They’re not really spooky, but check out these links anyway.

East Timor is trying to build tourism to support the local economy after UN personnel leave in 2012. This includes scuba diving pristine reefs. I’ll wait while you go look up where in the world East Timor is.

Back yet? Good. Is Guam gonna lay the smackdown on people damaging reef? Let’s hope so. They’ve introduced a bill that would penalize boaters who damage coral in any of various ways. The real kicker? This would include dredging the Navy wants to do to build an aircraft carrier wharf. Good luck collecting penalties from a U.S. Destroyer.

Diving Unlimited International is releasing a limited edition drysuit covered in skulls, just in time for Halloween. Get yours soon, cause once they’re gone, they’re gone.

Tired of the same old parties with the same old costumes? Put on a wetsuit this year and carve pumpkins underwater.

Have a fun and safe Halloween weekend!

Everybody’s talking about these crazy underwater scooters. A big bubble like a diving bell lets you root around with ease.

Feeling guilt about deep tec diving on Sunday morning? Pick up your own waterproof bible to read on decompression stops.

Cancun creates its own underwater museum. 400 statues of men, women, and children will provide an environmental-friendly, although spooky as heck, artificial reef.

A dive shop in Vancouver, BC is hosting a kids scuba camp in 2011, for about $300. Sure beats math camp!

Apparently scuba diving is on the rise in Lebanon, despite there being nothing to see. I like how a local instructor phrases it: “the divers can focus on their air consumption and focus more on technical details without distraction.” Sounds a lot like diving in a rock quarry.

A barge was sunk as an artificial reef in New Jersey to honor a local scuba instructor who died this past year. Personally, I’m hoping for an aircraft carrier.

I hope everyone’s having a great week so far!

Continuing with a royal theme beginning with last week’s queen angelfish, this week’s fish identification article is on the king mackerel.

Physical description

Like all mackerel, the king is a medium sized fish that is long and tube-shaped. They can be small (about 5 pounds) to sizes over 90 pounds, in extreme cases. 5-30 pounds is normal.

They have dorsal spines, but they are hardly visible for two reasons. First, it’s colorless, and second, it is usually receded into a groove, as are their pectoral fins. They have a small dorsal and anal fin that reminds me of a tuna. Their tail fins are deeply forked.

Then tend to be a silver fish with a whitish belly. They can have spots, but these are the dominant colors.

From a distance in low viz I often mistake mackerel for small barracuda. It sounds kinda stupid, but the silvery bodies and long, tubular shape can be deceiving on first glance.

Geography and habitat

King mackerel are found along the Atlantic coasts from North Carolina all the way down to Brazil.

They are usually seen at depths deeper than 40 ft (12 meters). Look for anything from a couple to schools swimming by the shores.

Further reading

Wikipedia
Florida Museum of Natural History

Photo by acct-deleted

Swim with the fish at Long Beach, California’s Aquarium of the Pacific. It’s pricey, but possibly beats the only other option one has in southern California: cold water.

The Kansas City Star has a great article on the mysteries of the Bahamas’ blue holes. Hardly beginner’s diving, these cave systems remain largely uncharted.

Chuuk Lagoon has to be one of the coolest diving places in the world. This article calls it Japan’s Pearl Harbor. Read that article and you’ll see that moniker is hardly hyperbole.

Don’t you love reading about ridiculous ways people spend money? These millionaires are into six-figure fish tanks. I had an aquarium when I was a kid, but it was filled with one dollar fish from Wal-Mart.

A Michigan man gets certified to scuba dive. Big deal? He’s legally blind. I’ve definitely dove with people who could’ve been legally blind, the way they were kicking everything.

A U.K. band has designed shoes to sell, with the proceeds going to a conservation fund. From the headline, Shoes for Sharks, I had hoped for pictures of sharks wearing little boots. Saving them from illegal fishing is ok too, I guess.

The Groveland, FL scuba diver is at it again! He’s making another go at the world record for longest freshwater dive. The current record is 5 days. He says he hopes his record attempt will bring attention to the poor quality of lakes in Central Florida. So that’s what he’ll think about for 5 days underwater.

A 563-foot Navy destroyer will be sunk as an artificial reef off Ocean City, New Jersey. Yeah, because New Jersey doesn’t have enough garbage in its water. (+1 me for scoring a Jersey joke)

The Wall Street Journal profiles an oil rig turned diving mecca. Placed in a prime western Pacific location, this rig is in the heart of a diving paradise.

In a cleanup day sponsored by REEF, divers removed over 500 lionfish. Combine this with the recent surge in eating lionfish and we have the makings for one heckuva barbecue!

I’ve seen scuba masks with cameras built-in before, but this headline cracked me up: camera scuba goggles mean your hands are free to punch sharks in the face. What’s better than punching a shark in the face? Catching it on camera from one foot away. I see a new scuba specialty in the future.

Rumor has it that the sequel to Avatar will go under the sea. Not surprising, given the heavy aquatic influence on the design of the first film.

Some kids in the Florida panhandle helped clean up local waters as part of learning about the environment. In order to do this, they had to first get scuba certified, to clean up around jetty rocks. Lucky kids. The coolest thing I ever got to do was look at a solar eclipse through one of those holes poked in construction paper.

More records are being challenged. This time, a Florida diver is attempting to break the record for longest freshwater dive. He started out on Sunday, sitting 10 feet below the surface. He came out 2:30 last night, making it almost three days underwater. I’m not sure if he broke the record, but I bet he’s got some serious prune fingers.

The Mythbusters are going to test the James Bond wetsuit / tuxedo switch. In the 1964 movie Goldfinger, James Bond peels off a wetsuit, revealing a perfectly groomed white tuxedo. I’m gonna go out on a limb and predict that they “bust” this myth. I can barely get my wetsuit off without losing my bathing suit.

A diver in England found a 60 year old German mine off Drake Island. I found an empty Jägermeister bottle once.