ScubaVision Productions recently launched a weekly podcast and made it to iTunes (and hopefully a larger audience). They shoot video for commercial and non-profit clients and, in our case, produce a 5-10 minute weekly scuba show. The visuals are clean, soundtrack soothing, and make for a nice diversion at work.
Current episodes:
Interview with John Hanzi, Dive Safety Officer at the New England Aquarium and author of adventure novel Out of Hell's Kitchen
Whiteface (The Anchor) at West Caicos
The Driveway at West Caicos
Boat Cove at West Caicos
Although not a podcast, check out ScubaVisions "Now Playing" link for a wreck diving video shot in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos of the Southwind and W.E.
I don't know about you, but my memory could use some help when it comes to fish identification. Black tip reef sharks and the bright orange Garibaldi are easy to remember but the variations of damselfish and triggerfish can be overwhelming.
Fish ID guides, like those by Paul Humann, are a critical part of any divers bookshelf but they're not always the easiest to use if all you can remember is the general size or markings on a fish. What I've always wanted to see is a fish guide which cross-references their characteristics in greater detail and It looks like the folks at WikiDivers are doing just that.
Their fish identification guide begins with describing the characteristics of fish: body shape, fins, markings, gills, size, and body/fin configurations. Each of these includes a link to fish which have those characteristics. If your unknown fish had vertical bands, click the Bands link and a list shows you those with vertical bands.
There is a growing number of fish species already in the guide but it's a work in progress. While the main page is a great starting point with photos and links, the search results don't generate thumbnails. Bummer, because clicking through links for individual photos is no better than paging through Humann's book. The founders of WikiDivers have voiced their commitment to the site so hopefully their hard work will continue and produce an intuitive and thorough resource.
It's 2007 and hopefully you've survived another Festivus holiday. I'm looking forward to next year when I don't have to follow my 14-month-old around my in-laws' and pulling him away from tables and electrical outlets.
My scuba stocking had these great books inside...
The first, Master Guide for Underwater Digital Photography, is authored by Jack and Sue Drafahl. I've only paged through but it looks like an excellent introductory guide to underwater shooting with your digital camera. There are many photos and references to new(ish) gear from point-and-shoot digitals to SLR. Topics covered include camera settings (what <i>is</i> the histogram used for?), setting proper exposure, strobes, wide-angle, macro, composition, and traveling with your gear. This is my first book on the topic and it looks like an excellent place to start.
The other is a giant coffee-table-sized thing called Ocean: The World's Last Wilderness Revealed. With a foreword by Fabien Cousteau, it's the end-all, be-all visual reference and fact guide to our seas. There are beautiful two-page photos and hundreds of diagrams describing every facet of our great seas from ocean currents to temperature to the creatures living in dark depths. It's the type of book where you can read two or three pages and move onto the next topic. If nothing else this should inspire you to get back into the water, try a new dive site, or simply impress your friends.
Yesterday's story about fish stocks collapsing brought up the legitimacy of fish catch data. But how do you account for a lack of data when you have illegal fishing?
The Aussies are sick and tired of it...illegal fishing that is. The Royal Navy has been given permission to disable (through gunfire) any illegal fishing boats intent to avoid capture. What promoted the new rules?
"[Foreign fishing vessels] are engaging in activities which are very dangerous to our personnel and indeed to our patrol boats, including using very large sharpened poles (and) the throwing of missiles," said Defense Minister Brendan Nelson.
Who'd have though the HMAS Canberra is just Australia's second artificial reef? I suppose when you have the Great Barrier Reef in your backyard the thought of artificial reefs is rather ho-hum.
So what is Australia's first? The HMAS Swan, sunk in 1997 after 26 years of service with the Australian Royal Navy. She was laid to rest at 30 meters in Geographe Bay.
The Geographe Bay Artificial Reef Sociey took the project a step further and persuaded the government to declare an "exclusion" zone around the site. The zone measures 500 meters in diameter and imposes restrictions on fishing, hunting, and the number of vessels moored at any one time.
Check out Jane Wilkinson's first-hand account of diving the wreck including photos and more back story. Should you decide to Goolge the HMAS Swan you'll find a (different) vessel of the same name which served in World War II.
I could also title this post, or What Lunch looks like for a Great White Shark (GWS).
This was taken in Seal Island in South Africa, home of the leaping GWS that you see on TV. The footage or frame grab in this case is from the BBC series Planet Earth. This shot is simply amazing, but it does remind me that I really don't want to encounter a GWS without a nice sturdy cage.
It's not terribly difficult to find details about the weather conditions of a dive destination. A quick Google search or thumbing through Sport Diver will give up the answer. Finding the information in one place may be a different story.
