Volunteering in film re-enacting fatal shark attack a solemn memory of Shark Week for BadDiverBill

BadDiversTV is behind Bill Hill now but his love for scuba remains and two new passions -- music and promoting causes -- have been added.

When a funding deal fell through for BadDiverBill’s Quest, which was to find the most interesting DIVE sites, Dive buddies and DIVE bars, Hill's pseudonym of BadDiverBill was set aside, along with his trademark "adult beverages," hat and sunglasses. They're gone, but not forgotten. If the opportunity arose, says Bill, "BadDiverBill would don his hat and sunglasses and make a cocktail." However, BadDiversTV.com exists online forever.

Still, the character he created is not what drives him now. Instead, it's his growing awareness of causes that have become important to him, namely, protecting the ocean and supporting an orphanage in Honduras. He came face to face with both causes through diving and is expressing them with music.

The song "Weightless," for which he wrote the lyrics, embraces the magic of both diving and its medium, the sea. A portion of the song’s downloads will go to The Ocean Conservancy.

It was his passion for diving that took Bill Hill to Honduras, but it was the needs of an orphanage in that country that captured his heart. He has made nine trips there, combining diving and helping out at the orphanage. There, he met Paola, a young girl who was abandoned by her mother. She is still in school there.

Hill was inspired by her and decided to make a little video and write a song about her, which he called Pequena Rosa (Little Rose).

"Dancing was her thing. She dances to forget about things. All the girls take care of each other," says Hill, who wrote all the lyrics for the song on the flight from El Salvador back home to Los Angeles. "I look forward to dancing with her to this song."

HIs friend, musician Jeff Alan Ross, wrote the music. Some of the proceeds from the song will go to the orphanage.
On the flight home, Hill came up with another idea that he called "Your cause, your anthem," which is to help others promote their cause.

Back in the water, August is the month of Shark Week, in which Hill served as a safety diver for a movie to re-enact the death in May of 2008 of a 66-year-old diver who was attacked by a Great White just north of San Diego. The shark was estimated to be about 12 to 17 feet in length. To illustrate the damage to the diver’s legs by the attack, the filmmakers wanted to cut up the legs of the wetsuit the actor playing the deceased man would wear. In choosing a wetsuit to destroy, they were looking for the one that was in the worst shape, with the promise that the donor could buy a new wetsuit at cost. They chose BadDiverBill’s wetsuit.

Bill was one of three safety divers on the "Body Glove" boat owned by Bob and Pattie Meistrell. Bob and his late twin brother, Bill, had been innovators of wet suits. "I was honoured and privileged to be on the Body Glove boat when he was the captain.

"One day we were shooting the actor stuff of them swimming when he (the victim) was hit, the panicking and the swimmers coming to the rescue. A lot of my job was just being behind the camera man about 15 feet down, or on the boat with no scuba gear."

Hill remembers "the kind of respectful feeling on the boat" because they were re-enacting a man's death.
He was told his job was finished for the day so he took off his gear. Then they decided to take one more shot on the other side of the boat. The actress swam quickly to the side where the shooting was to be, but the older actor portraying the victim of the shark attack seemed to be struggling in the water. He kept going under the surface in his attempt to get to the other side of the boat, the challenge made more difficult by wearing BadDiverBill’s damaged wetsuit. Knowing the actor had been in the water all day and was probably tired, Hill dove in, grabbed him and took him to the other side.

Another chapter had been written in the evolution of BadDiverBill.

Copyright Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

Big Sharks Close Up

George Bartsch wanted to swim with Great White sharks.

He quickly came to his senses.

“I had the desire to dive outside the cage, until I saw one. Then I was glad to be in the cage,” the Simcoe, Ontario, scuba diver says of his trip in February to South Africa, where he witnessed close up the size and power of the Great White.

George, a scuba instructor who opened his own dive shop in Simcoe two years ago, went out with Shark Diving Unlimited to Dyer Island (also known as Seal Island) off the coast of Gansbaai, South Africa. There, he got in a steel cage attached to the boat that would offer protection from the giant predators.

The cage is rectangular, ten by four feet, and occupancy is limited to six people at a time. Once they enter it the lid is closed.
“They do a very good safety briefing,” says George. This includes a warning to keep all body parts inside the cage. The grid is large enough that sharks can be photographed with your hands and camera inside the cage without the bars showing. Children as young as seven view the Great Whites from the cage.

George and the others in the cage, who included his niece, did not use scuba gear at all. It isn’t needed because the top of the cage is above water and scuba bubbles tend to scare away the sharks.

“When the sharks come, you hold your breath and pull yourself down. The passes only last a few seconds, says George. “You get a fleeting glimpse. They come several times, about 30 to 35 passes. They’re very fast and agile.

“I’ve seen other kinds of sharks but this is the first time I’ve seen Great Whites. At one point we had five different sharks. The largest was five and a half metres and it would weigh about a ton and a half. It was a female and it came up right close and personal.”

