Friday, October 5, 2007
What a Difference a Year Makes
Oceanblue Divers just celebrated the club's First Anniversary. Quite the gala it was.
Much has happened in a year. So much. Much I will always miss having missed out on.
You see, when first I stumbled across the Oceanblue Divers' website I must guiltily confess I was dismissive. I had been talking to a friend about whether there were environmentally minded dive groups. Whether there were divers concerned enough about the waters they enjoy to take some action toward the protection of them. So I went a-googling. "Scuba Ecology New York" One of the first hits was Oceanblue Divers.
"Eh. A month old?" I thought, "Well... mission statement sounds just right," I signed up to the website so I'd get the email updates on the goings on. The first actual meetup I remember seeing an invitation to was at that bowling alley in Port Authority. Great Lebowski forgive me, but I hate bowling. I ignored it.
Mostly I thought a month-old organization, no matter how well-intentioned, would be a flash in the pan. Wow, was I wrong. Very, very wrong.
In a year's time the club has neither petered out, nor gained only a few dozen divers from the New York area, but rather it has gained a thousand. A thousand divers from all over the country who care about the sorts of things that need to be cared about, who wanted to meet one another and to discuss the issues which need discussion.
Over the course of one year Oceanblue has booked a half-dozen flights to as close as the Caribbean and to as distant as the other side of Planet Earth. There have been just as many little, local trips out to good, ole' Dutch Springs (some wanted to arrange a plane there, too, but Michael Feld demanded that some nonsense called a carbon footprint didn't warrant a 75 mile flight). We have gotten the opportunity to see the interesting and important film Sharkwater well before the US premiere. We've got a terrific regular bar with bartenders who make one hell of a Greyhound and where, most importantly, we meet once a month to laugh with old friends and to make new ones.
"Laugh with old friends and to make new ones." Wow, does that sound corny. Like an after-school special or a recruitment ad for a Kool-Aid distributor. I'll have to beg your patience with the corn, because it's true.
Such a crowd of people have been attracted to the happy hours that it is hard not to leave without having made at least one new friend on any given night. The folks are cheerful and easy to laugh; even easier are they to tell their stories from all over the blue world. Converging from hundreds of different streams of life, everyone comes to talk diving. With cumulative centuries of bottom time, there are more stories among us than could be typed out in ten thousand blog postings.
We all know that divers are much, much cooler than non-divers, so we've got that in common from the get-go. Now consider that the divers at our happy hours also share an interest in not just diving, but in also protecting life beneath the surface. That's why Oceanblue Divers are that much cooler.
At the Anniversary Party we listened to a talk by Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The man spoke eloquently and passionately about the life he has dedicated to struggle against the viscous carelessness with which humans treat the sea. He spoke about the ills of shark-finning and about the crucial work Sea Shepherd does against the insufferable whaling trade. He spoke with a wildfire humor at the expense of embarrassed foes and he spoke with such a deep, personal sadness of the humiliating gaze in a dying whale's eye that one could hear hearts breaking like waves through the crowd.
The claps and cheers for this anti-Ahab were clear proof that I had been terribly mistaken to be dismissive of the gathering of this club for so much as a second. Here were a great many people who found each other through a website who share a common hobby in diving, a common hope for ecology, and a common goal in forging the two together into an instrument of change.
And just think of how many divers ain't found us yet...
If you're one of them, even if you aren't in New York, check us out. Everyone gets to The Big Apple sometime, you should try for the second anniversary. There's talk of having Poseidon himself there. Just be careful, after he gets a couple of Appletinis in him he's prone to start making prank hurricane threats to NOAA.
Much has happened in a year. So much. Much I will always miss having missed out on.
You see, when first I stumbled across the Oceanblue Divers' website I must guiltily confess I was dismissive. I had been talking to a friend about whether there were environmentally minded dive groups. Whether there were divers concerned enough about the waters they enjoy to take some action toward the protection of them. So I went a-googling. "Scuba Ecology New York" One of the first hits was Oceanblue Divers.
"Eh. A month old?" I thought, "Well... mission statement sounds just right," I signed up to the website so I'd get the email updates on the goings on. The first actual meetup I remember seeing an invitation to was at that bowling alley in Port Authority. Great Lebowski forgive me, but I hate bowling. I ignored it.
Mostly I thought a month-old organization, no matter how well-intentioned, would be a flash in the pan. Wow, was I wrong. Very, very wrong.
In a year's time the club has neither petered out, nor gained only a few dozen divers from the New York area, but rather it has gained a thousand. A thousand divers from all over the country who care about the sorts of things that need to be cared about, who wanted to meet one another and to discuss the issues which need discussion.
Over the course of one year Oceanblue has booked a half-dozen flights to as close as the Caribbean and to as distant as the other side of Planet Earth. There have been just as many little, local trips out to good, ole' Dutch Springs (some wanted to arrange a plane there, too, but Michael Feld demanded that some nonsense called a carbon footprint didn't warrant a 75 mile flight). We have gotten the opportunity to see the interesting and important film Sharkwater well before the US premiere. We've got a terrific regular bar with bartenders who make one hell of a Greyhound and where, most importantly, we meet once a month to laugh with old friends and to make new ones.
"Laugh with old friends and to make new ones." Wow, does that sound corny. Like an after-school special or a recruitment ad for a Kool-Aid distributor. I'll have to beg your patience with the corn, because it's true.
Such a crowd of people have been attracted to the happy hours that it is hard not to leave without having made at least one new friend on any given night. The folks are cheerful and easy to laugh; even easier are they to tell their stories from all over the blue world. Converging from hundreds of different streams of life, everyone comes to talk diving. With cumulative centuries of bottom time, there are more stories among us than could be typed out in ten thousand blog postings.
We all know that divers are much, much cooler than non-divers, so we've got that in common from the get-go. Now consider that the divers at our happy hours also share an interest in not just diving, but in also protecting life beneath the surface. That's why Oceanblue Divers are that much cooler.
At the Anniversary Party we listened to a talk by Captain Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. The man spoke eloquently and passionately about the life he has dedicated to struggle against the viscous carelessness with which humans treat the sea. He spoke about the ills of shark-finning and about the crucial work Sea Shepherd does against the insufferable whaling trade. He spoke with a wildfire humor at the expense of embarrassed foes and he spoke with such a deep, personal sadness of the humiliating gaze in a dying whale's eye that one could hear hearts breaking like waves through the crowd.
The claps and cheers for this anti-Ahab were clear proof that I had been terribly mistaken to be dismissive of the gathering of this club for so much as a second. Here were a great many people who found each other through a website who share a common hobby in diving, a common hope for ecology, and a common goal in forging the two together into an instrument of change.
And just think of how many divers ain't found us yet...
If you're one of them, even if you aren't in New York, check us out. Everyone gets to The Big Apple sometime, you should try for the second anniversary. There's talk of having Poseidon himself there. Just be careful, after he gets a couple of Appletinis in him he's prone to start making prank hurricane threats to NOAA.
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