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June 10, 2016 · 7:37 am

Divers Discover Fountain of Youth on Blacktip Island Reef

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A juvenile nurse shark swims through the shallows at Blacktip Island’s Ponce de Leon Reef Thursday, near the underwater vents believed to have restored youth to scuba diving visitors. (Photo courtesy of Marina DeLow)

Scuba divers on Blacktip Island’s Ponce de Leon Reef Wednesday discovered what local authorities say may be the famed Fountain of Youth.

“There’s always been a halocline up in the shallows where fresh water vents up through the hardpan,” Eagle Ray Divers divemaster Marina DeLow said. “No idea why divers wandered up in there. The vis is manky and the coral’s just polyps.

“All the juvenile fish on that site should’ve been a tip off,” Diesel said. “Then when all those kids wearing adult-sized scuba gear climbed back on the boat, well, we knew something was up.”

Experts say the spring leaching out underwater may have helped keep it secret.

“Legend says the Fountain of Youth is in the Caribbean,” island historian Smithson Altschul said. “Explorers searched for it for centuries, but no one expected it to be underwater.

“We’re not sure what the source is, or why no one has noticed it before,” Altschul said. “It may be booby pond water, since no one’s ever tried to drink that stuff. Or the rejuvenating properties could be from booby pond muck catalyzing with seawater. We don’t even know if the effects are permanent.”

The discovery caused problems at Blacktip Island resorts.

“We had a boat full of guests at the bar demanding post-dive drinks,” Eagle Ray Cove resort manager Mickey Smarr said. “They talked like adults and all, but they were little kids. We had to turn them away. We’re not about to serve minors.”

Resort dive staffs have not been impacted by the water.

“Near as we can tell, divemasters are immune to the stuff,” Eagle Ray Divers operations manager Ger Latner said. “Shouldn’t come as a surprise, I guess. It’d be hard to get any less mature than our dive staff.

“We’re selling kids masks and t-shirts and sun screen like crazy, too,” Latner said. “So there is a silver lining.”

Island resort owners, meanwhile, are promoting the dive site for its obvious benefits.

“We’re charging double to dive there, and folks are lining up to pay for it,” said Eagle Ray Cove owner Rich Skerritt. “We’re working up a Fountain of Youth Diver specialty course to teach divers how to get close enough to take a few years off without zapping themselves back to pre-puberty.

“That first group all has to get recertified as Junior Divers,” Skerritt said. “Damn shame. We can’t let some of them dive past 40 feet. There was a bit of marital strife by the resort pool, too, when a little tyke came back from diving and tried to get frisky with his non-diving wife.”

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June 3, 2016 · 8:19 am

Booze Aerobics Targets Blacktip Island’s Health Woes

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An innovative exercise program will allow Blacktip Island’s most hard-core drinkers to increase their physical activity from the comfort of their barstools. (Photo courtesy of Palometa Fischer)

Blacktip Island fitness buffs this week launched an alcohol-based aerobics program, conducted in all three of Blacktip’s bars, to combat the Caribbean island’s growing obesity problem.

“Blacktippers are freakishly out of shape,” aerobics instructor Palometa Fischer said. “We can’t stop them from drinking – it’s the island pastime. Instead, we’re getting them active while they drink.

“We’re taking advantage of the captive audience,” said Fischer. “The only drawback so far was the couple of beer bottles thrown at us when we first walked in.”

Program participants were upbeat after the first session.

“We’re jumping up and down watching football anyway. This wasn’t all that different,” said James Conlee at the Last Ballyhoo bar. “Palometa jumping around in them shorts didn’t hurt, either, you know.”

Health professionals, however, questioned the program’s safety.

“This regimen will worsen Blacktip Island’s alcohol epidemic,” said Dr. Azul Tang. “And most of these people are in no shape for vigorous exercise. Palometa’s going to have her hands full with cardiac arrests and broken bones.”

Program organizers emphasized their safety protocol.

“We have a 2:1 instructor-to-student ratio so we can prop people up if they start to fall,” instructor Ginger Bass said. “And the nurse is on call for every session.

“We start slow so people can acclimate – stretching on a bar stool, that sort of thing – then graduate to standing stretches,” Bass said. “We have pool sessions, too, for the really wobbly ones. They can’t fall too far. And we put Water Wings around their necks so their heads’ll float if they do.”

