What's going on with AquaticDiscovery.com?

So many of you have noticed the website is frequently down for short periods of time and various services seem to go on and offline at will.

In this day and age of cloud computing, 99.999% up times and co-located technologies why is this happening?

Quite simply our web hosting company we've been with 2002 was recently absorbed and, of course, everything seems to be breaking a lot of the time. We've tried to resolve things amicably but apparently reliability and customer service are not virtues the new web hosting parent company pride.

So over the next week we'll be migrating to a new hosting provider with a proven track record of reliability...EC2 here we come!

Julian, you're famous!

Can you believe it?!?!

Our own Julian is currently the top-rated photo on Whites Dive Unit website!

Check it our and vote for him at: whitesdiving.com

If that's not enough you can rent this red devil for Divemaster Guided Tours!

ooops...server crash

For those of you who haven't noticed the weirdness with Aquaticdiscovey.com, the online store and email then great! For everyone else, ooops...we're sorry!

Our primary server went down last week amidst an odd, head-scratching set of circumstances. But, to add insult to injury, our backup server melted down the next day AND our T1 connection went down the day after that.

Keep your fingers crossed that we got about 5 years worth of IT problems out of the way in 72hrs!

So, if you sent an email and haven't received a response please send it again... Thanks!

What's a scuba valet?

Congratulations to Julian and Todd for becoming PADI Divemasters over the summer!

One of their first acts as PADI professionals was to create the new Divemaster Guided and Valeted dives. Divers can enjoy the ease and comfort of having a Divemaster lead small groups on two fun shore dives. Divemasters will select a dive site based on your desires, conditions and level of experience. You'll enjoy two guided dives where your Divemaster will point out many of the creatures you might otherwise have missed like octopus, rays, nudibranchs and so much more. To top off the experience your Divemaster will even valet your equipment up and down the beach and help you get your fins on. Diving so easy and fun you'll forget it's shore diving!

For more info see our Divemaster Guided Dives page

What happend to "Nitrox-while-you-wait" ?!?!

Well, we made a small mistake when calculating flowrates which resulted in the wrong supporting systems to be speced and built. While we wait for hardware to be built we just have our regular 1-2day turn around on nitrox.

Damn you math, you used to be cool!

Jeremy becomes a PADI Scuba Instructor!

This past weekend was the PADI IE (Instructor Exam) which is the last step to becoming instructor. Our own Jeremy Schrader passed with flying colors...way to go!

Jeremy started diving through the Santa Clara University Scuba Club's Open Water Class in 2000. While he didn't dive very much during his undergrad years because of his rigorous SCU crew team rowing schedule (plus all those pesky mechanical engineering classes!) he was president of the SCU Scuba Club his senior year and became a PADI Divemaster in 2002.

In the last 7 years he's logged 100's of dives all over the world, assisted with 100's of student divers, helped rebuild boats, been instrumental in everything from breathing-air systems to marine engines and been an anchor around the shop. All this and he still found the time to hold down a 60+hr a week engineering job and stay happily married...wow!

Now, as an instructor, he has another job but it's the best one on earth: he gets to take new divers into the water for the first time, sharing his vast knowledge and experience while showing them all the cool stuff that makes scuba diving awesome!

Do you want to become an instructor too? It's just five easy steps:
1) Dive a lot
2) Become a PADI Divemaster
3) Dive a lot more with divers and student divers
4) Take the Instructor Development Course
5) Pass the PADI Instructor Exam

Nitrox-while-you-wait!

On April 3rd we'll officially release our new Nitrox automated blending system (one of our patent pending inventions).

Here's why it's awesome:

1. We can now blend ANY percentage from 21-40% in about 20mins.
2. We don't have to empty your tank before filling it.
   
3. O2 clean tanks are not required (if your tanks are already O2 clean, they won't be contaminated)
4. It's computer-controlled for unattended operation and precise blending.
5. With the rising price of oxygen we can still keep our nitrox fill prices low: $7 for any blend!
   

What's this mean to you?
Let's say you have a tank with 800psi of 31.8% nitrox and you want it filled at 36%. No problem, come back in 20mins and you're tank will be full @ 36%.

addicted.to.shirt.woot.com?

Haven't heard of Shirt.Woot.Com?
Basically it's a novelty t-shirt company that sells a different shirt every day (just one per day).

What makes Shirt.Woot fun is "the derby": Woot puts up a weekly theme and users submit original designs and other users vote on them. The top 3 designs are made into shirt that are offered Friday, Saturday and Sunday of that week.

This Weeks Derby is: THE SEA

So, if you haven't been to Woot and want to look stylish like our crew members then get on the Woot!

Shirt.Woot.Com

New Weekend Hours!

To avoid a mutiny, we've changed the weekend hours to noon-6pm (one hour later on both ends).

Why was there going to be a mutiny? Because the crewmember working in the shop on any given weekend day can't come diving and be back in time to open the store!

We're buddies in and out of the water!

Some people (notably one instructor from another shop) have expressed disbelief that our crew members, instructors and divemasters have great chemistry in AND out of the shop.

