Category Archives: Scuba Diving

August 28, 2015 · 8:34 am

Blacktip Island Wranglers Prep For Feral Cat Roundup

Blacktip Island officials are concerned a rise in feral cat numbers on the Caribbean island will devastate native wildlife and cause a health crisis. (photo courtesy Brisbane City Council)

Blacktip Island officials are concerned a rise in feral cat numbers on the Caribbean island will devastate native wildlife and cause a health crisis. (photo courtesy Brisbane City Council)

A spike in Blacktip Island’s feral cat population has prompted the Blacktip Theosophy Society’s Feral Cat Roundup this weekend to capture and neuter as many of the Caribbean island’s wild cats as possible.

“It’s an ad hoc sort of thing, dependent on cat population estimates,” said event organizer and society president Clete Horn. “They kill our native wildlife, and with so many cats, it’s a ticking time bomb public health-wise.

“The potential for hazardous people-feline interaction is off the charts,” Horn said. “There’s already been a couple cases of cat-scratch fever, and at least one divemaster’s been diagnosed with worms. Plus, the damn things keep peeing on my back porch.”

The two-day roundup requires all roped cats be neutered and released.

“A while back we people loose with .22 rifles and let ‘em pop as many cats as they could,” Horn said. “A month later we were eat up with rats.

“The roundup’s a way to balance out the cat and rat populations,” Horn said. “It’s an algorithm we’ve worked out based on how the Balinese rotate their rice crops to keep their rat population in check. It’s counterintuitive, but it works.”

“It’s like herding kittens, except they’re bigger and faster,” Theosophy Society wrangler Marina DeLow said. “And mean.”

“Beaters go through the brush whacking sticks to chase the cats into the corrals,” DeLow said. “We use fishing line for lassoes, and reinforced landing nets for the wily ones.”

Some island residents oppose the roundup.

“These cats are part of the ecosystem and have as much right to be here as anyone else,” local Protesting Inhumane Treatment of Animals president Harry Pickett said. “They need to be embraced, not roped and hog tied and snipped.”

Most islanders, though, are looking forward to the event.

“It’s adventure, it’s excitement and it rids us of pests,” resident Ginger Bass said. “If that’s not good, family entertainment, I don’t know what is. And the kids get to practice their lariat skills with some of the smaller cats.”

The weekend will also feature a greased-kitten chase for children as well as food stalls and craft booths with roundup-related products such as lassoes, heavy-duty gloves and landing nets. Prizes will be awarded for biggest cat captured and for the most cats captured.

The roundup concludes with Sunday afternoon’s Miss Kitty contest.

The island’s public health department is advising all participants and spectators to update their rabies vaccinations.

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August 21, 2015 · 7:24 am

Blacktip Island Mayoral Race Raises Immigration Ugliness

Blacktip Islanders gathered for an island hall meeting Thursday evening to discuss issues in the Caribbean island’s upcoming mayoral election.

Blacktip Islanders gathered for an island hall meeting Thursday evening to discuss issues in the Caribbean island’s upcoming mayoral election.

Blacktip Island’s mayoral race thrust immigration reform to the forefront of island politics Thursday after former mayor Jack Cobia demanded the immediate deportation of half the foreign workers on the Caribbean island.

Cobia is hoping to unseat first-term mayor Neville Crab.

“We got lots of good people on this island just begging for work,” Cobia said. “There’s way too many scuba hippies doing jobs locals could be doing. Chuck out the foreigners, problem solved. The current administration’s silence on this speaks volumes.”

Island politicos call Cobia’s plan an electoral Hail Mary.

“Jack’s trailing badly in the polls, so he’s built a straw man to compensate,” government watchdog Wade Soote said. “Sure, jobs are scarce on Blacktip, but so are people. Anyone able to keep a job has one.

“And the current mayor’s silent because he’s a bloody hermit crab,” Soote added. That’s why we elected him. He says nothing and does nothing. Best mayor we’ve ever had.”

Cobia’s rhetoric, though, has struck a chord with some locals.