Participants applauded the safety measures.

“So far, worst that happened is James spewed beer in the middle of jumping jacks,” Last Ballyhoo regular Dermott Bottoms said. “But he’d been drinking since breakfast, so you kind of expected it. That’s why they didn’t put him in the pool.”

Fischer, meanwhile, plans to expand the program in the future.

“We’re working up to a weekly Run for the Rum Bottle around a track,” Fischer said. “We put bottle on a pulley, like the fake rabbit they use for greyhound racing, and let everyone chase after it.

“For extreme cardio we’ll toss spiders on the bar when no one expects it,” Fischer said. “We beta tested that, and it got everyone’s heart rate right up into the fat-burning zone.”

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May 27, 2016 · 9:43 am

Blacktip Island Boaters Launch Dive-Sharing App

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Fishing skiffs sit ready to take Blacktip Island scuba divers to dive sites Friday morning.

Starting today, Blacktip Island scuba divers wanting a ride to or from a dive site can use a boat-sharing application launched by island boat owners. The app, modeled after similar land-based services, allows individual divers to hail private boats via their dive computer.

“We’re calling it ‘UBoat,’” founder Antonio Fletcher said. “You just punch your dive computer, and a boat picks you up.

“Divers like to sleep in, you know, and maybe only do one dive,” Fletcher said. “Or go places the resort boats won’t take them.”

Eight local fishermen have signed on for the service so far, most using fishing skiffs shorter than 20 feet.

“Going out fishing anyway,” local angler Dermott Bottoms said. “Might as well make a little side cash. And divers don’t mind the lines and hooks.

“Get extra money when sharks show up, too,” Bottoms said. “So long as the divers don’t catch me chumming.”

The app has already proved a hit with the island’s scuba diving guests.

“The little boats make it an adventure,” said diver Paula Plongeur. “And you never know who your captain’ll be. There’s nothing quite like hitting the surface, tapping your computer and seeing a half-dozen skiffs racing to get to you first.

“With UBoat, we dive where we want, as deep as we want for as long as we want,” Plongeur said. “Even late-night dives, though they do charge extra for those drop offs and pick ups. Especially the pick ups.”

Dive industry insiders, however, question UBoat’s safety.

“There’s no guarantee a boat’ll be there to pick you up,” said Eagle Ray Divers operations manager Ger Latner. “Some of these clowns are even dropping off solo divers.

“Sure, it’s a lower rate and personalized service, but what’s your life worth?” Latner said. “And you really want ‘Tonio or Dermott picking you up in the afternoon after they’ve been drinking all morning? Or worse, sleeping through the pick-up call?”

UBoat drivers were quick to defend the service.

“Tourists want to give me money for a boat ride, all right then,” Bottoms said. “Divers get on my boat ‘cause they want to, you know.

“They got a c-card and say they’re meeting a buddy on the reef, who am I to say they’re lying,” Bottoms added. “Not illegal. No one can tell me how I can make money.”

Divers defended the service as well.

“We see it as a kind of dive insurance,” Plongeur said. “People will fight to pick us up, even if a charter boat leaves us behind. Plus, Dermott lets us drink beer on the way to and from.”

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May 20, 2016 · 7:03 am

Guano Crayon Factory Solves Blacktip Island’s Health Woes

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A batch of giant crayons sits ready for export at Diddley’s Landing public pier on Blacktip Island. The crayons, made from reclaimed booby bird guano, have boosted the island’s economy and eliminated a public heath crisis.

Blacktip Island government and business leaders teamed up this week to solve an island public health concern and calm unemployment worries by opening a factory to make wax markers from booby bird guano.

“Droppings from all these birds was a making folks sick,” said public health chief Herring Frye. “It dries into dust, then the wind blows it everywhere. Folks all over the island were hacking and coughing and whatnot.

“We collected a bunch of it, it was too expensive to ship off island,” Frye said. “And the reef huggers wouldn’t let us chuck it in the sea. That’s when ol’ Doc stepped in and saved our bacon.”

Island entrepreneur Piers “Doc” Plank had recently patented a process that turned bird waste into multi-colored wax.

“It started as a gimmick to sell for writing underwater,” Plank said. “When I saw the mountain of bird poop Herry’d collected, well, the light bulb went off. What do you do with a giant pile of poo? Turn it into crayons, of course.

