DIVE Math and Science courses follow an order of knowledge>understanding>wisdom. Knowledge relates to basic facts and definitions about a topic. Understanding relates to reading and (especially) watching the DIVE lecture and taking notes, pausing and rewinding until you understand the subject. Wisdom relates to the ability to apply what you learned in a new situation, which is accomplished by solving homework problems, and especially answering test questions.

With test preparation, be active, not just passive

In college, many of your exams will be similar to DIVE Science exams, where you are required to be familiar with several weeks’ worth of information. You may also have a final over everything taught in the semester. But what is the best way to study for tests, especially a DIVE Science quarterly exam covering 7-8 weeks’ worth of material? Well, try thinking of your test preparation (and homework) time as “practice”, and the test as the “game”. For example, baseball players don’t prepare for games only by passively reading over the rulebook and watching other people play baseball. They mainly prepare by actively practicing, even having “scrimmages”, or practice games, in preparation for the real game. While the “passive” component is necessary, the “active” component is far more important.

When studying for tests, it is much easier for a student to passively read back over their notes, convincing themselves that “yeah, I know this material”. But the actual test looks nothing like this. Actual tests look like the Saxon Problem Sets or DIVE Science Review Questions, where the student is actively applying what they learned from their reading and lectures.

When I was in college, I took A LOT of math/science/engineering exams, and I learned quickly that passively reading over old lecture notes normally didn’t lead to great exam scores. One of my prayers with DIVE Science is that it will help students learn to study for big tests while in high school, when failure is not so costly. If you mess up badly on your first DIVE Biology exam, no big deal. Learn from your mistakes and keep going. But if you start college with poor study skills, you may do so badly on some of your freshman exams that it becomes very difficult to recover.

So, the best test preparation requires the student be actively involved. Here are some test preparation suggestions:

Saxon weekly tests (study time: about 1 hour)

• Re-take the previous week’s test. This works well because of Saxon’s continual review format, which means most of the topics covered on last week’s test will appear on the following week’s test. If you don’t understand a problem, go back and review that lesson where the problem is taught, either by watching the DIVE lecture or reading the Saxon textbook.
• Check to see what lessons the test covers through. For example, a table at the beginning of each Saxon test booklet has a column labeled “Covers material up through”. So if you were doing Saxon Algebra 1, Test 20, you would see it covers material through Lesson 80, while test 19 covered through Lesson 76. Each new Saxon test typically covers 4 new lessons. So, if you were taking Test 20, and you practiced by re-taking Test 19, you would also want to study Lessons 77-80. Study these by reviewing lesson notes and working practice problems, either DIVE Practice problems and/or examples and practice problems found in the Saxon text.

DIVE Science quarterly exams (study time: 6-8 hours)

• Review your notes and definitions. This is a passive activity, which you aren’t supposed to avoid, you’re just not supposed to make it the main study method. You can make this more active by making flashcards. And if you click here, we have free online flashcards available for all the definitions in DIVE Integrated Chemistry and Physics, Biology and Chemistry. We used a free online program called Quizlet to make the flashcards. 
• Rewrite your notes. When I was in college, I would often re-write my notes as part of my studying. This is time-consuming, but studying for a quarterly exam does take time, so just be ready to spend 6-8 hours on it. 
• Re-take your Review Questions. Definitely DO NOT just read over your completed review questions! Reprint them, or if you are using the online version, just open the lesson back up and do it again. Have your pencil and paper ready for making calculations. Push yourself, and try to be fast and accurate in your work.

These are just a few ideas for properly studying for DIVE Math and Science tests. If you are not doing as well as you would like on your tests, these tips may help you. Of course, don’t forget to pray! Jeremiah 33:3 says “Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.” If we call to Him through humble prayer, He will answer us and teach us great and mighty things about His creation!

Do you have any suggestions for studying for Saxon tests or DIVE quarterly exams? If so, please leave a comment!

A recent article in GSA Today, titled “The Evolution of Creationism“, is just one more of a multitude of biased and deceptive articles mocking and misinterpreting what God’s word and His works say about Earth history. Claiming to be the lead “Science Article” for the November 2012 issue, this should be your first clue that author David R. Montgomery and GSA’s editors are unwisely mingling scientific things with historic things. You see, researching Earth history, including Noah’s Flood, is not a scientific endeavor, but a historic one. The study of the unobservable past is called “history”, not “science”.

