Small motor boaters still drive for free

The vast majority of divers, be they fresh or salt water fanatics, spend some of their leisure time in boats. It looked for the longest while that 1997 was going to be the year that the business of getting to-and-from the dive site would cost more and require getting tangled in a bit of red tape in 1997!

Well, divers and boaters alike received a reprieve earlier this year when the Federal Government's plan to impose licensing fees on pleasure boats was indefinitely postponed.

The 1996 Federal budget outlined a proposal to charge boaters a yearly fee to operate their craft. There is already a one-time registration fee for all power boats over 10 hp, however this proposed fee was to impose a higher annual charge on power boats and for the first time included taxing sailboats, small motor boats and even rowboats.

The boat license issue has been withdrawn for further study. Meanwhile the Canadian Coast Guard is reportedly working to establish recreational boater advisory councils across the country. Among other issues, these councils can seek out public input (and pass the findings on to the Federal Government) on issues such as boat licenses.

Dive Show Makes Big Changes

Underwater Canada has taken a sharp left turn! The annual Toronto based dive show, now in its 26th year, has done a make-over on itself and has changed the format for North America's largest consumer scuba show which this year runs April 4-6th at the Constellation Hotel, along Toronto's airport strip.

"We want to stress that there is a lot of new ideas and new people at this year's show. We have also changed the format quite a bit," explained show manager Nancy Parton. "However, we are still Underwater Canada, we are volunteer run and we haven't touched the great spirit that drives this annual event."

For the first time in the history of the show there will be a Cousteau in attendance. 59 year old Jean-Michel Cousteau, the son of Jacques Cousteau (the founder of the sport of scuba diving) will be the master of ceremonies and a film presenter at the Saturday Night Film Festival.

"Actually, it would be more accurate to call him the master of ceremonies for the whole weekend!" explained Mrs. Parton. "He is also going to be the master of ceremonies for our two film shows on Sunday."

Jean Michel heads the Jean-Michel Cousteau Institute, a non-profit foundation for the study and discussion of solutions to the environmental and social challenges facing the generations of today and tomorrow. In 1993, he established a new company, Jean-Michel Cousteau Productions, to expand the range and depth of education film programming through television documentaries and interactive multimedia productions. He has released a CD-ROM entitled Cities Under the Sea: Coral Reefs.

Surprise, Surprise. In past years Underwater Canada's Masters of Ceremonies have been at the Saturday film evening but were not accessible to divers throughout the show. In addition to showing his new movie about the sinking of a Russian warship off Cayman Brac, Cousteau will be presenting an underwater adventure video at the Sunday film festivals and will be at his booth in the exhibit hall throughout the show.

Another change this year is the structure of the show. The Friday night film festival is no more (a second film festival has been added to Sunday's schedule), in its place, show goers will get to see the beauty of British Columbia diving and laugh and dance at the Barbados sponsored Dance the Night Away!

DIVER Magazine, in conjunction with BC Dive Tourism will be demonstrating to attendees the beauty of diving in the Emerald Sea on Friday, April 4th. The no-charge three hour program runs from 7 - 10 pm. From 9 pm until 1 am on Friday evening there will also be laughs and Caribbean music in the Constellation Hotel's main ballroom. Glen Foster, a popular comedian who has performed in Australia, New York and at the Peterborough Ice Floe Races has a routine planned that will appeal to anyone who believes in that old adage "Divers Do It Deeper"! The island of Barbados is sponsoring the evening and will be providing a live dance band throughout the night.

Other new stuff? Usually the dive forums and seminars are held just on Friday and Sunday. This year the show organizers have added two Saturday symposiums; a day long Field Neurological seminar with Andrea Zaferes and a half day, PADI sponsored workshop with Butch Hendrick. Hendrick aims his seminar, Are You A Quality Pro, at leadership candidates in the dive industry.

The big names from the Saturday night film festival, including underwater videographer Jim Kozmik and Stan Waterman, will be helping teach children, aged 7-12, about the joys of scuba in the new Youth Adventure Area on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. There will be a silent auction throughout the weekend and there will be an Ask the Expert area for people wanting answers to all of their the scuba questions.

Underwater Canada is sponsored by the Ontario Underwater Council, PADI Canada with the support of Diver Magazine, Sports Underwater World, the island of Barbados and the Aggressor Fleet. For ticket information contact the Underwater Council at (416) 426-7033. The show webpage can be reached at medianetcom.com/.

Captain Cousteau has a presence at show too!

Captain Jacques Cousteau will not be at the show. However, the Calypso Foundation, a wing of Cousteau's ecological foundation (which is separate from his son, Jean-Michel's foundation) has a booth at the show.

Captain Cousteau lost his research vessel the Calypso several years ago in an Asian boating accident. The foundation is raising money to launch a state-of-the-art research ship to replace the famed Calypso.

