Diving

THE SUMMER 2008 NEWSLETTER from Preserve Our Wrecks Kingston is available for download. Therein, among other things, is acknowledgement of the condiderable volunteer work done by the local dive community to the benefit of local tourism.

You'll also find information on the Kingston Underwater Event to be held August 8-10 at the Marine Museum and at City Hall. This is a showcase of Kingston's role as a premier freshwater dive location with a focus on diving, maritime heritage, conservation, and environmental issues.

SCUBA DIVING MAGAZINE has a brief article on diving near Kingston, now online from its March issue. The article covers three wrecks: The George A. Marsh, The Comet, and The Wolfe Islander II.

From the introduction:

With upward of 24 known moored wrecks, including schooners, barges and passenger ships, Kingston, Ontario, is a tempting destination for cold-water wreck divers. In fact, more than 400 ships are known to have wrecked in the area.

IT'S NOT TOO COLD TO DIVE, or to partake in an ice diving course.

KEDCO'S KINGSTON ONTARIO WATERFRONT WEBSITE IS BACK ONLINE.

Here's the current home page.

Your tax dollars at work; five-figure dollars worth.

Apparently nothing's changed since last November when this first came to light, then immediately taken offline.

It would be interesting to find out: who is well-served by misleading potential visitors to Kingston?

Note the adult and two kids, in a what appears to be a 15-foot canoe, mid-Harbour at dusk in imminent weather. Seriously, how improbable is that? How wise is that?

International-14 class sailboats haven't actively sailed here for quite some time; all "14" sailboats come here from out-of-town, and they are here maybe one-weekend a year. The boat pictured here is Toronto-based, shown in no-wind, flat-calm conditions, which is insulting, a bit like picturing a slalom skier in a farmer's field.

Underwater here isn't blue, it's green or, if anything, it's dark green. There's blue-water diving, but certainly not anywhere near here.

Adding just one more link-button to that web page looks very expensive. Guess how many files you'd need to touch to add another little box to the left of the canoe.

Is the KEDCO "blue belt" website like other websites KEDCO isn't able to maintain?

Take a guess: what percentage of visitors to Kingston ever get their feet wet in Kingston Harbour? A single-digit percentage? One-in-fifty, perhaps?

Take another guess: what percentage of Kingston residents ever get their feet wet in Kingston Harbour over the course of a typical year?

Do you suppose it might be because of fundamental waterfront inaccessibilities that exist here? Just who is KEDCO trying to kid?

It's one thing to try and lure visitors here, but it's quite another to be overtly dishonest about what we really have to offer.

The movers behind this "blue belt" website, Ross Cameron, Don Curtis, and KEDCO, are the very same folks who thought putting the LVEC on waterfront, expropriating MetalCraft Marine, totally eliminating Kingston Marina, and comandeering part of Fluhrer Park for the LVEC was a fine idea.

The CFB KINGSTON DOLPHIN SCUBA CLUB remains very active with diving throughout the winter.

Yesterday, for example, members dove off the Kingston Yacht Club during the day and then practiced in the KMCSC pool in the evening.

The Dolphins regularly post accounts and photos on their blog, and they occasionally update their photo gallery on Flickr which has, among other things, a photoset of members ice diving in Kingston Harbour last February.

Incidentally, though it's a military club, it's membership is open to all Kingston residents. A yearly associate membership costs $65.00 for civilians, $45.00 if you're between 14 and 21.

The CFB Kingston Dolphin Scuba Club is one of the truly great things about the Kingston waterfront. Active year-round, its members always seem to be collaborating with others on the waterfront, and they have been systematically sharing what they do, see, and find.

HMCS TERRA NOVA, a 366-foot Canadian Restigouche-class destroyer escort, is to be scuttled to create an artificial reef for diving near Gananoque.

The target-time for that is late 2009.

The claim that "the sunken ship will attract some 10,000 recreational scuba divers to the region in the first year" seems implausible.

UpdateA meeting account from Chris of the CFB Dolphins SCUBA Club. The scuttling is planned to be just off Browns Bay Provincial Park, near Mallorytown on the 1000 Islands Parkway. That's about 60 km from Kingston.

The CFB KINGSTON DOLPHIN SCUBA CLUB is a great example of how many local organizations could better interact with their members and the public at large: by blogging.

Consider these accounts of three recent dive excursions, all posted yesterday.

• Night Dive at the Pump House
• Wolfe Island Winter Dock
• Morton Street Wharf this afternoon

Makes you want to do a lot more diving, doesn't it?

Consider too the cost of all this: zero dollars, just three paragraphs in total.

THE 2nd ANNUAL LIMESTONE CITY MARINE HERITAGE SYMPOSIUM will be held Saturday January 6 2007 at The Ambassador Resort Hotel from 8:00 AM to 4 PM.

The theme of this years show remains ship wrecks of the local area with a special focus on marine archeology and wreck preservation.

The lineup:

• Locally:
  • Jeremy Jones - Shore Dive Sign Project. Jeremy reports on regional effort by divers to place in water signage for the protection of both wrecks and divers.
  • Scarlette Janusas, a professional underwater archeologist, on researching, working on, and protecting our Marine Heritage.
  • Ed Burt reports on his discovery of the almost mythical HMS Speedy
• Dr. Ed Reinhart presenting on his geological and archeologic efforts in Caesarea
• the always popular photograher Vlada Dekina show casing the wrecks of Belle Isle, Nfld
• Dr. Doug Smeaton on historic shipwrecks of Halifax

Tickets may be reserved by contacting wreckshow@ontariodiving.com. Seating is limited so please book early to avoid disappointment. Doors open at 07:30 am.

American boaters, on the other hand, are rightfully pissed at the idea since it affects them far more than it will ever affect Kingston.

If this goes through, it's just one more reason why the northern shore of Lake Ontario is a nicer place for boating, and for quality of life. On this so-called "issue" Kingston's current mayor, Harvey Rosen, would be well advised to zip it.

Click the chart below for a larger view or, better yet, see the US Homeland Security page. The box outlined with "blue" dots is the five-mile distance from the U.S. shores and/or U.S.-Canada maritime border. The boxes outlined with "yellow" dots, here shaded pinkish, are the proposed safety zones on Lake Ontario .

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CKWS-TV reports on a recent diving death near Rockport.