Cozumel, Key West sunscreen & Florida’s Nasty Nine

Online   Feb 20, 2019

Scuba Shack Weekly – Volume 2, Number 8

Welcome to the latest edition of Scuba Shack Weekly. Hoping that you are finding this weekly update interesting and informative. If you have any suggestions please let me know.

It was certainly busy here at the shop this past weekend. We are thrilled that so many people are interested in scuba diving. The gang is also busy in the service shop getting everyone’s gear checked out for the upcoming dive season. Joel and 16 Scuba Shack divers will be heading to Cozumel on Saturday. We hear that our friends from Dive On It in Rhode Island left our team a little present at Blue Angel. Thanks, Chris and Allison.

In December I wrote a little piece about sunscreen. Most sunscreens have ingredients that are extremely harmful to coral. Last year Hawaii banned certain types of sunscreen and I have read about more places as well. The latest location is Key West, home to a large barrier reef system. Ignorance is no excuse for continuing to use sunscreen with oxybenzone and octinoxate. Here is a link to an article about the Key West ban from Sport Diver.

While I am speaking about Florida, I recently came across a report published by the Ocean Conservancy about the “Nasty Nine” biggest threats to Florida’s coasts. Click here to read the post.

The newsroom article is a quick summary of the report. There is also a link to view the entire report. There is some great information about Florida in the report. Glad to have read it before we head to Key Largo in April.

We are expecting a big turn-out for our Project Aware specialty course. Next week, I will dedicate most of Scuba Shack Weekly to fill you in on how it went.

Thanks for tuning in,

Jeff