“Island unemployment dropped to zero when we hired staff for processing, distribution and sales,” Plank said. “And there’s a whole lot less wheezing now, too.”

Plank noted the facility manufactures markers of all sizes for a variety of uses.

“We started with industrial-sized ones to use for striping the road and landing strip,” Plank said. “They’re even coloring navigational beacons with them. The wax is brighter than paint, and holds its color longer.

“Of course, we also make the standard-sized crayons you’d expect, for underwater slates and kids’ coloring,” Plank said. “We’re marketing those as ‘Poopons.’”

Many islanders have embraced the markers.

“It’s kind of nasty, using crayons made from bird poop,” said local Olive Beaugregory. “But Doc’s factory separates outs the impurities. They don’t smell much, I’ve never seen such vivid colors, and knowing they’re made from poop keeps the kiddos from eating them. Well, most of the kiddos.”

Not all residents are happy with the factory, though.

“When the wind’s from the east, you’d think something died over there,” said Palometa Fischer, who lives next door. “Our eyes water, and the dogs have a nasty cough now. Mr. Plank did give the kids free crayons, though, so we make the best of it.”

Other locals are concerned the manufacturing masks a more sinister product.

“One of the little-known byproducts of Doc’s ‘cleaning’ process is trinitrotoluene,” said island political activist Harry Pickett. “You think it’s a coincidence those big markers look like warheads? TNT on Blacktip Island’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

Officials denied the claim.

“All this missile talk is pure crap,” Frye said. “We’d only use crayons for defensive purposes.”

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May 13, 2016 · 10:01 am

Blessing of the Regulators Returns To Blacktip Island

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Scuba diving regulators of all types and ages will be prayed for at Blacktip Island’s Blessing of the Regulators Sunday. (photo courtesy of Jerrod Ephesians)

The Our Lady of Blacktip cathedral will host the Caribbean island’s annual Blessing of the Regulators Sunday morning, safeguarding scuba divers and their equipment for the busy summer diving season.

“It’s a non-denominational ceremony open to all divers, regardless of religious beliefs, or lack thereof,” said the former-Reverend Jerrod Ephesians. “We do it on behalf of St. Dervil, Blacktip Island’s patron saint, who blessed the island’s first divers back in the 1550s.

“The ceremony’s totally inclusive,” Ephesians said. “We welcome single- and double-hose regs as well as rebreathers, Spare Airs and even snorkels.”

As ever, local divers are excited about the ceremony.

“I trust my training and all, but I’ll take any backup I can get,” said Eagle Ray Divers divemaster Alison Diesel. “‘God’s my alternate air source,’ you know? Whichever god’ll listen.

“Using Dervil’s original Canticle for Regultors is what makes the Blessing stick,” Diesel said. “The whole ‘Bless me that I may not so much breathe, as to continue to breathe’ thing. And sprinkling us with rum.”

Others questioned the ceremony’s efficacy.

“There’s no proven cause-and-effect relationship between praying over your regulator and diving safely,” said long-time resident B.C. Flote. “Folks want this superstitious shtick, let ‘em do it on their own time. This’s a religious ceremony and the bars can’t open until it’s over.”

Church officials take a pragmatic view of the service.

“Hand of the Divine or self-fulfilling belief, it amounts to the same thing,” Ephesians said. “We administer the Blessing. People have safe dives. Boom. Done.

“We ran a couple of double-blind test Blessings a few years back, but the results were inconclusive,” Ephesians said. “It’s metaphorical, anyway. The Blessing covers not just regs, but all scuba gear. Except dive knives. That’d be inappropriate, since Dervil was hacked to death by Norse raiders.”

Island business leaders have embraced the Blessing for more secular reasons.

“The resort’s chock-a-block full this weekend, and we’re selling Blessing t-shirts like crazy,” Eagle Ray Cove owner Rich Skerritt said. “Mumbo jumbo or not, it fills our bank account every year. That’s a result you can measure.”

The Blessing will be administered en masse rather than individually to avoid the scuffles that marred last year’s ceremony.

“There was a rumor the regs that got blessed first got more oomph than the later ones,” Ephesians said. “Next thing we knew, divers at the back of the line were about killing each other to get to the front. We had to replace a bunch of pews and three stained-glass windows.”

