Chris Curle/Special to the Eagle

Goliath grouper.

Chris Curle/Special to the Eagle

Kathie and Geoff Fahri.

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Diving for Goliath fish

The conversation around the Esplanade bar was animated, but in one clutch of islanders, the animation had to do with underwater critters.

Geoff Fahringer was chatting with Mary Zachrich and husband Chuck Schwindt about scuba diving and about their respective recent scuba trips to the Florida Keys and to Bonaire, a Dutch island off the coast of Venezuela.

Geoff and his wife Kathie have been diving in some of the best spots in the world, including Bonaire and Palau, a 200-island Pacific archipelago.

The Fahringers are among a score or more islanders who dive in group trips from Club Aquarius in Naples. Upcoming trips include Bonaire and Fiji.

Divers find fun and thrills much closer. On a recent Sunday, Fahringer and others explored the Black Hole, in the Gulf, about 27 nautical miles west of Marco.

“It’s a fresh water outflow from the Florida aquifer, probably 60-feet across,” Geoff explains. “It goes to a depth of about 240 feet, full of Goliath grouper, big sea turtles, snapper and more.”

Fresh water way out in the Gulf? Who knew?

Local divers also like to go to Pompano Beach, Key Largo, Venice — known as the shark tooth diving capital of the world — and to Disney’s EPCOT, where scuba-ites can sign up to dive in the popular aquarium.

“We were diving there and tourists eating lunch in the aquarium restaurant were taking pictures and laughing at us,” Geoff says.

On land, many area divers gather at scuba Adventures, 971 Creech Road in Naples. One Friday every month owner Kevin Sweeney hosts barbecue parties featuring videos and photos from local divers. Since Sweeney began teaching in 1974, he has taught more than 4000 people to dive.

Marco has a dive shop too — Capt. Jeff Dawson’s scuba Marco at 1141 Bald Eagle Drive (phone: 389-7889.)

Geoff Fahringer offers individual and group scuba diving instructions via his affiliation with the Add Helium store in Naples, 4948 Rustic Oaks. Geoff’s number is 253-4091 and e-mail, Sailer2@comcast.net. — Chris

Many unhappy returns

Talk to some local merchants this time of year and you may get an earful about cranky winter visitors who have gone now, leaving a trail of bad will behind.

A Naples florist tells of people who try to return fresh flowers, a few days after they were purchased.

Often they’re women who got the flowers as a gift from a spouse, child or friend.

“He doesn’t have this kind of money, so I’d like to return them for a full refund,” is the usual pitch.

Isn’t returning three-day old flowers, real flowers, sort of like taking back three-day old raw fish, claiming it smells funny?

Some obnoxious snowbirds get their share of ridicule from merchants.

According to a drugstore employee here, “One family brought in folding beach chairs they bought five months before, demanding a refund. They insisted they just bought them and that they were faulty. They seem to think our store is a ‘borrow-a-beach-chair’ agency,” the clerk says.

Maybe the sand in the aluminum hinges caused the “faulty” used chairs to malfunction.

A dry cleaner says more than one customer has brought in stained clothing, claiming it happened at the cleaners.

“There’s no way we stained those things; they were food stains,” said the dry cleaner. “They’re just hoping for free cleaning.”

A clerk in a supermarket seafood department says he’s had several phone calls, people complaining, “There’s something wrong with the shrimp I just bought!”

“May I ask whether you cooked it before you ate it?” he asks.

“No, should I?” is usually the answer.

So because some visitors or islanders are rude to clerks, servers and other retail workers, the rest of us need to be courteous, kind, cheerful and follow the rest of the Boy Scout Law. To see the whole thing, check out www.scouting.org.

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E-mail us at: chris@chriscurle.com or don@donfarmer.com.