Divers Gone Wild !
Posted By Paul Kotik on 24 April 2007
Fort Liquordale, FLORIDA - The 11th Annual Ocean Fest consumer dive show rapped- I mean, wrapped late - very late - into the night of Sunday, April 22. I'm listed in stable condition in a distant suburban residential setting out by the edge of the vast Everglades, but have had very little contact with my fellow Festers and so can only hope for the best...
After a bit of somber reflection I've accepted the proposition that my reputation is already damaged beyond repair and can suffer no more, and so I'll now confess that I'd never been to Ocean Fest before this year. That's right, never - but not for want of trying. It's just that my beloved Fort Lauderdale, in springtime, is an obstacle course of licentious temptations. I was never able to surmount the beaches' final line of defense: the howling, pounding, writhing, 180-proof bunker system of fortified bars, clubs and joints known as Las Olas.
But I digress. That, without having yet begun. Watch me now -
Cordon off the finest section of white sugar beach, the giant palms swaying over brilliant turquoise Atlantic waters in a perfect tropical sea breeze. Invite over 100 of the top players in the dive, dive services and tourism industries. Check. Throw up a postmodern linear tent city of cool white linens, liberally scatter Weeki Wachi mermaids, and construct a perfectly functional swimming pool by a monster sound stage framed by towers of amps, speakers and projector lamps. Yes, the dive show where you can actually go diving! Light fuse and retire to a safe distance...
That's what Ocean Fest organizer Neal Watson does every year. How to characterize Neal Watson? One unpacks the Louis XIV beryllium service from the hyperbole cabinet, and begins with the tentative sort: The Dean of Underwater...the Godfather of .... A top-shelf PR operative from New York City whispered her pet name for Neal into my salty ear: "...DIVE GOD, as he prefers to be called, heh-heh-heh...". If there's anybody on this Earth who knows more about diving and the dive world than Neal Watson does, well, that person must be stashed away in a Guantanamo-within-a-Guantanamo. Neal Watson is the real thing, baby.
So, yes! A consumer dive show on a Fort Lauderdale beach during Spring Break in perfect subtropical weather would pretty much be just as Hollywood would do it. Only more so. Hollywood, my dear ones, is simply never equal to the imagination and verve of a brigade of divers. The stuff that went on at Ocean Fest - oh, no, you can't make that kind of stuff up. One surprise after another.
The only thing that didn't surprise me was the continuing dominance of freediving as the show engine, pulling the scuba and travel sectors along with its dynamism and growth trend.
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