So... here are photos from last week's crew BBQ at Julian's house (complete with a healthy dose of Julian's Danish spiced wine, youtube, and "that's what she said"-jokes!).

As a side note, if Julian ever invites you to a bbq, go! Homemade mango salsa, hummus, delicious steak..... It's good enough to turn a vegetarian into a carnivore.

Spring Break 2009 trip?

Don't worry, we haven't forgotten about spring break 2009!

Here's the deal: We usual book discount group airfare and then pass that savings on to our customers. We've been going back and forth with several airlines (Continental, Taca, etc) and none will sign a contact...seriously, wtf?

Also, we should all start using our airline miles before some-thing-bad-happens and we loose them all!

SO, we're trying something new this year: We've picked a destination that American, Continental, Delta and others fly to and we're going to let everyone book their own air travel (using their mileage or from your favorite website). We'll be organizing the rooms, meals and diving.

The trip will cost between $700-$1200 depending on the airfare you pick, total (air-meals-room-diving for a week).

Full trip detail will be available on monday (1/19)...check your email or aquaticdiscovery.com

Happy New Year!

What's gonna be new in 2009?

Well, we have a lot of new stuff that'll be happening in 2009, let's take a look:

New "While You Wait" Nitrox blending/filling: We'll definitely be the only dive shop in the area and depending on what our patent attorneys find out maybe the only dive shop in the world to have a system that will automatically blend partial filled nitrox tanks to any mix a customer wants while you wait!

More Specialties and Advanced Classes: One of the biggest suggestions we've heard this year is "you need to offer more classes like Search & Recovery and Equipment Service/Maintenance." When we launch the new education section of the website you'll see 24 new specialties being offered along with many more openwater, advanced and rescue classes!

Dive Club: We've wanted to put together a different kind of dive club that's more about "the diving" and less about "the club". In 2009 we'll roll our Sunday and Thursday night dives into a social networking group so you can network and go diving with other divers while still feeling the support of our worldclass dive staff. Of course, it'll be free...we like free. :-)

Divemaster-Led Dives: For a small fee you can enjoy the safety and comfort of a Divemaster leading you and your buddy through the underwater wonderland right in our backyard! Your dive master will help you get in and out of the water, navigate and, of course, show you all the neat little creatures you've never noticed before!

Underwater Scooter Tours: Experience the ease of boat diving and the simplicity of shore diving with an Underwater Diver Propulsion Vehicle-- or scooter. Cruise along for an hour as our Divemaster navigates you through several miles of pristine diving!

Have a suggestion? Let us know, we're always looking for new, fun ways to get people involved in diving!

Point Lobos!

Our post turkey-day trip to Point Lobos was a lot of fun and we were lucky enough to have nice conditions (35+' of visibility) before the weather hit.

Check out the photos in our photos sections...underwater photos will be posted soon.

The NEXT Point Lobos trip is planned for Saturday Jan 3rd!

Free Stickerson Election Day!

Our first ever Free Sticker on Election day was a success and we hope to see lots of the little red and white "diver down" stickers replacing Obama and McCain bumper stickers this year!

Channel Islands Sea Bass Video

On the San Diego Wreck Diving Trip we were fortunate enough to see a Sixgill shark so what could out do that?

A 100+ pound Black Sea Bass hunting Halibut!

Believe me, a fish the size of smart car darting around is a very humbling experience (imagine swimming around the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Blue Water tank when they're feeding the Tuna!). Jeremy, Julian and Paul were lucky enough to catch this rarely seen behavior on video!



You know what...this Black Sea Bass is still a juvinile!

See all our videos (in higher quality) on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/AquaticDiscovery

Channel Islands Trip Recap (better late then never...right?)

Okay, so we've been getting a little behind on our blogging; nonetheless Channel Islands was great! The crew, of course, was excellent and the food was hearty but what set it apart from last year was we did some really unique dive sites.

Photos are now up for your perusal on the photo section of aquaticdiscovery.com

Video will be up shortly (hold on to your hats!).

PADI blogged about our blog!

In today's blog post on PADI's blog Aquatic Discovery's San Diego trip was a topic of discussion. Although the PADI community might have questions about whether we really saw a six-gill shark the divers on the trip all know what they saw!

...I wonder what the divers on this week's Channel Islands trip will see!

decorate our door!

The old boring door to the "back of shop" has been upgraded to a new fun door!

...so come by and decorate our door!

San Diego Wreck Trip: Photos are up!

Well the first day was pretty exciting with the sixgill shark sighting and all. The next two days we spent poking around the Yukon and Ruby-E which was beautiful. The Yukon is now totally covered club-tipped anemones and several very health group of Metridiums. We were treated to a great show by a harbor seal chasing fish in, out and through the wrecks...

Check out all photos at: http://www.aquaticdiscovery.com/photos/7.31.08/

San Diego Wreck Trip: Day 1

Sixgill Shark!

Our first day was quite eventful! We dove the wreck of the Lazy Days and were treated to an encounter with an 8' Sixgill slowly cruising the along the reef. We followed him for a few minutes before letting him be and heading back to the wreck. Uber-cool!