Saturday, August 01, 2020
Thursday, March 12, 2020
Friday, February 21, 2020
Tuesday, February 11, 2020
Saturday, September 02, 2017
Friday, November 18, 2016
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
YOSAR = Yosemite Search And Rescue
Safety Information for hikers, climbers, and everybody.
 | Reduce the chances that you will need YOSAR's services by checking on weather and trail conditions and planning accordingly. |
 |
There are 800+ miles of designated trails in Yosemite's wilderness. It is not surprising that the majority of YOSAR missions are spent assisting an injured hiker or searching for a lost person in the backcountry. Learn more about the potential dangers and how to maximize your safety while on the trail: |
 | Most climbers do a good job coping with the hazards of their sport, yet more than 100 climbing accidents occur in the park every year. What factors contribute to them? What, if anything, can climbers do to avoid them? And just how dangerous is climbing, anyway? With these questions in mind, the National Park Service (NPS) has examined most of the serious accidents that occurred in the park during the years from 1970 through 1990. The conclusions provide interesting reading for those wishing to stay alive. |
 | One of the best ways to learn is through example. With rescue prevention in mind, Friends of YOSAR has partnered with Accidents in North American Mountaineering (ANAM) and the National Park Service to write reconstructive analysis of incidents and post it to the Web so that others can better avoid/cope with backcountry emergencies. Although much of this analysis deals with climbing, it also addresses emergencies involving other backcountry pursuits, such as backpacking. Read in-depth reports, interviews and analysis by rescue professionals to learn from the misfortune of others. |
 | The following story, submitted by the subject of a search and rescue effort, illustrates the need to be aware of hazards in the outdoors. What began as an innocent day hike to view one of Yosemite's natural wonders ended in a traumatic experience at the edge of a waterfall. Read his story: |
http://www.friendsofyosar.org/rescues/rescues.html
Saturday, June 08, 2013
3Rs-2013
Rocks, Rips and Reefs are explained and experienced on dive site tours to familiarize divers with shore entries
The 2013 3Rs schedule is below
The 2013 3Rs schedule is below
This page gives you all of the information regarding our dive club network's cooperative events for beginner and experienced divers inlcuding what the 3Rs are, who can attend attend, what to bring, and the 3Rs schedule and locations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ub32NRbttZU --- And still pictures3Rs is an in-water education and site orientation program for divers and snorkelers. Participants are briefed on the interaction of surf, swell, and tides on underwater rocks and reefs, and then enter the water and tour popular dive sites with experienced instructors.3Rs is a great way for newer divers to learn more about the ocean and for experienced divers to explore new dive sites. Here is an example of what you will learn. Each session lasts about 90 minutes.
Participants learn how to:
- Identify underwater rocks and reefs by observing water movement and surf
- Take advantage of the ocean’s natural wave motion
- Spot safe places to enter and exit
- Avoid places hazardous to divers and snorkelers
- Encounter rip and long shore currents
- Use tides to plan dives
The 3Rs is free and open to the public; donations are gladly accepted adn are only used to keep this program operating. . Snorkelers welcome! SCUBA Certification is not required, but swimming experience is recommended. Participants must sign a liability waiver as part of registration. Participants aged 17 or less must have the waiver signed by a parent or legal guardian.
Bring a mask, fins, and snorkel. A full wetsuit and gloves are strongly recommended for warmth and protection from scrapes. Spring suits are OK. Weights are discouraged unless you are a strong swimmer or your wetsuit is extremely buoyant. Scuba gear (regulator, BC, tank, etc.) is not used during the 3Rs.
If you have not been diving or snorkeling recently, please check your gear before you arrive.
