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Cover JAN.qxp_April Cover(final) 28/11/2016 15:57 Page 1

IDEA-PACKED:HOLIDAY SPECIAL 2017

BRITAIN’S BEST-SELLING DIVING MAGAZINE

JANUARY 2017

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First In JAN.qxp_May First In 30/11/2016 08:02 Page 03

STEVE WEINMAN, EDITOR

Join our school.

Get to the bottom of all this.

FIRST IN TRAVELLING INCOGNITO TRIBES CAN’T HELP BUT ANNOUNCE THEIR ALLEGIANCES when they’re travelling. Parties of skiers or golfers are easily identified at airports by their clothing, accessories and baggage. The clues are in the styles and branding.

Many travelling divers also like to wear the T-shirts that proclaim their favoured sport. However, and please tell me if I’m wrong, I think I’ve noticed a move towards a more discreet approach in recent years.

This may have started as baggage allowances grew ever-tighter. Those heavy-duty wheeled dive-bags we used to take away with us could, even before loading, take up a third of the allowance on many of today’s flights.

Even if you hated biology class you’ll love learning to dive in The Florida Keys. In just three days you can be certified by the world’s best instructors. Before long, you’ll go down with the ships and come face-to-face with thousands of different species on America’s only living coral reef. fla-keys.com/diving Holiday Inn Key Largo Located next to deep-water marina.

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Not only that, but the branding also advertised the contents loudly to any rogue baggage-handler who might feel like finding a new home for an expensive regulator or dive-light. So divers started to find other solutions.

I tend to favour anonymity when I’m on the move.

Years ago I bought a plain black hardshell case, not expensive but weighing in at barely 4kg. It’s tough enough to protect the contents from the wellknown insensitivity of baggage-handlers, and the exterior says nothing about those contents, or me.

I THINK I’VE NOTICED A MOVE TOWARDS A MORE DISCREET APPROACH

Filled with dive-gear and packed around with clothes (I also carry a large plastic survival bag into which any equipment that’s not fully dried out can be stored later), I’m confident of being able to stay within weight limits and that my bag won’t attract unwanted attention. And I suspect that many of you now do the same. This month’s Big Question may shed light on that.

In divEr Tests this month Nigel Wade finds a lightweight dive-bag he likes but concludes that he would need to obscure the logos with duct tape, and I’d rather not have to do that.

The discreet approach isn’t for everyone, but I would humbly suggest that diving-equipment makers might think about producing their own means of transporting gear securely that is branded subtly if at all.

The January issue is divEr’s holiday special, hence my baggage musings.

Perhaps surprisingly considering the events of 2016, there seems to be a lot of optimism about the New Year in the travel industry, with two-thirds of international operators expecting their businesses to grow.

Diving travel trends have become hard to read. Egypt used to be a given, and I’ll stick my neck out and predict that after a fallow year many more of you will be finding your own ways to enjoy the compelling Red Sea in 2017.

We’ve picked out some other possibilities, from the tried and tested like the Maldives and the Philippines to Greece (at last shaking off its anti-wreckdiving image), the surprising Nevis in the Caribbean and a wild card for the adventurous, the Solomon Islands in the Pacific.

We also look at picking the right resort, getting the best from coral-reef diving, and accessories to keep you fighting fit in sunny climes.

Booking Now covers some other possibilities, from the Canary, Cayman and Christmas islands to Oman, Indonesia and Mexico – and my own favourite prospect for uber-adventurous divers who love to be first on the scene, St Helena in the South Atlantic.

At the moment it takes almost a week to get there, but that time will be drastically reduced this summer. It has wrecks and whale sharks. Pack that dive-bag, branded or otherwise, and start dreaming about 2017.

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Scuba Travel (FP) – 01_17.qxp_Full Page Bleed 29/11/2016 10:45 Page 1

Contents JAN.qxp_Contents_MAY 01/12/2016 14:42 Page 05

JANUARY 2017 Volume 62 No 1

CONTENTS FEATURES 21 How the North Measures Up The first of our holiday special features is all Red Sea 21

27 Gear up for the Sun The kit you need to keep you safe and well on holiday

33 Hooked on the Islands Ellen Husain has been seduced by the Solomons

38 Be the Champ!

27

The new black for underwater photographers is – black!

44 In the Lap of the Seagods We meet the people with a passion for Greek diving

incorporating

Published monthly by Eaton Publications, Suite B, 74 Oldfield Road, Hampton, Middlesex, TW12 2HR Tel: 020 8941 8152

Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Nigel Eaton nigel@divermag.co.uk Editor Steve Weinman steve@divermag.co.uk Publishing Consultant Tony Weston tony@divermag.co.uk Technical Editor Nigel Wade divingnige@btinternet.com Production Manager George Lanham george@divermag.co.uk Webmaster Mike Busuttili webmaster@divernet.com Advertisement Manager Jenny Webb jenny@divermag.co.uk Senior Advertisement Executive Alex Khachadourian alex@divermag.co.uk

49 Shades of Blue Seeking the best of the central Maldives by liveaboard 32

57 The Devil is in the Detail

Advertising Production David Eaton david@divermag.co.uk Subscriptions Manager subscriptions@divermag.co.uk

Homework pays off when choosing a dive-resort

62 Paradise with a Black Eye Learning to expect the unexpected in Nevis

69 Coral Sensitive 57

How to enjoy your reef dives to the full

74 The Ghost in the Sea Thresher sharks and much more in Malapascua

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http://tiny.cc/b2uld

Marketing, Sales & divEr Bookshop Dorothy Eaton dorothy@divermag.co.uk uwp-mailshop@divermag.co.uk Financial Controller Kojo Gyamera kojo@divermag.co.uk Accounts Assistant Julian Auty accounts@divermag.co.uk Reception enquiries@divermag.co.uk

EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS Archaeology Dave Parham Biology Dr David Bellamy Freediving Marcus Greatwood Industry Dr John Bevan Law Prof Mike Williams Medicine Dr Ian Sibley-Calder Photography Saeed Rashid, Brian Pitkin Ships Richard Larn Wrecks Rex Cowan

THE MAGAZINE THAT’S STRAIGHT DOWN THE LINE… HOW TO GET YOUR divEr: SUBSCRIPTION: Twelve issues, including p&p, cost £52.80 (UK); £64.80 (Eire/Europe/Worldwide surface); airmail rates available on request. Pay by Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, American Express, sterling cheque or UK Postal Order. Contact the Subscriptions Dept, divEr at the above address.

NEWSAGENT: If you prefer to buy divEr over the counter, place an order with your newsagent now. All newsagents can obtain the magazine, but in case of difficulty please notify the Subscriptions Manager at the above address. divEr (ISSN-0141-3465) is published monthly by Eaton Publications, Periodicals Postage Paid at Jamaica NY 11431. USPS no. 22517.

US agent: Air Business Ltd, c/o Worldnet Shipping Inc., 156-15, 146th Avenue, 2nd Floor, Jamaica, NY 11434, USA. US POSTMASTER: Send address changes to divEr Magazine, c/o Air Business Ltd, c/o Worldnet Shipping Inc., 156-15, 146th Avenue, 2nd Floor, Jamaica, NY 11434, USA.

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Contents JAN.qxp_Contents_MAY 30/11/2016 11:14 Page 06

CONTENTS REGULARS 3

First In Editor’s view

8

News At last – some encouraging news for British seas

18

Beachcomber

10

Those mind-boggling vanishing shipwrecks

41

Trewavas Time for some post-truth diving

54

Technique Can you handle a broken mask-strap or BC failure?

66

Booking Now All the latest holiday news

80

Book Review The Red Sea, Norway and freshwater fish

82

Diver Tests Back to basics: reel, gauge, computer and dive-bag

88

Just Surfaced

66

New but untested diving products

91

Dive Holiday Directory

92

Liveaboard Directory

94

Classified Ads

96

Dive Centre Directory

96

Advertisers’ Index

97

Subscribe Here

82

– and get a free Apeks diving watch!

98

Deep Breath Happy days with an action cam

Cover shot: Turtle in the Philippines

by Joss Woolf The reproduction in whole or in part of any of the contents of divEr is expressly forbidden without the written permission of the Publishers.

Copyright © 2017 by Eaton Publications. divEr reserves the right to reproduce on-line any articles that it has published in print.

The views expressed in FIRST IN are not necessarily those of anyone but the Editor, and other editorial should be ascribed only to the authors concerned. The publishers accept no responsibility or liability for any errors, omissions or alterations, or for any consequences ensuing upon the use of, or reliance upon, any information contained

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88 herein. Due caution should be exercised by anyone attempting dives on any site herein described or indicated. The company does not accept liability for submitted photographs. The printing of an advertisement in divEr does not necessarily mean that the Proprietors endorse the company, item or service advertised. divEr is distributed by Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London EC1A 9PT (tel: 020 7429 4000) and printed by Headley Brothers Ltd, The Invicta Press, Queens Road, Ashford, Kent TN24 8HH (tel: 01233 623131).

Aggressor Fleet (FP) – 01_17.qxp_Aggressor 30/11/2016 11:00 Page 1

News JAN.qxp_DIVER grid 29/11/2016 07:57 Page 8

DIVER NEWS

Proposal for 50 more English MCZs welcomed by conservationists MCS

T

HE BRITISH GOVERNMENT’S scientific advisors have set out proposals on where a final set of 50 Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs) are needed around England – and eco-charities the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) and The Wildlife Trusts say they are excited about the plans, which they describe as a positive step forward towards restoring the country’s seas.

The sites proposed for protection by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee and Natural England would form the third and final round of MCZ designations for England.

In the previous two tranches, only 50 protected sites were created, falling far short of the amount of protection scientists say is needed to safeguard our seas. However, the new plans could double that number.

Recommended to go out for public consultation in 2017 are sites that include the south of the Isles of Scilly; Norris to Ryde with its seagrass meadows; the 35m Mud Hole off the North-west coast, which is home to rare seapens; and Compass Rose off the Yorkshire coast.

The additional 50 sites “are essential to ensure that we are protecting examples of all habitats,” said Melissa Moore of the MCS. “They will allow a proportion of our seas to begin to recover from over a century of damage, and contribute to the restoration of biodiversity in our seas.

Cleaning up: encouraging news for English seas and UK beaches.

“We call on Government to include all these sites in their thirdtranche consultation next summer.”

Joan Edwards of The Wildlife Trusts said that if designated the sites would “help to establish a proper network of protected areas in our seas. This is a huge step towards ensuring that future generations will be able to rely on healthy and productive seas, rich in wildlife.”

The full list of sites recommended for designation contains the Alde Ore, Axe, Camel, Dart, Devon Avon, Erme, Otter, Taw Torridge and Thames estuaries; E Meridian (E section); Hythe Bay; Ribble; Beachy Head E (Royal Sovereign Shoals); Bembridge; Cape Bank; Compass Rose; Goodwin Sands; Holderness Offshore; Inner

Bank; Kentish Knock E; Markham’s Triangle; Morte Platform; Mud Hole; Norris to Ryde; NE Haig Fras; Offshore Foreland; Orford Inshore; Selsey Bill & the Hounds; Silver Pit; Slieve Na Griddle; Solway Firth; SW Deeps (E); S of Celtic Deep; S of Portland; S of the Isles of Scilly; South Rigg; Studland Bay; Wyre-Lune; Yarmouth to Cowes; Queenie Corner; E of Start Point MCZ Area of Search; S of Chesil Beach MCZ Area of Search; W of Copeland MCZ Area of Search; W of Lundy Area of Search; plus three inshore MCZ Areas of Search and more than 10 mobile-species MCZs. IN FURTHER PROMISING NEWS for the coastal environment, the MCS has reported that the number of

plastic bags on UK beaches dropped by almost 40% from 2015 to 2016, presumably thanks to the 5p charge now levied by supermarkets on single-use carriers. It described the drop as “fantastic news for marine wildlife”.

The figures are published in the MCS Great British Beach Clean 2016 report, based on surveys carried out last September. In 2015 there were, on average, 11 plastic bags per 100m of coastline cleaned, but in 2016 that figure had reduced to just under seven, the lowest in 10 years.

The charity began calling for action on carrier-bags in 2008, and says it was instrumental in getting a levy introduced in Wales in 2011, Northern Ireland in 2013, Scotland in 2014 and England in October 2015.

The MCS also reported a drop of almost 4% in the number of litter items found on UK beaches between 2015 and 2016 – although that still left 268,384 individual items of litter collected at 364 events by just under 6000 volunteers.

There was also a 4%-plus rise in the number of drinks containers found, including plastic bottles.

There was also “an astonishing rise” of 53.5% in the amount of balloon-related litter. Turtles mistake plastic bags and balloons for jellyfish prey, and the materials can block their digestive systems.

The Great British Beach Clean 2017 takes place on 15-18 September. n

THREE DEATHS DEFY STATISTICS ON THE GREAT BARRIER REEF A 60-YEAR-OLD British diver died on Australia's Great Barrier Reef on 18 November. He was found on the seabed at 15m with his regulator out of his mouth during his second dive of the day at Agincourt Reef.

The man was brought back aboard the Port Douglas-based Silversonic day-boat, where extensive efforts were made to revive him.

A doctor was helicoptered out to the vessel, which was equipped with emergency oxygen and defibrillation equipment, but eventually declared the diver dead.

“The dive-boat Silversonic has operated for 11 years and carried 230,000 divers during that time with divEr

8

The Silversonic was reported to be well-equipped to deal with an emergency. no diving fatalities,” Col McKenzie, Executive Director of the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators, told the Cairns Post. “Accidents like this are a tragedy for the surviving family-members, the crew and the

passengers.” The diver, who was travelling with his wife, had yet to be named as divEr went to press.

Earlier the same week two French snorkellers had died at Michaelmas Cay on the Great Barrier Reef. Both in

their mid-70s, Jacques Goron and Danielle Franck were on a snorkelling cruise aboard the vessel Passions of Paradise. They had both reportedly informed their tour group of preexisting medical conditions that could trigger heart attacks.

According to the Cairns Post, a cardiologist had speculated that the almost simultaneous deaths of the two might have been caused by an encounter with tiny but deadly Irukandji jellyfish.

“In Queensland, we have one fatality for 450,000 dives – so we have a record that is four and a half times better than the worldwide industry average,” said McKenzie. n

www.divErNEt.com

News JAN.qxp_DIVER grid 29/11/2016 07:57 Page 9

DIVER NEWS

Warship wrecks ‘vanish’ THE BIG QUESTION from Indonesian waters Outing the critter-fiddlers “Have you come across ‘critter-fiddling’ on dives – photographers manipulating macro subjects to give them a better shot?” That’s what we asked you last month, following up Alex Mustard’s disapproving article on what is currently a hot topic in the underwater photography world.

Forty-four per cent of you had witnessed such incidents…

YES HMS Exeter under attack during the Battle of Java in 1942.

ROYAL NAVY HEAVY CRUISER HMS Exeter is one of seven wrecks of WW2 Allied warships to have disappeared entirely or in part from their resting places in Indonesia.

The vessels were casualties of Japanese attacks during the bitter Battle of the Java Sea in 1942, and sank with considerable loss of life.

Of the seven Exeter was the biggest ship at 10,500 tons laden.

She was torpedoed on 28 February and sank in a depth of 60m south of Borneo. The wreck was located and identified by divers nine years ago.

Two other British casualties, the destroyers HMS Encounter and Electra, are reported to be missing and mutilated respectively.

Two of the other ships were Dutch, including the 6650-tonne HNLMS De Ruyter and the Java, and another was the American submarine USS Perch.

A third Dutch vessel, HNLMS Kortenaer, is reportedly still in place but with a large section removed.

The vessels were reported to be largely intact when discovered by sports divers from 2002, but now their disappearance has been revealed by

a survey carried out ahead of next year’s 75th anniversary of the battle.

With nothing left in some cases but indentations in the seabed, the inevitable conclusion is that the ships have been illegally salvaged for their scrap metal. Salvage ships often pose as fishing vessels to disguise their activities as they use explosives to blast wrecks apart and remove the scrap. However, it is highly unusual for every trace of such large vessels to be removed, because the operation would be so protracted.

Salvage would also have disturbed human remains on the vessels.

The Dutch Government was quick to launch an investigation into the fate of the wrecks, classed as war graves. They are protected on paper under UNESCO’s Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage of 2001.

Indonesia has pointed out that its navy cannot monitor all its waters at all times. However, in late November Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told Associated Press that Indonesia had offered to help investigate the fate of the wrecks. n

Divers retrieve fake euros POLICE DIVERS SEARCHING the Mechka dam in a reservoir in southern Bulgaria have recovered some 13 million euros – all in counterfeit 500-euro notes.

A forger who had confessed to police led the divers to the location.

www.divErNEt.com

Three men were arrested and weapons and drugs seized following an investigation into one of the biggest forgery cases to have occurred in Bulgaria.

One of the men, the owner of a printing company, had already been sentenced to six years’ jail for forgery. The police had been tipped off that the notes were about to be recovered from under water and put into circulation.

The operation was carried out by police working with Bulgaria’s Specialised Prosecutor's Office and the State Agency for National Security, DANS. n

“At muck/critter sites it is inevitable. Acceptance depends a lot on critter vulnerability, strength etc. ‘Scientific’ researchers are far more harmful to life than most.” Martin Roberts “It’s becoming more and more of a problem – it's the responsibility of every diver to vent their concerns and displeasure with dive-operator management whenever they witness it.” Ben Stokes “As an underwater photographer it drives me insane when I see others with cameras doing some ‘critter-fiddling’. There’s no need. The fun of the game is getting the shot by patience and good positioning, and if it isn’t happening you’ll get another chance at some point in your diving career. Touch nothing leave only bubbles is so apt!” Darren Willis “Often done by dive-guides who believe this will get them a bigger tip. ” Clare Vincent-Silk “I don't like it. We should leave well alone.” Simon Read “It’s cheating!” Mike McLaren “Yes, my buddy.” Richard Eaker “I’d prefer it if they left them alone.” Robert Porter “I spoke to a culprit after the dive and he claimed to be unaware of any impact of his actions.” David Tillotson “Morays and octopuses being teased out of their holes, molluscs being killed to create a feeding frenzy and seahorses being manipulated on some occasions by the dive-guide.” John Williams “I wish they would respect wildlife enough to leave them undisturbed.

I would rather have a natural shot that perhaps doesn't finish up as a perfect image.” Michael Beddows “I don’t often see it but I think that’s part of the trouble – I gather that dive-guides will sometimes be looking around while you’re busy photographing something, and quietly move a critter to a more photogenic spot. You might be able to tell because it is no longer camouflaged!” Marcella Wells

NO “But some photographers are so competitive I can well believe they’d do anything it takes to win.” Tanya Ortiz “But I’m sure it happens. With that and Photoshop you never know if the photo is a natural shot.” Peter Smith “Don’t photographers manipulate images anyway? If there is no harm caused to the critter, why worry?” Gordon Kaye “Can’t you get locked up for that sort of thing?” Steve Copeland “But if I did see that sort of thing happening my tolerance level would be zero.” Suzanne Phelps “I haven’t seen it on my guided dives, and if I did I’d be more than happy to give the diver a prod in the ribs or smack on the head and gesticulate a very obvious NO!” Nicholas Ray “Photographers are generally aware of the need to protect what they photograph.” TR Amp “Not yet, but I’m aware that it happens.” Clair Read

Go to www.divernet.com to answer…

THE NEXT BIG QUESTION When travelling abroad, do you carry your dive-gear in a purpose-made dive-bag with branding that indicates its contents?

