Special 40Th Anniversary Seaswells-June2015-For
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Welcome to the Special TSSC – A Look Ahead 40th Anniversary Issue By Tom Butcher of the TSSC SeaSwells Log! We are celebrating I have been asked to provide some thoughts for the future of TSSC. 40 years of diving, cama- I wish I had some “future predicting” skills. I know what stocks to raderie, environmental avoid (the stocks I purchased), so I know my “future predicting” skills stink. TSSC has been together for 40 years. Will it remain active stewardship and commu- 40 years from now? I confidently say “Yes”. Why? Because of each of our members and what we nity service. This issue collectively bring to the club. Following what has worked in the past, we will keep the Club together contains a plethora of your by our friendships and continuing to attend interesting Club events. Like every organization, there impressions and memories will be changes and different ideas of what to do. We can not survive on Dive trips alone. Our bank over the years. Enjoy and accounts and our jobs prevent monthly trips to exotic places in search of clear blue water. The Direc- become inspired for the tors will keep asking your thoughts on what activities you like to do; please help us keeping the Club an interesting and fun group to be with. The diving industry has changed a lot over the past forty next 40 years! years. The biggest change is the Internet, this is both a blessing and a curse to diving. The Internet has opened many diving options for trips, purchasing gear, even On the Leading Edge of Positive Change training. The Internet has helped Interview with Armand “Zig” Zigahn and his wife us make our Club more available, JoAnn; by Gary Lehman but it can also make the Club “un-necessary” if we don’t evolve. On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of The truly - it is beyond description. The hallmark of a Interesting events will keep the Scuba Sports Club we decided to circle around, get fine portrait photographer is mastery of the art of Club alive. Looking forward to back to our roots, and spend some quality reflec- conveying the spirit of the subject. In this, Pete suc- diving and attending Club Events tion time with our Founder Emeritus, Zig Zigahn. ceeds brilliantly. The artistic merits and emotional with each of you, ten to twenty I was favored also to spend quality time with Zig’s impact of Pete’s underwater images are matched years from now! wife JoAnn. It was an inspiring and spell-binding by the sensitive and informed marine environment interview which shined light on the past, present advocacy emanating from his images, and by the and future of our Club - and the sport of scuba towering technical excellence of the photographs. Tom Butcher, President diving. We met at Pete’s Saloon in Elmsford. Pro- Pete maintains direct artistic end to end control prietor Pete Riekstins is a long-time Club member, by meticulously printing all his own photographs. In This Issue: runs a great restaurant and saloon, and as many of Following some insistent urging, Pete will consider us know, is a supremely skilled underwater (and founding a website of his photographs, and has On the Leading Edge 1 topside) photographer. I suspected we’d be in for a decided to exhibit some of this work at the Saloon Divers’ Forum 4 treat when I spied a Nikonos underwater camera – magnifying for all of us the draw of this special Dive Planning 11 and Nikon D2X digital SLR on exhibit up on the place! Bonaire Bound 15 mantelpiece! Always Be Prepared 16 The photo show granted by Pete was actually a TSSC Events 18 Before the interview with Zig and JoAnn got un- perfect on-ramp to the conversation with Zig and Dive Safety 18 derway, Pete, his wife, and Zig, JoAnn and I spent JoAnn, because the unifying theme was respect, Northeast Divers Unite 19 some moments greeting each other and chatting. love and concern for the future of threatened ma- Trash to Art 20 We were then treated to an impromptu photo show rine environments, their inhabitants - and all of us Cardinal Rules 20 of some prints of Pete’s riveting underwater pho- who ultimately rely on the oceans for sustenance. U/W Photography 21 tography. Breathtaking and inspiring are the other Zig is disturbed by the damage and destruction of Spotlight 23 adjectives which come to mind! Pete has a portrait the waters he has experienced and cherished over About TSSC 24 of a white shark from Guadalupe Island (Mexico) the years, and is dedicated to restoring and pre- Front and Center 25 Membership Message 26 which is arrestingly beautiful and at the same time serving them. Protection of marine areas was a big The Depth in Orkney 27 brutally honest about the form, function and life of part of Zig’s motivation to found