Channel Islands Divers
Recreational Scuba Club
Speakers & Newsletters 2025
January 2025
Ken Kollwitz: Diving Bonaire
CID co-founder and professional dive trip leader, Ken Kollwitz, will tell us all about one of his favorite places for warm water diving - the island of Bonaire!
February 2025
Rob Weinerth
Courtesy Dockmaster at Ventura Harbor, Rob Weinerth will give us an insider's look at the working side of the Harbor, home to some of the biggest squid fisheries in the US.
March 2025
Todd Kortte
Acclaimed underwater videographer Todd Kortte will share tips for taking your videos to the next level, and will give GroPro QR code cards to adjust your camera's settings while diving to the first 40 members attending!
April 2025
Marine photographer Mark Strickland, instructor with Blue Water Photo and Indo-Pacific specialist will be sharing amazing images - "Cocos and Dumaguete - Celebrating the Big and the Small".
May 2025
Underwater ROVs (Remote Operated Vehicles), long used for scientific and commercial work, are becoming more available to divers like us. Tyler Buckingham will tell us about Blue Robotics, and its work to bring its marine robotics devices to the recreational dive community and marine education in some local schools.
May 2025 Newsletter
June 2025
Marine conservationist Reuven Bank returns with an update on the Sunflower Star Laboratory’s work developing aquaculture methods to propagate sunflower stars (functionally extinct in California) and restore them into the kelp forest ecosystem.
June 2025 Newsletter
July 2025
UCSB doctoral candidate Jacob Schmidt will describe his detective work to uncover who dumped DDT and low-level radioactive waste off of San Pedro starting the in 1940s, and his research on the toxic legacy of the DDT and other chemicals that remain off our shores.
July 2025 Newsletter
August 2025
Long-time CID members Don and Brandee Sisting love Baja. They'll share photos and stories from their February trip to Laguna Ojo de Liebre (AKA, Scammon’s Lagoon) in Baja Sur, to see the migration of the gray whales and have up close and personal encounters with these magnificent and friendly marine behemoths.
August 2025 Newsletter
September 2025
Native Californian and botanist Ken Niessen has deep knowledge of Southern California’s native plants. For the past 22 years, he’s concentrated on bringing back the federally endangered plant species in the Channel Islands National Park. He'll be telling us about these plants, the effort to recover them, what's worked and the future.
September 2025 Newsletter
October 2025
A native of Ontario, Canada, now happily transplanted to Ventura County, CID member Dale Burrows learned to dive in quarries as a young 'un, and grew up diving in and around Niagara Falls. He'll tell us about the incredibly preserved wrecks of the Great Lakes, where thousands and thousands of vessels await the adventurous diver.
October 2025 Newsletter
November 2025
Rob began diving in 1974. Quickly deciding to become a commercial diver, he trained at a professional school down in Wilmington. By 1976 he was working for a Singapore-based company as a oilfield diver, going to depths most of us recreational divers can't begin to imagine - 445 feet! Rob started diving recreationally 5 years ago and now dives with his wife and teen-aged daughter.