RETAILING Celebrate “Blue Friday 5.0” and Leave Black Friday at The Mall – by Gil Zeimer, ScubaStoryteller.com and Zeimer.com, San Rafael, CA
A PADI diver since 1985, Gil has authored more than 300 scuba articles. His first book, “Scuba Storyteller: Mostly Humorous Diving Tales by an Addicted AquaNut,” will be available by 11/1 and debut at DEMA.
Did you know that scuba diving’s popularity and Black Friday both date back to the 1950s? While the “Sea Hunt” TV series, star- ring Lloyd Bridges, and “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” documen- taries opened up the underwater world
1879, he called it “the most felicitous meeting of land and sea in the world.” Though it’s renowned for its beauty, above and below the waves, ten divers from the two dive clubs braved the chilly Point Lobos waters, rough seas, and varying visibility for the second annual Blue Friday in 2022. Their logbooks noted encounters with rockfish, kelpfish, and sheepshead. Sadly, purple sea urchins have populated the preserve, and there were small urchin barrens in the deeper water. The Third Blue Friday: High Tides and Churned Up Water: For 2023, we heavily promoted Blue Friday on ScubaRadio.com, California Diving News, and other media outlets with the hope that more divers would participate in more locations.
to millions, a surge of post-holiday shoppers and tourists in Philadelphia led police to coin the phrase “Black Friday.” Today, divers are getting wet globally, while the absurdity of fighting the crowds in the USA to find the year’s best bar- gains is taking place the Friday after Thanksgiving, I propose go diving instead! But hold onto your shopping bag. Now in its fifth year,
“Blue Friday” is gaining more trac- tion as a healthy alternative to Black Friday shopping insanity, and its slo- gan is “Don’t Shop. Dive.” The First Blue Friday – The Birth of a New Holiday Tradi- tion: Since 2021, the Marin Scuba Club and the Dive Club of Silicon Valley, both in Northern California, have been embracing “Blue Friday,” which was the brainchild of Kenneth Carter of Mill Valley, CA.
Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other ideas. On the Monterey Penin- sula, Jim Van Gogh, a member of the Dive Club of Silicon Valley, reported: “My buddy and I ascertained that the conditions were less than stellar. The tide was very high tide, with a big swell. The water was very churned up, aerated, and dirty. So, we bailed on the dive and just hiked.” But Kerwin Lewis, a Marin Scuba
Ken Carter & Son
Club member living on the Big Island of Hawai’i, and Natalie and Shannon Shuman, American co-owners of Sun Divers Roatan, all enjoyed warm weather and excellent visibility. The Fourth Blue Friday: Finally, A Global Finprint: Even though the weather negatively affected diving for Blue Friday 2023 in California, some of its positive news spread to other parts of the globe. The result? It was embraced by more people in more places than ever before: In the southwestern Pacific, Terry and Cathie Cummins of Dive Queensland spent Blue Friday in the Coral Sea, Aus- tralia, on Mike Ball Dive Expeditions’ Spoilsport to dive Ash- more Reef and Raine Island. In the mid-Pacific, Kerwin Lewis chartered a boat with Blue Wilderness Dive Adventures out of Kawaihae Harbor in Hawai’i. He exclaimed, “Ideal diving conditions. Surface temperature 83º, water temperature 80º. Visibility was the
He said, “I was inspired by REI closing its stores the day after Thanksgiving. That’s why the members of both of these clubs have been giving back to the Earth by skipping plastic consumerism and going diving at Point Lobos State Natural Reserve in Carmel-by-the-Sea, within the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.” “It started as an excuse to take my son, who had just gotten his Open Water certification, diving in California waters throughout the year,” added Ken. “I woke up one morning and booked all of the reservations at Point Lobos in 2021. Because we had such a great time with excellent visibility and virtually no other divers the first year, we decided to launch a second annual trip the next year.” The Second Blue Friday: Varying Visibility at Point Lobos: When Robert Louis Stevenson lived in Monterey in
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