Attendance at Niagara's Festival will not fall:

Underwater Canada is not the only dive show in Ontario these days. The Niagara Divers' Association's (NDA) Annual Shipwreck Festival has, in just three years, grown from being a club "do" to being a major North American scuba event. This year Shipwrecks 97 will be held on Saturday March 1, 1997 in Welland, Ontario (approximately. 45 minutes from Buffalo, 75 minutes from Toronto).

"For this our third year, we are very excited to have a total of nine multimedia presentations," said NDA's Bob Marshall, "with eleven speakers from Ontario, Michigan, Ohio and Florida. Topics are all shipwreck related."

The non-profit dive club has lined up North America's top Great Lakes wreck experts including frequent DIVER Magazine contributor Cris Kohl, author Frederick Stonehouse and photographer David Gilchrist to speak at the one day event. The wrecks of Kingston, Ontario, Diving the Edmund Fitzgerald and the sinking of the Morrell are three key areas of investigation by four of the presenters (Kohl, Stonehouse, Terrence Tysall and "Out of the Blue Productions").

The Niagara Dive Association does have a web page which includes information on the symposium, ticket information and directions on how to get to Welland, Ontario. Their web site can be found at www.vaxxine.com/nda. The association accepts e-mail at: dfmekker@on.bell.ca, or dmartin@sympatico.ca.

Plague year for diving deaths

For the past 18 years I have been monitoring dive related fatalities in the Province of Ontario. I do this by contacting the Ontario Underwater Council-which usually sends a representative to dive death inquests and publishes reports on the fatalities to its members-reviewing newspaper reports, and in the past two years by searching on the Internet.

If just one death in a season is tragic, then 1996 will go down as a plague year for the sport of scuba in Ontario. By my count, and I could have missed one or two death notices (or received inaccurate information on others), seven people died while diving in Ontario waters last year. It appears that two people died while diving in the St. Lawrence River in separate incidents, there was a report of a Bruce Peninsula fatality, one man died ice diving and there were three "commercial" diving deaths.

Studying and talking about dive fatality reports has merit. It gives all divers information about the possible pitfalls of the sport, and hopefully through knowledge of the cases, divers will adjust their own practises to avoid suffering the same mishap.

However, in 1996, many of the deaths occurred under bizarre circumstances, and it is unlikely that any sport diver will run into similar problems. Three of the seven deaths occurred in golf course traps in less than 10 feet of water while (at different courses) retrieving golf balls. A fourth death occurred just after Christmas when a man went diving in a Brampton area lake without ropes, a dive buddy or essential cold water/ice diving equipment.

Award Winners

Diver columnist Dr. David Sawatzky has won the Star of Courage and cave diving expert Kim Martin has won the Medal of Bravery for their part in the rescue of a trapped diver in a Tobermory cave. The men were presented with their medals by the Governor General at a ceremony held in Ottawa on December 6th.

David Sawatzky, with the assistance of Mr. Martin rescued his dive buddy [see Diver Magazine volume XX number XX] who had been lost inside an underwater cave for six hours!

Diving the Web:

Home Pages, Commercial Sites and Chat Lines ... anyone with a computer and a modem can dive the net. Spotted on the Internet, in no particular order of importance over the past month the following:

* Dan Lindsay, the owner of the video company, SeaViewing Imaging, already has produced two dive videos, "The Empress of Ireland - Lost Not Forgotten" and "Tobermory- Our Marine Heritage". Last month the 24 year old took to the net looking for information about a Lake Erie sunken tugboat.

"I am working on a video of a shipwreck in Lake Erie that lies in 165 feet. The wreck is a tugboat from the early 1900's of wooden construction, approximately 75' long and has a 17' beam roughly. We have only done one dive on the wreck and have not too much more information," wrote Mr. Lindsay. "The wreck is intact except for the housing over the engine room. The wheelhouse is fully intact. Zebra mussels are a big problem. The tug appears to have a three stage expansion engine. The smoke stack has fallen over."

The Underwater videographer needs help in identifying the tug. He figures that the tug is one of the following wrecks; the Cornell built in Buffalo, Smith tugboat lost in Lake Erie, and the Finy (tugboat). Think you can help? E-mail Dan Lindsay at seaview@ican.net

* The University of Windsor Skin and Scuba Club and the Windsor Chapter of Save Ontario Shipwrecks has a webpage. Mike Drexler looks after the Windsor service, his page can be reached at: www2.uwindsor.ca/~drexle2.

* Dan Volker is the editor of an online dive magazine. His South Florida Dive Journal can be accessed at www.worldpub.com/scuba/dive/. Mr. Volker describes the site as a dive magazine for underwater photography and video.

* There is a Website for people looking to get information about UK scuba matters. For discussion about equipment, dive sites and clubs check out www.drogon.net/scuba/. The site's e-mail address is scuba-uk@drogon.net.

* Considering a dive trip to Costa Rica? Check out this Central American country's web page at: www.cool.co.cr/.