“Every job that goes to some off islander means one of us’s going without,” laborer Dermott Bottoms said. “Ship five of them out, five of us got jobs.”

“It’s getting too crowded here,” local James Conlee said. “I pass people on the road all the time now. That never used to happen, you know. Most of them’re expats.”

But not all voters agreed.

“Dermott and his pals complain, but none of them’ve ever been able to hold a job for more than a week,” Eagle Ray Cove resort owner Rich Skerritt said. “Their issue’s not lack of work, it’s lack of beer money.”

With immigration reform talk driving his poll numbers higher, Cobia has upped his effort in recent days.

“All the foreign workers are concentrated around the resorts on the west coast,” Cobia said. “We’re gonna put up a barbed-wire fence to keep them off the rest of the island.”

Cobia declined to disclose how he plans to finance the proposed fence or where he would acquire barbed wire on Blacktip Island.

“There’s plenty of backers, I guarantee,” Cobia said. “And willing workers. That’s all I’m gonna say about that.”

Despite Cobia’s recent rise in the polls, experts doubt it will be enough to carry the election in the fall.

“There’s only five registered voters on Blacktip Island,” Soote said. “And three of them are in jail on drunk-and-disorderly charges.”

Cobia, meanwhile, remains upbeat.

“Even if I don’t get elected, at least I got people talking about important issues,” he said.

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August 14, 2015 · 8:01 am

World War Two Aircraft Found On Blacktip Island Reef

Divemaster Alison Diesel investigates airplane wreckage from the World War Two Battle of the Blacktip Sea.

Divemaster Alison Diesel investigates airplane wreckage from the World War Two Battle of the Blacktip Sea.

Divemasters scuba diving off Blacktip Island’s rugged east coast Wednesday discovered the wreckage of an airplane believed downed in the World War Two Battle of the Blacktip Sea.

“We was looking at a stingray when we seen the wings and undercarriage,” Eagle Ray Cove divemaster Lee Helm said. “We brushed the rubbish off and there was the Tiperon Air Corp’s roundel, plain as my hand.”

“Those storms last week blasted out all kinds of sand, I guess,” said divemaster Alison Diesel. “I mean, we’d dove there before and never seen anything but fish and coral.”

The wreckage matches photos of the island’s Piper Cub mail plane shot down as it delivered the fatal blow to the invading Axis flagship.

“The Battle of the Blacktip Sea was minor, but decisive,” said island historian Smithson Altschul. “The Italians hoped to gain a foothold in Cuba. All that stood in their way was Blacktip Island and the Tiperon navy’s light frigate Frigate. It was outgunned and outnumbered by the Italian pocket destroyers Fianchetto and Giuoco Piano.

“Islanders loaded the mail plane with Molotov cocktails made from grain alcohol and rum bottles,” Altschul said. “The last bomb dropped took out the Fianchetto’s bridge just as the Piper got hit.”

“Mama seen it,” Dermott Bottoms said. “Said folks thought it was a fireworks show ‘til they heard hollering in Italian. After, any enemy sailors swam to shore, folks whacked ‘em with conchs and stuffed ‘em in the turtle kraal.”

The Tiperon government has declared the area around the wreckage a heritage site and banned scuba diving to discourage souvenir collectors. Local dive entrepreneurs Sandy Bottoms and Rich Skerritt, however, are lobbying to turn the site into a pay-per-dive scuba park with interpretive tours.

“This is our heritage,” Skerritt said. “We got a right to access. Got Battle Diver specialty courses lined up, you know. In English and Italian. The fees’ll raise money for more exploration. And other things.”

Island officials, meanwhile, commemorated the find by declaring a new public holiday.

“August was the only month without a bank holiday,” island mayor Jack Cobia said. “It screamed for one. Hell, April has two holidays. This first-ever Battle Day’ll be a blast!”

Holiday festivities are works in progress, organized by local residents.

“Gonna start with a round-robin Boobies and Frigates tournament with lawn darts out back of the Last Ballyhoo,” said local James Conlee. “There’s free beer for all team members, and a free kamikaze shot if you get hit.”

