The Buzz: Your Daily Dose Of Outdoor News

Kayaking is Today’s Buzz Of The Day

Joseph Cremona and Julian Mamo recently shattered the record for kayaking around Malta.  Malta happens to be  a small group of seven islands off the coast of Sicily (which happens to be an island off the coast of Italy).  The two shattered the previous record by a whopping two and a half hours, putting in a time of 8 hours, 29 minutes, and 20 seconds.  The previous record had stood since 2001.  Malta might be considered a small island nation, but I can almost guarantee that paddling those kayaks for 8 straight hours is no easy feat.

Here’s news of another kayaking adventure currently in the works:  Skip Ciccarelli is set to end an amazing 1,700 mile, 54 day kayaking trip on August 9th at New York’s Pier 66.  Skip’s trek is being used to raise awareness for prostate cancer, something that Skip is all to familiar with.  On August 9, 2001 Skip had his own prostatectomy after a battle with the disease.  Skip is looking to end his trip on the 7th annnniversary of this procedure.  Did I mention Skip is 60?  Let’s cheer him on and hope that he can finish this great journey!

Most of you may not be that familiar with kayaking.  One of the great resources out there happens to be The Kayak Blog.  This is more of a review site for Kayaks and rafts, but it will give you a better idea of all the possibilities that kayaking offers.  Stop by and check out the Old Town Adventure XL 160, this one’s interesting for it’s built in rudder, a feature not often found in the world of kayaking.

Once you have your kayak, you are almost ready to go.  A quick stop by Canoe & Kayak Magazine will teach you all the ins and outs of successful water navigation, as well as other equipment you may need.  Once those things are in order and you are looking for that first adventure, you may want to check out 5 Wilderness Water Trails.  It is a fun read.

Today’s Strange News Of The Day:  This one has nothing to do with the outdoors, but is a mighty strange thing.  A restaurant in Taiwan has become amazingly popular with the local guests while offering a restroom theme in it’s restaurant, so popular, in fact, that the company is planning on opening a second one.  The guests sit on toilets, eat from urinal and toilet bowl shaped dishes, and even wipe their mouths with what looks like toilet paper.  So the next time you are sitting in a restaurant and your food tastes like crap–you may just have a reason for concern…

Today’s Fishing Focus: While not quite a fish, the menacing Tropical Rock Lobster is still a pretty cool catch.  Go check out the Ikuzo Fishing blog for the photos, and if those don’t satisfy you, perhaps the Yorkey’s Knob sharks will.

Today’s Hunting Highlights: Stabley Outdoors has released a news update about a recent recall on Bowtech General bows.  If you have recently purchased a compound from Bowtech, you may want to head over to Stabley Outdoors and see what all the fuss is about.  It looks like this affects late 2007 and 2008 models of Bowtech’s General compound bow.  That’s a pretty popular model so you might want to check and see what you got.

Today’s Conservation Consortium: In 2006, President Bush signed a bill that would protect 140,000 sq. miles of ocean around the Hawaiian Islands.  This area was quickly publicized to be the biggest protected area of ocean in the world and have the strictest regulations in existance.  Two years later, it looks like things have not went as planned, as you will read in this USA Today article.

Ocean currents are still bringing an estimated 57 tons of garbage and discarded fishing gear to the 10 islands and the waters surrounding them each year. Endangered monk seals are still being snared and coral reefs smothered by discarded fishing nets. Albatrosses are still feeding on indigestible plastic and feeding it to their young.

Debris removal, meanwhile, has fallen to 35 tons a year since the islands became a monument, about a third of the 102 tons that boats and divers collected on average before that, including junk that was already there.

And the Bush administration slashed the debris cleanup budget from the $2.1 million spent in 2005, requesting only $400,000 a year through 2008.

Today’s Green Tip Of The Day: Installing water-saving showerheads or flowrestrictors on faucets couldsave you 500 to 800 gallons of extra water a month.  Less water = Smaller bill.

Today’s Blog Of The Day: Mungo says Bah! Go check it out!