[PSUBS-MAILIST] Amazing Day

Hi All ! I just had a amazing day yesterday. I went up to Santa Barbara to do a couple of things and while I was up there I decided to go look at this sub a friend of mine had told me is on display at the maritime museum at the harbor. I found the sub, I believe it was called pioneer II it was used in the 60's and 70's in the Santa Barbara channel to check on submerged cables and also for the oil companies. I will try and go back up and get some pics. It is a two man sub with lots of room inside with a very large acrylic viewing dome, probably 3ft diameter dome with safety dome on the outside. The dome is not a full hemisphere. So anyway it just so happened that at the harbor they were having the harbor and sea food festival ( lots of great sea food!!) . A great day with lots of sunshine ( lots of nice scenery !!) All kinds of booths were in attendance, Coast Guard, Channel Islands marine sanctuary folks, Fish and Game, National parks rangers, And most importantly the Santa Barbara City college Marine Technology School. Also there were fishermen selling fresh fish, lobster (I bought 2), crabs and I met a guy selling oysters. Since I know that oysters are generally farmed I was curious how and where he was able to do it. It turned out that he leases 170 acres of ocean just off the Hope ranch just south of Santa Barbara the only such lease in California. He said the original person who obtained the lease had to go through 7 government agencies to get the lease. The original guy also tried to raise oysters but found that they were contaminated from faulty sewage treatment release from the city of Santa Barbara who he subsequently sued and won and forced the city to correct the problem. He leases the 170 acres for $140.00 per year.

Channel Island Sanctuary - So I got to talking to the sanctuary folks and they were showing me the newly designated areas around the island that are now "preserves" , ok that's cool, as I inquired further he proceeded to inform me that no one is allowed to go there. You cannot park your boat in that area, you certainly cannot scuba dive or skin dive there. "Can anyone go there?", I queried Well yes, he said I can go there, you see I'm a Naturalist if you wanted to go there you would have to go with a Naturalist like myself . At this point I felt my blood pressure shooting to about 10 bars. I was able to contain myself however and just stood there saying uh uh, uh uh. I had to leave or there would have been a murder. I went down a couple of booths to the Fish and Game and informed them of what this guy was spewing out, thank God they said he had no idea what he was talking about. I returned to my "naturalist" friend and set him straight after my blood pressure returned to ambient pressure.