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August 7, 2015 · 6:01 am

Red Herrings Invade Blacktip Island Reefs

Non-native red herrings have overwhelmed Blacktip Island in recent months, confounding scuba divers and angering residents.

Non-native red herrings have overwhelmed Blacktip Island in recent months, confounding scuba divers and angering residents.

Blacktip Island residents are scrambling to combat invasive red herrings causing dangerous levels of confusion on the Caribbean island’s reefs.

“No one’s sure how they got here,” Eagle Ray Divers operations manager Ger Latner said Thursday. “Where’s stuff like this ever come from? Our guess, they got dragged here, either unintentionally in a boat’s bilge, or on purpose by some yahoo.

“Either way, they’ve got to go,” Latner said. “They’re gobbling up our native species and wearing out our divemasters.”

Other scuba professionals are concerned about the threat the herrings pose to scuba diving guests.

“They’re beautiful and all, but they get our divers into some pretty gnarly jams,” Club Scuba Doo dive manager Finn Kiick said. “They shimmy and flash and you chase after them. Then they head for deeper water. We got guests going into deco left and right.

“There’s way more divers getting lost, too,” Kiick said. “They zone out following some bogus fish across the reef, and bang-o, next thing they know they’re three dive sites over. And out of air.”

After attempts to cull the herrings proved futile, government officials have shifted tactics to control their damage.

“For whatever reason, red herrings seem to thrive on this little island,” Marine Parks spokesperson Basil Kipper said. “We tried leading them into nets, but they wouldn’t follow, and quick as we would spear one, two more would take its place.

“Currently we’re urging divers to simply ignore them and hope they go away,” Kipper said. “Really, they’re only dangerous if one pays attention to them. The herrings, not the divers.”

Island leaders are demanding more proactive measures.

“These things are destroying our tourism product,” Eagle Ray Cove resort owner Rich Skerritt said. “All this talk about these damn fish’s got folks sidetracked from the important issues facing Blacktip. Just spear ‘em all, pronto, and restore diver confidence so we can refocus on extending our airstrip and expanding our resorts.”

Other residents are taking a more inclusive approach to the pests.

“We serve up red herrings at just about every meal,” said Blacktip Haven resort owner Elena Havens. “Like it or not, they’re part of our island’s ecosystem. We tell our guests ‘accept them, embrace them, then eat them.’

“We’re all red herrings at heart, when you think about it,” Havens said.

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July 24, 2015 · 7:30 am

Blacktip Island Divers Brace For Dockside Security Screenings

Skerritt Security scanning devices line the Eagle Ray Divers dock Friday, ready for scuba divers. Similar scanners have been installed at all Blacktip Island scuba resorts.

Skerritt Security scanning devices line the Eagle Ray Divers dock Friday, ready for scuba divers. Similar scanners have been installed at all Blacktip Island scuba resorts.

Beginning today, Blacktip Island scuba divers will undergo multiple security screenings before boarding dive boats due to threats made against the Caribbean island’s reefs.

“We got credible intel about attacks on the underwater environment,” Public Safety director Ferris Skerritt said. “These attacks are aimed at destroying Blacktip’s tourism industry and could result in the death of recreational divers, as well as untold fish and coral heads.

“We’ve called for, and received, the government’s full support in combating this threat,” Skerritt said.

The Tiperon Islands government has contracted security measures to Skerritt Security.

Local dive professionals dispute the threat’s seriousness.

“One out of context remark, and Barney Fife breaks out the prods and rubber gloves,” Eagle Ray Divers operations manager Ger Latner said. “It’s like last year’s War on Terriers fiasco, where ol’ Ferris rounded up all the island dogs for questioning. On the government dime, of course.”

Island business owners defend the screenings.

“The hell we’re not threatened! By eco-terrorists!” Eagle Ray Divers owner Rich Skerritt said. “A nutcase on one of our boats said, clear as day, he was gonna blow up fish. Then his accomplice referenced an ‘ayatollah.’ That’s a threat, context be damned.”