Please answer yes or no, and feel free to elaborate

9

divEr

News JAN.qxp_DIVER grid 29/11/2016 07:57 Page 10

DIVER NEWS

Did Canadian diver come across a ‘Fat Man’?

A

CANADIAN DIVER appears to have found a long-lost atomic bomb. Sean Smyrichinsky spotted the device at about 15m depth, while using a DPV to search for sea-cucumbers at a rarely dived site off Boyle Point, Pitt Island in British Columbia.

“I found this big thing under water, huge, never seen anything like it before,” he told the Vancouver Sun. At the surface he told friends: “Hey, I found a UFO. It’s really bizarre.”

He had no camera but later showed a sketch of the device to local fishermen, one of whom remembered a story of a missing bomb.

This 4900kg Mark 4 nuclear device was lost after a US Air Force B36 bomber crashed while flying a mission from Alaska to the southwest of the USA in February 1950. I t was packed with lead and TNT but was said to contain no radioactive materials.

The 17-man crew baled out after ice built up on the aircraft's wings and three of its six engines caught fire, but they first set the B36 on autopilot to come down at sea

Solo-diver on 17-hour drift ‘a bit naughty’

A 68-YEAR-OLD solo-diver who went missing off Australia's north Queensland coast in early November was rescued after being adrift for more than 17 hours overnight.

Les Brierley normally carried a personal locator beacon, but after cleaning it he forgot to bring it when he took his boat to dive the Yongala wreck, near Russell Island south of Townsville.

Diving alone, Brierley was quickly picked up by strong currents that made it impossible for him to return to his moored but unmanned boat.

A friend called emergency services at about 6.45pm after Brierley failed to return. A large search and rescue operation got under way and the boat was found during the night.

However, Brierley was spotted only at around 11 next morning, by a helicopter crew that was about to depart to refuel following a 90-minute search.

He had drifted more than 30 miles from the Yongala site.

Referring to Brierley’s yellow An original Fat Man nuclear device gives an idea of its shape and size. cylinder framed against his black wetsuit, Alan Griffiths, the Another day in Chris Wood’s rescuer underwaterwinched office. down to him, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “Black and yellow kind of stand out… I said to him: Ahmed stated that: “UK aviation “We look forward to achieving the ‘G'day mate, do you want a lift?’" security experts have worked return of flights once we can be Describing Brierley as “very closely with their Egyptian assured that the necessary lucky”, he said: “He went by counterparts on the ground, security environment can be himself, which is a bit naughty". sharing their expertise in sustained.”

Acting Police Inspector establishing effective security The statement leaves openGraeme Paterson told ABC that arrangements. ended a time-frame for calm conditions, warm waters “We continue to work in resumption of flights. and Brierley’s ability to stay partnership in a spirit of coLord Dear had asked what afloat and save energy assisted operation, and are grateful for assessment the Government had the search efforts.

Egypt’s close engagement and made of the impact on the British “Every hour that somebody partnership.” tourism and airline industries of spends in the ocean their chances Britain banned flights into the ban on air flights between the diminish, so the fact that he’s Sharm following the fatal downing UK and Sharm el Sheikh. been found in the first 24 hours is of a Russian airliner as it left the The question was not answered amazing," he said. n airport in November 2015. n directly, but in his response Lord

instead of land. Five of the men died in the incident, although their bodies were never found.

The B36 crashed almost 200 miles from where they had jumped out.

It was later revealed that they were on a mission to simulate a nuclear attack on San Francisco “as real as it gets short of war”, using a device based on the Mark 3

“Fat Man” atomic bomb used at Nagasaki.

Following Internet research, Smyrichinsky believes that the device he saw matches the description of a Mark 4 bomb.

Canada’s Department of National Defence has informed the diver that it is “looking into this matter with keen interest”. n

Sharm airport: ‘sustainability’ is now the issue ALTHOUGH EGYPT appears to have met the British Government's requirements regarding security measures at Sharm el Sheikh airport, imposed when it banned flights there from the UK in late 2015, a Department for Transport statement now seems to suggest that continuation of the ban has become a matter of “sustainability”.

In answer to a question from Lord Dear, a member of the AllParliamentary Group on Egypt which is pressing for a resumption of flights, DTp spokesman Lord Ahmed of Wimbledon stated that:

Join our Marine Experts, Photographers & Researchers Tel: 01428 620012 For our latest Ocean Giant and Reef Photos & Videos visit 10 www.facebook.com/AquaFirma

divEr

www.divErNEt.com Best of Above & Below Water Travel

News JAN.qxp_DIVER grid 29/11/2016 08:05 Page 11

SEASEARCH DIVER IS RECOGNISED FOR HIS ECO-CONTRIBUTION

Another day in Chris Wood’s underwater office.

MCS

CHRIS WOOD, WHO RETIRED last September after 13 years as National Seasearch Co-ordinator, was awarded the David Robertson Adult Award for services to marine and coastal wildlife at the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) 2016 UK awards in Edinburgh.

Seasearch is the UK-wide volunteer diver programme co-ordinated by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS).

Appointed to the role in 2003, Plymouth-based Wood was tasked with promoting and standardising diver training, and co-ordinating survey work and data-management of a growing network of Seasearch divers.

Wood oversaw almost 20,000 Seasearch volunteer dive surveys, resulting in 505,000 species and 59,000 habitat records being provided to the NBN and hence the public, says the MCS. Many of the records have been used to inform Marine Protected Area (MPA) site-selection and management, while others have been of species new or rarely recorded in UK waters. Since 2003, more than 800 divers have become Seasearch-qualified.

Wood, author of Guide to UK Marine Life and Guide to Anemones & Corals, remains an active Seasearch volunteer. “I’ve been fascinated by the underwater world ever since I stuck my head under it with a mask and snorkel in the Channel Islands as a 10-year-old,” he says.

“What’s so special about UK diving is the diversity. You can move from coldwater Arctic species in deep Scottish sea lochs to the southerly species in the relatively balmy south-west of England.

“Over the last 30 years I’ve dived almost exclusively

with Seasearch, which includes many people with both a fascination for marine life and unparalleled ‘in situ’ identification skills.”

Jean-Luc Solandt, MCS Principle Specialist MPAs, said of Wood: “The man is amazing – a great buddy, companion, diver, photographer, author, leader and well-respected by the scientific and diving community alike.

“I like that he never enjoyed being in the office, but was always happier at sea – never could a more suitable person receive such an award.” n

Documentary diver named a ‘Breakthrough Brit’ WILDLIFE-DOCUMENTARY producer and divEr contributor Ellen Husain has been named a 2016 BAFTA Breakthrough Brit.

“As the first natural-history person to be named, I’m seeing BAFTA’s support as, I hope, a good thing for getting more marine films out there and marine issues on the agenda,”

she told divEr. Organised by the British Academy of Film & Television Arts in partnership with Burberry, the annual Breakthrough Brit event showcases up-and-coming creative talent selected by a jury of industry experts.

Ellen Husain, 40, grew up on Cornwall’s south coast and is now

Ellen Husain (circled) at the Breakthrough Brits awards ceremony at BAFTA.

www.divErNEt.com

based near Bristol. Following a successful career as a marine biologist she moved into producing TV wildlife programmes.

She was employed as a researcher on BBC Two’s South Pacific series in 2007 but obtained an assistant producer credit for her ambitious underwater sequences.

She went on to work as an assistant producer on Ocean Giants for BBC One, and her breakthrough came in 2013 when she was asked to produce Silverback Films’ seven-part series The Hunt, broadcast by the BBC in 2016, “I’m hugely pleased to be named as a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit,” said Husain. “It’s an incredibly exciting initiative that provides a fantastic platform to help turn creative ideas into reality.”

Read Ellen Husain's take on diving the Solomons islands in this issue. n

SAVE up to £1000!

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divEr

News JAN.qxp_DIVER grid 29/11/2016 07:57 Page 12

DIVER NEWS

Proto-freediver Maiorca dies at 85 ENZO MAIORCA, one of the two Mediterranean competitive freedivers who brought the sport to global prominence in the 1960s, has died at the age of 85.

Born in Syracuse in Sicily (where he also died), Maiorca was bestknown for his rivalry with French freediver Jacques Mayol, as the two men vied to set new world records from the mid-1960s on.

Known by the Italian press as “Lord of the Abyss”, he was the first to reach

50m on a single breath of air (although his rival was the first to break through the 100m mark).

The divers’ rivalry inspired director Luc Besson’s popular 1988 film The Big Blue, although Maiorca felt that the Enzo Molinari character portrayed by Jean Reno portrayed him as an uneducated Sicilian. He blocked the film’s release in

Enzo Maiorca before his 90m bid at Sorrento in

Maiorca (left) with his French rival Jacques Mayol in 1978.

1974.

Italy, relenting only after Mayol’s suicide in 2002.

Like many Mediterranean freedivers, Maiorca originally took up the sport simply to spear fish, though he said that he gave up that practice

British teenage diver drowns in South Sulawesi

Lusitania telegraph recovered from 90m

Lusitania preparing to dock.

A TELEGRAPH FROM iconic WW1 liner wreck the Lusitania has been recovered from a depth of more than 90m off the coast of Cork in Ireland.

Technical diver Eoin McGarry from Dungarvan and his team raised the artefact from the seabed in late October, according to reports in the Irish press.

McGarry, who has been exploring the wreck for the past 15 years, had already brought up the pedestal for the Lusitania's bridge telegraph divEr

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during the summer, and hopes to recover the instrument itself in 2017.

The recent recovery, carried out under licence from Ireland's Heritage Ministry, was reportedly made challenging by weather, tides and poor visibility.

Heritage Minister Heather Humphreys said that the wreck’s US owner Gregg Bemis hoped “to place the artefacts recovered from the Lusitania on display locally, which of course would be of great benefit to

in 1967 out of a new-found empathy with his former quarry.

The Italian set his first world record in 1960, when he beat Brazilian Americo Santarelli with a 45m variable-weight dive. After his 74m dive in 1970,the sport’s governing body refused to preside over further record attempts, because doctors regarded the depths being attempted as too dangerous.

In 1974 Maiorca tried to become the first freediver to reach 90m in a live televised event.

However, after colliding with a scuba-diver at 6m and returning to the surface he swore audibly on air, and as a result was banned from Italian TV. After that incident he gave up competitive freediving until 1986.

In 1988, at the age of 57, he succeeded in setting a personal-best depth of 101m, and from then on concentrated on marine environmental campaigns. n

the people of Kinsale”.

The fast liner was sunk by a torpedo from German submarine U20 on 7 May, 1915, following a transatlantic crossing from New York, causing the deaths of almost 1200 people.

The rapid 18-minute sinking led to rumours that Lusitania was carrying a clandestine cargo of explosives for Britain's war effort, but the death-toll was a significant factor in bringing the USA into the war. n

A BRITISH TEENAGER has died while scuba-diving with his father on holiday in South Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Gregory Mills was diving a shallow reef site in Maya Bay with his father Christopher and divemaster Nicola Jaeger from the Wakatobi Dive Resort at 8am on Saturday, 29 October.

The 17-year-old is reported to have panicked while at a depth of 9m and dropped his regulator from his mouth.

Mills was said to have resisted attempts to help him and was declared dead on being brought to the resort’s medical room. An autopsy later confirmed the presence of sea water in his lungs.

The 5300sq mile Wakatobi National Park is a UNESCO protected area.

Maya Bay has an average depth of 12m, a flat seabed of coral reef and sand and little current. Visited by boat, it is recommended for all levels of diver. n

www.divErNEt.com

News JAN.qxp_DIVER grid 29/11/2016 08:05 Page 13

DIVER NEWS UWF

Too easy: students find key 16th-century Spanish wreck The 1559 Luna expedition included 1500 soldiers, colonists, slaves and Aztec Indians who travelled in 11 The archaeologists examine a cannonball. ships from Mexico to colonise the northern Gulf Coast.

A hurricane a month after their arrival sank six ships and devastated food supplies. After two years, Spanish ships rescued the remnants of the colony and returned them to Mexico.

“As long as we had just two shipwrecks, it could mean that the rest of the fleet was somewhere else,” said Dr John Worth, principal investigator of the land settlement. “Now we know we really do have the fleet.” n

EOS RZ FAMILY

UWF

A THIRD SHIPWRECK from a 16th-century Spanish fleet linked to an expedition from Mexico to what is now the city of Pensacola has been found by archaeological divers from University of West Florida (UWF).

The find in Pensacola Bay is located near the first two wrecks linked to the fleet, which was led by Spanish conquistador Tristán de Luna y Arellano.

One was found in 1992, and the second by UWF 10 years ago.

The latest discovery, dubbed Emanuel Point III, was made on a field trip last summer.

Luna’s land-base in Pensacola, the earliest multi-year European settlement in the USA, was discovered by UWF researchers only in 2015, enabling the dive-team to narrow their search area for the remaining wrecks.

“We chose a shallow spot with a sandy bottom to dive to give the students a break after we’d been in another part of the bay where it was deeper and darker,” said Dr Greg Cook, principal investigator of the wreck. The survey team had found an anomaly but had no great expectations and “decided to let the students have fun investigating it”.

“Within two minutes, the divers came up and said they felt stones with their probes. Later that afternoon, the first artefacts were found. I said that day: ‘You know, it shouldn’t be this easy.’”

Apart from ballast stones the team found iron concretions, frames and planking from the ship’s hull, and remnants of ceramics.

They now plan to carry out test excavations to determine the wreck’s extent and the type of wood present, as this will indicate if it was among the earliest ships to be built in the New World.

“Because it was found in shallower water than the others, it might be smaller, possibly what they called a barca,” said co-principal investigator Dr John Bratten. “This discovery is significant in understanding 16th-century ship construction.”

CENTER OF BRILLIANCE. EDGE OF PERFORMANCE. The new Mares family of dive lights will illuminate and zoom you into the underwater world. Featuring a hi-intensity LED encased in a non-corrosive aluminum body, adjustable beam, extensive burn time, and rechargeable battery via the included micro USB cord; available in a variety of sizes with multiple light intensities to meet all your diving needs and conditions.

We have the light for you. Don’t be left in the dark again.

Be brilliant. Take the edge of performance.

Using a suction line to survey the site.

www.divErNEt.com

mares.com

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News JAN.qxp_DIVER grid 30/11/2016 09:03 Page 14

DIVER NEWS

Mentor still yielding 214 years on A

NCIENT TREASURES and 19th-century artefacts have been found in the wreck of the Mentor, the frigate that was transporting the controversial Elgin Marbles and other items from Piraeus to England when she sank off the Greek island of Kythera in 1802.

Much of the ship’s cargo has been looted in the years since the sinking.

The marbles, parts of a frieze removed from the Parthenon in Athens by Lord Elgin and now mostly in the British Museum, were salvaged for him by Greek sponge-divers, along with other treasures.

But now an international team of marine archaeologists working for the Greek Culture Ministry's Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities has located an overlooked treasure trove.

Fragment of the Elgin Marbles and (inset) the 7th Earl of Elgin.

The divers carried out further excavation of what remains of the hull and prow of the Mentor following the depredations and damage caused by treasure-hunters over the years.

Diving archaeologists recovers significant Gozo jug from 110m A JUG RECOVERED by an archaeological dive-team from the 110m-deep oldest-known shipwreck in the central Mediterranean could prove that the Maltese islands were a key part of the Phoenician trade network.

Marine archaeologist Timothy Gambin of the University of Malta has told the Sunday Times of Malta that if, as suspected, the jug comes from Gozo, it would prove that the ship had been departing after trading in the Maltese islands, rather than simply passing by.

The 2700-year-old Phoenician vessel was found off Gozo’s north-western coast in 2014. Spread over a 60sq m area, it was surveyed by the Groplan Project, which concluded that apart from the visible amphoras and grinding stones at wreck level, archaeological remains extended to a depth of some 2m beneath the seabed, and probably included ship’s timbers.

Two amphoras, an urn and a grinding stone were raised before bad weather cut short the expedition.

Now a team of 12 technical divers from the UK, France, Malta, Italy and Finland, armed with a list of items to recover, has undertaken a 140-minute scuba-dive of the site. This was said to be the first time that archaeologists had dived to such a depth unsupported by submarines.

Items recovered, without excavating the seabed, included the jug and a large storage container of a shape not seen before, both thought to have originated in Malta, as well as amphoras from North Africa and western Sicily.

Amphora fragments were being tested in the hope of determining the contents. n divEr

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Among new finds, reported in the newspaper Haaretz, were parts of an Egyptian statue, ancient coins from the archaic to the Roman period, amphoras with stamped handles from Rhodes, and fish & plant fossils.

The team also found personal effects of the Mentor’s passengers and crew, including navigation equipment, watches, glassware and porcelain, pistols and ammunition, and a cannonball.

The frigate’s Captain William Eglen had argued that his ship was being dangerously overburdened while it was being loaded in Piraeus, but his objections were over-ruled by Elgin’s staff. When Eglen realised that the ship was taking on water, he tried to reach safety in Kythera, but was unable to anchor in rising seas.

The Mentor swung onto rocks and sank in 23m. All the passengers and crew were rescued.

Next year the archaeologists hope to uncover more antiquities from the bow of the Mentor, and buried in the seabed. n

Treasure-hunter ‘faking memory loss’ A FORMER UNDERWATER treasure-hunter faked memory problems in a bid to deceive authorities about the location of gold coins recovered from the 1857 Central America shipwreck, a judge has ruled.

After three years on the run, Tommy Thompson was arrested in a Florida hotel in January 2015. Since December he has been held in contempt of court for violating a plea bargain by refusing to respond to questions – and ordered to pay $1000 a day until he co-operates.

According to a report in the

Sun Sentinel, Thompson had claimed to suffer from a neurological disorder that caused memory problems.

But a psychiatric evaluation revealed no more than minor memory loss, leading to federal judge Algernon Marbley's ruling.

The early paddle-steamer Central America sank in a hurricane off South Carolina to a depth of about 2.5km. She had been sailing from Panama to New York with 425 passengers and crew and a reported 14 tons of gold aboard. There were few survivors of the sinking.

OBITUARY JOHN WEINBERG UK DIVER JOHN WEINBERG has died unexpectedly at the age of 58. He featured heavily in divEr group equipment tests during the 1990s and played a leading role in each of the three divEr videos released at that time.

Coming from a highly academic family, Weinberg gained a first-class with honours degree at University College London but chose a life revolving around scuba-diving instead. For many years he ran Scuba Training

Large amounts of gold and artefacts were recovered by Thompson’s salvage team from 1988 using ROVs, although the haul, estimated to be worth more than $100 million, was thought to represent only a small proportion of the gold aboard.

Thompson eventually went into hiding after being sued by investors and crew for lack of returns on expedition profits.

Thompson had claimed that the gold had been turned over to a trust in Belize, but had provided no details about its whereabouts. n

Ltd, a diving business based in Fulham, and continued to run escorted dive-trips all over the world even after that business ceased.

“A great many divers grew to know and like John because, above all else, he was a very likable character, someone who was said to be so relaxed, he was horizontal!” said John Bantin, former Technical Editor of divEr. Weinberg, who was unmarried, died at his home in Aberdeen, where he had been pursuing a new career. He had organised an autumn dive-trip to Indonesia, but cancelled his participation because he had recently been diagnosed with an illness, and had just started treatment. n

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Diver Awards JAN.qxp_Layout 1 28/11/2016 10:35 Page 15

DIVER AWARDS 2016

I WOULD LIKE TO NOMINATE: 1 divEr BRAND OF THE YEAR Which badge on your dive gear speaks volumes about quality and reliability?

