The Abalone and the Ant

I was on my way back from a trip on Sunday and my flight was delayed about 3 different times, but luckily for me (sense the sarcasm) we were stuck on the plane already when the delays were coming in. All and all we sat on the plane from 2:00 to 7:00, and left the gate 3 times. I was taking Jet Blue Airlines and as we all know, they provide their customers with personal satellite television. From 2-3 I watched Scrubs, then from 3-8:30 I watched Dirty Jobs. This show is hilarious by the way! After such an awful day of traveling, there was a bright side to it all. I learned some interesting facts about a shellfish and an ant that I just feel the need to share with everyone. It’s bizarre, I know, but these creatures are very peculiar.

The abalone is an endangered Pacific Rim shellfish, that I had never heard of until the show. It has a beautiful pearly shell that is sometimes used for decoration purposes. They are a popular seafood item, but are slightly expensive for each one because they are farm grown. Each abalone grows about an inch in 4 years so all the time and effort it takes to harvest them (going out to get their food and constantly nurturing them) really adds up, causing the price of each one to be so high. Interested in making an abalone meal but don’t know how to prepare it? Here are some recipes from “The Abalone Farm,” that will get you started.

Interesting facts about Abalones:

* Their blood does not clot, therefore if they get cut just a little, they will bleed to death

* They sometimes eat their own poo!

* They have a giant foot to move around with and that is what is eaten

* Their diet consists of giant algae (one of the world’s fastest growing plants, growing up to 4 inches per day!)

* They perform broadcast spawning:the female releases her eggs into the water and the male releases his sperm into the water, in hopes that they will find each other

 Interesting facts about ants:

* They have a dump that is separate from their living, eating and social areas

* They put garbage and dead bodies at the dump (sounds like they have their own mafia!)

* There are ants that work at the dump, they’re usually the older ants… maybe it’s their way of respecting their elders?

* Ants are psycho! According to Buzzle.com, there is an ant called the “Slave-maker” (Polyergus Rufescens). This ant steals ants from other colonies that are not hatched yet. When these stolen ants hatch, they must work as slaves at the colony they were brought to. I guess the ants haven’t heard of civil rights yet.

Continue Diving part deux

Here are the rest of the PADI dive courses associated with the previous blog for an advanced scuba license:

Coral Reef Conservation Course: This one is really important to take right now. The reef is suffering from human activity and this course teaches divers about the importance of reefs and how to help conserve them. Remember, this is the International Year of the Reef! (I wrote a blog on it a few weeks ago, check it out to learn more about why we need to save the reef and how you can do your part)

Enriched Air Diver:One of PADI’s best classes. It teaches you how to stay underwater longer with nitrox air, which extends your no stop time above the no decompression time

Multilevel Diver:Gives you a greater knowledge of the dive wheel and how to increase you bottom time, by slowing nitrogen absorption

Night Diver:This one always kind of scares me! There’s something frightening about the mystery of the ocean as it is, but to be in the complete dark while swimming in the mysterious ocean is beyond frightening! Not saying I won’t do it, cause I will, but I’ll have that same look on my face I always do before going on some crazy roller coaster. The really cool things about night dives are the different animals that come out during the night and those are things you would never be able to see during the day. There are tons of  bioluminescent creatures in the ocean at night, such as bacteria, fish, mollusks, sponges, jellyfish, crustaceans, etc.

 

 

Continue Diving

In the next few weeks I plan on taking advanced diving classes and hopefully after that become a dive master. PADI offers so many diving courses that I didn’t even know about until recently! the class that really appeals to me though is underwater photography. The world beneath the surface is so beautiful that I don’t think anyone could take a bad picture! There are tons of animals, plants, and structures that most people never get to see, and the ones that do see them are only underwater for short periods of time. You could dive in the same location two days in a row and see completely different things.

Classes offered by PADI Dive Centers:

AWARE Fish ID: This class instructs students on the species of fish and the families they are in. Think about how cool you would sound boating back to shore and discussing with your buddy all the interesting fish you two saw. He won’t really know what you’re talking about, but at least you’ll feel smart!