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May 6, 2016 · 6:00 am

Blacktip Island Braces For Booby Days

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The dried surface of Blacktip Island’s booby pond will be the site of Sunday’s Booby Days race celebrating the Caribbean island’s resident booby bird population. (photo courtesy of Sula Beakins)

The first weekend in May brings the annual Booby Days to Blacktip Island, celebrating the island’s most numerous and most popular residents, the goofy-footed booby birds.

“People come from all around the globe to see these birds,” said Sula Beakins, Blacktip Booby Benevolence League president. “They’re Blacktip Island’s life blood.

“There’s only about 100 people here, but there’s thousands of boobies,” Beakins said. “There was even a push a few years back to rename Blacktip ‘Booby Island,’ but the island council thought that’d give potential visitors the wrong impression.”

As ever, the weekend’s highlight will be Sunday’s race across the island’s dried central pond, to the booby rookery and back again.

“It’s tougher than it looks, and dangerous,” said 2015 winner Edwin Chub. “That mud’s a dried crust on top of sharp ironshore. It looks flat, but there’s all kinds of cavities and crevasses underneath.

“We race in the traditional manner, with tennis rackets strapped to our feet,” Chub said. “We also have to fight our way through a line of folks dressed as frigate birds. It’s a bit like ‘sharks and minnows,’ just stinkier.”

“The nesting boobies’ll peck king hell out of racers on the other side,” Beakins said. “But that’s added incentive to hightail it back.”

Public health officials require all participants to wear full-face respirators to guard against inhaling any dried booby pond dust.

“In the rainy season that pond’s liquid, but there’s damn-little water in it,” said Public Health Director Stoney MacAdam. “That’s generations of dried-up rotted vegetation, dead fish and bird poop. There’s diseases out there that don’t have names yet.”

Participants are also required to tie a long rope to their waist to facilitate body recovery should they fall.

“You go down out there, you’re history,” MacAdam said. “And ain’t no one going out to get you.”

Other weekend activities include a mackerel rundown cook off, a booby-petting booth for children and the ever-popular soused herring-eating contest.

“We serve up raw herring, just like a booby would eat it, but with diced onions,” Beakins said. “Whoever eats the most in a minute, keeps it down for five minutes and hasn’t got food poisoning in four hours wins the coveted Booby Prize.”

The celebration is sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control.

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April 29, 2016 · 6:53 am

Back Breaker Integrated Weight Tourney Comes to Blacktip Island

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One of the Back Breaker competitor’s gear, rigged with a 30-year-old brass regulator to add extra weight to his rig. (photo courtesy of Catalina Luxfer)

Blacktip Island this week will host the five-day Back Breaker 2016 Integrated Weight Throwdown, with anonymous competitors vying to maim divemasters across the small Caribbean island. The winner will be determined by the number of divemasters injured and severity of those injuries.

“It’s like a traveling Fight Club for out of shape, passive-aggressive scuba divers,” Back Breaker organizer Catalina Luxfer said. “Divemasters are always telling us to dive with less weight. It’s so judgemental.

“This is payback,” Luxfer said. “We dive with however much weight we want, and we won’t be shamed into wearing less. They hurt our feelings; we hurt their backs.”

Back Breaker contestants say strategy is simple.

“The trick’s to make the BC look light, but still pack it chock-full of lead,” competitor Virgil Cracken said. “Then you tell the DM you just had surgery, and could they please lift your gear out of the water for you.

“You should see their eyes bug out when they start the lift,” Cracken said. “I tore up three backs and two elbows in the last tourney. I use my old Dacor 900 first stage just to add another eight pounds to my gear.”

Per Throwdown rules, divemasters are not told the competition is taking place until the end of the final day. Competitors will dive one day at each resort to allow equal access to all divemasters.

Injured dive staff will be examined by physicians and given x-rays and M.R.I.s to determine extent of injuries so points can be awarded accordingly.

“You score if one of your weight pockets slips out and crushes a divemaster’s toes, too,” Luxfer said. “Eighteen to 20 pounds per pocket’s a good target. Any heavier, it’s tough to disguise the bulk.”

Contestants will be disqualified if they drop below 100 feet/30 meters of depth.

“We can’t have a repeat of last year’s cock-up in Palau,” Luxfer said. “A guy with 32 pounds had a BCD inflator valve failure. He was just, WOOSH! Straight down the wall before anyone could say ‘boo.’”