Make _________________________________________________________________

2 divEr PRODUCT OF THE YEAR Which do you consider the most exciting item of kit to emerge in 2016?

LET THEM KNOW

Make _________________________________________________________________ Model ________________________________________________________________

3 divEr TOUR OPERATOR OF THE YEAR

YOU CARE

Which company is best at arranging diving package holidays?

Name _________________________________________________________________

4 divEr DIVE CENTRE OF THE YEAR Which centre, anywhere in the world, seems to get it right more often than not?

Name _________________________________________________________________ Location ______________________________________________________________

5 divEr LIVEABOARD OF THE YEAR It may be the facilities, the crew or the itinerary – name your ideal boat

Name _________________________________________________________________

6 divEr DESTINATION OF THE YEAR Nominate the best country for divers to visit, and not necessarily the obvious!

Country _______________________________________________________________

7 divEr RETAILER OF THE YEAR Vote for any dive store that has given you good value and exemplary service

Name _________________________________________________________________

S

OME PEOPLE MAKE OUR

days as divers, whether they provide the equipment on which we know we can rely, or the liveaboard and dive-centre services that ensure a hassle-free, safe and enjoyable diving experience.

They’re the people we want to go back to again and again.

And that is what the divEr Awards are all about – they’re an integral part of the UK diving scene, still dedicated to recognising the most deserving in the diving industry, 19 years on.

Who helped to boost your diving experiences in 2016? Let us know who you would like to see get a big pat on the back.

The divEr Awards will be

presented at the London International Dive Show at the ExCeL Centre in February, and if you’re planning to be there you’re invited to attend the ceremony and applaud your winning nominees.

You can either complete the form on the right and freepost it to us, or visit www.divernet.com and do it online.

But please don’t delay – you have only until midnight on 31 December 2016 to get your nominations over to us.

We expect the winners to be trading on their divEr Awards success next year, so make sure they’re the ones you’d like to see win.

Location ______________________________________________________________

8 divEr NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR There is an award, but you don’t need to vote – the winners will emerge from among the newcomers with the most votes in the other categories.

I understand that I may submit only one voting form, and confirm that I am not an employee of, or commercially associated with, any organisation I have named above.

Signature: _____________________________________________________________

Name _________________________________________________________________ Address _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________ Postcode ______________________________________________________________ Tel ____________________________________________________________________ Email __________________________________________________________________ Submit your completed form to divEr Awards Readers’ Vote, FREEPOST RTSA-BKTCUHBG, divEr, Suite B, 74 Oldfield Road, Hampton, Middx TW12 2HR, to arrive no later than 31 Dec, 2016. Photocopies cannot be accepted. Your details are required for verification only, and will not be otherwise used or passed on to any third party.

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LIDS 01_17.qxp_DIVER grid 01/12/2016 09:26 Page 16

LIDS means diving – plus a whole lot more…

W

HEN THE MID-FEBRUARY, school half-term approaches, you may well find yourself weighing up ideas that will keep the family entertained but, vitally, keep you entertained as well.

If the family is into adventure and outdoor activities – and as you’re a scuba-diver, there’s a good chance it will be – you should find plenty to keep everybody happy at London’s ExCeL on any day between 16 and 19 February.

That’s when the London International Dive Show (LIDS)

takes place as part of the UK’s biggest outdoor activity event, which also embraces the Outdoor Adventure & Camping Show, London Bike Show and Triathlon Show.

This year LIDS also forms part of the Oceans Festival element of the event, which also includes the Incredible Oceans Live project run

by Whalefest and the World Cetacean Alliance.

Whatever interests you and your family or friends, your tickets provide access to all areas of all four shows.

Go phreatic in London! divEr has been intrigued to follow the “phreatic” experiences of Marcus Greatwood and his NoTanx Freedive Club in recent times – the term describes diving on a single breath of air in often inaccessible and enclosed environments, and admittedly it’s not for everyone.

Now at LIDS you can get the chance to meet the team and get a taste of this new sport that combines freediving with caving and abseiling, but do so in a way that won’t have Health & Safety drawing sharp breaths.

Take the NoTanx Phreatic Diving Challenge: after a test of your flexibility, strength and self-control you’ll get a brief safety talk before being kitted out. You’ll attempt to wriggle along Squeezy

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Passage (a replica cave), ascend a 25m anti-abseil (or “prusik”) and test your relaxation skills in a final Static Apnea (breath-hold).

Prizes of Anchor dive-lights and accessories are promised for fastest times each day. The experience is free, but please book your slot in advance – email info@NoTanx.com.

www.divErNEt.com

LIDS 01_17.qxp_DIVER grid 01/12/2016 11:55 Page 17

SHOW PREVIEW PHOTOS: ALEX KHACHADOURIAN

NO NEED TO SHELL OUT…

Win a £10,000 dive holiday in St Lucia!

With so many potential new divers visiting the four-day event – some 50,000 visitors turned up in 2016 – there will be many keen to dabble in scuba for the first time, which is where LIDS’ enlarged Try-Dive Pool comes in.

It will again provide a focal point at ExCeL, with expert instructors offering visitors of all ages a gentle introduction to scuba free of charge.

Then there are exciting crossover LIDS attractions such as the Phreatic Diving Challenge (see panel left).

When you’re ready to sit down you’ll find an inspiring array of special guest presenters speaking in the Oceans

www.divErNEt.com

Theatre (crowd favourite Paul Rose, naturally, to name but one!).

And there will be celebrity speakers throughout the hall, and attractions such as the Adventure Theatre, Adventure Playground, Discovery Zone, Wetsuit Testing Pool, Superbloc climbing wall and much more.

The quartet of shows run from 11-6 on Thursday, 16 February, from 105 on the Friday, from 10-6 on Saturday and 10-5 on Sunday 19.

You’ll find the latest LIDS low-down at www.diveshows.co.uk, and for more on the other shows and to book tickets, go to www.oceansfestival.co.uk n

Where there’s a Dive Show there’s a Grand Prize Draw, and that means free tickets for a fantastic holiday for two people for our lucky winner.

For LIDS 2017, the Caribbean island of St Lucia has stepped up with a tasty 12-night, twocentre package for two. Seven nights’ B&B accommodation in a deluxe pool-view room awaits at Bay Gardens Beach Resort, in the island’s entertainment capital Rodney Bay Village.

Diving comes in the form of 10-dive packages with Dive Saint Lucia (DSL), and you’ll find it a relaxing experience exploring the island’s turtlepopulated coral reefs.

For non-diving partners, an OWD referral with London School of Diving is included – existing divers can opt to do an Advanced Scuba Review.

You’ll move on for a five-

night half-board stay at Anse Chastanet Resort, with a sixdive Scuba St Lucia package.

This great prize includes international flights, courtesy of the St Lucia Tourist Board, and transfers, plus various day-trips and special dinners.

Just think, all you have to do is turn up for LIDS, and keep your fingers crossed! Terms and conditions apply.

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Beachcomber JAN.qxp_Beachcomber 28/11/2016 08:17 Page 18

BEACHCOMBER

CASE OF THE VANISHING WARSHIPS It’s frighteningly easy to lose stuff under water, and very hard to find it again. Shipwrecks, for example. How many times have you been out with the club and dropped in the hook and headed down to dive HMS Seabed?

Vanished: the wreck of HMS Exeter.

It even happens occasionally with experienced professional skippers, although not so much now that charter-boats have decent positioning and echo-sounding kit as standard.

I mean, it’s not as if you can move a shipwreck, is it?

Which brings me to an expedition to dive the wrecks of a number of ships lost in the Battle of the Java Sea in 1942. The vessels were part of a fleet under the command of Dutch Admiral Karel Doorman, and the Japanese sank a number of ships, including three from the Dutch navy, three British ships and an American

submarine.

One of the British ships was the 10,000-ton heavy cruiser HMS Exeter, veteran of the battle with the Graf Spee in the South Atlantic.

Ten thousand tons is a lot of ship, and she and the others were in 70m, some 60 miles from the nearest Indonesia coast.

Were, because they’ve gone. Vanished. No longer there. All that’s left are the hollows in the seabed where they used to lie.

Which begs the question of how they could possibly be moved and, much more interesting, how they could be moved without somebody noticing what was going on. It is possible to lift 10,000 tons of scrap from 70m, but you don’t do it overnight.

Perhaps there really are aliens.

Lake within a lake Maybe the Mayans knew a thing or two after all.

Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula is covered in a network of cenotes, sinkholes where the limestone has collapsed to open access to the water table below. The Mayans believed that the cenotes were gateways to the underworld where their gods lived, and would throw precious objects into them as offerings –things like golden carvings and people who disagreed with the Mayans.

These days the sinkholes are worldfamous and a paradise of sorts for divers who like caverns and caves and darkness, but Cenote Angelita is something else again, and will give even hardened cavers a bit of a pause.

The water in the cenote is fresh and clear down to 30m, when a turbid light-coloured cloudy bottom comes into sight. Except that it isn’t the bottom, it’s a 3m-thick layer of water containing hydrogen sulphide.

The press makes a lot of the fact that hydrogen sulphide smells awful and is highly poisonous, but as you’re currently at 30m and breathing from a scuba set neither of those things will actually matter very much to you.

Just keep descending, switch on your torch and you come out into a pitch-black realm of clear salt water.

It’s been described as an underwater lake at the bottom of a lake.

Canadian videographer Mike Corey

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Diving Cenote Angelita. has dived and filmed the site and you can find his video on YouTube. As he says, dive Cenote Angelita and you might believe the Mayans were right about their cenotes.

Minimal concept I love the spirit of adventure that drives the development of so much of our scuba equipment. The open-circuit regulator was one man’s dream, and now they’re commonplace. The closed-circuit rebreather grew from a desire to push the boundaries and explore the limits, and now they’re pretty much in the mainstream.

And now, there’s the MiniDive!

It’s basically a half-litre cylinder that you fill using a handpowered pump. Yes, a hand-pump.

There’s an integrated regulator and a button pressure gauge and

you stick the lot in a little bag and hang it round your neck and jump in the water and away you go.

Obviously there are limitations. It’s a small bottle and it’s filled using a bicycle pump, so even when you’re tired of pumping it isn’t going to be really full, but hey, it’ll do for a few shallow minutes and that’s all it’s for.

OK, I know it’s easy to make fun and, believe me, I was tempted, but

hey, maybe it really does have a niche and it’ll kick-start more interest in our beloved sport.

Bubbly, yet down Dive-sites always get a name. Apart from being essential for the first line of my logbook entry I don’t normally pay much attention to them, but here’s one I just love.

In the Gulf of Mexico scientists have discovered a spot they call “The Jacuzzi of Despair!” Isn’t that fantastic?

Wouldn’t you crawl over broken glass to dive a site called that? Just imagine the conversation in the pub.

Sadly it’s too deep for anything but ROVs, but all the same, I’d love to do it.

Britannic World Meanwhile, there’s a move to turn the wreck of the Britannic in Greece into an underwater theme park.

On the one hand, great! It’d be awesome to be able to get a good look at the sistership of the Titanic, and a wonderful way to get non-divers involved in the whole wreck-preservation and history thing.

But on the other hand, what on Earth are you thinking? She’s 120m down and, and, and… well, you know as well as I do what diving that deep entails.

Can you really see a retired dentist from Illinois being willing to don scuba-gear and go look at a shipwreck if it means four hours of deco? Not to mention the logistics of actually supporting such an endeavour.

And if it’s a matter of underwater tunnels and elevators and walkways, just thinking about writing the risk assessment is enough to make me feel poorly. Still, if it gets off the ground, I’ll buy a ticket.

Well, fancy that!

Fish. We see a lot of them, and marvellous things they are, and even more amazing in real life than when they’re deep-fried in batter.

Did you know, for example, that male mosquitofish with larger genitalia do better with lady mosquitofish than males with smaller kit?

And, even more interestingly, female mosquitofish develop larger brains when they’re, ahem, attended to by males with larger tackle.

Isn’t nature remarkable?

www.divErNEt.com

Simply Scuba (FP) – 01_17.qxp_Full Page Bleed 24/11/2016 17:11 Page 1

020_DIVER_0117.qxp_DIVER_2017 28/11/2016 15:17 Page 020

S D N E I R F H T I We take you DIVING W to the best M A L D IV E S IND O N E S IA E GY P T T HA IL A N D S PAIN OM AN M AU R IT IU S JAPA N C RO AT IA

dive spots in the best dive destinations!

B OOKINGS A ND I NFORMATI ON :

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HOLS Red Sea.qxp_DIVER grid 28/11/2016 08:16 Page 21

HOLIDAY DIVER: RED SEA

How the North measures up Southern Red Sea liveaboard trips can seem more remote and glamorous but the northern reaches accessible to day-boats have their own strengths, especially these days.

JOHN LIDDIARD reports

W

HEN PLANNING A RED SEA liveaboard trip, top billing always goes to the southern routes: “Daedalus and St Johns”, “Brothers and Daedalus”, “Simply the Best” and so on. So how does a northern route measure up? I joined blue o two’s blue Melody for a “Strait of Tiran and North” trip to find out.

Boarding in Hurghada, the route heads across to Ras Mohammed and Tiran before looping up the Gulf of Suez to the Dunraven and Thistlegorm wrecks, then back to Hurghada via the Ulysses at Small Gubal island and Dolphin House at Sha’ab el Erg. All these sites are accessible by dayboat from one or more of Sharm el Sheikh, El Gouna or Hurghada, but not all on the same trip. You couldn’t say the same for the southern itineraries. Resorts and desert camps are spotted all the way south to Ras Banas, but the south still has www.divErNEt.com

Pictured: Soft corals on the propeller of the Dunraven.

sites out of day-boat range.

I’m not usually a great night-dive fan, so it’s somewhat perverse that the diving gets good for me on the first such dive of the trip, at the Alternatives.

The day had started on the Hurghada side of the Red Sea with a warm-up at Poseidon Reef – pleasant enough, nothing challenging, nothing amazing.

It was the sort of dive that could be made on any reef rising from a flat seabed where no-one could get it that wrong, a typical warm-up site at the start of any liveaboard itinerary.

With a warning of possibly rough conditions, blue Melody crossed from Hurghada and the captain picked an Alternative at which to moor up for the afternoon and night. The Alternatives are a line of seven coral pinnacles just along the Gulf of Suez from Ras Mohammed, and I still don’t know to what they are an alternative.

I wouldn’t class them as alternatives to Ras Mohammed, but perhaps they are just alternatives to each other. I’m not certain but think we were on the pinnacles closest to the RasMo end.

We just had time for a late-afternoon dive to get familiar with the site.

Afternoon cakes filled the gap nicely before darkness had settled with the usual rapidity of desert areas, and now it’s time to kit up again.

N

IGHT-DIVES CAN BE EXCELLENT opportunities for seeing the small and weird. Our attention is focused on a beam of light as we hope that small critters that hide during daylight will venture out.

I am rewarded on the first patch of soft coral we reach. A two-spine crab the size of a 20p coin is perched on a branch without a care in the world. A few branches later, a decorator spider crab ☛

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HOLS Red Sea.qxp_DIVER grid 28/11/2016 08:16 Page 22

is doing the same thing. Its body is much smaller, but overall the crab is bigger with its long spindly legs.

Coral-guard crabs are out from between the branches of hard corals, but they shy away from light and I need to find, focus and snap quickly before they retreat.

Among the fire coral I find shrimps and another two-spine crab, but it’s only once home processing RAW files on a big screen that I will notice the tiny squat lobster just above it…

Now blue Melody heads up the Gulf of Aqaba to the Tiran reefs. Our morning dive at Jackfish Alley will allow lessexperienced divers to build up to the more adventurous diving to come.

It’s the school summer holidays, and the mix of divers on board is even more diverse than usual. There are two families with a total of five teenage boys; several

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Above: Fire coral, anthias and soft coral at the Alternatives, Ras Mohamed.

Above right: Gorgonian, Woodhouse reef.

Below: Blue-spotted ray at Woodhouse reef.

Bottom, left to right: Titan triggerfish at Gordon reef; hawksbill turtle at Jackson Reef; Crocodilefish at Thomas reef.

couples, including honeymooners from Finland and a pair from Romania who proudly declare that they are from Transylvania; a few individual men and women, ranging from students to pensioners with diving experience from recently qualified to instructor.

Three divers are signed up for an Advanced Open Water Diver course and one for a Deep speciality.

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E DIVE WOODHOUSE, Gordon, Jackson and Thomas reefs in that order, all majestically big and colourful and each with its own character. It has been a while since I have dived them, and never did so back to back over a couple of days, so this is a chance to refresh my memory.

A drift along the east side of Woodhouse and into the channel separating it from Jackson takes us past the remains of a day-boat, the concrete floor of the bathroom and a few scraps of metal all that remains among a recovering scar in the coral.

An eagle ray swoops past in the distance, then loops back closer, though never close enough for pictures. We surface in a current bubbling towards the open side of the reef for a RIB pick-up.

Gordon is the southernmost reef, marked by the skeleton of the Louilla on the far side and a beacon to the south.

Off the wall of gorgonians, a whitetip reef shark has been taking lessons from eagle rays about teasing divers. In the shallows, the location is distinguished by scattered barrels from Louilla’s cargo.

I expected few day-boats about from Sharm el Sheikh, and we certainly don’t have to share the water with other divers, but by mid-afternoon a sizeable armada has gathered and a fleet

of boats departs for Na’ama Bay. Early morning at Jackson, the northernmost reef, provides an opportunity to hang out looking for hammerhead sharks. We make a negative entry on the leading edge of the reef, beneath the skeleton of the Lara, another navigational casualty. Last time here I was on a technical trip, diving the lower part of the ship at 70m.

With hammerheads, it’s hit or miss.

A quick poll suggests a 25% chance of a distant glimpse, and considerably less for a close encounter. With only half of our liveaboard team out in the blue, perhaps our chances are better today?

Twenty minutes later and the conclusion is – obviously not. I head into the wall and back towards the mothership. But it’s not a wasted dive, because a drifting safety stop becomes one of the prettiest shallow dives of the trip as a brisk current picks up over alternating stripes of fire and soft coral, with a pair of very tolerant turtles grazing just off the top of the reef.

T

HOMAS IS THE SMALLEST of the four reefs, always reminding me of the “lost wife, saw barracuda” incident at the turn of the millennium. Nothing untoward happens today as we drift with the current past banks of gorgonians.

Looking out across the sand at 30m, I imagine I can see the top of the canyon in the distance, a technical dive just off the reef that winds its way down to 90m, or perhaps it’s just my eyes playing tricks.

If you’re curious about “lost wife, saw barracuda”, by the way, look out John Kean’s book of that name.

The Tiran reefs page of our checklist complete, blue Melody heads back to Ras Mohammed. This time it’s the classic

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HOLIDAY DIVER: RED SEA

Shark and Yolanda reef drift, the real RasMo dive round the tip of Sinai, past the two detached patches of reef, with the bottomless wall, swirling currents, shoals of fish and bathroom fittings.

Some of the toilet bowls are sporting a quite impressive covering of coral, particularly fire coral. Perhaps it’s enough to create positive feedback; anyone posing on a toilet bowl gets a burning shock, and the fire coral grows some more.