Boat Diver: Think about how many boats you’ve been on while going to your scuba diving destination. It’s hard to know where to stow your gear, how to exit and enter the boat during the dive, the different safety rules of each boat, etc. This course teaches you about different boats you may be diving from and the elements of safety and other information. My first dive for example was off an inflatable boat, which is different from diving off a live-aboard.

Diver Propulsion Vehicle: Don’t want to put forward the effort of having to actually swim your way through the water while scuba diving? Don’t! There are little motorized vehicles that you can hold onto that project you through the water at a comfortable pace so that you can see more in a shorter period of time.

Deep Diver: You learn to dive to the depths of 60-130 ft. and see things that you can’t possibly see at 45 ft. It’s definitely one of the most beneficial courses you could take out of all that are offered

Wreck Diver: I can’t wait to do this one! This course teaches you to dive through wrecks and observe the history of ships, airplanes, and anything else down there. This course teaches you the knowledge and procedures it takes to dive in and around wrecks.

Drift Diver: Ride the tide dude. This is an interesting course because it teaches you how to drift along with the currents and flow of the water, while staying with a buddy and communicating efficiently with that buddy and the dive boat. You learn that actual science of currents as well, which is really cool.

These are only half the courses offered by PADI. I don’t want to overload the classes onto one post so take a look at these and I will post the rest tomorrow! Hopefully you find one that interests you. I personally want to take them all….

Charleston, South Carolina

I just got back from a week and a half long vacation in Charleston, SC. I started out in Charlotte, NC, which I loved! I stayed there for one day and moved on down to Charleston till Sunday, Father’s Day. On the ride down there, I saw about five cops for every ten miles! So a little bit of advice, while driving through NC and SC do not go more than 3 miles per hour over the speed limit.

I stayed on the Isle of Palms when I got down there, which was absolutely beautiful. The interesting thing about the dock off the house I stayed at was that dolphins would constantly come right up to the edge! The ocean looked just like a lake because it was surrounded by marshes. Stream-like channels of water formed creating the illusion of a lake but as soon as I saw dolphins rise to the surface, I began to question the body of water. Yes, to my disillusionment, it was salt.

While I was down there I went fishing, boating, to two concerts, some nice restaurants, downtown Charleston, Fort Sumter, the light house, the beach, etc. Slang words I heard were, IOP (Isle of Palms) and Chucktown (Charleston).

Things I liked:

* You could walk on the beach WHENEVER you wanted, not like beaches up by where I live

* Beautiful houses and architecture, very beach-like

* Sailboats, shrimpers, yachts, “coffee-grinder” boats, the ocean

* The massive amounts of dolphins!

* She-Crab soup (never heard of it before I went there)

* My first grit!

* Downtown night life

* The tranquility and beauty of Isle of Palms

* Poe’s Restaurant

* The people

* The docks

* The Windjammer

Things I didn’t like so much:

* I was expecting some more palm trees

* The humidity ravished my hair… I never thought I would have to actually apologize for my hair

* Palmetto bugs, you step on one of those and both its arms and legs come out the sides of your shoes

* A crab bit my toe in the ocean!

Hey, four (ridiculously stupid) complaints, that’s not bad… Overall, LOVED IT!

Bottom’s Up!

If you got a chance to go to Mexico let’s say, what’s one of the first things you would do when you got there?….Lay on a beach, margarita in one hand and an amazing novel in the other.  Specialty drinks are something always associated with popular vacation spots, here are some famous ones for your next vacation, virgin or non-virgin, both versions taste great for any drink (some can’t be virgin’s though such as a shot, for example, the Swedish drink of choice…VODKA):

Margarita:

According to The Great Margarita Book, there are so many different stories that lend to the origin of the margarita; however, I must believe that the margarita did in fact originate from Mexico (for my own sanity!  If we were to find out it came from some American in California I’m sure we would all feel that we have been living an awful lie for all these years we thought it was from Mexico)!  You can decide for yourself which legend is the most valid in an article by Cosmic Chile.  Just a quick side note, this site has a whole list of hot sauces, my favorite thing in the entire world!  I put it on everything that I do not like to eat but must eat, such as broccoli, grilled chicken, corn, I’ve even mixed it into my salads.  So if you are just as obsessed with hot sauce as I am check out some of the sauces they have on their site!