On the way out, the boat operator dumps tuna blood into the ocean, creating a chum slick that the sharks follow. Once the boat is stopped and the customers are in the cage, they bring the sharks in close by throwing out a rope that has large tuna heads attached to one end. Close to the cage, they pull it out of the water before the sharks can strike.

“They are careful to make sure the sharks don’t get the tuna heads. They don’t want them to associate people with food.”
“It was breath-taking to say the least,” says George. “The mouth was right in front of us. You could see the teeth and the eyes.”
The sharks bumped the cage so hard it rocked the 22-foot, steel-hulled boat. They never did bite down on the steel bars, but large foam tubes on top of the cage had bite marks.

“The water was very cold but the adrenaline was pumping so hard you didn’t feel it,” he says of the 52-degree Fahrenheit water temperature.

While seeing Great Whites so close was obviously exciting, George also found the whole experience educational. A marine biologist was onboard the boat to answer questions. Someone wanted to know if the Great Whites’ appearance in the area was seasonal. They were told that while some of that species do migrate, those common to this particular area do not because the seals (food for the predator sharks) are there all the time. The boat operator’s success rate in finding sharks is 90 per cent.

Little is known about Great Whites, including where they breed or the length of the gestation period.

While Great Whites are aggressive, George says the much smaller bull sharks, which are at most six or seven feet long, are probably even more threatening. “You see them in Florida. A lot of the incidents (attacks) there are by bull sharks that come into the shallows.”

With the Great White experience now ticked off on his bucket list, his next project will be a trip to Utila, Honduras, to see the whale sharks. Growing up to 40 feet in length, they’re even bigger than Great Whites.

But there will be no need for a steel cage on this adventure. Whale sharks eat plankton. Not worried about becoming their dinner, divers often snorkel on the surface with whale sharks.

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

Going to great depths to save ocean life

Scott Cassell already holds the record for longest non-stop dive but is ready to break it again while trying to preserve ocean life.

On September 17, the explorer and combat/commercial diver will attempt a 30-mile (48-kilometre) non-stop SCUBA dive from Catalina Island to Los Angeles, gathering information about shark population and what the ocean actually holds, a task that only human effort can accurately collect.

“[The ocean] is where monsters dwell,” says Cassell, who has spent more than 13,000 hours under water in his lifetime, “Where man’s imagination can become reality because it truly does have the most magnificent animals to ever have existed.”

From 1,000 ft. to 3,000 ft., he will be diving through two great white shark strike zones, and an area that has been known to contain very large Mako sharks, to calculate how many sharks there are in Southern California.

Aside from sharks, other dangers Cassell is prepared to face include hypothermia, decompression sickness, extraordinary currents, equipment failure, and physical exhaustion.

For this diver, however, his safety, although important, is not top priority.

“Every dive is a mission,” says Cassell. “And the mission is always first.”

Cassell considers himself a man who takes responsibility for everything in his world. In this case, that's the ocean and the animals that dwell underneath.

“If we, as humans, were to see the devastation, in chronological form, that has occurred in the ocean, as if it were on land we would be horrified,” he says.

To call this a successful dive, he says he needs to make it from point A to point B non-stop, collect observations, and report his findings.

At the end, he plans to produce a documentary and lecture series to expose this information to the public.

A Vancouver crew of producers and filmmakers has joined him in the mission, helping raise money for Cassell’s conservation work and documenting the record-breaking attempt.

Thanks to ARIANA KAKNEVICIUS and THE METRO

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

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The Best Diving Practices

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As soon as man enters the deep blue sea, there is a change of everything. Walking is no longer our way of getting around. We float in style. Our access to unlimited oxygen is cut down to a tank-full. Instead of shopping for fish, some fish shop for us. Scuba diving is fun. But it’s only fun when you come out of the water the same way you came in. Below are few points on some diving practices that are advised to those who respect themselves as divers and respect the places that they dive in.

Secure the obvious

Aqua-man, if you’re reading this: stay away! Everyone else is subject to the need of diving equipment. Diving shops can be tricky. If you’re new to scuba diving, try not to enter one on your own. If you have a friend who is an experienced diver, ask him/her to direct you to a competent diving shop that will not only sell to you your needs, but also cares for them.

When you’ve got enough equipment to survive a tsunami, go look for a good diving location. Ask yourself questions like, “What do I wanna see?” and “How do I get there?” How do you answer these questions? Do you literally have go beach hopping just so you can find a good diving spot? If your answer is yes, then my friend Google would be greatly insulted. I just said, “Google.” You’ll know what to do.

When in-depth

Now you’re in the water, and you feel like a scuba diving Boy Scout. You’ve got everything you need. Does this mean that you’re good for the day? Not quite. You need a sane and experienced “diving buddy”. If you’re going out with a group of friends that has been diving for awhile, then make sure you stick with them the entire time you dive.