To complete the best day yet, afternoon cakes are replaced with pizza. With a history of pitta bread that can be readily adapted as a base, and a ready supply of spices, my experience is that Egyptian chefs are reliably capable of making a tasty pizza.

Now halfway through the cruise, the balance shifts towards wrecks with the Dunraven and Thistlegorm.

In 1876 the Dunraven was returning to Britain from Bombay with a cargo of cotton. Heading for the Suez Canal, she caught fire and drifted onto Sha’ab Mahmud near the beacon at the reef’s southern end.

Dive-guides usually recommend entering the upturned hull at the stern, then swimming towards the bow inside the wreck, past the boilers and out through a break in the forward hull. Photographically, I prefer to do it in the opposite direction. That way I can swim ahead of my buddy and turn to take pictures looking up towards the bow.

I also like to be last in, so that I can spend as long as I like without blocking the way for others. Today it works like a charm, especially as those preceding me have been kind enough not to stir up the silt.

Above left: Hand basin and soft and fire coral at Shark and Yolanda.

Above: Cases of shells in the aft hold of the Thistlegorm.

A

FEW MILES FURTHER ALONG Sha’ab Mahmud, the next stop is Small Crack. From a RIB drop outside the crack, a whip coral provides me with a cute cowrie as a macro target before the current provides a spectacular whoosh through the reef and back to the boat.

Two dives on the Thistlegorm couldn’t have been more different. On the afternoon of our arrival we descend into murky visibility, a strong current towards the stern and a not-unexpected diver soup in the forward holds.

There are seven other liveaboards above the wreck, so potentially 160 divers could be in the water if everyone is down

Below: Double spindle cowrie at Small Crack, Sha’ab Mahmud Bottom left: Inside the bow of the Dunraven.

Below right: Stern gun on the Thistlegorm.

at the same time. I invert the dive-plan and head for the stern, slowly working back to the holds where, fortunately, the diver soup has now used its air and left the cargo relatively uncrowded.

This is my first visit to the wreck since reading Alex Mustard’s marvellous report on the trucks and motorbikes (I-SPY the Thistlegorm in a Whole New Light, October 2014). I look and wonder, and wish I had all the information he imparted to hand on a slate.

Next morning the wake-up call is early “to beat the rush”. Kitting up on the divedeck, I can see that the guides on other boats have had a similar idea. Next door they’re already entering the water.

I had skipped a night-dive on the wreck. Those who went had enjoyed it, but to my mind it was for the thrill and to get another dive in rather than to see anything different. Low visibility and pitch black – I can get that on a bad day in the English Channel, though without the confusion of all the other divers nightdiving in a limited space.

Now the current is less and visibility a sparkling Red Sea normal. The other boats all seem to be doing a stern-first route, so I head straight into the holds, then up into the superstructure before returning to our line at the bow.

I cross paths with a few other divers, but not many considering the number in the water.

Returning to the Hurghada side of the Gulf of Suez, the steamer Ulysses and a ☛

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HOLIDAY DIVER: RED SEA

barge on opposite edges of Gubal Seghir are wrecks I haven’t dived since 1987, on the centenary year of Ulysses striking the reef.

Divers from another liveaboard are just finishing, and our group is split into waves by the RIB journey to the wreck, so while Ulysses is a small wreck, it isn’t busy.

The bath-tub at the stern is considerably older than those on the Thistlegorm but, unlike ships, bath-tub design has hardly changed.

The even-smaller barge is a bit crowded until divers from several liveaboards spread themselves out a little.

Anticipating a busy site, I’m back on macro, and it turns out to be the right choice. Fish on the barge and surrounding reef are so used to divers that even the normally skittish are easy targets, including a Picasso triggerfish, a photogenic species that lives up to its name but, unlike its namesake, is usually media-shy.

Above: Scorpionfish on the Ulysses.

Above right, from top: Picasso triggerfish and Moses sole, both seen on the Barge at Gubal Seghir.

How can such a varied trip end on a high? At Sha’ab El Erg, better known as Dolphin House North, the dolphins are as used to divers as the fish are on the barge.

It takes 10 minutes or so for them to get round to saying hello, but soon they home in for a good 45 minutes of dolphin fun, with repeated close passes and smug dolphin smiles.

A final dive at Umm Gamar, with wall, pinnacles and caves would also have been a fitting climax, if it were not for the dolphins before.

S

Below: Bottlenose dolphins came along to play at Dolphin House North.

O IS A “TIRAN AND NORTH” route from Hurghada a liveaboard itinerary to rival the southern routes that achieve higher billing? It’s decompression day ashore, and divers from many liveaboards, south and north, are waiting out the heat at the Marriott.

The southern boats have seen oceanic whitetips and hammerheads. We missed the latter but had a really good dolphin

encounter. As for the reefs, the southern reefs can be on a par with Tiran or Ras Mohammed, but I wouldn’t like to say that one was better than the other. I think we had the better wrecks.

Could our “Tiran and North” route have been bettered? It’s down to personal preference. I’d have liked another dive at the tip of Ras Mohammed instead of Jackfish Alley, or to have dived there straight after crossing from Hurghada.

I would have fitted in the wreck of the Rosalie Moller, though I have no idea how that could have been achieved.

For a warm-up dive I would have liked to jump in at Giftun or one of the Abu Nuhas wrecks, but that wouldn’t have been a site suitable for a warm-up. So overall, I’d say that a budget “Tiran and North” route compares pretty favourably to anything further south.

FACTFILE

GETTING THERE8 Flights to Hurghada from Gatwick.

DIVING & ACCOMMODATION8The 38m liveaboard blue Melody can carry up to 26 guests in its airconditioned en-suite twin and double cabins. It is rebreather and tec-friendly and nitrox is available.

It has two tenders.

WHEN TO GO8 Year-round.

CURRENCY8Egyptian pound.

PRICES8blue o two’s one-week Strait of Tiran and North itinerary starts from £699, including flights, www.blueotwo.com VISITOR INFORMATION8 www.egypt.travel

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divEr Magazine online - and much more

www.divernet.com

Dive with

Explora Madeira • Maximum 4 divers per guide • Courses always available, from Try-dive to Instructor • Group discounts & free places For more information call: + 351 962 672251 or + 351 291 220184

geral@exploramadeira.net www.exploramadeira.net

Summer gear.qxp_DIVER grid 28/11/2016 08:15 Page 27

HOLIDAY DIVER

Gear up for the Sun With diver in holiday mood this month (let’s face it, we’re always in holiday mood!) NIGEL WADE looks at some representative products designed to keep you safe and comfortable when diving in exotic locations

S WE SAY CHEERIO to the Christmas period and enter the New Year, many of us will be planning and booking our summer dive holidays. There’s nothing nicer than contemplating some warm tropical sunshine, clear blue seas and spectacular reef vistas as the cold, grey UK winter rolls slowly by.

However, the much-needed feel-good factor and healthy vitamin D infusion bright sunlight delivers to our bodies carries certain risks, in the form of the sun’s harmful ultra-violet rays. This radiation causes damage to unprotected skin, the long-term effects of which can

be devastating as it’s linked to lifethreatening skin cancers.

Extended exposure to these rays can also damage our eyes by leading to cataracts (clouding of the lenses, and consequently decreased vision). So we

take steps to protect ourselves from the sun’s harmful rays while still enjoying its benefits in reasonable safety.

I don’t want to sound like a prophet of doom; only to ensure that your precious diving holiday remains problem- and pain-free. So I’ve compiled an array of gear suggestions to help you avoid being burnt, stung or poisoned by contaminated water.

I’ve also borne in mind the need to minimise our environmental footprint by including a few items that have been sympathetically produced to help limit their impact on fragile marine eco-systems. ☛

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REEF SAFE SUNSCREEN:The Facts

HEADGEAR

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ET’S LOOK AT SOME of the gear designed to keep the sun off our bonces. The head is the body-part closest to the sun; some of us have a natural covering of hair, some not so much and others none at all. Regardless of how follicly rich or challenged we are, we all need to protect this vital area from burning in the sun.

The most popular choice is a simple baseball cap – stylish, with infinite designs and a peak to provide shade to the face making it ideal for boat, beach and resort pool use. A good alternative is a widebrimmed hat like the Booney – this also adds shade to the ears and back of the neck.

The Buff Snood is an extremely versatile product that can be used in a variety of ways both under water and on the surface to provide UV protection when you’re waiting for a boat pick-up and the journey back.

Another option is the neoprene Scap.

This bandana-style cap not only keeps the wearer’s hair in check but provides a modicum of insulation under water and UV protection at the surface.

One last thing: how many of us have lost our headgear overboard as the dive-boat speeds along? I’ll have to put my hand up to that, but I’ve found that a Croakies “Lid Latch” is so simple and effective that I wonder why the idea didn’t occur earlier.

N 2008 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC NEWS published an article linking sunprotection products used by the masses on beach holidays to coral-bleaching.

Scientists had discovered that four ingredients found in suntan lotion could awaken dormant viruses in the symbiotic algae called zooxanthellae.

These algae live in reef-building coral species. The virus causes them to replicate until their hosts explode, or the algae are expelled, spilling further viruses into the surrounding ocean to infect neighbouring coral communities.

The four chemicals, oxybenzone (benzophenone-3), butylparaben, octinoxate and a camphor derivative, are commonly used in sunscreens.

By 2015, as a result of research that involved the USA’s National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Haereticus Environmental Laboratory in Virginia was estimating that between 6000 and 14000 tonnes of this ecologically toxic cream is washed off swimmers in oceans worldwide every year.

It’s becoming a significant contributor to the demise of our coastal reef systems.

Another ingredient often found in sunscreens mimics the effect of the female hormone. This can have a dramatic effect on fish and other aquatic life-forms by turning them into sexless hermaphrodites

that can no longer reproduce.

In the years since these chemicals were first linked to coral damage and sexless fish, sunscreen-makers have produced what they claim to be “reef-safe” products. Some have replaced reef-toxic chemicals with natural substances that are claimed to be as efficient at blocking UV radiation but which don’t harm the reefs.

These sunscreens use titanium dioxide and zinc oxides instead of harmful oxybenzone as UV blockers, and other biodegradable ingredients that are claimed to be environmentally friendly instead of the chemicals proven to be damaging to corals.

The US Environment Working Group (EWG) specialises in research and advocacy in areas of toxic chemicals.

Its stated mission is “to use the power of public information to protect public health and the environment”.

EWG has produced a comprehensive guide to sunscreens, listing their ingredients and awarding a personal and environmental safety rating for each one.

It also features a “Hall of Shame”. To find out more, visit www.ewg.org We could all make a significant contribution towards reducing the risk to our reefs by simply wearing a widebrimmed hat and UV-rated clothing before even reaching for our sunscreens.

33 Goddess Garden Sport Natural Sunscreen SPF30 Spray This spray is claimed to be reef-safe, biodegradable and water-resistant for up to 80 minutes with a UVA/UVB broadspectrum sun-protection factor of 30. The active ingredients used in this organic sunscreen include titanium dioxide and zinc oxide. The product has been awarded a low-risk rating by the Environment Working Group. Expect to pay around £19 for the 177ml pump action spray (pictured). ww.naturalisbetter.co.uk

33 Badger Sport Sunscreen Cream SPF 35 This biodegradable cream-based sport sunscreen is claimed to be reef-safe and water-resistant for at least 80 minutes, providing broadspectrum SPF 35 protection from harmful UVA & UVB rays while moisturising and nourishing the skin. The active ingredient is non-nano uncoated zinc oxide. This product was again awarded a low-risk rating by the EWG. An 87ml tube costs around £15. www.badgerbalm.com

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55 Sea Shepherd Baseball Cap Show your support for Sea Shepherd ecoactivists with this "Jolly Roger" flag hat displaying the conservation society’s version of the pirate flag. They regard themselves as the good pirates pursuing the bad (drift-netters, whalers, sealers and poachers). This cap is made from heavyweight 100% organic cotton twill, comes in black with white embroidered livery in one size to fit all, and costs from £17. www.seashepherd.org

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HOLIDAY DIVER

55 Columbia Bora Bora Booney II Hat This high-performance Booney hat combines UPF 50 fabrication to block out harmful UVA and UVB rays, and an Omni-Wick sweatband and mesh vent panel (which is non-UPF), to keep the head cool and wick the moisture

away. This hat has a wide brim to provide facial shade and an adjustable drawcord and toggle so that it won’t blow away in windy conditions.

Expect to pay around £22. www.columbia sportswear.co.uk

The Scap The Scap is a bandana-style cap designed for divers and other watersport enthusiasts. It’s made from custom-cut 1.5mm neoprene with a specially designed interior band and a grip-zone to keep it in place. The Scap is available in a variety of colours and patterns to allow the wearer to express his or her personal style.

Claimed as ideal for taming wild hair in warmwater climes and providing UV protection to the top of the head at the surface, this stylish one-size-fits-all headwear is priced at £30. www.sea-sea.com

EYEWEAR

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UNGLASSES COME IN all shapes and sizes, and for that matter price ranges.

We all want to look good and resemble a secret service agent in our fashionable Oakleys or Ray-Bans, but when they disappear over the side of our liveaboard and vanish into the abyss we’re going to be left heartbroken.

The alternative is to get a pair specifically designed for use in, on or around water, and that means they need to float.

Polarised lenses offer the advantage of cutting out reflected glare and allow a better view through the water’s surface but it’s the UV protection rating we should be looking out for. There’s little more valuable than our eyesight.

www.divErNEt.com

55 Buff Snood The original seamless, tubular sports snood, this versatile headgear can be worn in a variety of ways from neck-warmer or beanie to ear-protection band. Buff snoods are made from hi-tec, quick-drying Coolmax (100% polyester) fabric.

The featured snood has an invisible, odourless, long-term (up to 70 washes) insect shield and offers 95% UV protection.

A Polygiene treatment to the fabric is said to keep it cleaner for longer without releasing odours caused by bacteria.

Buff snoods are available in various colours, print designs and materials.

Expect to pay around £22 for the High UV

Insect Shield model shown here. www.buffwear.co.uk

Croakies “Lid Latch” Hat Retainer 66 This simple US-made lanyard is designed to stop your hat or baseball cap from blowing away. It’s made from a single 25cm length of 3.2mm diameter woven climbing line, with strong metal bulldog clips fastened at either end to secure the headgear to your collar. No more need to worry about it disappearing over the back of fast-moving dive-boats. Available in black, brown or navy colours, it costs £5. www.andark.co.uk

33 Cressi Ninja Sunglasses These polarised sunglasses from Italian dive-gear maker Cressi are neutrally buoyant and will float on water. The lightweight frames feature a soft rubberised coating while the lenses are category 3 polarised, offering 100% UV protection, and are shatterproof for eye safety. Various lens colours are available with prices starting from £27. www.cressi.com

Gill Racing Sunglasses (overleaf) All Gill sunglasses are designed to float, so if you drop them all is not lost. These Racing models come with a built-in retainer and feature 100% glare-free polarised lenses that are said also to effectively block UVA, UVB and UVC radiation. The lenses are ☛

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coated to make them hydrophobic so that they repel water, and they’re claimed as shatterproof too. They cost £45. www.andark.co.uk

Croakies Original Neoprene Sunglass Retainer (far right) This simple, lightweight US product is made from “HyPUR-cel” neoprene and incorporates the maker’s own backstitch with open tips that slide onto the frame ends of the glasses to provide a secure grip. It’s 40cm long and 20mm wide, washable, colourfast and available in either black, royal blue or navy blue solid colours. Price is £6. www.andark.co.uk

BODYWEAR

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HILE THE LARGEST AREA for potential sunburn is the torso, this area is also the easiest to protect by using simple fashionable apparel that delivers high UV protection. The many designs and styles include eco-friendly products constructed using recycled materials.

Rashguards also protect the wearer from marine stingers such as jellyfish and hydroids; they can be worn as a base layer under wetsuits or, in warmer waters, as standalone garments.

Good alternatives are the thin neoprene dive products that range from short- or longsleeved tops to full suits. These tight-fitting garments not only provide UV and sting protection but add thermal insulation. They may not be flattering when worn by any but the fittest of divers, but then neither is the dangerous red hue from sunburnt skin.

Fourth Element Ocean Positive Hydroskin Rashguards 66 These rashguards are made using the sustainable fabric Econyl®, which contains 100% regenerated polyamide fibre recycled from salvaged materials such as fishing-net. In tests, this material was reportedly found to be twice as resistant to chlorine, suntan creams and oils as non-sustainable equivalents. These guards are designed to wear as

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a UV shield for watersports and under a wet- or semi-dry suit as a base layer. Men’s and women’s long-sleeve garments cost £45. www.oceanpositive.net

Seac RAA Long Evo Rashguard 44 These long-sleeved lightweight rashguards from the Italian manufacturer use a mixture of 85% Nylon and 15% Spandex fabric said to offer 97.5 UV protection with a UPF 40+ rating – that means protection from the sun in, on or around water, and from marine stingers too. This tight-fitting, stretchy garment is available in both men’s and women’s cuts, priced at £26. www.seacsub.com

Sharkskin Full Suit 44 This Australian suit is said to be a high-performance alterative to neoprene that can be worn individually or layered under a wetsuit as an additional thermal layer. Its trilaminate materials consist of a soft microfleece inner layer to wick moisture away from the body, and a breathable, windproof membrane to help regulate body temperature and eliminate windchill. An outer layer of four-way stretch abrasion-, UV- and water-repellant material provides a protective shell that also “sheds” water. The fabric is neutrally buoyant but has the equivalent thermal protection of a 2.5-3mm neoprene wetsuit. Its sunprotection factor is 30+. It comes in gender-specific styles and sizing and costs around £250. www.liquidsports.co.uk

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HOLIDAY DIVER

HEALTH

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MPORTANT TO CONSIDER when travelling abroad are the diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, and some of you may be planning dive trips to destinations where malaria, dengue, West Nile, yellow fever and more recently Zika viruses can be spread by the tiny winged assassins.

A proven insect-repellent is a good starting point. DEET-based products have been successful over the years, although DEET is a pesticide and should be used with caution. As an alternative, natural-formula repellents are said to work well. Remember that mosquitoes are at their most active at dawn and dusk and the addition of an impregnated mosquito-net at night could mean the difference between a bite-free trip and an itchy nightmare.

Maintaining hydration is something we normally take for granted. After all, where the local water quality is questionable there’s likely to be an abundance of bottled mineral water available for visiting travellers.

Unfortunately, local waste-management practices in holiday destinations around the globe are not always well-run, leading to hundreds of thousands of plastic bottles being discarded every day and ending up littering coastlines and our oceans. This causes untold damage to the marine ecosystem and its vulnerable wildlife.

A single re-usable bottle with a filter system can make a huge difference in this respect and will keep you safe regardless of the local water quality.

