threw at him.  this may lead him to associate people with food, which might ultimately end in an attack on a human.  rather than risk that scenario, gators that are fed by humans are euthanized.

   this, in so many words, sucks.  See full story.

       dove a little in Key Largo over the weekend.  worst dive was the Spiegel Grove.  unfortunately, the current was running something wicked, and it was a lot of effort just to descend hand over hand on the line.  i had to take breaks not to get winded.  we made it to the bow, but visibility was less than 10 feet, and after a little bit, we just called the dive.

     by far the best dive was Molasses Reef.  this reef shows its wear and tear, but it still retains quite a lot of healthy coral, and the fish variety and abbundance is still quite nice.  here are some pics:

honeycombed cowfish

scrawled filefish

    of all reef fish, i like the "weird" ones the best: filefish, cowfish, trunkfish, puffers.  morays are also nice (we saw two on the Molasses Reef dive).

   David Bright, a leading researcher into underwater exploration and shipwrecks, has died after diving to the site of the Andrea Doria off Nantucket, where he was working in preparation for the wreck's 50th anniversary. He was 49.  See Full Story.

   Bright surfaced from a dive and went into cardiac arrest.  It is unclear whether he suffered DCS or AGE, a stroke, heart-attack, or some other condition.  He had done over 120 dives on the Doria.

   Bright's interview with PBS about the Doria can be seen here.

     the Pensacola News Journal reports that the three Pensacola dive shops can barely keep up with demand for taking divers to the Oriskany.  shops have, in fact, been turning away divers because they can't accomodate everyone who wants to go.

shot from inside Oriskany's bridge

   this is certainly good news for the dive shops in Pensacola.  we'll have to wait and see as to whether the demand remains viable (though i am sure it will drop considerably in the months to come).  nevertheless, it's hard to argue against sinking Navy ships as artificial reefs when the response from divers is this hot.

  See full story.

      Hungarian diver Gusztav Riczler has set a new world record of 270 meters (just over 885 feet) for the deepest unaided scuba dive.   Riczler, who is 37,  descended to the maximum depth in 14 minutes in the Red Sea's Blue Hole, off the coast of Egypt, and then started the long ascent back to the surface, which required several decompression stops that totaled eight hours.

Riczler is listed as an IANTD instructor in this page,

which also contains the photograph above.

     See full story