Witnesses disagreed.

“The dude said, ‘That blowfish was the bomb,’” Eagle Ray Divers divemaster Alison Diesel said. “Then his drunk buddy slurred, ‘I, uh, told you so.’ People on Blacktip don’t make bombs, we get bombed.”

Security experts, however, are taking no chances.

“Each resort now has explosive trace detectors and millimeter wave scanners at the top of their docks,” Ferris Skerritt said. “Then X-ray backscatter machines and hands-on security personnel at each boat. You wont be able to sniff the reef without a thorough going over.”

The measures already have scuba diving guests complaining of overzealous screeners.

“Those chuckleheads groped me places I didn’t know I had,” scuba guest Bubba Gadgette said. “Two of ‘em. Four times! I mean, what could I possibly hide in my Speedo? Now, I enjoyed it and all, but they confiscated my booties for no reason.”

Officials dismissed the complaints.

“Of course it’s intrusive. And expensive,” Ferris Skeritt said. “We can’t take any chances. And the program’s an unqualified success: we’ve had zero attacks since we installed our system.

“We’re also looking at ways to protect the island’s reefs from lone-wolf shore divers,” Skerritt said. “No telling what some radicalized Cousteau-wannabe’s capable of. By God, we’ll scan them on the beaches and frisk them on the ironshore if need be. Cost be damned.”

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July 3, 2015 · 5:46 am

Singing Coral Heads Discovered on Blacktip Island

Blue chromis school above a stand of Blacktip Island’s singing staghorn coral on Jawfish Reef. (Photo courtesy Amanda Meyer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Blue chromis school around a stand of Blacktip Island’s singing staghorn coral on Jawfish Reef. (Photo courtesy Amanda Meyer, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Blacktip Island researchers this week documented coral heads on the Caribbean island’s Jawfish Reef interacting with other corals via harmonic resonance.

“There’d been tall tales from scuba divers about singing coral,” Tiperon University-Blacktip professor Ernesto Mojarra said. “On a hunch, we installed one of our new Broadband Datalogging Sound/Vibe Monitoring arrays on the reef. The BDSM tests showed the staghorn polyps flagellate to create high-frequency vibrations.

“It’s more of a high-pitched hum than actual melody,” Mojarra said. “Like Tuvan throat singing, but in the 16740 hertz range. Near as we can tell, that lets polyps communicate coral-to-coral. It also explains why more people hear the tones as the staghorn recovers from near extinction.”

The discovery settles a debate that’s raged among Blacktip’s divers for years.

“There’s always that annoying whine at Jawfish” Eagle Ray Divers divemaster Marina DeLow said. “Like The Chipmunks singing ‘Good Vibrations.’ I chalked it up to doubling up on Sudafed, or vodka hangovers. Now we know better.”

Some experts, however, dispute the finding.

“This is textbook wish fulfillment, fueled by alcohol and who knows what else,” Island Psychological Association president Sigmund Skinner said. “Every scuba hippy wants to anthropomorphize the reef. They want to believe coral flagellates to communicate, and hey! What do you know? They discover coral flagellates. And sings while it does it!”

Local business owners, however, embraced the discovery.

“If coral can communicate with other coral, it stands to reason it can communicate with other organisms, even humans” said Elena Havens, owner of the Blacktip Haven resort. “Elephants communicate over vast distances with ultra-low frequency sounds. This is really no different.

“We’ve started underwater meditation sessions on the reef,” Havens said. “The effects have been stunning. It’s like our guests have become one big polyp colony.”

Researchers, meanwhile, are scrambling to catalogue the coral sounds.

“Ernesto brought us in to decipher the individual tones and tone combinations,” TU-B linguistics department chair Porgy Chomsky said. “We’re testing whether this is simply a species-specific vocabulary, or if we’re dealing with a pancorallic semiotic. It’s potentially ground breaking. Staghorn coral’s the Chatty Kathy of the reef.”