Natural history research is not the same thing as scientific research

Anyone, creationist or otherwise, who attempts to interpret unobserved past events is doing history research. Montgomery’s article is no “Science Article”, as the GSA Today publication proclaims, it is a history article, and a dogmatic one at that. It is pointless to write a “science article” against creationism, which is an interpretation of the past, and then bash creationism as “unscientific”. Creationists, but even moreso university professors like Dr. Montgomery, need to better discern between natural history endeavors and scientific ones.

The abstract to Dr. Montgomery’s article claims 21st Century creationists have “abandoned faith in reason and cast off a long-standing theological tradition that rocks don’t lie.” Words cannot describe the amazing untruth of this statement. The truth however, is that the author includes a paltry list of references, and the most recent one by a creationist author is from 1961! So Dr. Montgomery is either deliberately ignoring, or is honestly ignorant of, the revolution of creationism since Whitcomb and Morris’ 1961 book, The Genesis Flood.

God’s word calls Christians to “reason together” (Isaiah 1:18), so our goal is to consider both faith and reason. What many Christians have not “abandoned faith in” is Scripture as both a true and reasonable historical account, and this is evident in Christian churches, private schools, and home schools across America and around the world. Neither have we abandoned faith in man’s ability to unlock mysteries of past events. And we haven’t abandoned faith in even the most dogmatic suppressors of Truth, that they might repent and be baptized, for the promise of salvation is for as many as the Lord our God will call (Acts 2:38-39).

Everybody has an interpretive framework about the past

Earth history is always interpreted within a framework. In Dr. Montgomery’s article, he claims that it is only creationists who “evaluate facts by how well they fit their theories”. This statement does nothing to improve discernment between scientific and historic endeavors, and adds confusion regarding the word “theory”. Plate tectonics, for example, is a theory that can be tested. Is there evidence that crustal plates exist and that they are moving at observable rates? Yes. Is it reasonable to assume the present rates are about the same as rates in the past? Yes. But is it also reasonable to assume that present rates are not anywhere near the same as they were in the past? Yes! Could we also reasonably assume that something entirely different, like vertical tectonics, occurred in the past, and that the current plate movements are just a “settling in” of past movements? Yes, we can do that, too! So now we have one scientific theory, plate tectonics, but multiple interpretations regarding how it may or may not have worked in the past.

Dr. Montgomery’s article mentioned plate tectonics, but he only described one use of it (present is key to past) for interpreting the past. Why didn’t he discuss the other two, the creationist models of Catastrophic Plate Tectonics and Vertical Tectonics? Well, because these don’t fit his interpretive framework, so he ignores them and in so doing suppresses the truth about them.

The truth is, all natural historians evaluate facts by how well they fit their interpretive framework. A young-earth creationist sees a new paper on radiometric age dates proclaiming millions of years, and assumes some sort of error has been made. Likewise, someone who believes the earth is older will reject a radiometric age if it doesn’t fit well in their framework.

Creationist research journals are more open-minded

In the 21st Century, there are many creationist organizations, as well as peer-reviewed research publications, including the Creation Research Society Quarterly, Answers Research Journal, Acts and Facts, and Journal of Creation. A quick look at the references of just about any research paper in these journals will reveal a diverse mix of both creationist and non-creationist writings.

If Dr. Montgomery had bothered to practice the diversity that the GSA claims to preach, he would have known immediately the modern revolution of creationism also believes “the rocks don’t lie”. The truth is that nobody, creationist or otherwise, believes the rocks are lying. That’s absurd. Every rock has a story, but knowing with 100% certainty what the true story is is impossible. So we end up with different interpretations, because there are different frameworks with which we interpret the past.

Another false claim made by Dr. Montgomery’s article is his belief that creationists see “geology as a threat to their faith.” Of course, geology should not be a threat to anyone’s faith. The only threat is dogmatic scientists and educators like Dr. Montgomery, who ignore the evidence presented by creationists, and then act like creationists have “abandoned reason”. This is bad medicine for impressionable young Christians who go off to universities where men and women like Dr. Montgomery teach, trusting their professors’ words over God’s word and abandoning faith in Christ as savior. And that should be a warning to Christian parents to pick your children’s college carefully, and train them to be prepared to always give an answer for the hope that is in them (I Peter 3:15).