Blacktip Island dive staff, alerted to the clandestine tournament, were unconcerned.

“Honestly, these bozos’ll be hard to tell from our regular guests,” Eagle Ray Divers divemaster Alison Diesel said. “I mean, everybody wears 16, 18 pounds these days. Some dude last week had 22. And he was skinny, with no wetsuit.”

An award ceremony for contestants and divemasters is slated for Friday evening. Winners receive a dive flag tattoo. Injured dive staff receive free drinks, Percocet prescriptions and titanium spinal implants.

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April 22, 2016 · 7:23 am

Blacktip Islanders To Choose, Punish Community Scapegoat Saturday

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Blacktip Island’s annual scapegoat will be buried chest deep on the Eagle Ray Cove beach Saturday to atone for the collective misdeeds of the island’s residents. (photo courtesy Ginger Bass)

Blacktip Island residents will celebrate William Shakespeare’s birthday Saturday with the annual Choosing of the Scapegoat festival on the Eagle Ray Cove beach.

The scapegoat, chosen for offenses against fellow residents during the past year, will be buried up to the chest, recreating the final scene in Shakespeare’s ‘Titus Andronicus,’ where Aaron is partially buried as punishment for his crimes.

“When the island was first populated, the bickering settlers about killed each other,” island historian Smithson Altschul said. “‘Titus’ was a popular play at the time, and locals used the ending as a model for how to maintain social order throughout the year.

“They’d let bygones be bygones until Shakespeare’s birthday, then half-bury the biggest troublemaker and let the land crabs pick at him,” Altschul said. “The rest got a fresh start, transgression-wise. It was barbaric, but it held the community together.”

The contemporary scapegoating is nowhere near as brutal, organizers said.

“Back in the day, they left the scapegoat planted for days,” said the former-Reverend Jerrod Ephesians, festival chair. “Now we just leave them in a few hours, laugh at them and call all our sins absolved. And we cut out the crabs.

“We bury the ‘goat chest deep on the beach and wait for the tide to come in,” Ephesians said. “It’s kind of a time-out corner to think about what we’ve done. The ‘goat’s there for us all.”

The Choosing has become a family event on the island.

“It’s a teaching moment for the kids,” island resident Chrissy Graysby said. “It shows them what happens when you gossip and lie and cheat and steal. Now, those are the traditional island pastimes, but the Choosing gets all that negativity out of the community. It’s catharsis, you know. We’re sipping rum, but we can feel the pain.”

“No one knows who the scapegoat is until the final vote. If there’s a tie, both, or all, get buried,” resident Lee Helm said. “April on Blacktip’s a bit like, Yuletide what with everyone being overly nice to make up for the rest of the year.

“The land crabs still cause problems, but Jerrod has small children there to shoo them away,” Helm said. “For the most part. Dermott Bottoms lost an eyebrow to a crab last year, but he had it coming.”

Island youngsters are also kept busy with multiple rounds of Pin the Moustache on the Scapegoat. Other family-friendly activities include a Shakespearean sonnet contest, a Hamlet soliloquy hip-hop off, crab jugglers and stalls selling codlings, carbonadoes, cakes and ales.

As ever, there is intense unofficial wagering about who the scapegoat will be.

“My money’s on Dermott in a repeat,” Graysby said. “Though, as rough of a year as it’s been, people just might vote Jack Cobia in since he’s the mayor.”

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April 15, 2016 · 5:46 am

Psychoanalysts Hijack Blacktip Island Bird Watching Tournament

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A Blacktip Island brown booby, diagnosed with bipolar disorder by visiting mental health professionals on island for the weekend’s pro-am bird watching tournament. (Photo courtesy of Sula Beakins)

Blacktip Island’s annual bird identification tournament turned into an avian psychology exercise Friday morning when more than a dozen mental health professionals, who had misinterpreted the tournament’s name in an advertisement, stormed the registration table.

“It read, ‘Blacktip Island Pro-Am Bird ID Tournament,’” said visiting psychiatrist Carl Skinner. “The assumption was it was a tongue-in-cheek continuing education junket mocking antiquated Freudian structural analysis. You know, the old Id-Ego-Superego triumvirate.

“I spent days coming up with ways to quantify Freudian takes on tropical birds,” Skinner said. “To get here and find out I just read it wrong, well, it made me angry.”