TU-B’s Mojarra concurred.

“If these harmonics are fueling coral growth, it could be key to restoring coral populations worldwide,” Mojarra said. “We have plans to regenerate individual coral heads with recorded music. And a crack team of marine geologists is working up plans for underwater coral topiary.”

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June 19, 2015 · 7:16 am

Blacktip Codex Could Be Lost Gospel

An illuminated panel from the Blacktip Codex shows Medieval Blacktip islanders netting a lionfish. The scrawled figure to the lower left is believed to be the earliest representation of the island’s legendary mersquatch.

An illuminated panel from the Blacktip Codex shows Medieval islanders netting a lionfish. The scrawled figure at the lower left is believed to be the earliest representation of the island’s legendary mersquatch.

The discovery Thursday of a 600-year-old bound and illuminated religious text, dubbed the Blacktip Codex, sent shockwaves through the Caribbean island’s religious and academic communities.

The rudimentary book, 200 pages of stacked sharkskin vellum bound on one edge, is attributed to St. Dervil of the Mead, patron saint of scuba diving and founder of the island’s Our Lady of Blacktip cathedral.

“Its folium rectum reads ‘The Gospel According to Dervil,’” Blacktip Reformed Theosophical Seminary deacon Calvin Augustine said. “The text is an account of Mary Magdalene and Jesus’ daughter Sarah fleeing to Blacktip Island, battling storms and pirates all the way. If true, it’s possible current Blacktip natives are their descendants.”

The codex was discovered after heavy rains caused a cathedral wall and part of the flooring to collapse, revealing a previously unknown storage vault containing the codex, pots of coconut mead holy water, a cot, playing cards and other religious relics.

Island historians say the book’s provenance speaks to its authenticity.

“Blacktip Island was sacked by Norse raiders blown off course on their way to Greenland,” Tiperon University-Blacktip history professor Edwin Chub said. “This codex could have been placed in the underground vault for safekeeping.

“Of course, Dervil was killed in that raid,” Chub said, “so any knowledge of the vault would have died with him.”

The island’s Ecumenical Council, however, has doubts.

“It may date back to Dervil’s time, and maybe even Dervil’s hand,” council president and former Reverend Jerrod Ephesians said. “But some mead-sotted monk’s potboiler about Jesus’s descendants in the Caribbean? That’s not history. That’s a B-grade movie.

“Now, Dermott Bottoms did walk on water that time James Conlee chucked the snake in his boat,” Ephesians said. “And Antonio Fletcher’s been known to cast out demons in Ballyhoo parking lot Saturday nights. But that’s hardly proof of divine genealogy.”

Historians are also intrigued by the codex’s detailed illuminated panels. In addition to gold-leaf images of Mary and Sarah, the codex also shows island settlers nettling lionfish.

“It’s the earliest known depiction of lionfish culling in the Caribbean,” Chub said. “Of necessity, Blacktip’s first settlers were fishers of lions, not fishers of men: a hastily-scribbled margin note reads, ‘Lord, save us from the devil, the Turk and the marinu leonus.’”

Island merchants, meanwhile, are already capitalizing on the find.

“With our resort being next to the church, we set up a roadside Blacktip Codex reading tent and gift shop,” Eagle Ray Cove owner Rich Skerritt said. “We’ve got Codex Mead, Codex caps and t-shirts and even Codex soap-on-a-rope that smells like a hurricane shelter.”

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June 5, 2015 · 10:21 am

Blacktip Divemaster Creates Island Superhero Team

Backstabb battles Dr. Speedo’s evil Pee Men in the premier issue of The Adventures of The Slacker Defenders. (courtesy of Paul Gustavson)

Backstabb battles Dr. Speedo’s evil Pee Men in the premier issue of The Adventures of The Slacker Defenders. (courtesy of Paul Gustavson)

Blacktip Island divemaster and amateur cartoonist Finn Kiick has published a serialized graphic novelette featuring a team of costumed crusaders on a small Caribbean resort island.