The gospel offends and threatens

Dr. Montgomery and other like-minded individuals see creationism, and more importantly, Christianity, as a threat to their own beliefs, so they suppress and ignore the truth (Romans 1:18). For them, it is not about having an open mind regarding interpreting past events. It is more about power, and having the power to control information and then deliver it to a large amount of people who trust their authority. Unfortunately, in Dr. Montgomery’s article at least, it seems GSA is abusing their power by controlling information, while stifling diversity of thought and religion.

Interestingly, dogmatic control of information reared its ugly head in the 1900′s when J. Harlan Bretz, a man who never claimed to be a creationist, published research on the Channeled Scablands of Eastern Washington. He believed the scablands formed by catastrophic, post-glacial floods, yet it took 40 years for his ideas to gain wide acceptance. Why did it take so long? Well, mainly because geologists at the time feared that a catastrophic interpretation just might provide evidence for another catastrophic event, Noah’s Flood.

Today, most geologists are slightly more accepting of catastrophism than their 20th century counterparts, so the differences between creationists and others regarding Earth’s features really boils down to this: Are today’s crustal features a result of mostly high-energy, short-term events, or mostly low-energy, long-term events? There is evidence for both, but the former interpretation fits better within a biblical framework of earth history.

Creationism is not going away

There is evidence the earth is old, and evidence the earth is young. Always has been, always will be. The differences arise not because “science has proven” one over the other, but because of the nature of the problem at hand, which is that we simply cannot replicate unobservable past events. The young earth/old earth, creation/evolution controversy is not going away because ultimately, this is not a scientific debate, but a debate about how to interpret both Scripture and nature’s historic accounts. Because man is imperfect, our historic interpretations are imperfect. But this Christian, scientist, and natural historian believes that both Creation and Providence proclaim the earth is thousands, not billions of years old, and that it was created, from nothing, in 6 days.

Let’s pray that those who treat history like history will increase, and those who promote dogmatic and bigoted responses to these different interpretations will decrease, being transformed by the renewing of their minds in Christ (Romans 12:2).

“……But others fell on good ground, sprang up, and yielded a crop a hundredfold.”  Luke 8:4-8

In the parable of the sower, Jesus used the analogy of a seed to help His disciples understand how the Word of God works in the lives of people. When God’s word falls on the “good ground” of a noble and good heart, the Word is kept and bears fruit with patience (Luke 8:15). It is because Christ is author of both the spiritual and material things that He is able to make such amazing comparisons between His word’s effect on a human, and what happens to a real seed when planted in the right soil.

The parable also applies to other things, including our DIVE math and science instructional materials. When they are planted in the “good ground” of a child and family that are willing to take the instruction and “bear fruit with patience”, the results are sometimes truly remarkable. The following are just two of many examples we hear almost every week.

The Brooks family wrote us on Oct. 8, 2012,

“As a child with autism, my son had an IEP (Individualized Education Program) in the public school system, but somehow, he was left behind. After changing schools in sixth grade, I was informed my son was three years behind his peers and his transcripts didn’t reflect his performance level. Their outlook was bleak, and less than aggressive in working with me to help catch him up. So I removed him from the public school system and started homeschooling.

Making a long story short, I’m proud to share with you, my son is [now] well ahead of his public school peers. He’s currently in his senior year taking AP Calculus, AP Physics, AP Government, AP Macro, AP US History.

While my son did all this work himself, I really owe you a huge piece of recognition for your quality CD’s. My son is proof, even a once diagnosed “low functioning” autistic can gain success. Thank you so very much for your contribution to his success. My son plans to work in the computer animation and engineering field. He too appreciates and recognizes your CD’s to help him achieve success.”