For all dates below, registration will be at 8:00am. Mandatory briefing starts at 8:15am, enter the water 8:30 am. The sites below are the most popular and interesting for shore diving and free diving. If your club wants to do a different one, let us know. You want a date for such in September or October, and on a day with a moderate morning tide.Boomer/La Jolla CoveSaturday, June 15, 2013
Meet at 1150 Coast Blvd. (La Jolla Cove steps)
Session Host: La Jolla Cove Swim Club and Snorkel Swim Club of San DiegoNorth Bird RockSaturday, June 29, 2013
Meet at 6000 Camino de la Costa, La Jolla
Session Host: Total Immersion DiversGoldfish Point (La Jolla Caves)Saturday July 13, 2013
Meet at 1325 Coast Blvd. (Old Shell Shop)
Session Host: Dive AnimalsMarine StreetSaturday July 27, 2013
Meet at 244 Marine Street
Session Host: Total Immersion DiversShell BeachSaturday Aug 10, 2013
Meet at 1000 Coast Blvd. (nearest cross street - Ocean St.) Top of the stairs
Session Host: San Diego FreediversHospital PointSaturday Aug 24, 2013
Meet at 400 Coast Blvd (south of Cuvier)
Session Host: San Diego Sea DogsSunset CliffsSaturday Sept 7, 2013
Meet at - Parking Lot 1200 Block Sunset Cliffs Blvd (cross street Osprey)
Session Host: San Diego Rainbow Dive ClubChildren's Pool & South CasaSaturday Sept 28, 2013
Meet at Life Guard Tower 850 Coast Boulevard
Session Host: San Diego Dive Club
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Tempest in the Children's Pool
The following is a post from John Leek, an activist scuba-diver who uses the Children's Pool in La Jolla to access the rich kelp beds and of the reserve. There is no reason that people can't share the beach with our harbor seals, but irrational animal activists are pushing for a political and judicial closure of the Children's pool.
Looking forward to the 3rs at Children's Pool and environs this Saturday, I set out to assess the danger of exposure to seal bacteria at Children's Pool. On one Thursday while on video I took standard 100 ml sample bottles out into the Pool. I followed Health Department protocol and packed 4 separate samples in ice to go to a lab the next morning. County Health has not tested Children's Pool water in years.
Beach testing is done for 2 indicator bacteria. Coliform (E Coli) and Enterococcus. Before 2004, coliform was the usual "indicator bacteria". That term is very important. Both bugs are resident in mammals, and so in the absence of another mammal concentration, it can be assumed their presence at a beach indicates a sewage spill possibly containing human pathogens which could include giardia, hepatitis, cholera, Gawd-knows-what. Enterococcus became preferred because it lives much longer in salt water. But since 2004, a beach cannot be closed for non-human levels, only posted advisory, because sea gulls or such can trip the tests. In 1999, DNA tests had shown such bacteria at Children's Pool was seal originated, not indicative of a sewage spill
I had read statements on Divebums by divers who said they would not enter Children's Pool because they heard of the contamination, yet divers disport themselves in the equivalent of space suits, and often sign legal waivers stating "I know diving is dangerous and if I die it will have been my own fault". Can risk level values be determined?
The lab tests would tell the current level of 2 bacteria, but not about any virulent other life forms it was, or was not indicating. Nor would it indicate if bacteria or viruses from a seal could "hop" to a human like swine flue or salmonella from chickens. For that there was needed human systems regularly exposed to seal water. I found 4 swimmers who said they each swam in Children's Pool over 200 times/year. None could recall ever getting sick. Encouraging. The last test would have to be a human guinea pig exposed to high levels to measure any reaction. I filled another sample bottle and with the camera running, I drank it. Then we found the camera had not been on properly so I did it again. The next day was Friday. I turned the samples in to the lab in the morning and went back that evening to fill another sample bottle and drank it on camera. Science.
Saturday, I sought out the park ranger and with him in the camera field I asked him if he had seen me capture a sample just then and what diseases he was told might be resident, "Some sort of gastroenteritis, I should think" he said. "Good guess", said I and quaffed it. Still nothing. Sunday I found somebody to film me collecting 2 samples in the Pool, with seals swimming around me. I stood by the ranger again and downed both samples. Six bottles in 4 days documented. Enough. The lab results would be ready the next day.
The lab samples had been at a very high tide. Anything on the sand had been exposed to the water. Almost all coliform had tested to be E Coli, no surprise. 7 to8 hundred MPN/100ml. (MPN = Most Probable Number of colonies) . EPA standards are statistical. 235 MPN/100ml predicts 8 in 1000 swimmers will become ill, which is considered an acceptable level, but it is preferred water be below 126 (4 swimmers/1000) 400MPN/100ml is considered not good. But I was not just in it - I swallowed around 5000 colonies in 4 days. The Enterococcus level was 140, 4 times over "acceptable". Yet I was unaffected with 600ml ingested, = over 1000 colonies.
Dr. Dezfulian, director of EEL Analytical Laboratory, was kind enough take time to answer some questions.
Q: Is it surprising I did not get sick?
A: No, the standards are statistical. A population contains infants, very old people, people with AIDS or other immune deficiencies. A diver is typically of a healthy population. Your digestive system destroys most bacteria immediately, though had you had a peptic ulcer you could have had serious problems. The only thing you know is you met a high load of INDICATOR bacteria. They are not normally virulent, but varieties can be opportunistic in the event of open wounds or immunodeficiencies.