From Africa to the Virgin Islands, Dive Global has an alphabetized listing of dive destinations and what to expect for water conditions based on the season. It's not as nicely designed as their Critter Calendar which presents animal encounters by calendar month (hint, hint), but it's a start.
Recently, we told you about Cool Waters, Emerald Seas: Diving in Temperate Waters, the new book by Irish photographer John Collins. This breath-taking, 173-page hardcover is a tribute to the marine environment in the world's "cool waters" -- the temperate seas (between 4° and 20° C) sandwiched between the tropics and the polar regions. Recently, I got to see this magnificent book up close, and I was blown away by the beauty of Collins' rich images and the passion in his accompanying narrative. If you believe diving in temperate seas is a dull, lifeless experience, think again: the cool seas are the ocean's most productive, creating a rich, colorful, kaleidoscopic ecosystem brimming with life. The mesmerizing images in Cool Waters prove it.
A few weeks ago, we told you about Below Freezing: The Antarctic Dive Guide. Recently, I got my hands on a copy of this colorful little book, and I'm very impressed with it. This excellent Guide -- really, the only Guide of its kind -- is written by Lisa Eareckson Trotter, the first person to learn to dive in the Antarctic and a long-time crew member aboard Lindblad Expeditions'Endeavour. Having logged over 400 hours diving in area waters, Trotter's experience in and love for the region shines through on each and every page.
Featuring plenty of easy-to-read maps, and ultra-clear descriptions of 25 dive sites off the Antarctic Peninsula and South Georgia Islands, the Guide also sports hundreds of sparkling, eyebrow-raising photos -- most of which are vastly different from marine life images in other dive guides. Published by WILDGuides, a non-profit organization focused on wildlife conservation, the book carefully and lovingly describes the joys of diving in Antarctica's waters, while it simultaneously details the hazards of this bitter, harsh environment. In short, the 116-page soft cover book is one of the most unusual -- and one of the best -- dive guides around.
John Collins is an Irish photographer and writer. After studying photography as a teenager, he became a dive instructor in 1991, and he soon merged his two hobbies, shooting images as he explored the underwater world. Later, he continued studying photography at the New York Institute of Photography, and recently published his first volume of underwater images, Cool Waters, Emerald Seas: Diving in Temperate Waters.
According to Collins, "While coral reef scuba diving is obviously the most popular, so many people live in areas where the waters are cooler and miss out on the superb diving here." Consequently, for his first book he chose to spotlight cooler water diving. Exploring western Europe's north Atlantic, North America's chilly Pacific, and Africa's shark-filled southern seas, Cool Waters features 120 "interpretative" (versus "documentary") images. From the look of the sample images of the book, it appears he's interpreted things very well: he's created a gorgeous love letter to the ocean, filled with bold, captivating images.
I am by no means a cold-water diver. In fact, if I even have to wear a wetsuit, my feathers get a bit ruffled. I fully understand that that disposition severely limits my range of diving options, but me and cold, well, we aren't too friendly. After all, why do you think I moved to South Florida?
However, I've recently been thinking about Antarctic diving a lot. After learning about Below Freezing: The Antarctica Dive Guide, Antarctica has been on my mind lately. Seriously. It seems like such a faraway and mysterious world. Well...because it is. Consequently, when I watched this video of diving in Antarctica, I was amazed: amazed that divers have to lug with them 150 pounds of gear; amazed that divers can shiver through 30 degree water; amazed at the scenery -- both topside and underwater; amazed at the mysterious creatures in those frigid waters. Did you know some Antarctic fish have the chemical equivalent of antifreeze in their blood? And remember those vampiric sea spiders? They're huge!
Check out this video and prepare to see some diving footage you've never seen before. However, I thought that when diving among icebergs, people were cautioned not to approach an iceberg closer than the vertical height above the water. Since icebergs can calf at any time, I think iceberg divers should not be crawling the bergs, as the divers in the video are.
WILDGuides was created in 2000 as a non-profit publishing organization committed to supporting wildlife conservation. In 2003, WILDGuides teamed up with English Nature, a Government agency championing conservation in England. Together, WILDGuides and English Nature produce simple-to-use photographic guides, the profits from which support a range of nature conservation charities. Their newest guide, Below Freezing: The Antarctic Dive Guide, is also perhaps their most ambitious. Moreover, it's really the only guide of its kind that covers the wild, fragile place known as Antarctica.
