I want to let everyone know that we are changing the venue for our dive on Saturday Jun 23, from Hendry's to Goleta Beach.  We are also going to make it an underwater cleanup dive.  As you know, the pipeline at Goleta Beach is a popular dive location, but given its proximity to the Goleta Pier it gets a lot of debris (in addition to golf balls).  There is trash and fishing paraphernalia that accumulates on the pipeline and interferes with the habitat.  Paul Weakliem and Carl Gwinn were recently approached by Boyd Grant who is the vice-president of the United Pier & Shore Anglers of California about having PDC help clean up the pipeline.

Since we often dive on the pipeline we will benefit by removing trash and fishing gear.  It will provide a more beautiful place to dive.  It will also make it a safer place by removing potential entanglement hazards.  The Pier & Shore Anglers will join our BBQ and provide the meat.  It is a great way of helping the environment and forging ties with others that use our local beaches.

The plan is to clean up the pipeline region only and stay away from the pier itself, but just in case,  we plan to close sections of the pier to fishing while we are in the water to minimize any potential hazard.  I will talk more about this at our next meeting, but the only change, other than the venue is that we should maintain strict buddy teams and make sure that everyone brings dive knifes to cut any fishing line that one may encounter underwater.