And here is an excerpt from Tiffini, who made a comment recently on my Producer Math post:

“I couldn’t seem to wrap my brain around algebra. Instead of help, I got a transfer to “consumer math”. I was so embarrassed, I couldn’t tell my friends about the class I was in. I had been labeled “dumb”, so therefore I thought that was the case. Unfortunately I didn’t make it through college, but I believe strongly in education, so I worked very hard to put my husband through college, med school, and residency. In 6th grade our son was having trouble in school. I didn’t want the same experience to happen to him. After much prayer and fasting, we decided to homeschool. It is definitely not the easy way out. I’m thrilled that as a freshman this year he’s doing very well in algebra 2 with geometry. I’m so thankful for the dive cd’s.”

Some things to notice from those two stories include:

• Both are examples of individuals and families who have the “good ground” that is so essential for taking the “DIVE seed” and bearing fruit.
• Both are examples of government schools failing to properly educate, and that should be a huge warning to you if you currently have a child, especially one who is struggling, in a government school. And for Christians, government schools are really no place to put your children anyways, because the goal is not to help your child become a creative Christian, rich in good works and ready to give, willing to share (I Timothy 6:18).

So what about your family? Is it “good ground” for sowing not just “DIVE seeds”, but any seeds? Is it filled with the thorns (Luke 8:7) of whining, complaining, hopelessness, anger, and laziness? If so, it is never too late to turn your thorny, rocky soil into rich, fertile ground. It may take lots of prayer, patience, and daily repentance and reforming, but with God, all things are possible (Matthew 19:26). Think about it, if the two families highlighted above can turn impossible things into possible ones, then by God’s grace you can, too!

A lot has been said recently of a viral YouTube video by “Bill Nye the Science Guy“, where he makes many ridiculous connections between science and his personal beliefs about origins. Others have responded with their own videos, including Answers in Genesis here and here, and Creation Ministries International here. And, in an unrelated incident in 2011, AiG’s Creation Museum cameras picked up Bill Nye stalking around in their museum parking lot. I guess he thought he was “Bill Nye the Spy Guy”, gathering intel for “his side”. Why not just go inside and have an open, friendly discussion, instead of acting like such a creepy weirdo?

After filtering through all the noise in Nye’s video, I found one correlation that makes total sense. Nye starts by saying “denial of evolution is unique in the United States”. What he means is that 40% or more of the United States population believes in “young earth creationism”. But, immediately after this, Nye proclaims how the United States is “where most of the innovation still happens”. Innovative people are creative people. Innovative….creative…creationist….creationism, do you see the connection?

Creativity of God is the foundation of a Christian education. And in Genesis 1:27, we learn that God created man in His image. God, in His infinite power and creativity, made us like Him. He uniquely designed us to be amazingly creative. So, it makes total sense that a country where a large portion of the population believes in a creative God who made them like Himself, would also be the world leader in technological innovations.

It should be self-evident that if you give a child a proper Christian education, as opposed to brainwashing them into believing they evolved from purposeless goo via random processes, the former is typically going to produce more creative, helpful people. So thank you Mr. Nye, for making that great connection between creationism and American ingenuity. It makes perfect sense. More public acceptance of creationism sparks more creativity, while more acceptance of evolutionism sparks less creativity.

So, who are you? Are you a humanist whose manifesto requires you to believe in evolution? Atheist? Theistic evolutionist? If yes to any of those, perhaps today is the day to turn a corner and be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2). Your hysteria over “evolution deniers” is totally unreasonable. Open your mind, open the Book, and relax about all the creationists in your midst! And please quit stalking us, good grief!

Leave a rational comment (no cussin’ and no rantin’!) and let’s discuss it. Or, if you would rather just hear a silly song by Tim Hawkins about stalkers, click here.

My son and his wife graduated from Texas A&M University today (for all you Aggies out there, rejoice with me with a hearty “Whoop!”). I was pleased that the ceremony began with a prayer, and the first words of the prayer were “Creator God…“. Unfortunately, a large gathering at a public university was the last place I thought I would hear those words, but I was thankful they were said! In my opinion, acknowledging there is one God, and He is the Creator of everything, is one of the most reasonable, sane things a human being can do.

Being an A&M graduate myself, I’ll be the first to say that the university is by no means a “holy ground”, but I will say this: in this day and age of intolerance towards Christianity, for the most part, Texas A&M University and its graduates are not like that. It is a place where a majority of folks love the Lord, and the minority who don’t tolerate those who do. So atheists, muslims, buddhists, etc., by all means, come to Texas A&M! But come with an open mind and heart and soul, and be prepared to consider that the God of the Bible your friends are worshiping is the right One, and that He created you for a great purpose.