Beneath The Sea Happy Birthday, TSSC! 30 this apex predator. One has to just see the portrait; in 1976. But first things first! Cont. on page 2 Visit Our Website: www.thescubasportsclub.org bathed in fluorescent lighting, surrounded outgrew all other Westchester exhibition On the Leading Edge... by humming display stations, rattling print- venues. continued ers, gray connecting cables, blue connecting cables, yellow and orange connecting cables, Zig grows up in Utah ....and a Life Dedicated datacenter raised floors, big blue computers to Advancing Scuba Diving and Marine Envi- twenty foot long and seven feet high (along ronments with plumbing to keep them from melting Zig hails from Utah where he was an athletic down), acres upon acres of nondescript youth engaged in all kinds of sports - ski- gray disk drives storing corporate data, rows ing, tennis, hiking...and being a rascal. Utah and ranks of communications equipment, however is a location in the continental United slightly foul programmers who need some States which is just about as far away as you can fresh air (and a bath), and their ill-tempered get from the ocean environments which he is supervisors. But we can count on Zig to find a now so committed to protecting! So how did way to stay sane; so Zig founds a sports-based that happen? Maybe he learned the love of the social club called Single Grapes. oceans during his youth, perhaps in the Navy? Nope: Zig served in the US Air Force after Single Grapes : Sure Beats the Decadent Zig and JoAnn – a Transformational Col- high school, where he learned the mysteries Nightlife... (Or More Accurately IS the Deca- laboration! of the growing, vital field of telecommunica- dent NIGHTLIFE ?) 1980 witnessed the stirrings of great things tions. Anyone who has ever flow over Utah and Single Grapes was a fun and happening place happening resulting from the transfor- looked out the window will have been inspired in the early 1970’s! Members enjoyed being mational collaboration of Zig and JoAnn. by the soaring, multi-colored and dramatic together hot air ballooning, playing tennis, That year Zig, JoAnn, Soliman and others landscapes of Utah. Zig must have been as well, enjoying invigorating white water canoeing sojourned to Sharm El-Sheikh near the because he chose to study geology in college. and rafting, hiking, and decompressing with southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula which Upon graduation, Zig was commissioned as frequent DJ’d dances, and just generally raising at the time was almost devoid of hotels; an officer in the Air Force. Because he was a <fun> cain all over Westchester and the Howard Rosenberg had a lonely motel there telecommunications whiz, Zig was ordered to Northeast! Stratton Vermont was the winter and a dive boat, and he pioneered what has report as Telecommunications Instructor to hangout for skiing, the Delaware River for now developed into one of the major world his Air Force comrades. Thus in Zig’s early white water canoeing in the summer, and West dive resorts. The lucky participants in this adulthood, he mastered the sky and its ways Hampton, out on Long Island for reportedly historic dive included Vreni Roduner, Bob and means as an Air Force officer - and he also epic beach parties! ... and year-round, legend- Abrams, Hester Abrams, Luba Fineson, Ei- understood the Earth below his feet as a geol- ary ‘Purple Toes’ dinner parties! leen DiRuocco, Lila Perry, Med Fernandez, ogy major. Throughout his scuba diving career Tina Barros, Peter Richter, Tina Martinez, and through his travels all over our world, Zig’s And... Single Grapes was... SCUBA DIV- Pat Pruitt and Soliman Shenouda. The knowledge of geology has served him well, ING. Zig certified in 1972. After all, this was team also went to Ras Mohammed at the deepening his understanding of and connection generally in the era of Lloyd Bridges playing southernmost tip of the Sinai Peninsula, to our Earth and its oceans. Mike Nelson in Sea Hunt, and the captivating just a little south of Sharm El-Sheikh, with adventures of The Undersea World of Jacques Egypt to the west across the water and Sau- Upon discharge from the Air Force, Zig was Cousteau - which revealed to all of us landlub- di Arabia across the water to the east. The grabbed by a rapidly growing IBM Corporation bers for the first time the wondrous undersea diving was spectacular, an impressive sight hungry for the very best technical and business environment; and it was also the era of the were the huge amphorae from a 500 yr. old talent. Zig served twenty five years as a systems groundbreaking film Blue Water, White Death Turkish Cargo ship, some with mercury engineer, designing / building / operating IBM’s by Peter Gimbel and Stan Waterman (which and we plaid with it in the sand.