Q: If the water had been 4 times less populated, the water would have been as safe as a normal beach?
A: There is no safe level. Somebody somewhere can get sick in any water. There are thousands of kinds of bacteria in sea water. A common native ocean bacteria is vibrio vulnificus, a cousin of cholera. (Cholera is also found in recreational water in "acceptable levels") Vibrio wulnificus is concentrated in filter feeders and causes 95% of seafood related deaths. (raw oysters) If it settles into an open wound, there can be sepsis the next day.
Q: How many indicator bacteria do you have inside you right now?
A: On the order of a billion. A digestive system depends on them.
Q: So did I prove anything?
A: Not really. Now if you want to contract for daily measurements for a year with temperature, salinity, tide, time entries, you could nail something down. You just need a grant.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Thursday, March 08, 2012
As our baseline changes we lose perspective
In my short life, I've seen the changes along our California coastline, as the quality and quantity of life along the shore has diminished. Pictures of 1950's San Diego show men spearfishing 50 lb. yellow-tale tuna from shore, but today these are gone. Our expectations have been scaled back due to our experience.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
RIP Eduation from Water Safety Magazine
Avoiding and Escaping Rip Currents
- Monday, 14 February 2011 00:00
- Mario Vittone
- Hits: 354
- Beaches, Open Water
by Mario Vittone
At the beach at Cape Canaveral, nineteen-year-old Josh Scurlock looks out at the water. The larger than normal waves look rough but not too rough so he and a friend go out in them to play. A strong swimmer – Josh loves the ocean and his new Florida home just five blocks from the beach. It’s Saturday and the sun is out and there is no school and nothing at all is wrong in the world.
Joshua Scurlock in 2008
The U.S. Lifesaving Association says a story like that will happen over a hundred times this year on U.S. beaches. My hope – and of that Josh’s mother, Dawn – is that they will be wrong. By knowing what to look for, where to swim, and how to escape one should you get caught in a rip current, your summer will be a safer one.
Rip Currents
Often they move slow enough to barely be detected. But given the right circumstances of waves and beach profile, they can develop into currents moving at speeds of up to 8 feet per second – faster than any of us can possibly swim. Ranging in size from just a few feet to hundreds of yards, their pull can be to just outside the breaking waves to over a hundred yards from shore.
How to spot a rip current: As with all risks, avoiding it altogether is safest. Though not always visually detectable – stronger rip currents can give off some telltale signs.
- An area of water through a surf zone that is a different color than the surrounding water
- A break in the incoming pattern of waves
- seaweed or debris moving out through the surf zone
- Isolated turbulent and choppy water in the surf zone
Eight out of ten people rescued by beach lifeguards in the U.S. are rescued from rip currents. Guards hate rips and know how to spot them. Before going in, ask the nearest guard specifically about rip currents in the area and what the threat level is for rip currents. Also, please check the NOAA for Rip Current Threat advisories by clicking here.
If avoidance fails: If you are caught in a rip current the primary thing to so is to stay calm and relax. You are not going to win a fight with the ocean. Swim slowly and conservatively parallel to the shoreline or relax and let it carry you out past the breakers until it slacks.
Contrary to myth – rip currents are not “undertow,” a misleading term. They will not pull you under the water. So long as you can tread water or float you will be safe until you can escape the flow and head back. When you head back in, do so at an angle to the shoreline. Again, maintain a slow and relaxed pace until you reach the shore or assistance arrived. If swimming at a guarded beach ─ and you should be ─ they will most likely have seen you and will be on their way out (or watching carefully).
Other tips:
- Swim only on guarded beaches. The USLA estimates the chance of drowning on a guarded beach is 1 in 18,000,000.
- Talk to the guards about local hazards before getting in the water.
- [Experienced] surfers go out when it’s rough because it’s fun and they are tethered to huge boards that float.* (See note) If you’re not VERY comfortable in rough water over your head – stay out of rough water totally. You’re not ready.
- NEVER swim alone.
- There is nothing wrong with making your young children wear USCG approved life jackets to play in the surf. That doesn’t mean you can leave them alone – but it will make them safer.
- Discuss rip currents and how to deal with them with your children. In fact, make them read every page of http://www.ripcurrents.noaa.gov/ and write you a report.
- Swim only on guarded beaches. I said that twice for a reason.