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”

Jeremiah 29:11-13 (NKJV)

And I heard a voice saying to me, ‘Rise, Peter, kill and eat.’ But I said, ‘Not so Lord!’ For nothing common or unclean has at any time entered my mouth.’ But the voice answered me again from heaven, ‘What God has cleansed you must not call common.’   Acts 11:7-9

When was the last time you rose, killed, and ate? In other words, when was the last time you caught your own meat, cleaned it, and cooked it? What about your children? Acts 11:7-9 is one of many verses that make it clear God wants us to participate in His creation. Being wise rulers over God’s creation means we need to be involved with it, finding a balance between overexploiting and overprotecting. If you don’t know how to catch, clean and cook something, there are thousands of helpful resources out there. Here are a couple of videos I made on the subject:

Now rise Christian, kill and eat with your family and friends!

When you eat the labor of your hands, you shall be happy, and it shall be well with you. Psalm 128:2

Failing at producing

You may have heard the phrase that America has turned into a “nation of consumers”. If you think that is an incorrect assessment, take a look at this graph:

United States Imports Minus Exports, 1960-2011

This year, 2012, will likely be the 37th consecutive year that the United States of America has imported more than it has exported. In other words, we are consuming hundreds of billions of dollars more than we produce. As a whole, Americans are less productive, which means we are also less creative, than we were back in the 1960s.

For Christians, a trend like this should be unsettling, because it goes against the most basic of Christian principles. One of God’s very first commands to humans was to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Created in His image, we are designed to create, too. To be productive. To bear fruit and “eat the labor of your hands”, as Psalm 128:2 teaches. “Bearing fruit” is not just about having children, or raising corn and cattle, building houses, bearing spiritual fruits, etc. Bearing fruit is ultimately about fulfilling the Great Commission by spreading the Gospel to the ends of the Earth (Matthew 28:18-20). And God didn’t make us all clones, and give us all the same exact plan for fulfilling the Great Commission. He designed us to be creative in this task.

Unfortunately in America, we answered the trend towards excessive consumption by developing “consumer math” classes for high school and college students. Such classes usually contain basic arithmetic and very little algebra, and are designed to help students understand common-sense ideas such as not spending more money than you earn. Less obvious topics like interest rate are also covered. However, most topics are a review of what students already learned in elementary and middle-grade math courses. Also called “business math”, Wikipedia describes these courses as “subjects taught to students who are not planning a university education.” In other words, the classes are for people who are not planning to be producers, just consumers.

Training up backward-thinking consumers

Now, don’t get me wrong. I certainly believe non-university bound students can also be productive members of society! However, by taking “consumer math” instead of an advanced math or calculus class in high school, you are essentially falling in line with secular and non-Christian education standards. For example, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics claims “For those whose formal education will end with high school, the needs of citizens and consumers for increasing mathematical sophistication dictate a collection of courses based on consumer and career needs”. See, there it is again! Non-university-bound students are just consumers. And citizens. But I didn’t say that, “they” did! The average government school is training students to be consumers and citizens who are told of their supposed not-so-special origin from a monkey-man. Shouldn’t they, shouldn’t we, instead be training students to be forward-thinking producers? Of course! If you are in a government school, you should fight against this kind of demoralizing miseducation. If you homeschool or private school, don’t use the government schools as your guide! Instead make sure your child gets a good dose of Christ-centered science, and it’s language, mathematics.

You are more than a consumer

University bound or not, current Christian or not, I hope you can see the problem with consumer math. Of course, some consumer math is a good idea, but “producer math” should be the priority, especially in high school and college. Because human beings are designed by God to be creative, creativity comes naturally for us. But creativity always requires tools, and in the 21st Century, good mathematics skills are definitely one tool that will help spark creativity, and in turn, productivity. All humans are consumers, but life is about so much more than that. Being a producer as well means that you and/or the company you work for need to 1) Create something to sell and 2) have the ability to sell it AND make a profit. And it is the profit (fruit) that you can use to grow your family, grow your church, and be a wise ruler of God’s creation as you fulfill the Great Commission.