So next time you head down to Mexico, lay down in that baking sun to crisp up (just kidding) and grab a margarita from the beach bar.  If you want to bring Mexico to your own home here are some recipes for your next margarita:

The Traditional Margarita:

2 shots of tequila
1 shot Cointreau
1 shot freshly squeezed lime juice
Salt and lime wedge, to serve

Margarita Texas:  This site has a HUGE list of margarita recipes

If you are looking for a place to buy excellent margarita materials, mixes, specialty salt, shakers, etc. you will not be disappointed at Williams-Sonoma. 

Sangria:

Arrrrriba Arrrrriba!  This wine punch comes all the way from Spain and is delicioso!  The word “sangre” in spanish means blood and that is what the drink is made of.  Just kidding!!!!  Sangre is the word for blood and it is named after this word but it isn’t actually blood.  It might look like a lighter color of sangre but it tastes delicious!  The way it is made is by infusing red wine with fresh fruit.  Whenever I have gotten sangria, a tooth pick usually came with it so I could pick out the whole pieces of fruit inside the drink.  There are also other alcohols infused in as well to the sangria to give flavor.

The Classic Sangria Recipe:

1 bottle quality rioja
2 tablespooons caster sugar
half orange, cubed or sliced
1 lemon, cubbed or sliced
handful of fresh berries of your choice
30ml brandy Spanish brandy, such as Domecq
30ml Cointreau
235ml soda
ice cubes to half fill jug

I just found this really interesting site about the origin of gross drinks from around the world (helpful hint:  When you go to this site, you have to scroll down a little to get to the story, the top is blank).  You will cringe and hopefully laugh at the same time, I’m not even sure if those two expressions go together but I did something along those lines when I looked at the drinks!

 

 

Vacation in a Tree a Snow Ball or the Ocean

If all your vacations have consisted of beautiful beach resorts or exotic locations and you’re looking to switch it up a bit, take a look at these adventurous hotels, they will give you a whole new percpective on “vacationing”:

****Cedar Creek Treehouse:

Feel like Tarzan and Jane in one of these Red Cedar Tree treehouses 50 ft. from the ground!  Located in Ashford, Washington, this Earth friendly resort is a bed and breakfast and delivers a romantic getaway to any adventurous couple!  The prices begin at around $300 for two people per night.  If you want to see more about staying at the Cedar Creek Treehouses visit their accomadations link.

Photos of the Treehouse Observatory

Photos of their Stairway to Heaven 

****The Icehotel:

This mind-blowing phenomenon of a hotel is located north of the Artic Circle in Sweden.  It is made completely of ice!  The beds are made of ice as well with reindeer furs beneath and above you so that you don’t die from hypothermia!  The beds also come with sleeping bags to nestle yourself in.  Artists come from all over to create masterpieces of ice sculptures in these rooms as well as the church, Absolut bar and reception areas.  The hotel is built from scratch every year and the River Torne is the source for the ice that is used to build the hotel.  Are you an ice sculptor yourself?  Icehotel is accepting applications from artists around the world for the 2008-2009 winter season.  Rooms are about $865 a night so save up for this great adventure and learn more about staying at the Icehotel at their website.

**** Jules’ Undersea Lodge

This is going to be the next place I vacation!!  This hotel is located underwater in Key Largo, Florida and you have to actually scuba dive to it in order to get there!  If you don’t want to stay the night you can enjoy Jules’ Undersea Lodge for $125 per person.  Prices to stay over begin at $375 per person, but she offers many packages to accomodate anyone’s needs!  If you’re not certified in scuba diving but always wanted to be (I strongly suggest it!!!) you can get your NAUI or PADI license at Jules’!  Even if you are a certified diver you can continue your diving experience by recieving a Dive Master, Advanced Open Water, Rescue Diver (etc.) certificate at Jules’, she offers many packages to accomodate everyone.

You can even get married there….

 

ARRRR!