55 Divesangha Calypso Sun and Water Guards

Incognito DEET-Free Insect Repellent 66

The Calypso range of clothing is mostly made using the Econyl® yarn mentioned elsewhere, produced by Italian textile-maker Aquafil. The fibre is made from 100% regenerated nylon sourced from fishing-nets and other salvaged waste materials. The range includes men’s and women’s hooded, zipped sun- and waterguards (pictured). These offer 50+ UV protection, are quick-drying and employ Divesangha’s HungDry hanging system. They cost £48. www.divesangha.com

The ingredients used in this product are said to be 100% natural, biodegradable, safe to humans and without a trace of DEET. Incognito is non-greasy, claimed to be 100% effective against mosquitoes, sandflies and ticks, and comes in a 100ml pump-action spray bottle. It is recommended by Public Health England and the NHS. The price is £10. www.lessmosquito.com

Scubapro Pyroflex Steamers & Rashguards 66 These products feature a water-repellant, high-stretch 1.5mm Everflex X-Foam neoprene, claimed to dry quickly and offer maximum flexibility. The interior has a combination of fleece and plush lining for comfort and the garments come in a range of sizes for both men and women. The Pyroflex rashguard pictured costs £74. www.scubapro.com

55 Water-to-Go 75cl Filtration Bottle The Water-to-Go bottle contains filter technology claimed to eliminate 99.9% of bacteria, viruses, chlorine, fluoride and heavy metals supplied from untrusted water sources. This multiple-use filter bottle also removes the need to drink water from single-use plastic bottles that might be discarded and end up polluting our oceans. The 75cl bottle is available with pink, blue, red or black (pictured) sleeves; it costs £25 and a replacement filter costs £10. 50cl bottles are also available. www.watertogo.eu

Pyramid Trek 50 Insect Repellent 44 Formulated for malarial areas, Trek 50 (formerly Repel 55) is a medium-strength repellent said to be suitable for general use in tropical and sub-tropical parts of the world such as SouthEast Asia. Supplied in a 120ml plastic bottle with a pumpaction spray it contains 50% DEET and costs around £7.

Stronger concentrations containing up to 100% DEET are available for especially high-risk destinations. www.pyramidtravelproducts.co.uk

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Galapagos

N

Maldives

N

Turks & Caicos

Saba/St. Kitts/St. Maarten

www.explorerventures.com info@explorerventures.com UK/Europe: +1.307.235.0683 US/Canada: +1.800.322.3577

Silver Bank

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HOLIDAY DIVER: SOLOMONS

There’s something about Mary

B

OOOOOOM! LOW-FREQUENCY rumbling vibrations vibrate through my sternum. It’s an odd feeling, not actually unpleasant – but not exactly enjoyable. A bit like the bass rumble on a loud dance-floor, but more exhilarating for the fact that I’m 30m deep, in blue water.

I’m hanging out with a huge school of giant trevally off the edge of the remote, and uninhabited, Mary Island. There’s not a disco in sight – for about 150 miles.

What there is, however, far more exciting than a Solomon Islands night spot (of which there are few), is Kavachi.

A submarine volcano! It might be 40 miles away, but it’s going off. Like a series of distant explosions crossed with rumbling thunder, I can hear only the noise beneath the waves – but given the effect here, it must be ear-splitting up close.

I’m nearing the end of my dive, but there have already been some top sightings. The huge thousands-strong school of 60cm-long bigeye trevally is reason in itself to visit this spot.

It’s a shimmering silver mass that shifts and pours in ribbons over the reef, only to ball up again in another spot.

Approach slowly and you can be enveloped by it.

But that’s just one of Mary’s attractions – the island seems to be a gathering place with an interesting cast of characters.

There’s a bit of current running – nothing extreme, but hooking on means that you can watch the world go. Big dogtooth tuna are a real treat, making appearances on almost every dive, and then there are a few grey reef sharks about in the blue, medium-size schools of barracuda and also something I

haven’t seen elsewhere – a school of juvenile grey reefs, each just a metre or so long.

At first there are only a few, but they seem to gather out of the gloom until I count upwards of 35 swimming together – making their way to the blue, just out from the wall.

Unhooking and rounding the corner of the reef, the booming is more intense, now facing Kavachi more directly. The trevally are up to something.

The school that was split previously on the reef has come together in one giant mass, and moved out into the blue, down-current of the island. Fish are

splitting off in pairs, one silver, one now temporarily black – a remarkable transformation.

They’re clearly thinking about spawning. Swimming with them against the flow is draining my tank, so I fight my way back against the current to the reef for a safety stop before surfacing. I’d like to have stayed, but I do get one last treat. Back at the reef the surgeonfish are also spawning, streaking several metres up from the coral before letting out a plume of milt.

Other fish dart in to make the most of the event, and midnight snapper hoover up the milky clouds – revealing why the jack went offshore and downcurrent.

All in all it’s a great dive, and Mary Island captures what the Solomons is all about.

There’s a slightly prehistoric Lost World feel here, where you can expect the unexpected.

With more than 900 islands, many of them not inhabited, only two liveaboards and a few landbased operators scattered about, it’s a place of intrigue, ripe to explore.

But, apart from pounding volcanoes and giant schools of silver fish, what else do the Solomon Islands offer? Well, the answer is just about everything… ☛

Hooked on the islands Reefs, wrecks and raging currents – this Pacific destination has left a deep impression on ELLEN HUSAIN

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Heart of the Coral Triangle The Solomons lie in the eastern corner of the Coral Triangle, the worldwide centre for coral biodiversity. They are north-east of Australia, east of PNG and north-west of Vanuatu. There are six main islands, but more than 900 smaller ones, some inhabited, some not.

Here are some of the best displays of hard corals I’ve seen. Untouched by the recent bleaching of nearby Australia and elsewhere, species of all different forms and colours sit one next to another in an amazing display of niche diversification.

One dive in the Russell Islands reveals incredible vistas of healthy staghorns, and excited divers returning to deck unilaterally describe the “rolling green hills of acropora”.

Munda, too, has impressive shallow reefs at Bigo Bigo with myriad colours and forms topping coral canyons in 0-5m of water. You could spend hours on one tank, bewitched in the dancing light. As

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a former coral-reef scientist this obviously floats my boat, and on surfacing we decide simply to dive the same spot again.

Wreckie paradise Wrecks are not usually my thing. I prefer the life that lives on and around them to the structures themselves.

However, from planes to submarines and warships, the Solomons has such a variety of interesting and different craft, often in readily identifiable form – that even I was quite taken.

The Solomon Islands were the site of WW2’s infamous 1942-43 Battle of Guadalcanal, when so many craft were sunk that the neighbouring seaway is named Iron Bottom Sound.

With 200 ships and more than 600 aircraft littering the seabed, it’s safe to say that if you’re one for rust then you’ve come to the right place.

For serious technical divers there are some world-class wrecks, with the Aaron Ward in 70m said to be bristling with

Above left: Emerging into the jungle at Mirror Pool in the Russell Islands.

Above: Bigeye jack pour over the reef at Mary Island.

Below left: Lionfish are frequently seen around Uepi Island’s bright red seafans.

Below: B343 American Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter plane Betsy II, downed on January 1943 near Gizo.

amoury, or the USS Atlanta, serious stuff at 95m-plus. But for the more recreational types there is still a heap of options, from the two incredibly accessible wrecks at the steeply sloping Bonegi Beach – just a 30minute drive from the nation’s capital.

Imaginatively referred to as Bonegi 1 and Bonegi 2, one of them (1 or 2?) actually breaks the water’s surface, just metres from the tide line.

Lying in 5-35m of water it’s perfect for diving or snorkelling, and has a lot of life around the upper deck and hold.

Perhaps more novel, however, are the various downed aircraft, many of which, seemingly miraculously, sit upright and fairly intact on the seabed.

There is something impressive about a plane under water, and in the Solomons they come in all shapes and sizes, from a

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that you see under water, as well as antiaircraft guns, tanks and memorabilia rescued from the jungles of the island.

Catalina flying boat and an American B17 Flying Fortress bomber to the surprisingly diminutive Mitsubishi Zeros and Hellcats.

Many are in readily accessible depths, outside of Guadalcanal and Tulaghi.

Munda has a large variety, but wherever you dive there are usually wrecks about.

The P38 lies disconcertingly just off the end of the Seghe airstrip. Vis is not the best there, and there may be a current running, but the single-seater WW2 fighter is shallow and has an incredible vivid array of soft corals under its wings – take a torch or strobe, or you won’t get the effect.

For those interested in the war there is also an open-air WW2 “museum” on Guadalcanal. There you can see dry versions of several of the crashed planes

Above right: Bigo Bigo shallows in Munda –“so good they named it twice”, as they say there. The name means rainbow in the local language, and the corals certainly are colourful.

Below right: Exploring the canyons and caverns of the Russell Islands.

Sharks & megafauna I’ll be completely honest here – there are better places for megafauna. That said, there are a fair few sharks around, and spots where you can reliably see them.

Uepi Island in the Marovo lagoon is an amazing place to stay, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to see sharks while you’re there. The passage on which the island is situated has a lot of action, with local grey reefs, and I saw a hammerhead on my first dive of the visit.

There are also plentiful blacktips that hang out near their dock, and big schools of fish.

Munda is also well-known for the chance to see hammerheads, in season, and Shark Point had some of the best vis I saw during my whole trip, with larger fish like napoleons and schools of bumphead parrotfish – one of my favourite fish.

Caves, caverns & cuts One thing the Solomons does really well is topography. With lots of uplifted limestone, many of the island cliffs are riddled with cuts, caves, and coral canyons. This makes for some really beautiful diving, and some fun passages and swim-throughs.

Of all of them Leru Cut is the most famous – and for good reason. A vertical fissure extending above and below the surface that runs 50m back into the island, you swim in at 10m and surface at the end in a chamber open to the air, glimpsing the distant sky above.

That’s fun, but what makes it great is the light. The floor of the cut is of fine white sand, and looking back towards the entrance divers are silhouetted against the dazzling shafts of glowing blue light that signal the entrance. With the top of the cut always open to the air, it’s an easy but very beautiful dive.

Aside from the Cut there are a heap of other caverns and caves. Mirror Pool is ☛

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SOME SOLOMON ISLANDS DIVE-PROVIDERS Bilikiki

Plying the waters for nearly 30 years, the Bilikiki is the Solomon Island’s most established liveaboard, and something of an institution. She has a charm of her own. Distributing seeds and buying back vegetables from villages en route means there’s always fresh produce onboard, and she receives a warm welcome from flotillas of local canoes wherever she sails.

With signature sites accessible only by boat, the itinerary is packed with variety, and great hosts mean that the boat is efficiently run & well setup for photographers. www.bilikiki.com

SIDE Solomon Islands Dive Expeditions (SIDE) is the newest operation on the dive scene. The crew are young, mostly Australian. Again, SIDE visits

otherwise inaccessible sites in farflung locations, and will choose them based on the abilities of the group. Many are tried and tested but some can be exploratory. With talk of bigger, more “expeditionstyle” trips, if adventure is your thing, watch that space! www.solomonsdiving.com

Tulagi Dive Tulagi Dive is based in the capital, Honiara. It dives Iron Bottom Sound’s numerous wrecks from the Bonegis to the Aaron Ward, as well as sites such as the lava tubes at Tulagi’s Twin Tunnels. Neil Yates and Troy are both seriously into the technical side of life, so for serious deep wreck dives they’re your men.

They also offer dive certification, and are the perfect operation if you just want to do a few dives before heading off to the outer islands. www.tulagidive.com

a swim-through that opens to a shallow pool in the jungle – sometimes with a resident croc. Sadly he wasn’t home when I dived it (or if he saw us we didn’t see him), but it’s a beautiful spot nonetheless.

If the water’s undisturbed you can look up through Snell’s Window at the trees above.

Other sites include the Kastom Cave, an impressive deeper cave in the Russells, which again allows you to surface in the jungle, but this time through a shimmering halocline of fresh water.

Munda is famous for its signature dive, the Cave of the Kastom Shark, which starts in the jungle pool and emerges through a narrow downward tunnel to a wall and blue water, at around 35m.

What else?

Currents! With more than 900 islands, changing tides set up some pretty strong flows. Depending where you dive and who you dive with there are some pretty impressive currents.

Most of the operators will have reef hooks, which you can borrow or buy, and hooking on to a wall is a great way to see some of the best fish action – just as long as you keep your mask on.

All the operators will plan dives according to divers’ needs, so don’t be concerned if you’d prefer a more sedate experience, because there are plenty of relaxed potterings to be had too.

Other Solomons highlights include

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Dive Munda

Belinda who runs Dive Munda is really fun, and one of the most enthusiastic people I’ve ever met.

There are a whole range of dives around Munda, and partnering with Agnes Lodge makes a great affordable base, offering planes, stunning reefs and pelagics – and the best vis during my stay. www.mundadive.com

Dive Gizo Dive Gizo also has a range of sites, from a shallow US Hellcat plane to walls, garden eels and corals. There are accommodation options in Gizo town, or Dive Gizo will pick you up from the beautiful Fatboys Resort – just 10 minutes by boat. For nondivers Fatboys also has great shallow snorkelling in the extensive lagoon. divegizo.com

Uepi Island Resort Established for 30 years by Grant and Jill Kelly, Uepi Island is a lovely place to stay with a brilliant sustainable ethos, as well as having fantastic diving. Situated next to a pass in the huge and spectacular Marovo Lagoon, sites are typically very close to the Uepi dock – just five or 10 minutes by skiff (or you can dive right from the dock). Large schools of fish, sharks, rays and sometimes mantas can be seen.

Uepi also does some brilliant daytrips – the Taiyo wreck/Penguin Reef /Babata sinkhole trip is highly recommended. Uepi is probably the best place for anyone wanting to spend time with a partner and still do a couple of dives a day. The island is picture-postcard, with walks and lots of birds and wildlife, and there is excellent snorkelling in the pass. www.uepi.com

FACTFILE

GETTING THERE8 Fly to Brisbane via Singapore and on from there to the capital, Honiara. Solomon Airlines flies several times a week and can also provide internal flights.

DIVING & ACCOMMODATION8See panel above.

WHEN TO GO8 The Solomons are hot and humid, with air temperatures usually around 30°. The heaviest rainfall is supposed to be from December to March but the weather patterns can vary. July to September are said to be the best months to visit.

CURRENCY8Solomon Islands dollar (SBD) LANGUAGE8There are 70 – officially it’s English but the main common language is Solomons Pijin.

PRICES8 Return flights from the UK cost around £1340. Hotels in Honiara cost £80-220 a night, guest-houses around £45. Island resorts vary from home stays at around £25 and basic lodges at £50, to higher-end resorts at £100 and up. Seven-night trips on Bilikiki cost US $3640pp (two sharing).

VISITOR INFORMATION8 www.visitsolomons.com.sb

pygmy seahorses – Hippocampu denise and bargibanti are regularly seen, along with ghost pipefish, mangroves, massive seafans and soft corals.

The Solomons offer incredibly diverse diving opportunities. Visibility is usually good, but don’t always expect the clear oceanic vis of some other places. It’s also a nudibranch fancier’s heaven, and macro subjects such as orangutan crabs and ornate ghost pipefish are there if you take

Above: Divers return to the Bilikiki after visiting an island village in the huge Marovo lagoon.

time to find them – or use a good guide.

On land, the Solomons has fascinating culture. Outside of three main town-sized “cities” it’s mostly small island villages living subsistence lifestyles, with that feeling of stepping back in time.

The wood carving is exceptional – with lots of pieces inspired by sea life, it’s worth saving some space in your suitcase for that memento from your trip to the wilder side of the Pacific. www.divErNEt.com

Explore the undiscovered Solomon Islands. Enjoy 4 to 5 dives daily from our huge dive deck with nitrox, rebreather support and unlimited hot showers. Relax in air-conditioned comfort in the spacious salon or one of our 12 well-appointed cabins. Discover the most intense bio-diversity worldwide, along with WWII history and unique cultural experiences.

For more information or to make a reservation:

book@dive-solomon.com www.solomonsdiving.com

divErNEt.com ‌ it’s where divers click!

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BE THE CHAMP!

Never mind ’The New Black’, underwater photographers are happy to stick with ’Black is Black’, because you can’t beat it as a way of hiding the stuff we don’t want to see in our pictures, says ALEX MUSTARD

‘The key is in controlling the background, and the more of the muck we can hide, the better‘

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TYLE NEVER GOES OUT of fashion, so the saying goes. The message is that while fads come and go, some looks are timeless.

Fear not, this is not an article on the sartorial elegance of neoprene. Instead, after a few months discussing new photographic trends, I want to return to one of the classics.

Among fashionistas each season, a new colour seems to be elected as the new black. Pink, orange, red, brown have all had their turn as the new black.

But for underwater photographers, good old black continues to do a damn fine job.

I have recently returned from Lembeh, the muck-diving nucleus in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. Lembeh is undoubtedly one of the wonders of the diving world, reminding us that some of the ocean’s best experiences come in the smallest packages.

It is a great location for a photographer, the only downside being all that dreaded black sand!

Volcanic-sand diving doesn’t just mean more O-ring cleaning, but it also creates one of the worst backgrounds imaginable for pictures.

That is the photographic paradox of Lembeh, it is a destination with the best subjects, but the worst backgrounds. If it was just pure grains of basalt it would be fine, but the problem is that mixed in are white shell fragments, jagged stones of different colours and snotty algae.

Muck is an appropriate name.

The key to producing eye-catching muck diving images is not in finding a good subject, but in controlling the background. And the more of the muck we can hide, the better.

accident. To produce a black background during daylight, we need to use a closed aperture, a fast shutter speed and a low ISO. These combine to cut ambient light from our pictures, so that the only light is from our flash or strobes.

Then we need to light the subject and not the background, most easily done by framing against open water. Water does not reflect the strobe light back to the camera, so it will appear black.

Often, finding the right viewpoint to unlock this composition requires a bit of contorting – something we call earning the black background.

If you’re too comfortable, you’re not trying hard enough!

Subject selection also plays a vital role.

Look for subjects that are perched on top of something, rather than those sheltering in a depression!

Unfortunately, in Lembeh many of the subjects are on the seabed, so we have to modify our lighting technique.

STARTER TIP Some compact cameras are limited to more open apertures (f/8 being the maximum). This makes it harder to create black backgrounds in bright conditions.

Use the lowest ISO and also increase the shutter speed as much as possible. Sometimes you might have to wait for darker conditions, deeper or towards the ends of the day.

Below: Look for subjects up and away from the seabed, so that they can be easily framed against open water.

Nikon D700 and Nikon 105mm. Subal housing. 2 x Subtronic strobes. ISO 200, 1/320th @ f/25.

I HAVE TWO FAVOURITE techniques for creating black backgrounds when working with subjects sitting on the sand: Snooting and Inward Lighting.

These two techniques allow us to light the subject and not the background, meaning that wherever the critter is positioned, we can light it and not what is behind, leaving it black.

Both techniques have a reputation for being fiddly to set up, but the key is to maintain the same camera-to-subject distance throughout. This means that ☛

BLACK BACKGROUNDS are the underwater photographer’s default.

Route one – the simplest approach to powerful pictures. A clean, black background enhances the graphic qualities of your composition and makes colourful subjects pop out.

Black backgrounds are not difficult to produce, but they don’t happen by

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PHOTO TECHNIQUE Pictured: A snoot restricts the beam from a strobe down to a spotlight. The technique works best with a single strobe, highlighting this cardinalfish over an urchin.

Nikon D5 and Nikon 60mm. Subal housing.

1 x Inon Z240. Retra LSD. ISO 200, 1/200th @ f/20.

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PHOTO TECHNIQUE when we look at our pictures and make adjustments to the aiming of the strobes, it has the desired effect.

The first step is to frame the subject as we want and then lock the focus. If you already use back-button or thumb focus, it simply means not pressing the focus button any more.

Alternatively, we can just switch the camera from autofocus to manual focus, so that it does not refocus.

For macro snooting, I favour optical snoots, such as Retra’s Light Shaping Device, which use a lens to concentrate the beam to a spotlight.

This makes the spotlight much brighter and therefore makes it easier to

produce a black background, because I can still use a low ISO and small aperture.