Three of the many math skills that are important for 21st Century producers, two of which you won’t see much of until Algebra 2 or later, include 1) Unit multipliers (conversion factors), 2) Analytical Geometry, and 3) Calculus. And in all three of these, an understanding of fractions is key.

Good skills with unit multipliers are helpful when you are designing a new cancer-fighting nanotechnology, and you need to convert micrograms per liter per hour to ppm per day. Or, maybe you are setting up a spreadsheet to help you determine cost per unit of an invention that you patented, and now want to sell. Analytical geometry is helpful in computer graphics and other applications, where knowledge of not only shape, but exact spatial positioning is important. And calculus is where rates of change are studied, which has applications in more areas than you will ever imagine in a lifetime.

Math for producers

John Saxon (1923-1996) wrote some of the best “producer math” books available. While newer editions are moving away from his tried and true methods, the pre-2009 Saxon textbook editions are the best I’ve seen at helping students learn producer math. Avoid the newer, blue-covered hardback Saxon texts, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and NOT written by John Saxon. In texts written and approved by John, unit multipliers are taught beginning in the elementary grades, and continue through Calculus. Consumer math topics are also included. For example, sales tax, a topic that would be taught in a high school “consumer math” course, is introduced in the elementary-level Saxon Math 5/4. Students continue building their consumer math skills from this point on through Saxon Calculus.

As I get closer to creating my own mathematics curriculum, I hope to take the best of John Saxon’s principles, and build on those. As I develop this curriculum, I am taking note of the fact that John Saxon  never wrote a “consumer math” textbook. Indeed he frowned upon the very idea of placing students in these classes.  Regarding consumer, or “basic” math, John Saxon said “We cannot take kids and relegate them to the trash heap in this technological society. We label them as failures when we put them in basic math”(from John Saxon’s Story, by Niki Hayes, p. 276). And Saxon wasn’t the only successful teacher opposed to these courses. The book Standing and Delivering by Henry Gradillas highlights the story of how he and teacher Jaime Escalante eliminated “dumb dumb” math classes from Garfield High School in Los Angeles, and by doing so, turned around math education, with many students passing the AP Calculus exams.

So is “producer math” harder than “consumer math”? Well, is buying a blueberry bush, planting it, watering it, nurturing it, harvesting the fruit and then taking it to market to sell, harder than consuming a bowl of blueberries? Yes! But what does Scripture say about doing hard things? Does it say to run from them? Certainly not! It says to count our trials as joy (James 1:2-3). Parents and teachers who seek to help students be producers will get more heartache, more complaints, and more trials to deal with. But 10 years later, those parents will probably get more “thank you’s” from their children than from the ones who failed to challenge.

Christians have been called to handle the hard stuff with grace and thanksgiving. Parents, you know your child best. Are they capable of doing more producer math? The majority of them are, so push them with much love, patience, and perseverance. And if they fail the first time, give them a second chance the next year. And the next. But if you are certain your child is not capable of things like calculus, then do what it takes to teach them as much producer math as you can. Being a producer is not just the American way, it’s the Christian way, and us parents need to make sure we are training our children up to be more than consumers. Much more!

This video was taken at an oil and gas platform off Freeport, Texas on May 18, 2012. If you know what a red snapper looks like, you know you are looking at a massive school of them! And there are also multiple year classes visible, with a nice school of 10-15 pounders in view at the end of the clip. Both rigs I dove at that day were loaded with red snapper. In fact, they’ve been loaded with red snapper for years!

This year, the season for red snapper in federal waters is a ridiculously short 40 days, and you can only keep 2 over 16 inches. This is the shortest season ever! I hope there will be a grassroots effort soon demanding better sport fish regulations for red snapper. I don’t mind having a season, but a 40 day, 2 fish minimum is foolish. The season should be extended, and I think the limit should be increased to 5 snapper of any size, with the stipulation that you have to keep the first 5 you catch and then stop snapper fishing. Everybody who has any experience snapper fishing knows that if you send a squid-baited hook to the bottom next to an oil platform in federal waters off Texas, you will have a snapper biting before you can engage the gears on your level wind. It has been that way as long as I can remember, and I am sick of catching 99% red snapper when I bottom fish near an oil platform, and only being allowed to keep certain sizes over an ever-shortening season! Plus, it is just common sense that a red snapper that has been hauled up from 75+ feet deep has a much lower chance of survival upon release than say, a largemouth bass from Lake Conroe. When people go snapper fishing, they are not normally going for a catch and release excursion, it is catch, keep and eat! The current rules are not designed to benefit either the fish,the angler, or coastal economies, and that needs to change.

