NAUI’s recognition materials are designed to provide information needed by dive operators and buddies who dive with partners with disabilities. This is done by providing a document carrier and waterproof training record along with the plastic card entitled “NAUI Adaptive Scuba Diver.” The card is imprinted with the individual’s name and training information, just as are NAUI Scuba Diver certification cards. The training record is the standard NAUI Diver Training Record Form that has been printed on special waterproof paper and pre-folded to fit in the credential wallet along with the diver’s card.

The presence of a disability does not necessarily preclude a student from attaining full certification as a NAUI Scuba Diver. Often extra work with the student, equipment modifications, or use of modified methods will enable the student to successfully complete all required skills.

Information on teaching people with disabilities is available from a variety of sources. NAUI highly recommends its instructors familiarize themselves with this valuable information for such time as when they might have an opportunity to award recognition to this exciting group of enthusiastic students.

NAUI Worldwide is the oldest, second-largest and one of the most respected dive training and certifying organization in the world, and offers a full range of training programs from Skin Diver through Instructor Course Director, with dozens of specialty courses including Nitrox and Technical diving. Thousands of NAUI member instructors, dive businesses, resorts, and service centers are located in countries throughout the world. For further information on NAUI affiliated stores, resorts, and certified diving instruction, contact NAUI at (813) 628-6284 or www.naui.org.

Sport Chalet Opens New Locations
Sport Chalet, the largest specialty sporting goods retailer in the U.S., opened new stores in November in Redlands, San Bernardino County, and in Antioch between the San Francisco Bay area and Stockton.

The address for the new Redlands location is 27550 Lugonia Ave., phone (909) 335-3800. The Antioch location is at 5839 Lone Tree Way, phone (925) 777-2030. Both locations are open M-F 9:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., Sat. 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sun. 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The new Sacramento location will have a Grand Opening on December 12, 13, and 14. Their location will be 2401 Butano Drive. For more information on that Grand Opening call Sport Chalet’s toll-free number at (888) 9CHALET or visit Sport Chalet’s web site at www.sportchalet.com.

Sport Chalet is a leading operator of full service specialty sporting goods superstores operating in California for more than 40 years. The company offers over 35 services for the serious sports enthusiast, including full dive training and certification programs and scuba charters.

IUB Research Team Explores 1850 North Coast Wreck
On a foggy July night in 1850, the Frolic, a majestic Baltimore clipper en route from Hong Kong to San Francisco, collided with a rocky reef off the treacherous Mendocino, CA, coastline. The ship and its valuable cargo of Chinese household goods sank, but the door to California’s untapped North Coast and its vast reserves of redwood had swung wide open.

More than a century and a half later, a team from Indiana University Bloomington, including Charles Beeker, director of the Underwater Science Program in the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, and four IUB students, traveled across the country to direct the underwater field research on one of California’s most important Gold Rush-era shipwrecks.

Beeker and his students, Sean Bradley, Jaime Brown, Mikel Esher and Adam Gutwein, wrapped up work on a two-week underwater mapping project on August 8. The team and its findings will be featured on an hour-long History Channel documentary on the Frolic, which is scheduled to air November 11 as part of a new series, Deep Sea Detective.

The Frolic and its cargo, which was worth approximately $150,000, crashed into the Mendocino coast on July 25, 1850, at the north end of what is now the Point Cabrillo Light Station and Preserve (about 100 miles north of San Francisco). Had the Frolic arrived routinely in San Francisco, California’s North Coast might have escaped development for years. Instead, the region became a commercial hot spot and a lumberman’s dream.

Beeker, who has led several years of shipwreck research in California, served as underwater park specialist for the Frolic project and was part of a dive team that included several prominent maritime archeologists and students from both IUB and East Carolina University. Together, the team explored and mapped the remains of the Frolic from July 28 to August 8.

The team made several discoveries, including significant remains of the ship’s hull and a new (for 1850) technology that was found unassembled in the cargo section of the vessel: a troutman-type anchor that included an unusual kind of chain called “stud-link.” Beeker said that, prior to the discovery, he had no evidence that such stud construction existed before 1855. “Today, right on our 1850 Frolic, we’re rewriting maritime history,” he wrote in his daily dive journal.

Over the two weeks, the team battled the cold and remote Pacific waters, rocks and big surges, but Beeker said the conditions were far better than expected. The team hoped to complete, at most, four days of diving but were able to double that amount. “The weather has been very good for this coastline,” he said, “and we completed eight full days of diving.”

For Beeker’s students, who will continue to work on the data, video, photos and illustrations compiled at the Frolic site, it was a thrilling experience. It was also an opportunity to research a historic site that had an enormous impact on California’s culture and history. In their dive journals, which are posted at www.mcn.org/1/pointcabrillo/dailydivejrn.html, the students discussed their own involvement with the project, the challenges they faced, their overall experience, and their impressions of the local community, which was highly supportive of the team’s research efforts.

In his own journal, Beeker, a pioneer in underwater park development in Florida, California and the Caribbean, discussed his hopes for the preservation of the Frolic. He said he believes that all of the elements are in place to turn the cove where the ship is buried into an underwater state park, which would protect the site through state oversight, return actual relics or replicas, and allow visitors to experience a historic shipwreck from the same year California became a state.

To learn more about the Frolic dive project, go to www.mcn.org/1/pointcabrillo on the web.