I always work with the snoot in line with the lens, either vertically above my port or horizontally beside my port.

This makes aiming much easier, because the adjustments are just forward and back, not in three dimensions.

If you have a willing buddy, it is easier still to ask him or her to hold and aim the snooted strobe. However, it can be hard to hold it totally still and I actually prefer the slower, but ultimately more accurate, method of aiming it for myself.

MID-WATER TIP To create black backgrounds in low visibility, it is important to be as close to the subject as possible, which will keep backscatter to a minimum.

In some conditions you will always gets some backscatter, which is pretty easy to clean up on black backgrounds when processing images.

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Below: Inward lighting illuminates the subject and not the background. Here, I removed the diffusers for a sharper cut-off of light, and to reveal the hairiness of the frogfish.

Nikon D5 and Nikon 60mm.

Subal housing. 2 x Inon Z240. ISO 125, 1/200th @ f/20.

INWARD LIGHTING is a technique that illuminates the foreground subject and not the background. It is also more than a simple problem-solver, because with the light angled in from both sides it accentuates the texture in a subject.

The powerful effect of inward lighting appears only when we set it up properly.

First we must push our strobes way forward, so that they are in line with the subject. They need to be kept wide enough apart that they are outside the angle of view of the lens, to avoid flare.

This means that we can use this technique only with subjects where there is space around them to work.

ADVANCED TIP Black backgrounds should not be overused, otherwise your friends will end up asking if you dive only at night. So select this option when it’s the best fit with the subject.

Black backgrounds work particularly well with graphically strong subjects, with symmetry and/or rich colours. They are also the best option with busy subjects, creating simple, powerful pictures.

The next step is to rotate the strobes around so that they are pointing back at us. This means that only the inward side of the beam will light the subject, and behind it will be black. It might take a few shots to get the lighting absolutely spot-on, while making small adjustments to the strobe-aiming.

All these techniques use the classic combination of low ISO, fast shutterspeed and closed aperture to quell the ambient light.

Then it is all about carefully illuminating only the subject, either with our framing, or with advanced lighting techniques to ensure that black never goes out of fashion.

www.divErNEt.com

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TREWAVAS VIRTUALLY DIVING I’M WATCHING A MAN ON TV wearing a blacked-out scuba mask. Ah, this brings back memories of zero-vis exercises on technical-diving courses. That moment when the instructor will hand you a baggy old black mask smothered in gaffer tape to block out any light or sight, and expect you to replace your mask with this one to perform your skills.

The blacked-out mask is invariably a spare or reject which has spent its life kicking around the rusty dregs-end of a dive-crate, or stuffed into a drysuit cargo pocket. And this makes the whole exercise a great deal more interesting, as it provides what they call “task-loading”; or what I call a “crap-a-hola moment”.

Basically you’re so busy trying not to think about the possibilities of mildew poisoning while you struggle to manage the inherent leakiness of the mask, that the actual exercise – feeling your way along a line in total darkness to retrieve your stage cylinder – is trivial and benign.

However this is not what the man on the TV is doing. That “blackedout scuba mask” is actually a mobile phone strapped to a headset to create a virtual-reality experience.

Maybe standing around looking like a wonk and pretending to be flying through space is not so very different from being under water, looking like a wonk, and pretending to be navigating your way through a cave in zero-vis.

I guess this raises a few issues. Such as – will virtual-reality diving take over from actual scuba?

Why bother kitting up and getting wet, when you can experience a digitally enhanced dive with perfect visibility and stacks of interaction with a cast of crazy sealife?

Never one to miss a trick, how long will it take PADI to start offering virtual certifications to these virtual divers?

And then I remembered. We’ve already been at it for years! We’ve had virtual diving in the form of glass-bottomed boats. Aquariums now have tunnels that enable you to walk through giant tanks of water as the sharks and rays glide over your head. Whether this has encouraged or discouraged people from going diving is difficult to judge.

Somehow this creation of an alternative reality feels different. It feels part of a wider sea-change in human perception that’s taking place.

We now live in a post-truth world. People have detached themselves from facts and opted for delusion. Unreality trumps reality. You don’t have to look very far for the evidence.

And perhaps this is just what post-truth diving will look like: a man in a “blacked-out scuba mask”, weaving haphazardly and waving his arms as he enjoys an imaginary encounter with a CGI pod of friendly dolphins.

Call me old-fashioned but there’s part of me wondering: just how crap must your reality be, if this is what passes for entertainment?

So much for post-truth diving. I’m off to the pub after the pool for a far more traditional form of entertainment. It mostly entails watching a man weaving haphazardly with a beer goggle in front of his face.

He’s holding forth about the enormous conger eel that he had to wrestle out of the way while retrieving a porthole from a good 55m-deep – possibly 75m-deep – wreck.

Yes it’s post-diving truth! We’ve been at it for years.

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE PADI TO START OFFERING VIRTUAL CERTIFICATIONS?

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Why not go diving in a cradle of civilisation?

Thousands of wrecks spanning thousands of years are now open for inspection, with lashings of history, arts and gastronomy to fill your uptime. Greece’s biggest diving advocate makes the case to STEVE WEINMAN

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E’RE DIVING THE Kyra Eleni, one of the most popular sites for divers who are based in Greece’s capital. The wreck lies just off the small island of Patroklos, and you get there by driving south from the city along the Athenian Riviera towards the tip of the mainland, then jumping aboard a RIB in the picturesque bay at Anavyssos.

The 99m cargo ship sank in the Saronic Gulf nearly 40 years ago, coming to rest on a sloping sandy seabed. Still intact are the elevated bow, which rests to port in 18m of water, and the upright stern that lies deeper at around 30m, with a great deal of twisted debris separating them.

Kyra Eleni, built in 1949, was sailing unladen from the Greek port of Lavrio to Bulgaria when she encountered strong winds and massive waves.

Struggling to Patroklos in search of shelter, her port side struck rocks. With water entering the engine-room and second hold, she started listing. The crew managed to escape across the rocks, and were rescued the next day.

There was unkind talk of an insurance job at the time. However, given the ferocious January weather and the fact that both the captain and first engineer had their wives aboard at the time, this seems unlikely, because they’d never have heard the last of it.

In the lap of Above: Diver on the wreck of the Kyra Eleni.

Right: Avgerinos Vrazopoulos (left) with Aris Polianidis and George Koutsoubos of Aqua Team.

S

OME SMALL FISH are skittering around, but there is little marine growth on the wreck. Moray eels and grouper may well find shelter there as reported but I don’t spend any time hunting for them. Instead I circle the bow, meander over the tangled metal and perform a long figure of eight to dip lower around the impressive stern, taking in the ever-changing perspectives.

Increasingly I find that I enjoy picturing tiny divers in natural light against a large metallic backdrop, and the Kyra Eleni, still shapely from many angles, serves that purpose well.

Conveniently, just a week before our arrival, a clean-up dive-team assembled

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by the Mediterranean Association to Save Sea Turtles has removed 250kg of ghost netting from the wreck, to be recycled as clothing. So the Kyra Eleni is now safer, and probably looks a bit shorn after its giant haircut.

After the dive, Avgerinos Vrazopoulos will keep apologising for the 15-20m visibility, insisting that we’d normally be able to see for at least 30m, but I hadn’t found it a problem.

The amiable Avgerinos is the reason www.divErNEt.com

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HOLIDAY DIVER: GREECE holiday with a little diving on the side, you’d be well-advised to check out his website first.

As much as Avgerinos is a passionate diver, he is a passionate marketing man.

Impoverished Greece needs to showcase its assets, and he reckons scuba-diving is one of those assets, but that it can’t be sold or enjoyed in a vacuum.

He recognises that there are plenty of countries with better claims for your attention on the marine-life front. But his Greek diving experience comes as a package deal – Scuba Hellas aims to pinpoint the best wreck and geological diving in an area, and the underwater experiences come with a generous side order of culture, ancient history and good food and drink.

Or the diving can be the side-order, as you prefer.

T

the sea gods Left: Three sea gods on a frieze in the Acropolis Museum in Athens.

I’m staying at a hotel in central Athens with the convivial bunch of visiting divers, mostly online journalists from Poland, Germany and Denmark, who are now doing circuits around the Kyra Eleni like fish in an aquarium. www.divErNEt.com

Avgerinos has invited us here because he’s a man with a mission, eager to share his vision of diving in Greece. He runs Scuba Hellas Underwater World, and whether you’re planning a dedicated divetrip to the country or considering a family

HE SCUBAHELLAS.COM portal was developed over six years – “Our motto is: ‘Made by divers, for divers!’” says Avgerinos. Its map allows the user to zero in on to concentrations of good dive-sites and dive-centres around Greece and its islands to learn more about them.

The team evaluate the dive-centres for service levels, facilities, experience and dive-site access. Suitable diving and accommodation packages can then be assembled.

Some 2000 mapped dive-sites and 230 dive-centres are included at present, but there is much to do – by some estimates there could be 15,000 wrecks in Greek waters, a tenth of them deeper than 50m.

“It used to be extremely difficult for visitors to have a week full of dives in Greece during summer vacations,” Avgerinos tells me. “This was because most if not all of the dive-centres provided just a few different dives, and more than 70% of their revenues were based on Discover Scubas and Open Water courses, so their target group was just tourists, not experienced divers.

“I love my country, and travelling around I found our quality of dives to be very high and able to compete with famous successful destinations not only in Europe but globally.

“I was in marketing & communications for almost 30 years, so finally I combined my business skills with my hobby. I aimed to upgrade the local scuba service levels and eventually make my country one of the top destinations for diving, as it deserves to be.”

Avgerinos wants to ensure that diving visitors are left wanting to come back for more. I ask him about one island with an unusually high concentration of WW2 wrecks – wouldn’t it make an attractive destination for divEr readers?

No, he says firmly. He enjoys the dives ☛

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Above: Tangled wreckage on the ill-fated Kyra Eleni.

Left: Divers enter the Blue Canyon.

Below: Amphoras from a wreck dating from 1400 BC.

but doesn’t rate the one dive-centre there.

He couldn’t recommend it, even though it’s run by an old friend. That speaks volumes about what Scuba Hellas is trying to do.

I should also say that the organisation hardly seems to receive the grassroots support you might expect. Many divecentres appear content to go on operating at entry level, avoiding the need to venture to distant or challenging sites.

The key for Avgerinos, however, was the lifting of the ban on diving wrecks in Greece that once deterred so many visiting divers. Oddly enough, diving wrecks over 50 years old is still officially prohibited, because they are classified as “ancient”, but this, we’re assured, is an unenforced prohibition existing purely on paper for the time being.

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ITH THE SUN STILL BRIGHT, the RIB takes us in close to the cliffs of Arsida island, on the way back to the divecentre.

The Blue Canyon will be a different experience altogether. We drop in, swim over to the wall and pass through a dark vertical crack that soon widens out. The deep fissure offers spectacular views back out towards the blue window.

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Closer inspection of the walls with our torches reveals just how colourful they are, liberally splattered with multicoloured sponge and algal growth. At the base of the crack on the right-hand side a small cavern beckons, though it doesn’t extend that far in.

After eyeballing the canyon from all angles for some time we emerge and set off with the cliff wall on our left, dipping no deeper than 20m as we go. There are some yawning crevices to explore, a few solitary fish and shoals of baitfish but not that much detail to divert the attention.

I’m enjoying the ride simply because I haven’t been diving for a while.

You know how a song will get on your mind, then on your nerves?

For much of that dive I get snagged on my brain not a song but the title of an album I’ve never actually heard – Tales from Topographic Oceans.

I never much liked Yes, and this offering was by most accounts the progrockers at their most pretentious, but the title obviously lodged years ago in the murky backwaters of my subconscious, to finally be unleashed by this rocky Greek seascape. There are times when you just have to enjoy diving not for what you’re seeing but for the act of diving itself.

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HOLIDAY DIVER: GREECE

PETER SYMES / X-RAY MAGAZINE

Back at the Aqua Divers Club at Anavyssos, we enjoy a meal overlooking the calm bay. The dive-centre is attached to a hotel, and is notable for the quality of the briefings and friendliness of the staff.

It’s owned by Englishman David White and his partner Eleni Siatra, who also run the dive-centre at well-known luxury resort Costa Navarino in Messinia.

Because this group press trip is highlighting the all-round pleasures of leisure time spent in Greece, we are being introduced to a range of Athenian restaurants, from the robust traditional cooking of the Thanasis Taverna near Monastiriki Square, an area in which the greeters of a hundred establishments vie for your attention, to the higher-end fish cookery of Psaras in picturesque Plaka.

And on our last evening we will visit the fascinating Acropolis Museum (and dine in its restaurant looking out at the citadel that towers over the city, a neat mix of culture and cuisine), before rounding off our short trip in the popular Briki Bar in Mavili Square.

By now we have faith in Avgerinos’s recommendations, topside or below.

Perhaps our most interesting dive, as much in the concept as in the execution, is at another wreck-site. If a 50-year-old

shipwreck can be considered ancient, what does that make the 3400-year-old site we get to visit there?

Of course, the timbers of a merchant ship, or olkas, from 1400 BC are long gone, so what we have left is a debris field of broken amphoras on a gently sloping wall at around 30m.

We have only so long to spend eyeballing these remnants before deco calls, but it’s the sort of archaeological dive that captures the imagination as your mind drifts back across the millennia. Better for me than Tales from Topographic Oceans.

W

E’RE NOW DIVING with Aqua Team Porto Rafti, and its spanking new dive-centre set away from the sea is a model of modern design, well-equipped and organised – and once again, with helpful staff and comprehensive briefings.

And how often do you get back from a couple of pleasant dives and find that the dive-team already have the barbecue coals glowing, all set to grill mountains of meat and veg with wine on the side while the wetsuits dry nearby?

Top: Steve Weinman in Aqua Team’s secret cavern.

Above: Sea anemone in the “side-chapel”.

Below: Boarding the RIB at Porto Rafti.

Porto Rafti is an attractive resort town, also south of Athens but on the eastern, Aegean side of the Attica peninsula. The dive-centre, co-owned by Aris Polianidis and George Koutsoubos, offers 20 or so dive-sites in the vicinity.

After the ancient wreck the RIB drifts into a lagoon for the surface interval, startling a small and bashful contingent of naturists. There is another underwater treat to come, a site the location of which Aqua Team keeps to itself. It’s a vast bowl of a flooded cave with walls that are even more rainbow-hued than those of Blue Canyon.

A number of big Flabellina nudibranchs and fireworms are in evidence, and then, in the middle of a deep recess – the equivalent of a side-chapel in a church – can be seen a large, solitary plum-coloured sea anemone with slender tentacles.

Photographers take turns to poke their heads into the space, like worshippers paying homage to some Greek goddess.

Being based in Athens for diving is clearly very different from travelling to one of Greece’s 3000 islands, of which I’ve had limited experience in the past.

However, this recent trip, and time spent browsing the Scuba Hellas website, has made me curious about other Hellenic hotspots for diving.

It made me think about exploring places such as Kefalonia, not necessarily as dedicated dive-trips but as family holidays plus diving. Ferry-hopping between wreck islands could be fun too.

Greece is little more than three hours’ flight away from the UK, and while I wouldn’t go for the fish I would certainly go for the wrecks, the odd cavern and that inimitable all-round Greek experience.

FACTFILE

GETTING THERE8 Direct flights from London Stansted with Ryanair.

DIVING 8Aqua Divers Club at the Calypso Hotel, Anavyssos, www.aquadiversclub.com. Aqua Team Porto Rafti, en.aqua5. gr. For other dive centres go to www.scubahellas.com ACCOMMODATION8 Alexandros Hotel in central Athens, www.airotel.gr, or choose a coastal hotel.

WHEN TO GO8 For Athens May, June, September and October are best for temperatures and lack of wind. It’s also less crowded.

CURRENCY8Euro PRICES8Ryanair return flight (with bag) £204. Six nights’ B&B at a 3* Athenian Riviera hotel with four days’ guided double boat dives from 580 euros pp (two sharing). This is a price for a group of 10 or more – a couple might expect to pay 420 euros pp for a four-night stay and six dives.

VISITOR INFORMATION8 www.visitgreece.gr, www.scubahellas.com

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048_DIVER_0117.qxp_DIVER_2017 01/12/2016 11:39 Page 048

The top-selling marine life guide from Underwater World Publications. ● The revised and expanded edition of “British Sea Fishes” covers more species in greater detail ● Every fish species relevant to divers is depicted with colour photographs, usually in the natural underwater habitat ● Detailed drawings of more than 100 species highlight important identification features to help you pinpoint any fish you come across while diving ● Clear and informative text enables even complete beginners to accurately identify the fish they see This book is highly recommended for divers, snorkellers, and anyone interested in marine wildlife.

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Underwater World Publications at £9.95 (normally £17.95) plus £2.00 postage & packing

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TO ORDER: CALL The divEr Bookshop on 020 8941 8152

OR go to http://www.divernet.com/marinelife/p303357-british-sea-fishes.html

BE A BRITISH FISH EXPERT!

HOLS Maldives.qxp_DIVER grid 28/11/2016 08:11 Page 49

HOLIDAY DIVER: MALDIVES

Shades of Blue MICHAEL SALVAREZZA & CHRISTOPHER WEAVER dive the central atolls of the Maldives by liveaboard

Below, from left: A juvenile emperor angelfish is hard to miss; the liveaboard Conte Max.

ZURE. INDIGO. TURQUOISE. Aqua. Sapphire. Cobalt. There are seemingly innumerable shades of the colour blue… and every single one of them seems to be on display in the Maldives.

Standing on the deck of the Conte Max, the luxury liveaboard that was to be our home for the next week, we gazed out across a patch of South Male Atoll and tried to count the different shades of blue we could see.

We stopped at seven, not because we couldn’t count more colours but because the ship’s bell had rung,

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indicating that it was time for the next dive-briefing.

From the air, the Maldive islands appear very much like a set of small stones flung across a wide expanse of the Indian Ocean. Each of these tiny specks of sand is surrounded by a fringing coral reef, creating the idyllic postcard-perfect tropical island vistas prized by the resorts that have been built on many of these islands.

The islands themselves are part of the coral-reef systems of the various atolls that comprise the Maldives, atolls that have become legendary in the world of

diving, such as Ari, South Male, Felidhoo, Malaku and Baa. While land-based diving from the resort islands can be very rewarding, the best way to explore this vast ocean wilderness is by liveaboard.

Shortly after our arrival in the capital Male, we met the boat and began steaming south to South Male Atoll, our overall objective to explore the central atolls.

Within a few hours we had pulled up at our first dive-site, Velassaru Giri, a massive coral outcropping off Velassaru Island that would be our check-out dive.

We quickly climbed aboard the ☛

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dhoni, the dedicated dive-tender, and after a short ride and a giant stride entry later we were on the reef.

We were immediately impressed by the clouds of anthias darting in and out of the hard-coral outcroppings, and the countless redtooth triggerfish along the coral wall. None of these dared to stray more than a few inches from the safety of the crevices into which they would quickly hide on our approach. For a check-out dive, this wasn’t bad.

O

UR DIVES AT VELASSARU ISLAND included exciting drifts through the channels in the fringing reef and one on an unidentified fishing-boat known as the Kuda Giri Wreck. This picturesque shipwreck lies perfectly upright alongside a coral drop-off, and is an ideal place to observe the schools of brilliant red soldierfish that hide within the wreckage.