They’re greedy, they plunder, they’re dishonest and they have no moral code.  They have been feared for hundreds of years by sailors and are still feared to this day.  These barbarians I speak of are none other than, pirates!  Many pirate shipwrecks grace the ocean floor with treasure chests, cannons and tails of adventure (or so we read in books) but one wreck stands above all the rest because of its infamous captain, this ship is known as Queen Anne’s Revenge.  The captain of this ship was the legendary pirate, Blackbeard.  The wreck was found in 1996 off the coast of Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina.  When it was discovered, only the anchor flute was visible in a depth of only 20 ft.!  The original name of the ship was Concord until it was commandeered by Blackbeard, renamed Queen Anne’s Revenge and was designated his flagship. 

Researchers uncovered approximately 2,000 artifacts from the site, some including a brass bell, cannons, grenades, hooks, etc.  The ship, that sank in 1718, is still intact in the sand and artifacts are still being lifted from it.  Some remains of Queen Anne’s Revenge can be seen at the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum in Newport Beach, California.  The Blackbeard exhibit opened on May 24th and will close after August 1st, so if you are in the Newport Beach area, go see it soon!  Check out Newport Harbor Nuatical Museum’s website for other great past and future exhibitions.

If you love Blackbeard as much as I do, you also might want to take a look at these fun places:

Queen Anne’s Revenge, Restaurant, Pub & Museum

This restaurant is located in Charleston, SC and I stumbled upon it as a major coincidence because I am planning to move to Charleston!!  I will most definitely go when I’m down there next week and let you all know how it is.  After looking at the dinner menu, seafood and steak seems to be their specialty, my two favorite types of food!  If you’re interested in eating here (which you should be, it looks delicious!) you can get directions from their website.

Blackbeard Ale store in the Virgin Islands

I’ve been to this store on St. Thomas and I love it!  I have two shirts, a towel, a sticker and a few shot glasses from there.  Shop away!!

North Carolina Maritime Museum

This museum in Beaufort, North Carolina has many artifacts and historical facts about Blackbeard.  Visit the site for more great information on Blackbeard and his pirating adventures!

Find your Perfect (Adventurous) Vacation

I have grown up in a family that just wants to lay on the beach while vacationing.  Don’t get me wrong, I am obsessed with the sand, the sun and the men, I mean the water! ;)  But as I have grown I have wanted to do a lot more than just vacation to warm spots.  Rather, I want to experience every thrilling activity I possibly can!  To live fearlessly, openly and observantly is what it is all about to really live.  Whenever I travel I want to learn everything I can about the culture of the land, the food, the history, the style, etc., the feeling of enlightenment after a vacation can literally change your life, I know first hand.  Use this list to start planning your trip now:

What do I love to do (as of now)? (our goal is to tweak this and give you a new perspective on life, introducing you to various other things you will love to do!  Some examples of things I love to do: sail, fish, surf, scuba dive, snowboard…although I’m awful I still try when I am around snow, wakeboard…bad at that too but practice makes perfect, hiking, biking, laying out in the sun with sunscreen of course!, sight seeing…I love museums and any historical structures that are important to a particular culture, learning parts of a new language…O.K. I could go on forever, but you get the point)

What kind of environment do I like to be in when on vacation? (hot, warm, cold, dry heat, humid heat…something I do not recommend for the air, rocky, soft sand, snow, lush plants, cactus, palm trees, etc.  If it helps, draw your dream place to be right now and by the time you are finished you won’t even realized that you put a palm tree or snow flake in there!)

What are things I don’t want to do or try?  (You might be very against eating mealworms for example, or setting up a tent on some snowy mountain)

What are some activities you’ve always wanted to do? (Most of these include things you might be too afraid to try but being fearless is important!  I know for a long time I was scared to scuba dive, but as I took baby steps to overcoming other obstacles in my life, such as flying, I eventually was no longer afraid of scuba diving.  Rather, it’s one of my favorite things to do!)

What accommodations am I looking to stay in? (a tent, a hotel, a lodge, a cottage, a sailboat…one i strongly suggest,  a hostel…one I don’t suggest so much, a sleeping bag, a down feather bed, a water bed?, etc.)

All of these questions are going to leave you with a hodgepodge of answers, but that’s a good thing!  If you have a lot written down, then a lot of places are going to be right for you!  Take your top item from each question and put it in your favorite search engine, this will give you a rough idea of the place you want to visit and the kinds of things you can do there!  I listed a couple places down below for sailing specifically, hopefully they will help some of you!