There are plenty of snapper out there, let’s get the rules changed, now! The majority of fishermen are responsible enough to comply with the foolish regulations we have now; there’s no reason to expect we would have a massive decline in snapper if we had a June 1-Sep. 30 season, with a “keep the first five, any size” limit. If you agree that the rules need changing, share this video with others and spread the word! Here is contact information for the Gulf Council: 2203 N Lois Avenue, Suite 1100, Tampa, Florida 33607 USA. Phone:813-348-1630; Toll Free: 888-833-1844; Fax: 813-348-1711; Email: info@gulfcouncil.org.

Kindly but clearly let them know you want to see improved fishery management strategies for red snapper. Let them know overprotection is not a good management plan!

Annual commerical and recreational harvest quotas are set by the NOAA Fisheries Service. Their Southeast regional office in St. Petersburg, Florida, is responsible for the Gulf of Mexico red snapper quotas. Call them at (727) 824-5301 and let your voice be heard. Their website is http://sero.nmfs.noaa.gov/

In America, we have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, so if folks at NOAA and the Gulf Council are mismanaging an entire fishery, we can motivate them to do better!  Please don’t hesitate to contact these folks with some new ideas and let them know their current plan is no good, either for the red snapper, or for the anglers who enjoy them.

To learn more about the foolish methods currently used to determine the red snapper sport fishing season, read these articles by Houston Chronicle outdoor writer Shannon Tompkins:

2012 article

2011 article

Also, it should not go unnoticed that the state of Texas, whose waters extend out to 9 nautical miles, has maintained a 4-fish daily limit and 360-day season every year since the federal agencies have been overregulating their waters. The more relaxed Texas limits have obviously not hampered red snapper populations in federal waters!

Scripture tells us that about 4,500 years ago, the ground split open and the “fountains of the deep” erupted (Genesis 7:11), flooding the entire globe with water. Today, about 70% of the earth’s surface is still covered by water, averaging over 2 miles deep, and giving us a watery reminder of the year-long, global cataclysm.

One of the best ways to understand more about the global cataclysm described in Genesis is to study volcanic eruptions. And the bigger the eruption, the better! This is why Novarupta is so important. Latin for “New Eruption”, Novarupta burst forth for over 60 hours on June 6-8, 1912. The 3rd-largest eruption in recorded history, Novarupta caused tops and sides of mountains to collapse, deposited up to 700 feet of finely-layered ash in places, plus much, much more.

Since 2008, I’ve been studying Novarupta and the surrounding Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. I’ve been blessed with two opportunities to explore the area with family and friends, once in 2009 and again in 2011. I’ve also published a research paper on Novarupta in the Creation Research Society Quarterly (CRSQ 46(1), leave a comment if you would like a pdf copy).

During my explorations, I was able to collect a lot of photogeologic data, taking photos and videos of places only a handful of humans have ever visited. Wanting to share this footage with as many as possible, Providence led me to CreationWorks! The CreationWorks Media Team is made up of a group of 12 – 18 year olds whose goal is to share, “the truth of the Bible through the media, with an emphasis on Creation.”

So here’s what’s happening. I donated my footage to CreationWorks, and they are going to use it to make a film about Novarupta! This is their first film project (they have done some radio projects in the past), which they plan to enter in the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival. But they need your help! They are hoping to raise $5,500 to cover expenses of producing and distributing.

Watch the Novarupta trailer

I think the story of Novarupta is worth telling! If you do, too, then please consider making a donation to the project. Click here to watch CreationWorks’ Novarupta trailer. I think you will see that they are off to a good start! To donate to the project, click here (or go to http://www.kickstarter.com/ and enter Novarupta in the search box).  And please pray that God world be glorified through this project. Thank you!