* (Note: Reader Nate L., an avid surfer, correctly schooled me up and pointed out that too many beginning surfers depend on their boards for floatation. That’s a huge mistake. Leashes break, surfer’s lose their boards, and then the weak swimmers among them are in just as much danger as anyone else. Nate’s advice for surfers is “…if you can’t swim out and back from the break without a board, it’s too big for you to go out.”
Thanks Nate – that is a VERY good point.
disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the Department of Homeland Security or the U.S. Coast Guard.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mario Vittone has nineteen years of combined military service in the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. His writing on maritime safety has appeared in Yachting, SaltWater Sportsman,On-Scene, Lifelines, and Reader's Digest magazine. He has lectured extensively on topics ranging from leadership to sea survival and immersion hypothermia. He is a marine safety specialist with the U.S. Coast Guard.
Website: www.facebook.com/watersafety
Monday, August 01, 2011
Drowning that doesn't look like drowning.
Drowning? Not likely.
UPDATE: Many thanks to everyone who has shared this important information. Please Click HERE to share this article your facebook friends.The new captain jumped from the cockpit, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the owners who were swimming between their anchored sportfisher and the beach. “I think he thinks you’re drowning,” the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other and she had screamed but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sand bar. “We’re fine, what is he doing?” she asked, a little annoyed. “We’re fine!” the husband yelled, waving him off, but his captain kept swimming hard. ”Move!” he barked as he sprinted between the stunned owners. Directly behind them, not ten feet away, their nine-year-old daughter was drowning. Safely above the surface in the arms of the captain, she burst into tears, “Daddy!”
How did this captain know, from fifty feet away, what the father couldn’t recognize from just ten? Drowning is not the violent, splashing, call for help that most people expect. The captain was trained to recognize drowning by experts and years of experience. The father, on the other hand, had learned what drowning looks like by watching television. If you spend time on or near the water (hint: that’s all of us) then you should make sure that you and your crew knows what to look for whenever people enter the water. Until she cried a tearful, “Daddy,” she hadn’t made a sound. As a former Coast Guard rescue swimmer, I wasn’t surprised at all by this story. Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for, is rarely seen in real life.
The Instinctive Drowning Response – so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D., is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water. And it does not look like most people expect. There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind. To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this: It is the number two cause of accidental death in children, age 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents) – of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult. In ten percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch them do it, having no idea it is happening (source: CDC). Drowning does not look like drowning – Dr. Pia, in an article in the Coast Guard’s On Scene Magazine, described the instinctive drowning response like this:
- Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. Th e respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary or overlaid function. Breathing must be fulfilled, before speech occurs.
- Drowning people’s mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. The mouths of drowning people are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help. When the drowning people’s mouths are above the surface, they exhale and inhale quickly as their mouths start to sink below the surface of the water.
- Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water, permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.
- Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.
- From beginning to end of the Instinctive Drowning Response people’s bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick. Unless rescued by a trained lifeguard, these drowning people can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.
(Source: On Scene Magazine: Fall 2006)This doesn’t mean that a person that is yelling for help and thrashing isn’t in real trouble – they are experience aquatic distress. Not always present before the instinctive drowning response, aquatic distress doesn’t last long – but unlike true drowning, these victims can still assist in there own rescue. They can grab lifelines, throw rings, etc.
Look for these other signs of drowning when persons are n the water:
- Head low in the water, mouth at water level
- Head tilted back with mouth open
- Eyes glassy and empty, unable to focus
- Eyes closed
- Hair over forehead or eyes
- Not using legs – Vertical
- Hyperventilating or gasping
- Trying to swim in a particular direction but not making headway
- Trying to roll over on the back
- Ladder climb, rarely out of the water.
If you have any questions at all – please post them in the gCaptain forums under “maritime safety”
disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the Department of Homeland Security or the U.S. Coast Guard.
For more water survival tips be sure to visit USCG rescue Swimmer Mario Vittone’s gCaptain Page. Or follow Mario on Facebook.
UPDATE: Many thanks to everyone that has shared this important information. Please Click HERE to share this article your Facebook friends.
Friday, June 11, 2010
What is the punishment for killing off an entire species?
End of the Giant Atlantic Blue Fin
A recently published study, intended to provide data to commercial fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico so they maximize their catch of Yellowfin Tuna, Thunnus albacares, whilst avoiding bycatch of critically endangered Atlantic (Northern) Bluefin Tuna, Thunnus thynnus, suggests that the [0]Deepwater Horizon oil leak may devastate the endangered Atlantic bluefin population, causing it to completely collapse or possibly go extinct.
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