To reach it, divers descend along the coral wall and then make a 100m swim over the sand at about 25m. The ghostly bow of the vessel emerges from the blue and the wreck comes into view.

You can swim along the deck, peering

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Above: Divers explore the wreck of a Maldivian fishing vessel.

Below: Soft corals come into full bloom at night.

Bottom, from left: Clouds of anthias swarm on the reef; a sting ray searches for food.

into the dark recesses of the cargo holds, but for the experienced it is very difficult to resist the temptation to venture inside.

The vessel, once dedicated to removing marine-life from the sea, now provides a home for a large population.

Divers exploring the Maldives must be prepared for strong tidal currents that flood in and out of the atolls. They can be disconcerting for unprepared divers, but they bring with them breathtaking action.

At Gulhi Island we dived Miyaru Faru

Corner, a bend in the coral formation marking the entrance to a channel.

After a quick descent to the reef, we were swept up in the powerful current and were soon flying over the reef. Our hearts raced as we passed over hard- and soft-coral colonies, and glimpsed briefly the brilliantly coloured tentacles of sea anemones flapping in the tidal flow.

These flyovers were nice, but our objective was the actual bend in the reef, where the big action of predators and prey was taking place. We were there in a few moments.

Using current-hooks, we allowed ourselves to float in the water column like kites and watched excitedly as grey reef sharks, jack, tuna and eagle rays drifted by in the deep water.

When it was time to move on, we detached our hooks and resumed our flight over the reef until we reached a more tranquil area and slowed to enjoy the shallow sections of the coral jungle.

F

URTHER SOUTH, WE VISITED the reefs alongside Alimatha Island in Felidhoo Atoll. The memory-cards in our cameras were quickly filled to capacity with macro and wide-angle images. Green turtles, schools of oriental sweetlips and massive clouds of red-tailed butterflyfish come first to mind.

But it was the tiny world of macro photography that really came to life here.

As we peered beneath coral overhangs dripping with soft coral, we spotted many species of angel and butterflyfish, all featuring dazzling colour designs, like the bold yellow bands of the royal angelfish, or the mesmerising line-drawings of juvenile emperor angelfish – nature’s true works of psychedelic art.

Before the Conte Max moved on for its final island destination of Guraidhoo, we carried out a unique night-dive at the Alimatha Jetty. Here, as local fishermen clean their catch and discard bits of fish into the water, dozens of nurse sharks, opportunistic jack and stealthy sting rays congregate for an easy meal.

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HOLS Maldives.qxp_DIVER grid 28/11/2016 08:12 Page 51

HOLIDAY DIVER: MALDIVES

For divers, the action is spellbinding as the predators search for food, completely unaware of and uninterested in the voyeurs. We remained fairly motionless on a sandy bottom in about 14m and watched as 70-80 nurse sharks patrolled above and countless jack sliced through the water column.

An occasional ray would glide lazily through the group of divers, scouring the sand for food. It’s a somewhat artificial dive because the marine-life has been conditioned to seek food there, but it’s still an exciting experience that produces smiles of satisfaction every time.

Fierce currents and dizzying arrays of marine life characterised our final dives at Guraidhoo Island. At a site known as Kandooma Beyru, we descended along a dramatic vertical wall to about 36m and began a brisk drift along the reef, stopping periodically to explore cuts in the wall where we could get out of the current and search for photographic subjects.

It’s an interesting sensation to duck into these natural shelters and turn to

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Above: Watching curious nurse sharks.

Right, from top: Convict surgeonfish often occur in vast schools that roll over the reef in search of food; a strikingly coloured starfish; Maldives anemonefish usually live in pairs or family groups.

peer back out into the blue, watching divers and the occasional jack or trevally glide by in the current.

Careful examination of whipcorals and gorgonians revealed the presence of tiny gobies, each perfectly camouflaged to blend into the host coral they inhabited.

But stopping in the flowing water, maintaining neutral buoyancy, and focusing the camera on these tiny subjects as the whip-coral or gorgonian flaps in the watery breeze is no small feat!

I

Below, from left: Jack photographed below a pier at night; a school of red-tailed butterflyfish scour the reef for food.

T WAS HERE THAT WE also found a rainbow of large anemones, each with its attendant anemonefish. Green, yellow, white, purple and even day-glo orange were just some of the colours of these anemones, causing us to begin referring to the Maldives as the Rainbow Reef!

While many of our dives would begin in deeper water, often the true circus could be found in the shallows atop the coral-heads. Clouds of yellow sweepers, blue and gold fusiliers, and many schools of snapper and grunt, along with a wide

array of reef fish in eye-popping colours, kept us endlessly entertained.

On one dive, an army of convict surgeonfish rolled over the reef feeding on algae and other detritus in unison, while on others we encountered Napoleon wrasse, titan triggerfish and the uniquely patterned clown triggerfish in the shallows. There really is no reason to go very deep in the Maldives, because much of the interesting life of these reefs can be found in 12m or less.

Pulling anchor and heading back to Male after a week of spectacular diving, we faced into a freshening wind and watched as flying fish took to the air ☛

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HOLS Maldives.qxp_DIVER grid 29/11/2016 07:43 Page 52

HOLIDAY DIVER: MALDIVES ahead of the boat while dolphins cavorted in the distance.

The northern monsoon was upon us, and dark clouds hinted at troublesome weather to come. But despite the choppy seas between the atolls, and the growing wind and rain, the Conte Max remained a comfortable home on the Indian Ocean.

There are few better ways of becoming immersed in the ocean world of the Maldives than to experience it from a liveaboard, free to roam from atoll to atoll, and to discover the wonders that lie beneath the waves in the Maldives’ coral jungle.

FACTFILE

GETTING THERE8 Flights from the UK into Male.

Liveaboards such as the Conte Max will arrange pick-up at the docks alongside the airport. No visa is required.

Below: Even uninhabited islands have been colonised!

DIVING & ACCOMMODATION8The 33m Conte Max, built in 2004, has eight large cabins – a suite, four triples and three twins, taking up to 21 guests. All are en suite with air conditioning and there are no bunk beds. There is a diving dhoni and a crew and instructor team of at least 11, www.luxuryyachtmaldives.com WHEN TO GO8 The Maldives has an equatorial tropical climate. DecemberApril is the dry season. February-April is the hottest period and MayNovember is the rainy season.

CURRENCY8Rufiya, but US dollars and euros accepted at most resorts.

PRICES8 Conte Max charges from US $2310pp for two sharing on one of its eight-day itineraries. In low season group prices start from $1850pp.

Return flights to Male from £420.

VISITOR INFORMATION8www.visit maldives.com

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Luxury Yacht Maldives (FP) – 01_17.qxp_Full Page Bleed 25/11/2016 17:00 Page 1

Technique JAN spread.qxp_DIVER grid 28/11/2016 08:51 Page 54

TRIALS & TRIBULATIONS

Pt 2

In the second of a two-part article in this series, SIMON PRIDMORE describes a few common equipment problems encountered by divers, and offers techniques for avoiding or dealing with them

D

O YOU REMEMBER having to do the mask-flood and maskremoval and replacement drills during your beginners’ course? How could you ever forget, right?

Do you remember hating them and thinking afterwards: “Thank goodness that’s over, I’ll never have to do that again.”? Or perhaps you’re one of the fortunate ones who had all sorts of difficulty doing the drill, and finally managed it one time only so that the busy instructor could tick that box on his checklist and move the group on?

Well, this message is especially for you!

There was a serious purpose to those drills. They were not devised just to give you a hard time.

1 BROKEN MASK-STRAP On any dive your mask-strap could snap or your buddy’s wild fin-kick could separate you from your face-furniture with one blow.

You might catch your mask as it flies off, but chances are that it’s gone. This in itself is not a serious problem; you will be visually impaired but can still look around you, gather your thoughts, signal for assistance if you wish and see which way is up so that you can make a slow, careful ascent to the surface, breathing from your regulator as normal and

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remembering not to inhale through your nose, which is now exposed to the water.

Losing your mask will not kill you but panicking when you lose it just might!

Losing control of yourself when it happens and bolting to the surface could have tragic consequences.

So you need to be certain you won’t panic if you lose your mask. How do you do that? Practise, practise, practise.

In a pool or during a dive with a buddy in shallow water, remove your mask and then swim along for a few minutes, remaining calm.

Can you see the readings on your watch, computer or depth and pressure gauges without your mask? Do you notice how the design of your regulator second stage diverts your bubbles away from your nose and eyes? See how easy this is?

If the possibility of losing your mask really bothers you, or if you don’t want to allow the loss of your mask to interrupt a dive, do what many technical divers do to guard against the inconvenience of having to complete long decompressions without a mask.

Invest in a frameless back-up mask that will stow neatly in a pouch or BC pocket.

Make sure it’s stored so that you can access and deploy it quickly in an emergency, and practise fitting it and clearing it under water until the action becomes instinctive.

Above: A diver reaches back to open the cylinder-valve.

The left hand is under water, pushing the cylinder up to make the manoeuvre easier (see 4: Rolling Into The Deep Without Air).

2 LOOSE WEIGHT-BELT (LOST WEIGHT-BELT) There are two issues here. Your primary concern is to ensure that your weight-belt does not fall off during a dive. Hold onto it at the buckle every time you enter the water and check that the buckle is still tight and the belt correctly positioned around your waist before descending.

As you descend the increasing pressure at depth will compress the neoprene in your wetsuit and your belt will become a little looser. So remember to reach down and tighten it once you arrive at depth.

Of course, having done this you might find that the belt becomes a little tight when you return to the shallows. If so, just relax the buckle again.

The second issue is the risk of a runaway ascent in the event that your weight-belt comes off.

To minimise the danger this presents, you can do three things.

First, buy a BC with minimal integral buoyancy. That means one that will give you sufficient buoyancy on the surface when you inflate it but, when deflated, doesn’t require too much weight to get it under water.

Second, practise dumping all the air from your BC quickly in an emergency.

Know where the dumps are and which www.divErNEt.com

Technique JAN spread.qxp_DIVER grid 28/11/2016 08:51 Page 55

TECHNIQUE on top of BCs all the time. The cracks are often difficult to see, and the first sign of a problem is usually bubbles escaping from the fitting.

However, sometimes there is no warning: I have seen an apparently good shoulder-dump valve shear off completely when the BC was inflated under water.

If this happens, the BC immediately becomes useless and the dive is over.

Dump at least part of the weight you are carrying in order to swim to the surface and, once you get there, dump all your weight to stay buoyant.

4 ROLLING INTO THE DEEP WITHOUT AIR body position you need to be in to make sure no air is trapped. Avoid complex jackets with huge wraparound air-cells.

Third, carry only as much weight as you need!

3 BC FAILURE BCs are highly reliable but they can fail in a couple of ways that you may not have considered.

The first of these is that they can start auto-inflating. It is a great advantage to be able to add air directly from the cylinder via the low-pressure inflator hose, but the valve at the BC end can corrode and fail, allowing air to seep into the BC and increase its (and your) positive buoyancy.

It’s a sign that this is happening if you find yourself constantly having to dump air when you haven’t added any.

You can keep the valve corrosion-free by wiping it clean every now and then with a little white vinegar on a cotton bud. If the valve is already corroded it may be too late for vinegar, but your local dive-centre should be able to replace it.

However, if you have not noticed the problem or are using rented equipment and the valve suddenly fails explosively, you will need to have the presence of mind and dexterity to disconnect the hose under water, dump the air and then inflate the BC orally when you get to the surface.

These skills are introduced in most beginners’ courses and they should be practised and maintained, as they have real purpose.

Shocking as it may be to contemplate, you also need to be prepared for your BC to stop functioning as a flotation device.

The material with which these devices are made is tough and hard to pierce, but it can wear or tear.

The real potential failure points, however, are the dump-valves, which are made of fairly brittle plastic that cracks easily. Scuba equipment is often handled roughly in transit, and heavy cylinders fall www.divErNEt.com

Above: An apparently sound shoulder-dump can just shear off.

Right: A failing highpressure gauge. The needle never goes to the bottom of the red zone even when the gauge is detached from the cylinder.

Read more from Simon Pridmore in: Scuba Confidential – An Insider’s Guide to Becoming a Better Diver Scuba Professional – Insights into Sport Diver Training & Operations Scuba Fundamental – Start Diving the Right Way All are available on Amazon in a variety of formats.

The history of diver-training is based on people assessing the causes of accidents and then designing courses to try to ensure that they are not repeated.

This is all very reassuring but this consistent approach also means that the writers of new course texts tend to add new techniques and new technologies to what has gone before, but are very reluctant to omit the older material.

This leaves us with some historical anomalies, and one of these is the advice given to all new divers that they should open the cylinder-valve all the way and then twist it back a quarter- or a half-turn.

This advice dates back to the mid-20th century when our sport was in its infancy, and it was feared that valves could be damaged if left open all the way.

Today, once your cylinder valve has been opened the only thing you can achieve by twisting the valve back is to partially close it again.

Also to blame for a number of incidents in which a diver has inadvertently entered the water with the cylinder-valve closed or only a fraction open is the over-attentive diving partner with poor plumbing skills who misguidedly closes an open valve while performing a buddy-check.

Here is how to make sure you never enter the water with your cylinder-valve closed, even partially.

Forget what you were told in your training. Turn your valve all the way on before you put your scuba gear on. Then do not let anyone else touch the valve after that, no matter how much your buddy insists or what exalted rank they hold in the dive industry.

Before you enter the water, take four breaths from your regulator and watch your high pressure gauge while you do so.

If the needle moves when you breathe, your valve is either fully closed or almost closed. Why four breaths? Because you might not be watching your gauge, and if your valve has been opened then closed again, it will take you four breaths to clear the hose. That horrible empty sucking feeling will come on the back of the fourth breath.

Unless the dive-site conditions demand it, never enter the water negatively buoyant. On the rare occasions that the dive-site conditions require you to go in negative and plummet, know how to open your own cylinder-valve if you suddenly find yourself with a vacuum in your regulator as you descend.

The usual technique is to reach down and behind you with your left hand and push the base of your cylinder upwards.

Then reach behind your neck with your right hand, grasp the valve firmly and

turn it away from you.

Don’t place blind faith in your highpressure gauge. The vast majority are cheap mechanical devices with cheap components.

They can malfunction and mislead.

Many have no actual zero reading; they just have a series of red dots below the 50bar mark that become smaller until they peter out.

Often there is a registered trademark symbol (a circle with an R inside) below the point where the dots run out, and you may think this is the zero. It isn’t! When a gauge starts to fail, the needle never actually points at zero.

Look closely at your gauge when it is not attached to a cylinder, and make sure you know where the needle will be when you have no air remaining!

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AquaLung (Fusion AirCore) – 01_17.qxp_AquaLung 29/11/2016 16:05 Page 1

FUSION AirCore The Evolution of Comfort

Fusion AirCore is a breathable membrane core that sits within your Fusion drysuit skin and provides superior FRPIRUW E\ VLJQL½FDQWO\ UHGXFLQJ PRLVWXUH EXLOG XS DQG reducing pre/post dive surface overheating.

Fusion AirCore Fusion Skin

• AirCore VTec Breathable fabric keeps you dry, warm and comfortable.

• Oversized cut reduces seam and material stress for enhanced durability.

• Most leaks occur at the seams and the AirCore has 25-50% fewer seams.

• The Fusion’s Independent Outer Skin provides added protection and custom options.

• Welded seams are guaranteed for the life of the suit.

• RZ System for fast drying and rapid Skin changes for all diving conditions.

• Automatically adapts for varied thicknesses of undergarments for all water temperatures.

• Adapts to your individual body shape providing you ZLWK FXVWRPLVHG ½W • Comes standard with Seal Lock Technology.

• 4XLFN DQG HDV\ LQ ½HOG UHSDLUV

REDISCOVER YOURSELF

www.aqualung.com/uk

HOLS Resorts.qxp_DIVER grid 28/11/2016 08:08 Page 57

HOLIDAY DIVER: RESORTS

The devil is in the detail For many divers, liveaboards have their drawbacks – for a relaxing, flexible diving holiday they prefer to be based on shore. But how to ensure that your chosen bed, board and dive-centre combo is perfect for you? BETH & SHAUN TIERNEY have the answers

N

O DOUBT EVERYONE HAS their own version of this story to tell – the saga of the day you arrive at your long-awaited diving resort... and your heart sinks.

The time it happened to us was when we arrived at reception at a hotel in a country a few hours east of the Red Sea after an overnight flight – only to be totally ignored by the staff.

Curious. We waited, we tried to get attention, we were as polite as polite, we were ignored. Eventually, we were told that there were no rooms.

Sorry? We have a reservation. Still, we were ignored.

We found the dive-centre. Knowing that we would be landing at 5.30am, we had paid for the room for the previous night to be sure that it would be waiting for us, but now we were informed that the “no-room policy” meant that we had to be there by 2pm.

After returning to reception and www.divErNEt.com

performing a considered melt-down, we were given a room that was dirty, had the worst, rock-solid beds, no view (we had booked beachside) and the noisiest neighbours on the planet.

Things were not looking good, and to be honest, by the time that trip was over,

we realised that the check-in debacle had simply been a reflection of the entire trip.

The big conundrum is how to find a resort where you won’t feel let down. The devil is in the detail, as they say. Never cut corners when it comes to researching what type of hotel or resort is the right ☛ one for you.

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Choosing where to stay

Feet firmly on the ground Deciding which geographical destination to visit is usually the fun part – sit around, read a book or magazine, daydream for a bit then, voila! You’re ready to book the best trip of your diving life.

However, the hard part starts when you try to choose exactly where to stay once you’re there.

Although your trip is mainly focused on the marine realm, a lot of divers prefer to stay on terra firma. Resort-based dive holidays are perfect for people who are happy with fewer dives, have a non-diver or family with them or want to enjoy the local culture.

There’s more flexibility to go where you want and when you want. You can drop a dive one day to see a local landmark, or choose which dive-sites you want to visit, while missing others.

Also, sometimes interesting diving areas are better served for in-depth exploration by a local resort than by being on a liveaboard with no access to shore.

The most important thing to do is define your requirements before you start the booking process. Ask yourself how much you can afford, what style of hotel you like, what your travelling companions need and, as always, what type of diving you want to do and what you want to see.

Next, read as much as you can and tap everyone you know for recommendations.

It can be hard to know who to believe in this information super-age, because we can be overwhelmed by the volume of information about distant places yet not always sure whether bold claims can be substantiated or not.

It depends who’s doing the claiming, and that isn’t always clear.

So talk to your friends, check back-

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Above: It looks idyllic from the air, but will the resort be everything you’ve been promised?

issues of divEr and read a guide-book (we know a good one!). One obvious route is to check a resort’s website, but it’s important to try to read between the lines when you do, as their job is simply to convince you of how great they are, and how much better than their rivals.

A breathtaking, bragging-rights remote destination may actually have primitive infrastructure, or a small resort may fail to mention that its most famous dive-site is actually 50 miles away.

There are usually, but not always, an abundance of choices at most major diving destinations. In really popular areas such as Egypt and the Maldives, there will be a broad range of accommodation options and dive-centres at all budgets and in many different styles.

Very occasionally there won’t be, of course – a few world-famous island-based dive-locations have just the one, so that doesn’t take too much thought.

And no doubt you have been happy with that type of choice in the past. But what about the areas where there may be dozens of options?

No matter which wonderful country you have decided on, budget is usually the first consideration. Many destinations will have resorts ranging from all-singing, all-dancing, credit-card-breaking luxury to cheap and cheerful.

