Flotsam & Jetsam

Tougher to Get to Bonaire: Air Jamaica is pulling out. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday flights will be suspended on June 27 and all flights on August 28. American Eagle will be picking up some slack, but keep in mind it’s notorious for not getting luggage on the same flights as its passengers . . . And it’s tougher to dive Bonaire. Oil terminal security guards are actively enforcing a ban on diving the Windjammer wreck.

Diving Can Make you Crazy: Two days after a dive, a 31-year-old male Scubapro MK20 Cracking Problem Reported Flotsam & Jetsam walked into a Louisiana hospital emergency room agitated, with delusions, paranoia, and complex visual hallucinations. Tests found some brain abnormalities, but physicians couldn’t pinpoint the cause. While scuba diving, the patient had made a breath-holding ascent from 45 ft. to 15 ft., so the doctors consulted Louisiana State University hyperbaric medicine specialists, who recommended recompression treatments. That eventually resolved his psychosis. While uncommon, DCS can present itself with severe behavioral changes such as psychosis. Glover, Van Meter, LeGros and Barratt, Health Science Center, LSU, New Orleans. UHMS Abstracts, 2004.

Sting Ray City: At what might be the most dangerous patch of underwater real estate anywhere, critters continue to attack humans at Grand Cayman’s Sting Ray City On April 1, reports the Wisconsin State Journal, eleven-year-old Justin Weber was scuba diving with his parents at Sting Ray City on Grand Cayman, when a six-foot green moray chomped down on his forearm, severing several arteries. The eel held on tight until Justin’s dad pried its jaws apart. Justin underwent six hours of surgery on Grand Cayman, where doctors used a vein from his leg to help restore blood flow to his hand. The Webers arranged for a chartered medical jet, which cost $21,400, to fly Justin to Madison, Wisconsin, for further surgery. His family is hopeful he’ll regain full use of his hand. His mother Laura said the family will resume diving, but not where fish are fed. “We believe this changes the way the animals react to human beings,” she said. Experts would agree.

Eating Wrasse: A beautiful humphead wrasse, reports DiveNewZealand, was being kept live in a restaurant fish tank in Sydney’s Chinatown district, just waiting for a customer to pick it out for dinner. A delicacy throughout Asia, the species is second on the World Wildlife Fund’s list of endangered marine species, behind the great white shark.. This fish, however, got lucky. A diner contacted the Sydney Aquarium to persuade them to give the fish a new home, then paid the restaurant $900 for it. The staff at Sydney Aquarium named her Kai, which in the Maori language means “lunch.”

Earthquake Diving: At the end of a night dive in the Raja Ampat islands (Irian Jaya) earlier this year, subscribers Allan and Barbara Jones of Anaheim, CA we were starting to return to the ship when they felt a loud and heavy vibration. “It was as if a very large freighter was passing overhead,” they told Undercurrent. The vibration increased in intensity until “we had to wrap our arms around our chests to keep our internals from vibrating.” The 7.3 earthquake lasted about 20-30 seconds, and passengers on the boat felt as if it were slipping its anchor. The quake was epicentered 200 miles away, said the Joneses, but since water transmits energy much more efficiently than air,” it seemed we were just over the source.”