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Regional News
The club has a yearly meet-up at the San Diego Coast Guard Station on the Bay
America’s Boating Club photo
objects), and celestial navigation, in case a boater’s GPS goes down.
“The most basic is the ABC course, which if you take that and pass the test at the end of the course you qualify for the California Boating Certificate,” said Gibbs. “And there are further courses you can take after that. Some of them are seamanship piloting and celestial navigation, marine weather, engine maintenance, cruise planning, all the ins and outs of sailing both basic and advanced.” The club was created in early 20th century Boston by a man named Robert Upton. Upton was a sailing member of the Boston Yacht Club in 1909 who became fascinated with powerboats and wanted to learn more.
Upton became Rear Commodore of the Boston Yacht Club in 1912 where he created an unofficial Power Boat Division and in 1913 the Executive Committee officially established the Power Squadron and the first inkling of the United States Power Squadron was born. Since that time the club has shared in ups and downs but continues to provide education for boaters and work with other government organizations like the United States Coast Guard. The club works with the USCG to provide free vessel safety checks for sailboats and powerboats up to 65 feet.
“We have a checklist from the Coast Guard,” said Gibbs. “We are the only other organization authorized aside from the Coast Guard to be able to do vessel safety checks. We do that free of charge there is no reporting it is just a checklist of things we go over with the vessel’s owner if they pass, they get a triangular coast guard sticker or decal and they put it on the port side of their boat somewhere where it is visible.”
The decal lets the Coast Guard know that the boat has been checked and passes the safety requirements for that year, decals are changed every year.
Through the individual sections of the club, there are raft-ups and sail fleet races as well as on-the-water training. According to the press release from America’s Boating Club Southern California has squadrons in San Diego, Oceanside, Newport Beach. There are also clubs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Las Vegas areas and up to Oregon and Washington.
To find a local club or get more information see https://americasboatingclub.org/.
SCIENTISTS EXPLORE CALIFORNIA COASTAL WATERS TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE HUMAN IMPACT
There were 12 exploratory dives that took place off of California’s coast exploring the DDT dumpsites and mineral-rich hard grounds in the California borderlands.
By: JORDAN B. DARLING
SAN DIEGO— Over the course of 12-days marine scientists aboard Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor completed several dives off the coast of California exploring mineral-rich hard grounds and the DDT dumpsite surveyed earlier this year by Scripps.
“The DDT dumpsite was two days out of 11 at sea and all the rest of the days we were on mineral-rich hard grounds,” said Chief Scientist Dr. Lisa Levin, a professor of biological oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “There were rocks we were interested in because they are covered with ferromanganese crusts and phosphates and minerals...We want to understand what animals and microbes live in these systems so that should the environments change, we will be able to track changes.”
Levin and her team explored nine locations along Southern California’s borderland and were up to 150 miles offshore, dives took place on seamounts and sea knolls which are submerged mountains and hills, underwater escarpments, or steep underwater cliffs, and the DDT dumpsite.
The scientists collected samples using a remotely operated vehicle that was tethered to the ship. The vehicle was sent down in the morning and spent seven to eight hours a day collecting rocks, water, sediment, and other samples before returning to the ship. Levin and her team explored mineral-rich hard grounds which lead them to discover a whale fall and a new methane seep along California’s coast.
According to Levin, the expedition was a baseline study to look at these areas and create a better understanding of the sea life that calls rock-hard grounds home and hopefully be able to track changes later on.
During the expedition, scientists discovered two new environments in the California borderlands, a whale fall and a methane seep.
These environments foster unique communities on the ocean floor, a whale fall is where a whale carcass comes to rest on the seafloor and often provides food for scavengers but the whale also releases chemicals that can fuel a community that relies on chemical synthesis the same way a methane seep would.
“They represent reducing environments,” said Levin. “They are a different kind of ecosystem on the seafloor the methane seep has animals that are getting their energy and food from chemical energy chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis. That’s of interest, and the whale fall also because when the whale decays it produces chemicals, hydrogen sulfite, in particular, that can fuel the same kind of community as a methane seep or thermal vent so they are little patchy environments that are actually turning out to be pretty common on the California margin.”
Levin said that it could take a year to two years to solidify the findings and publish but that the general impression is that California’s borderland is diverse and full of life.
“They’re kind of general but the initial
Dr. Lisa Levin and master’s student Michel Guraieb inspect and photograph a rock taken from the ocean floor.
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Schmidt Ocean Institute
A squat lobster on top of a bubblegum coral on the San Juan Seamount. impression is that the borderland is a very diverse system with every single site we visited had different species,” said Levin. “We call it heterogeneity you know there is a lot of differences, minor differences in the habitats that shape different animal communities.”
Levin and her team have gathered the data to gain a baseline of the ocean and continue to track changes over time, whether it is from climate change, human exploitation or even wind power offshore.
“I think you know the average person doesn’t care too much about the deep ocean but it is vulnerable to change from human activities,” said Levin. “We’ve been using the expression exploration before exploitation this cruise was a good example of that exploring our own backyard and new things trying to do things before we’ve damaged it.”
The data is being returned to Scripps for further analysis.
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The docks in Dana Point consist of a base of concrete covered with a later of plywood that has become warped in some areas.
DANA POINT BOATERS MARCH FOR THE HARBOR
Dana Point boaters were protesting the almost 90 percent increase in harbor slip fees set for October of this year.
By: JORDAN B. DARLING
DANA POINT— On Aug. 14 more than 50 boaters from Dana Point gathered around the Richard Henry Dana statue across from Dana West Yacht Club to protest an increase in harbor slip fees that were announced in June. Boaters were sent a letter from Bellwether Financial, a member of the Dana Point Harbor Partners, on June 21 informing them that slip rates would increase by 26 to 90 percent starting on Oct. 1 in lieu of the harbor revitalization and renovation.
Rates for slips under 30 feet would increase by 26 percent and the rates for the largest slip between 55 and 60 feet would increase by 90 percent.
Bellwether used public marinas from Orange County including 11 marinas that were located in Newport Beach, two which were located in Huntington Harbour, and one located in Sunset Beach to determine the average market rate.
In an Aug. 10 letter addressed to Orange County, Dennis C. Winters, a legal advisor to the Dana Point Boaters’ Association, alleged that the Partners were in violation of the spirit of lease and the Tidelands Grant to the County, which states that prices will
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