United States: Gig Harbor, Washington* Cape Cod area* Outer Banks, North Carolina, also in North Carolina is Blackbeard’s ship!!  It is located off the Beaufort Inlet*  Newport Beach, California, Catalina, California

Islands:  Pretty much anywhere in the Caribbean and South Pacific, but I can tell you from first hand experience…Tahiti (the “Island of Love”) is a-m-a-z-i-n-g.  Tahiti is in French Polynesia, which consists of 118 islands, so you just take your pick!

France:  Cannes, Nice, Monaco (pretty much anywhere in the South of France!)

 

How Nice!

I have traveled to many places and seen many things throughout my life; however, there is one place that stands out above the rest when it comes to my ”places to live” list.  This place I speak of is a stunning city, with cute shops, breathtaking architecture, delicious (not to mention extremely fresh) seafood, pebbly beaches, friendly people, rolling mountains with beautiful houses adorning them, O.K. you get the point…it is FABULOUS!  This place would be no other than Nice, France.

There was a sailboat race going on when I was there and I could have died from the sheer beauty of it all.  There were about 30 boats on the horizon with the port-wine colored sun setting behind them all, reflecting on the small ripples in the water.  The small ripples that probably, in reality, were 10-foot swells from the boats’ perspectives.  The light breeze blowing past my ears, the sight of the toy-like sailboats gliding softly on the surface, together made for the most romantic and beautiful moment.  In all honesty, I could have sat in that spot forever, I still think about it to this day, that is how strong the feeling I had was.  

At night time when I was there we went to a restaurant/bar, where we met these three french guys in their 20’s, one Julian, the other Mike, the third…well the third one might have been in his 40’s, so we kind of avoided talking to him, we were like 20 at the time!  We asked Julian and Mike what French men thought about Americans.  They responded that we all get cancer from Diet Coke, most of us are fat with pretty faces and we are ignorant of all countries but America.  After they confessed their somewhat inaccurate ideas about Americans, the four of us girls declared our craving for buffalo wings.  In his little French accent Julain said,      

Ah yesss of course you American girls would crave late night fast food…

Yes, we craved fast food and it was the first time I was actually proud of wanting it. 

Save the Reef!

As I sat down to read the latest issue of “Sport Diver” I came across some upsetting information on page six.  The health of reefs all around the world is worse than I thought.  They are crippling beneath our very goggles and we must all do something about it.  If everyone with a passion for the ocean joins together then we can save the reef!  There is trash all over ports that eventually goes out to sea and decomposes our reefs and the animals inhabiting them.  Global warming is also playing a huge role in destroying our oceans because the temperature of the ocean keeps increasing from human activity.  This increase has many fatal consequences for the wildlife within our oceans.  Also, did you know that we are depleting much of the fish population by over fishing?  It is easy to take advantage of the ocean because it does take up 75% of the earth and you may think, “Gee it’s so big how could garbage, global warming, over fishing, etc. have an effect on such a huge mass?”  Well the answer is that it’s been going on for years and years now and has built up to the point where we need to start doing something about it.  Ocean’s have a more positive outlook this year though because 2008 has been titled, the International Year of the Reef.  I can just imagine a musical happening down in the depths, something similar The Little Mermaid with Flounder, Sebastian and Ariel extatic about the actions we are taking to preserve the ocean.   

If you are ever diving or sailing and come across an area of pollution or something you do not find “natural” in that area, contact “Earth Dive” with your complaints.  The more we get our voices heard, the faster we can save the ocean before it is too late!

Both the ocean’s surface and subsurface contain their own world of exploration and adventure.  If we want our traveling luxuries to continue we need to understand the dangers of polluting our reefs and putting our two-cents into the situation, it’s worth something I promise!  Some website you can visit to get started:

Project AWARE

10 Ways a Diver can Protect the Ocean

The Coral Reef Alliance

Planetary Coral Reef Foundation

These sites can also give you great ideas for where to vacation and they also offer some fun little facts about the eco-sytems beneath the surface.  Join something today