But if you’re diving with a group of people you don’t know, it is crucial to find a dive buddy who will take care of you and knows what you don’t. Remember the movie, ‘Open Water’? Those two were not only diving buddies, but a couple. And they still ended up stranded alone in the ocean.

Creature Feature

Ah, yes- the ocean life. It is full of creatures big and small. Some are endangered, and some are dangerous. We need to take care of some of them, and we need to take care of ourselves from some of them. Observe all you want, but remember to keep you distance. Those who choose to take photos, choose your models carefully. A great white shark may be sensitive to flashes.

And yes, if I must say this, I’ll only say this once. Don’t feed them fishes. At first, it may sound safe and fun, but when you upgrade from bread crumbs to a Happy Meal, things may get ugly. If the unkind, bloodthirsty ones happened to notice that small “num-nums” keep popping out of you, they might get the idea that you’re a refrigerator.

Enjoy collecting memories, but make sure there’s still room for common sense.

Thanks to Sean of Expedition Fleet

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

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Great white shark proposed for protection

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The federal government may add the great white shark, an ocean predator made famous by the 1975 movie Jaws, to the Species at Risk Act.

Great whites swim closer to the shores of Atlantic Canada than most people realize, but they've been on decline for more than 30 years. Their appearance in Jaws raised the sharks' profile but also opened them to greater risk at the hands of humans.

"The movie had the effect of, first of all, making everybody afraid of sharks, of course — and great whites in particular," said Steven Campana, from the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, N.S. "There was also a move on the part of some recreational fishermen to go out there and catch a shark, a great white, to show their manliness."

Campana is a senior scientist at the Bedford Institute and also heads the Canadian Shark Research Laboratory there.

While there are no accurate numbers for the great white population, scientists agree their numbers are declining.

'They are out there.'— Mike Henneberry, fisher

It's already illegal to kill a great white in Canada, but now the federal government is hoping to give the species greater protection.

"It's really a matter of supporting other international efforts to reduce catches of great whites and somehow limit their by-catch in other fisheries," Campana explained.

Scientists say about 32 great white sharks have been captured in waters off Atlantic Canada in the past 30 years. In most cases, fishermen hauled the sharks up accidentally.
Mike Henneberry and his crew once hauled in a great white while fishing tuna. Mike Henneberry and his crew once hauled in a great white while fishing tuna. (CBC)

Marty Henneberry of Sambro, N.S., said he and his crew hauled in a huge great white while fishing tuna aboard an American ship.

"It took us like an hour-and-a-half to get it up, to visualize, to see what it was," Henneberry told CBC News.

"As it came up, we seen the tail come out of water. We knew it was a shark but wasn't sure what kind, right? I never ever seen a great white myself."

Henneberry explained they put the shark on a winch, but it because it weighted an estimated 3,000 pounds (1,360 kilograms), it was too heavy to hoist aboard.

"It stalled our winch. We got it up to see the head, and it had the triangle teeth, and that's how we identified it," Henneberry said. "They are out there."

Experts say there is no need to panic, however.

Campana said there are about 300 million sharks swimming around the Atlantic Canadian region, but they're far less interested in people than people are in them.


thanks to the CBC for this posting!!!

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

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What happens in a shark attack?

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We've all seen Jaws, but believe it or not most shark attacks don't end up with swimmers being dragged around in circles so that they look like they're being sucked down a plughole.

In fact there are three main types of unprovoked shark attack, and the experience and chances of survival vary dramatically depending on the behavior and intentions of the shark.

Here is a breakdown of what each one consists of.

Hit-and-run attacks

More often than not sharks will "attack" humans out of curiosity having mistaken them for a seal or other more common form of prey.

These attacks occur in shallow waters and surfing spots. The shark will usually give the swimmer or surfer a single bite before retreating and will often not return, having realized the human is bigger than, or different to, its normal prey.

Sneak attacks

As the name indicates, this attack happens without warning. Unlike hit-and-run attacks, sneak attacks are thought to be the result of feeding or aggression rather than mistaken identity.

The attacks usually happen in deeper waters and will usually involve a number of bites or injuries, often proving fatal.

Bump-and-bite attacks

Similar to sneak attacks, these usually take place in open sea and will tend to involve multiple bites because the shark's intention is to attack the victim, rather than simply investigate.

The difference is in the shark's behavior. Rather than pouncing unexpectedly, the shark will repeatedly circle the victim and bump into them in a sign of aggression before actually attacking them.

Thanks to ::: Florida Museum of Natural History and Nick Collins of the Telegraph

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

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Underwater Thrills:Swimming With Sharks: Pilot Episode - SharkDiver The Movie

Underwater Thrills:Swimming With Sharks: Pilot Episode - SharkDiver The Movie

Kathy Dowsett

www.kirkscubagear.com

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