Below Freezing is written by Lisa Eareckson Trotter, founder of Polar Dive, who actually learned to dive in Antarctica and who has spent 5 years logging over 400 hours in the chilly waters. In Below Freezing, Trotter outlines the conditions of 25 of the area's top dive sites; explains the wildlife divers are likely to see; provides maps and photos of the area; details how to reach this distant land; and offer tips on what to take (um, let me guess, lots and lots of warm clothes?). Moreover, she discusses the kinds of equipment divers need to enjoy Antarctica's icy conditions.
Although the press release indicates that Below Freezing is available from the publishers, it's not listed on their website. If you're interested in getting your thickly-gloved hands on a copy, drop them an email. Even for people not interested in diving, it sounds like an extraordinary and unusual travel guide.
This story blew me away, it was like seeing the forest of the trees for the first time. We've been reporting on huge jellyfish populations, dirty water and dead zones but what is emerging, is an argument that we are turning the clock back on the the sea, to a more primitive time. "Runoff from modern life is feeding an explosion of primitive organisms. This 'rise of slime,' as one scientist calls it, is killing larger species and sickening people." Primeval sea creatures back on the rise.
Things like fire-weed scare the crap out of me, if you ever run into jelly fish, it's unpleasant but usually doesn't leave you with chemical burns and scars on your body.
In the article, the fisherman describes the pain as being, "It's like acid,...It kept pulling the skin off." It's gotten so bad that some of the commerical fisherman have simply given up during certain months of the year.
Great.
I for one, welcome our new primitive organism overlords
Husband-and-wife team Beth and Shaun Tierney recently published a book called Diving The World. Part of Footprint Travel Guides, Diving The World carefully describes and compares over 200 of the world's top dive sites, including Australia, PNG, Solomons, Fiji, Galápagos, Belize, Mexico, Honduras, Egypt, East Africa, Maldives, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, and Micronesia. The 352-page book is crammed (in a good way) with maps, color photos, information on climate and dive conditions, anecdotes of the various dive sites, local conservation issues, and suggested top-side activities. Looking inside the book set my mouth to watering. Must...get...copy...
For a taste of what the book is like, check out the Tierneys' website, Sea Focus, which is loaded with tons of exquisite underwater (and topside) images as well as comprehensive trip reports they have compiled through their work/travels. Must...get...this...job...
To get your own copy, you can order through Footprints, Sea Focus, or (if you live in the US, it's cheapest from) Amazon.
Of course, lists get made to provide insight into other's thoughts. But since others are, by
definition, NOT YOU, people naturally review those lists and disagree with them. Perhaps you think Tim Simond's list of the best places to dive in
style overly favors warm-water diving. Maybe you believe John Boyle's threefavoritedive sites are lackluster.
Personally, I found Nick Hanna's recent Top
Ten Dive Sites to be short-sighted. Everybody disagrees with everybody else...but at least the list made you
think. That's the beauty of lists.
Recently, Scuba Diving News announced its Top 100 Dive Sites. Compiled by
a group of its readers, none of the sites are bad sites. But, surprisingly, only one Caribbean site (Belize's Blue Hole) cracked the Top 20. Having done most
of my diving in the Caribbean and Southern Africa, I was a bit surprised at the relative UNDER-representation of those
areas in the list. But it got me thinking. And that's what the list was supposed to do. Scuba Diving News' Top 10 are
as follow:
ScubaVision Productions recently launched a weekly podcast and made it to iTunes (and hopefully a larger audience). They shoot video for commercial and non-profit clients and, in our case, produce a 5-10 minute weekly scuba show. The visuals are clean, soundtrack soothing, and make for a nice diversion at work.
I don't know about you, but my memory could use some help when it comes to fish identification. Black tip reef sharks and the bright orange Garibaldi are easy to remember but the variations of damselfish and triggerfish can be overwhelming.
It's 2007 and hopefully you've survived another 
Yesterday's story about 
Who'd have though the HMAS Canberra is just 
It's not terribly difficult to find details about the weather conditions of a dive destination. A quick Google search or thumbing through Sport Diver will give up the answer. Finding the information in one place may be a different story.
Recently, we told you about 
A few weeks ago, we told you about 
John Collins
I am by no means a cold-water diver. In fact, if I even have to wear a wetsuit, my feathers get a bit ruffled. I fully understand that that disposition severely limits my range of diving options, but me and cold, well, we aren't too friendly. After all, why do you think I moved to South Florida?
WILDGuides
This story blew me away, it was like seeing the forest of the trees for the first time. We've been reporting on 
Husband-and-wife team Beth and Shaun Tierney recently published a book called 
Of course, lists get made to provide insight into other's thoughts. But since others are, by
definition, NOT YOU, people naturally review those lists and disagree with them. Perhaps you think 