Tournament organizers, faced with irate therapists, opted to run an impromptu avian analysis contest concurrent with the planned Pro-Am.

“Oh, the looks some of them got in their eyes when we explained the mistake,” Blacktip Island Audubon Society president Sula Beakins said. “When the third one started twitching, we told them to go ahead with their diagnosing, or whatever it is they do, and we’d come up with t-shirts for the winners.

“We agreed to sign off on their con-ed units, too,” Beakins said. “Their accrediting bodies won’t recognize us, but they’ll be off the island before they discover that.”

Tournament participants are excited to test their diagnostic skills on the island’s birds.

“Psychoanalysis supposedly only works with humans,” psychologist Anna Fromm said. “But that’s so exclusionary. People, birds, they’re subjects, each with a distinct personality.’

“We’re observing them and interacting with them like we would any other patient,” Fromm said. “And, not surprisingly, our findings jibe with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classifications.”

Some therapists started early to get a jump on the competition.

“Blacktip Island’s famous for mental instability,” said pet psychologist Siggy Young. “So far the birds here have proved every bit as bat shit as the people.

“Since dawn I’ve found two bipolar boobies, three night herons talking to invisible friends, and multiple ground doves with generalized depression and panic attacks,” Young said. “There’s also a big grackle down at the Last Ballyhoo with textbook antisocial personality disorder. If we can help any of these birds live happier lives, our trip wasn’t wasted.”

Most competitors, however, are have taken a more relaxed approach after their initial shock.

“We’ll get laughed at back home,” Skinner said. “But, end of the day, it’s a free tropical vacation. And if this works out, next year we may branch out to psychoanalyze fish, too.”

The American Psychological Association refused to comment on the tournament and had not returned The Blacktip Times’ calls as of press time.

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April 8, 2016 · 8:57 am

Blacktip Island Dive Op Installs Roller Coaster Bow Seats

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A state-of-the-art RCS-5000 roller coaster seat at Blacktip Island’s  Club Scuba Doo prior to installation on a Scuba Doo Divers dive boat’s bow. (photo courtesy of Dusso Janladde)

 

Blacktip Island Club Scuba Doo this week installed roller coaster seating on the bows of its dive boats so guests can safely ride there in rough seas.

“People always want to sit on the bow, even when the waves get gnarly,” Scuba Doo Divers dive manager Finn Kiick said. “And they get cranked when we make them come back.

“With these new seats, though, they can have a thrill ride going to and from the dive sites,” Kiick said. “We strap ‘em in and let ‘em scream.”

The seats are amusement-park grade RCS-5000s, standard on most modern high-speed rides, with padded lap-bar restraints to keep riders in place.

“These jobs will take a three-meter wave at 15 knots – about four and a half gees of force – and stay latched,” Club Scuba Doo general manager Polly Parrett said. “Basically, a wave could smack you unconscious and you wouldn’t come out of the chair.

“We do charge extra for bow seating,” Parrett said. “But guests are happy to pay. There’s even occasional fisticuffs over who gets those few choice spots.”

Some industry experts, however, worry the seating may have a negative long-term impact.

“Those things are a disaster waiting to happen,” said scuba watchdog Wade Soote. “One broken neck or one drowning, and Blacktip’s tourism product will have a permanent black eye.

“Last week a guest had to spend the night on the bow when Finn lost the key to the lap bar,” Soote said. “And what happens after a few salt-water drenchings and a rusty latch fails?”

Scuba Doo touted the chairs’ reliability.

“On the mondo-wave days, we make people wear full scuba,” Kiick said. “Folks usually opt for that on their own, so it’s not a huge deal. And we have an awesome cutting torch of the bar ever gets stuck again.”

The bow seats have also received an unexpected endorsement from the International Coaster Enthusiasts roller coaster club.

“It’s a different ride every time, what with the seas always changing,” ICE president Busch Matterhorn said. “You don’t get that kind of unpredictability on a static metal tube ‘coaster. We had seasoned old timers squealing like little girls today.”

The resort offers new Bow Rider Diver specialty courses via most certifying agencies.

“It’s a pretty straightforward course,” Kiick said. “We blast you through a quick class, then do mask clears and out-of-air drills in the chair at full throttle. NAUI divers have to do the skills with only a mask and snorkel. PADI divers just pay double.”

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