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Andrew Cohen wrote: > > Which reminds me, Kent, I am going to spend October in Sitka. Know of > any good extended range (or otherwise interesting dives) there? > Andy Cohen > Andy, I'll respond back to the lists in case any of the rest of you are interested in Alaska diving. First, the conditions and habitat in Southeast Alaska are quite similar to what you will encounter in British Columbia or Puget Sound, although water will be a bit cooler. Perhaps 45-50 degrees in the summer and 29-38 in the winter. However, unlike Puget Sound and British Columbia, no real dive-tourism infrastructure exists in Alaska. That is not to say that there are no dive shops, simply that the shops are just oriented to local sport divers and commercial (urchin and abalone) divers. There are no liveaboards working in Alaska and I don't know of any dive charter boats dedicated to just diving. Consequently, the way to dive Alaska is to hook up with local divers in advance. Most local divers own their own boats (or have a dive buddy who owns a boat) so there is no local market for charter operations. And most tourists tend to want to fish, watch whales or sea kayak rather than dive. Like anywhere else in the world, the best place to find divers is through the local dive shop. If you are in any town with a dive shop, you will have no trouble finding folks to dive with, but they are unlikely to be techie types. It is possible to hire a sportfishing charter boat to do a dive charter. There are hundreds of little sportfishing charter boats in Alaska. But, you will have to have a divemaster with you or hire one to be legal. And, the skipper may not really have a clue about where to take you or how to run a boat with divers in the water. So, you've got to know exactly where you want to go and you'll probably have to do all the staging of deco tanks etc. yourself. I don't really recommend this unless you really know the waters well yourself. Now, for Sitka. I've only been there briefly and only got in a couple of shore dives. In SE Alaska you will generally find that the closer you are to the open Pacific the better the vis gets better and the marine life gets more varied and dense. I've dove along the Pacific shore of Yakobi Island about 100 miles north of Sitka and the visibility was better than 100'. Best diving I've done anywhere in the world including Belize, Costa Rica and Brazil. When you get into the inside waters of SE Alaska, the vis is usually much worse due to all the glacial silt and freshwater runoff. Did a dive in Glacier Bay once, the vis was about 6 inches. In Juneau it ranges from around 10-60' depending on the season, winter is better. Sitka Sound faces the open Pacific and is the surrounding waters have fabulous sport diving. I don't know if there are any good wrecks near Sitka (there are several excellent wrecks near Juneau in 100-200' of water by the way). But the continental shelf drops off to about 1000 fathoms in front of Sitka Sound so you can certainly do extended range diving. However, you will find that most of the divers around Sitka are your basic single tank sport divers who stick within sport diving limits and mostly obsess with collecting king crab, abalone and other seafood. There is one decent dive shop in Sitka with with rental equipment. I think they only have air, not nitrox or other mixed gas. You are unlikely to find anything but single AL80s and steel 72s for rent, and finding rental tanks with DIN valves will be tough. They do rent DUI CF200 drysuits though, so you can get a decent drysuit if you need one. The sea otters are re-populating the SE Alaska coast and they are cleaning out all the urchins. That means the bull kelp is coming back in force. You will now find some of the worlds best kelp diving along the Alaska coast. If you are playing tourist in Alaska, that is the sort of diving I'd recommend doing. There isn't all that much to see once you drop below about 150', it just gets darker and more barren. I believe the Abalone season is in October so most of the divers in Sitka could be out working the beds and it may be difficult to find a partner unless you're willing to go help pry abalone off rocks. The only divers I know about who are doing any extended range stuff on the outer coast are some of the state and federal fisheries biologists who are doing stock assessments and survey work. It's probably mostly state biologists now as I think NOAA is mostly using the mini-sub to do extended range work. Email me privately and I'll give you some contacts. I have heard that there is a dive shop in Craig Alaska (on Prince of Whales Island near the BC border) that has installed simple hotel rooms for visiting divers and has a mixed gas operation going. I think they do tours on their own dive boat. They are the only operation I know of that is making a stab at the dive tourism market. But, Craig is remote and difficult to get to. For example, it's cheaper and faster for me to fly from Juneau to Seattle than it is to fly from Juneau to Craig and it would be a 36 hour trip one-way from Juneau on the ferry. I have not been there so I can't comment on the operation but the diving around Craig is reported to be spectacular. They also have some fairly unexplored caves if you want to try cave diving in 40 degree water. There are also dive shops in Ketchikan and 2 in Juneau. Here is a list of the shops that I know about in SE Alaska. There are also a couple shops in Anchorage but don't bother with diving up there, they have massive tides and mostly shallow mud flats. If anyone wants to know about wreck diving around Juneau, give me a private email. Regards, ---------------------------------------- Kent Lind klind@al*.ne* (or) Juneau, Alaska kent.lind@no*.go* ---------------------------------------- SOUTHEAST ALASKA DIVE SHOPS Alaska Diving Service Ketchikan, Alaska 907-225-4667 Craig's Dive Center Craig, Alaska 800-380-3483 Southeast Diving and Sports Sitka, Alaska 907-747-8279 Channel Dive Center Juneau, Alaska 907-586-3666 The Scuba Tank Juneau, Alaska 907-789-5115 -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send list subscription requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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