Kiick said the The Adventures of The Slacker Defenders’ heroes and villains are modeled on people he has known in his years on Blacktip Island.

“This’s a new breed of superheroes – pure Blacktip personalities,” Kiick said. “In most comics, a dude get mutated by some scientific snafu, right? Well, the Slacker Defenders’ve been torqued by living on a little island too long.

“This place’ll do that,” Kiick said. “Island life takes who you are and jacks it up, for good or evil.’

Kiick’s superhero lineup features Scuttlebutt, Captain Barstool, The Mooch, STD, Backstabb and Mr. Brown Knows.

“The Mooch can finagle anything from anyone,” Kiick said. “Scuttlebutt, she’s a mind reader and the team’s intel wizard. STD’s the femme fatale who can give bad guys the clap from across the room.”

The first issue pits the team against its nemesis, the evil Dr. Speedo and his Pee Men.

“It’s art copying life, really,” Blacktip Times book critic Paloma Fairlead said. “Dr. Speedo is a guy named Georgie from Passaic who morphs into the ultimate scuba diving evil whenever he steps into a dive boat’s head.

“The Pee Men, meanwhile, look like ordinary scuba guests. They congregate at bars and destroy evenings with deadly-boring dive stories,” Fairlead said. “In the inaugural issue they’re tasked with chasing off all the tourists so Dr. Speedo can drill for oil offshore.”

Some readers have taken offense with Dr. Speedo, a pot-bellied villain who wears only the skimpiest of swimming attire.

“I was shocked to find my young son with a comic showing a pasty fat man wearing nothing but a red banana hammock,” island visitor Philomena Porgy said. “Children don’t need to see that. And it bore an uncanny resemblance to the boy’s father.”

Others locals objected to what they see as the comic’s subversive subtext.

“This Dr. Speedo’s set up as the bad guy for wanting to replace a weak revenue stream with a stronger one,” Eagle Ray Cove resort owner Rich Skerritt said. “That’s anti-progress. It gets folks riled at local businesses. We can’t have that.

“I talked to Nelson Pilchard down at Scuba Doo about terminating Finn,” Skerritt said. “And to Jack Wrasse at Immigration about having him deported.”

Kiick is unfazed by the criticism.

“The next issue’s gonna have the Pee Men snagging all the grouper from the reef so Dr. Speedo can open a sandwich stand,” Kiick said. “Then the Slacker Defenders’ll swing into action in a big-ass way.”

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May 29, 2015 · 7:01 am

Blacktip Island Dive Operators Welcome Emotional Support Animals

Blacktip Island scuba resorts now allow emotional support animals, such as these sandwich terns, to dive with their people.

Blacktip Island scuba resorts now allow emotional support animals, such as these sandwich terns, to dive with their people.

With the growing popularity of emotional support animals, dive operations on Blacktip Island are refitting their dive boats to accommodate scuba diving guests’ companion animals.

“Places have been allowing emotional support dogs and cats for years,” said Sandy Bottoms Beach Resort owner Sandy Bottoms. “After a bunch of guest complaints, we decided to try that with diving.

“We rigged our Titan Eos with special seats and lavatory facilities to see how it’d go,” Bottoms said. “It worked so well, we rigged the Titan Ganymede and Titan Uranus too. Nothing’s too good for our emotionally unstable guests.”

Other island resorts quickly followed suit.

“So long as the diver has proper documentation for their support animal, they’re welcome on our boats,” Eagle Ray Divers operations manager Ger Latner said. “We also rent water-tight Plexiglas crates with pony bottles for folks who want to take their animals on the dive with them. I mean, underwater’s where a lot of our guests need the most emotional support.

“We can accommodate anything up to and including a small pot-bellied pig,” Latner said. “Any bigger, the crate’s buoyancy gets to be an issue.”

Blacktip Island’s divers welcomed the change.

“It’s wonderful to take Frumpy with me and not leave him in the room by himself half the day,” scuba diver Suzy Souccup said, stroking her 12-foot Burmese python. “He and I are both calmer during the dives, though several guests were put off when he decided to explore the boat on his own during our surface interval.”

