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Serious about having fun? Oh, yeah. In 1985, member Jack Wade broke the world record for the longest SCUBA-supported underwater stay (80 hours and four minutes) at Fell Lake Pool in Sagamore Hills. In 1988, OURA members created the first-ever SCUBA-supported ham radio station. "We spoke to people in 44 states and seven countries," says Paul Buescher, who founded OURA in 1981. Next summer, members of the group are planning to walk across Lake Erie ... on the bottom, of course. Buescher took up SCUBA diving, more or less, because he was bored. "I wanted to take up diving, and my friend wanted to try hang gliding. We flipped a coin, and I won," he says. The rest is pretty obvious: Buescher took to the water like a fish in pursuit of a deep (get it?-- groan!) understanding of all things aquatic. Pretty soon he was finding those like himself, who wanted to dive while doing good. These days, OURA members help recover evidence for local law enforcement, collect samples for scientific research projects, and more. OURA has worked with both Ohio State University and Cleveland State University on studies of freshwater mussel populations (hint: the zebra mussel is the winner) and even on freshwater jellyfish! "One year, we collected a whole bunch for SeaWorld of Ohio," for a research project they were doing, Buescher says. Zebra mussels, Buescher explains, have done the lion's share of the work in cleaning up Lake Erie. But in the process, they wiped out ALL the competition. The striped mussels, which are not native to the Great Lakes, killed every other species of mussels in the lake, and then--this is the kind of thing mussels do--built reefs out of the dead bodies. Every couple of years now, Buescher and company check on mussel populations of our streams and rivers. They are finding zebras, he says, but so far not enough to worry about. Now--if you'll pardon another bad pun--you might say we've only scratched the surface of OURA's activities here. To find out more about the group and its research and other events, you can dive into (last one, I promise) their site at http://www.members.aol.com/ouraohio
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