The island’s dive staffs are not as enthusiastic.

“Underwater’s not the best place for topside animals,” Eagle Ray Divers divemaster Marina DeLow said. “We had a badger go ballistic on a dive last week. Things were fine until we hit 30 feet, then all hell broke loose.

“We had to evac the badger to the surface without a safety stop, then spent an hour getting it calmed down enough for us to open its crate,” DeLow said. “We ended up having to cut back on air until it passed out.”

Other resorts are offering training to avoid underwater mishaps.

“We’ve started NAUI and PADI Emotional Support Animal specialty courses,” Blacktip Haven resort owner Elena Haven said. “At a minimum, we require support animals to do an orientation dive in our pool before boarding our boat.”

Experts emphasized the need for good judgment in choosing an animal to dive with.

“We had a woman with an emotional support squirrelfish yesterday,” DeLow said. “It wasn’t two minutes into the dive a Nassau grouper hit it, bam, duck on a June bug. A doc onboard guessed it set her therapy back six years.”

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May 22, 2015 · 8:35 am

Blacktip Island Divemaster Invents Spray-On Wetsuit

Blacktip Island divemaster Alison Diesel’s Can-O-Prene wetsuit substitute has divided the small Caribbean island’s scuba diving community.

Blacktip Island divemaster Alison Diesel’s Can-O-Prene wetsuit substitute has divided the small Caribbean island’s scuba diving community.

A spray-on neoprene substitute invented by a Blacktip Island divemaster has many in the dive industry questioning the future of rubber-based wetsuits.

The brainchild of Eagle Ray Divers divemaster Alison Diesel, Can-O-Prene is applied in layers immediately before a dive.

“Guests always ask how thick a wetsuit they need,” Diesel said. “We can’t tell them. Some people get cold easier than others. With Can-O-Prene, though, they can tweak their thermal protection. The more layers you spray on, the toastier you stay. Then at the end of the day, you just peel it off.

“Plus, we ditched all the polymers and acetylene and metal oxides,” Diesel said. “It’s made from soy and seaweed, so it’s enviro-friendly.”

Diesel teamed up with island entrepreneur Piers “Doc” Plank, owner of the Bamboo You line of scuba gear, to manufacture and market Can-O-Prene.

“Alison had the vision and the biochemical know how,” Plank said. “When she approached us about handling the business end of things, we jumped at the chance. This could revolutionize the dive industry.

“Not only is it all natural, it also takes up minimal space in luggage,” Plank said. “Instead of hauling down a heavy wetsuit, imagine tossing a can of air freshener in your bag. That’s all the room Can-O-Prene takes, and one can’ll get you through a week of Caribbean diving.”

Scuba divers who tested the product were impressed.

“It’s like getting a custom drysuit without the custom price,” Eagle Ray Divers divemaster Gage Hoase said. “I mean, it’s just fwoosh and I got a 5/3 suit in minutes.”

Critics, however, questioned Can-O-Prene’s environmental soundness.

“If it comes out of a can, it’s not all natural,” local activist Harry Pickett said. “We have no idea what makes that goop foam like that, or what sort of toxins it’s releasing onto the reef.”

Medical experts worried the product’s potential health risks.

“Without knowing its exact chemical makeup, we don’t know what agents are leaching into divers’ skin,” said island doctor Azul Tang. “At least with vulcanized polychloroprene we know what we’re dealing with.”

Plank and Diesel were quick to allay those concerns.

“Is Can-O-Prene perfect? No,” Plank said. “Frankly, you smell kind of like a dried herring after the third or fourth dive day. We’re working on that. But it’s better than wrapping yourself in fake rubber.”

“It’s biodegradable, latex free, gluten free and dolphin safe,” Diesel added. “You could eat it after you peel it off. Unless you’re one of those grotty divers who to pee in their wetsuit.”

Neither Diesel nor Plank would comment on rumors Can-O-Prene will also be sold in adult novelty stores.

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