Once you have worked out your category, make a list of what you need.

Divide the must-haves from the things that would be nice, but won’t be upsetting if you don’t get. Remember that even if you can afford the best resort available, it may not have the amenities you want.

On-site facilities are a particularly important issue for those with non-diving partners and children.

Many top-class resorts don’t have, for example, a kid’s pool or club, as it’s not the market they want in their fancy resort, while smaller budget hotels may not have the space for such things.

For those with kids, look for a separate, shallow pool with safety facilities. A play area or kid’s club is also a good option and, depending on how old they are, you may want to ask if the dive-centre can teach your youngsters.

If all the adults in the group are divers, is there a baby-sitting service, useful for both dive days and nights out?

For the big people, look for the opposite. Is there a child-free pool or adults-only zone, and can you request a room that is away from families?

Above: Even you can’t dive all the time, can you? Are there other attractions to fill your surface time, or at least your deco day?

Right: Shallow, secure pools are useful for divers travelling with children.

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Are there bars and restaurants both inside the hotel and nearby, if you like to try the local food?

Likewise, for everyone in your group, you may need a variety of non-diving options. Are there historic sites, art galleries or other entertainment alternatives? Are there surface water or indeed other sports available?

Is there a local village to take a walk around at the end of your diving day, or access to a capital city if you want a big day out at the end of your trip?

Above and above-right: Every dive-centre has its own procedures and practices – for example, some insist on doing everything for their guests (valet-diving) while others encourage you to muck in. Make sure the centre’s style suits your preferences.

Dive-Centres The next consideration, and possibly the most important, is the dive-centre – specifically, is it based in the resort or somewhere else?

In some countries, you may need to walk to the hotel next door, while in others it may be at the closest port, as that is where the day-boat launches from.

Off-site dive operations will often send a vehicle to collect guests in the morning, but that might be inconvenient as you will be carrying kit with you constantly – and forgetting something frequently!

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Below: If a bar and a view is all you require when the sun goes down, it doesn’t matter how remote your hideaway is, but some divers prefer a more active night-life.

Below right: If the trip is to involve training, check that the dive-centre can offer what you need.

It probably doesn’t need saying, but always check that the operation is affiliated to a major training agency or similar governing body.

If you go off the beaten track, this may not be a given, although that’s rare these days. And in some parts of the world small dive-centres may claim affiliations they don’t actually have – if in doubt, check with the agency early on.

Otherwise, if you have concerns drop the dive-centre an email in advance. Ask about facilities, if it has any extra courses you might want to do, whether it has good-quality, well-maintained equipment if you want to rent some or all of your kit and, should anyone in your group have a disability, if it can provide extra assistance.

The manner and speed of its response will in itself tell you much about a divecentre’s efficiency.

It’s also worth asking about shorediving. Is it available and, if so, will it be tide-dependent? Can you wander in at leisure from the beach, or can you leap in from a jetty so that the diving is unrestricted? Is there easy snorkelling available for non-divers?

It’s worth checking the centre’s policy on whether you can dive alone with your buddy or need to have a guide with you, as some do require the latter.

Dive-Sites While the precise location of the sites is something you rarely need to worry about, it is worth knowing in advance how you’ll get there.

RIBs are often used for a single dive, so you come and go to the dive-centre and can use facilities there. However, if most of your dives will be done from a larger day-boat, check the amenities on there.

It’s no fun being out on the water all day without some shade, a loo, lunch and drinking water. Ask if lunch is included too or whether you need to make arrangements at the hotel.

Camera-users will also want space to store their toys, or work on them.

Another query might be about snorkelling, and whether the operators take snorkellers out with the scuba-divers.

This can be great if you want your ☛

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HOLIDAY DIVER: RESORTS friend or kids to come out for the day with you, but can be less fun for the divers in the group, because the mixed focus can be disruptive for both sides.

Diver policies While you’re dropping a note to the divecentre, another area to investigate is what its policies are in terms of buddies, groupdiving or even solo-diving.

If you have your own buddy, you’re ready to go, but nothing is more frustrating for some people than to be an advanced diver and buddied up with a

total novice (or vice versa).

Slow and gentle divers who like to spend time on the reef will be frustrated if they are shepherded around with a group moving at the speed of light.

The biggest moan you hear on this subject is having to end a dive early if one diver runs out of air and the whole group is asked to ascend.

In the end, also bear in mind that no matter how many questions you ask, you still may find something that annoys you. The trick is to revel in the good stuff, and dismiss those minor devilish details.

RESORT CHECKLIST 8 Is the hotel on or near a beach?

8 Are there restaurants, bars and shops in walking distance?

8 Is the dive-centre on site or will you need to travel there each day; if so, will it pick you up?

8 Is the dive centre BSAC, CMAS, PADI, NAUI or SSI affiliated?

8 How far away are the dive-sites?

8 Is it shore- or boat-diving?

8 How many divers and guides will be on the boat?

8 Can you dive just with your buddy or are you expected to remain within a larger group?

8 Which courses are available?

8 Is nitrox available and included in your rate?

8 Are there camera facilities on the boat?

8 Are there other activities for the kids, a non-diving partner and things to do on drying-out days?

Get Britain’s best-selling diving magazine on Apple, major Android devices, Kindle Fire and PC & Mac How It Works Simply download the divEr app for FREE from the App Store or Google Play and receive a sample copy completely FREE. Once you have the app, you will be able to download new and back issues or take out a subscription all for less than the newsstand price.

There are FREE divEr supplements for you to download as well – just by creating an account!

Don’t forget to register for your Pocketmags account (using the same username and password you registered for your App), which will also allow you to view your purchases on multiple platforms.

You can access digital editions of divEr via www.Pocketmags.com and Pocketmags Magazine Newsstand for Kindle Fire.

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DON’T You can FORGET al digital s so take out a www.di ubscription at vermag azine.co .uk www.divErNEt.com

RNLI (DiveSafe) – 10_16.qxp_RNLI 23/08/2016 16:33 Page 1

THERE ARE LOTS OF HAND SIGNALS IN DIVING WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR HEART, THIS SHOULDN’T BE ONE OF THEM Book an appointment with a healthcare professional or diving doctor and check that your heart is up to it.

FIND OUT MORE AT RNLI.ORG/DIVESAFE The RNLI is the charity that saves lives at sea Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a charity registered in England and Wales (209603) and Scotland (SC037736). Registered charity number 20003326 in the Republic of Ireland.

HOLS Nevis 2 spreads.qxp_DIVER grid 28/11/2016 10:56 Page 62

Paradise with a black eye From experiencing the ultimate in luxury to coping with the fallout from mask squeeze and the unexpected sight of human bones, it was an eventful week in Nevis for MELISSA HOBSON

F

ROM THE MOMENT my plane touched down, I knew that I was in for an idyllic week. My private transfer picked me up from St Kitts Airport to whisk me away – via a short drive and a five-minute water-taxi – to the majestic, unspoiled Caribbean island of Nevis.

The sea breeze blew the stress of work away as the secluded island and its unmissable lush green mountain loomed into view.

Nevis appeared to be 36 square miles of paradise, so where better to stay than the luxury resort Paradise Beach?

From the thatched roofs that make the seven villas appear to melt into the backdrop of Nevis Peak to the secluded outdoor showers, this recently refurbished property was designed to guarantee guests privacy and tranquillity.

I sipped on an iced rum punch and pranced around my expansive villa, not quite believing my luck.

That night at the resort’s beachfront bar I chatted to some of the other guests who had been diving with Scuba Safaris, the dive-school that would be looking after me for the week.

They had seen turtles, sharks and eagle rays. I hoped I’d be as lucky.

N

EVIS HAS A TROPICAL CLIMATE , with average daily temperatures at around 25°C. Yet, just my luck, a storm system had swept through the day before my arrival. All seemed calm now, however – I hoped it would stay that way.

I was visiting at the end of August, off-

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season, so although several restaurants and hotels were closed for refurbishment until around October, the island being quieter meant that I could get into the best ones.

Like Bananas, by all accounts everyone’s favourite dinner-spot, where we watched fireflies from the roof terrace after the sun had set on my first night on the island.

In the morning, I took a taxi to Oualie Beach to meet Ellis Chapelton, who runs Scuba Safaris. He filled me in on the history of our first dive-site, the tragic Christena passenger ferry that sank on 1 August, 1970.

On the day she went down, workmen had been below deck fixing the engine before she left St Kitts for Nevis.

The captain set out without realising that the watertight doors hadn’t been

Above: Eagle rays.

Inset: Paradise Beach – a good place to chill.

closed properly, and the ferry, overloaded with around 300 passengers instead of the recommended 180, took on water fast.

There were only 90 survivors.

The maritime disaster shook the community – almost everyone on the island lost someone that day.

W

Right: The Cristena – remains around the wreck cast a sombre note.

E JUMPED INTO THE balmy water and dropped to 20m, where the memorial site of the 50m-long wreck was nestled, upright, on the seabed.

Covered in coral, the Christena looked quite pretty. With lurking lobsters, sergeant-majorfish, a few unwelcome lionfish and a good swimthrough, at first www.divErNEt.com

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glance it was like any other wreck. But the signs of its demise couldn’t be ignored.

And I don’t mean just make-up bottles and trinkets that once belonged to passengers, but the bones of bodies never recovered from the wreckage, still scattered in the sand.

A skull leered at me from the floor of what was once the upper deck. Despite the 29° water, I shivered.

Most of the shipwrecks I have dived before have been scuttled as artificial reefs or went down with few or no fatalities. So I felt uneasy about the vast number of people who met a gruesome end here.

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(secondhand from a friend) had seemed to fit OK at the surface but at depth the pressure, combined with a tight seal that didn’t budge when I tried to equalise, caused a moment of intense pressure.

That one second was enough. My eye, suddenly felt sensitive through the dive and on the surface, and sure enough the mask squeeze had ruptured blood vessels behind my eye – giving me tiny red dots across one eyelid and the early stages of a bruise on the other.

What with the bones and the bruising, I wasn’t hugely disappointed that the next dive – at Bug’s Hole – was totally different. And that, of course, included wearing a new mask!

Despite the recent storm, visibility was good and we had a clear view of the vivid coral reef. Instructor Elvin tapped his tank to get my attention. I couldn’t believe my luck – after diving for eight years I had seen my first seahorse only in Grenada the previous year but within minutes of dive on Nevis dive, here was another.

I was watching the lovely yellow creature so intently that I almost missed a green turtle darting past.

The turtle, in turn, distracted me from an enormous sting ray, almost as big as me, buried in the sand, and another smaller ray a little further off.

A lettuce slug, which looked like a ball of tangled white hair, scuttled along a rock, and a blenny peeped its little black face out of a hole in the coral.

There was so much life on the reef: two octopuses, a green and a honeycomb

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Clockwise from top: Sting ray on the reef; one of many seahorses; moray eel and flamingo tongue snail at Bug’s Hole.

moray eel, a wide-eyed flounder, lobsters, trumpetfish, countless false arrow crabs, flamingo tongues and a couple of pufferfish – one of which must have just been startled, as its spines were sticking out in all directions.

Oh, and five more seahorses.

I

Below: Spiny lobsters.

WAS PARTICULARLY PROUD of being the first to glimpse an orange seahorse camouflaged against a piece of coral. Or so I thought. Looking up to get the attention of the group, Elvin hovered in front of me, pointing at the seahorse himself. I’d been too engrossed to realise that he’d spotted it too.

It was a long, shallow dive, almost an hour at a maximum depth of 11m – just

as well, as there was so much to see.

The huge variety of life below had distracted me from my injury. In the diveshop, I looked in a mirror and found that my bruised eye was swollen half-shut.

Back at Paradise Beach an ice-pack helped reduce the swelling and bring out a big black bruise. Good thing I’d packed my sunglasses!

I wasn’t going to let a pesky bruise ruin my trip, so the next day I was ready for our dive at Nag’s Head North – so named because it’s the shape of a horse’s head.

The reef was teeming with life: among the pillar coral, bright seafans and sponges we found lionfish, stonefish, boxfish, moray eels, octopuses and several yellowhead jawfish.

Another sting ray had just wafted past us when, looking up, I saw a huge silver fish looming way above me.

Elvin saw me watching it and laughed, motioning around us; this was just one

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of a whole school of bass.

During our break between Nag’s Head North and our next dive, Shitten Bay, I sat on the top deck with the skipper and basked in the midday sunshine.

There was a small island nearby with lots of birds flocking around it. As we had time to kill, we drove the boat closer for a better look.

Dark-brown pelicans swooped down into the water, hunting for fish to bring back to their babies, which were nesting in the treetops and not yet old enough to fly. Frigate birds circled overhead, and we even saw kingfishers in flight.

The sight of a turtle coming up for breath reminded us that we were here for what was below the surface, not above, and we kitted up again.

S

HITTEN BAY WAS BETTER than the name suggested, which was a relief.

We saw no turtles under water but we did see green morays, more pufferfish, boxfish, cowfish, a huge ray and some tiny shrimp before calling it a day.

Frustratingly, I was just climbing back onto the boat when the rest of the group spotted an eagle ray. By the time I’d jumped back in, it was gone.

Being small, I tend to find that my

muscles ache after a couple of days of lifting heavy tanks. So, back on land, I visited the hot springs near the Bath Hotel, where Admiral Nelson used to stay on the island.

The springs are so scorching that you can stay in the hottest bath (43°C) for only 15 minutes at a time, but locals swear that the 70-plus minerals in the steaming water are a miracle cure for ailments.

From hot springs on land we moved to the Hot Springs dive-site where we swam to certain sections of the boulder landscape and held out our hands to feel the change in temperature where jets of hot water were escaping from fissures in the rock.

We didn’t see as much life on this dive (only in part because my mask kept flooding) but finding the right vents in the rock to experience underwater hot springs was pretty special in itself.

Church Reef would be my last dive of the trip, and a great way to end on a high. Tropical creatures filled the reef: spotted trunkfish, banded coral shrimp, octopuses, lobsters and hermit crabs, more sting rays, trumpetfish, boxfish, false arrow crabs,

Above: Rich fish life on the reefs of Nevis.

and a stonefish.

These final two sites were just off the coast from Paradise Beach resort, so we could look back at the picturesque conical roofs, designed to mirror the shape of Nevis Peak, from the boat.

Our final dive over, I headed straight for my favourite lunch spot: Sunshine’s on Pinney’s Beach.

With no more dives, I was free to enjoy a couple of its famous Killer Bee cocktails without worrying about getting “stung”.

Living up to their reputation, just two small plastic cups of cocktail were strong enough to go straight to my head. I didn’t envy the hangovers of the sunburnt American tourists who had been drinking them all day.

O

PTIONS FOR MY FINAL DAYS on the island ranged from paddleboarding and snorkelling to a spa treatment or a stroll through the Botanical Gardens of Nevis, admiring its tropical trees, plants and flowers from around the world.

The first thing I’d noticed about Nevis was its mountain and, throughout my trip, Mount Nevis had always been in sight. So I didn’t want to leave without seeing it up close.

Knowledgeable local guide Alfred Tysoe, better known as Baba, escorted me on a hike to the mountain’s waterfalls, taking in along the way the flora and fauna of the rainforest, many of which are used as herbal remedies.

At sunset, I trotted along the beach on a guided horse ride with Nevis Equestrian Centre and was back at the resort for a final rum punch under the stars.

The green tinge now spreading across my bruised eye indicated that my time on the island was coming to an end.

In the final analysis I can only go along with Christopher Columbus, who described Nevis as “Queen of the Caribbean”.

FACTFILE

GETTING THERE8 BA flies to St Kitts from Heathrow. Water taxi transfers to Nevis can be arranged by Paradise Beach Resort.

DIVING85* PADI dive-centre Scuba Safaris, www.divenevis.com ACCOMMODTION8Paradise Beach Nevis, www.paradisebeachnevis.com WHEN TO GO8 High season is from December to early April. You can dive from July to November but many hotels and restaurants are closed during hurricane season.

CURRENCY8Eastern Caribbean dollar but US dollars accepted.

PRICES8Elegant Resorts offers a seven-night stay from £2395pp based on six people sharing a three-bedroom garden villa, roomonly, return flights to St Kitts, private transfers to Nevis and UK airport lounge passes, www.elegantresorts.co.uk. Scuba Safaris offers two-tank packages from US $110 a day or $455 for five days.

VISITOR INFORMATION8www.nevisisland.com

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HOLIDAY NEWS

BOOKING NOW…

Two big liveaboard operators into one UK liveaboard and tour operator blue o two and Thailand-based liveaboard operator Worldwide Dive and Sail are

Dive the fourth Cayman Island

The companies plan to combine and expand their fleets, while separately continuing to grow blue o two as a dive-tour operator.

Although the merger was expected to be complete by the start of 2017, it could take up to two years to complete the rebranding and combining of the fleets.

Founded in 2004, Worldwide Dive and Sail operates a range of AsiaPacific area liveaboards, including Siren Fleet, Master Liveaboards and The Junk.

The merger extends an existing partnership between the two operators that began when Master

8 www.divetech.com

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8 www.blueotwo.com, www.worldwidediveandsail.com

ST HELENA PACKAGED In December’s Booking Now we brought you news of the diving in out-there South Atlantic island St Helena, a new Marine Protected Area with barely dived reefs and old shipwrecks, and where whale sharks gather in large numbers in the first quarter of each year.

We also explained that you need to fly to Cape Town and take a five-day cruise aboard RMS St Helena to get there (from £2228pp return) – which is why serious bragging rights were involved.

We now hear that commercial flights to the island are set to start this July, making access far easier, and we also have details of packages from the island’s two dive operators.

Crab bait at Christmas dive trip to the banks in 2015.

“Our divers were probably among the first humans to lay eyes on sections of those walls.”

The package from US $2900pp includes seven nights' shared condominium accommodation at Divetech's Lighthouse Point, transfers, five boat-trips with diving plus unlimited diving at the resort, breakfasts and lunches, with dinner option and farewell barbecue. Divers must hold a minimum certification of CCR Normoxic Trimix.

Liveaboards was formed in 2014.

In 2017 blue o two’s flagship blue Horizon, which has operated in the Red Sea since 2006, will be rebadged as the Red Sea Master (artist’s impression left), while blue Voyager will become the Maldives Master.

And from March 2018 the Yemaya, a liveaboard now operating in Cocos and Malpelo in the eastern Pacific, will be refurbished as the Bahamas Master. Based in Freeport, she will offer 7-, 10- and 14-night cruises for up to 16 guests, with an emphasis on shark-diving.

Inspired by the TV blockbuster series Planet Earth II, tour operator Dive Worldwide has been dreaming up packages to reflect some of the inspiring footage audiences have been enjoying.

One of these, based on the Islands episode, is a 15-night “Christmas and Cocos Island Diving Experience“ including five days on Christmas Island. For millions of years this tiny Australian outpost has been ruled by crabs, and at the start of the wet season every October/November some 43 million red crabs move from forest to coast to breed and release their eggs into the sea, the babies returning about a month later.

This event attracts whale sharks and other pelagics, and visitors can enjoy spectacular underwater and topside adventures, says Dive Worldwide. Its package costs from £4095pp sharing, including flights, transfers and 20 dives.

Into the Blue offers an eight-night package from £1300pp (two sharing) with B&B at the Blue Lantern, seven days’ diving with lunches, including two whale-shark experiences, barbecue and sunset cruise.

Sub-Tropic Adventures also has an eight-night dive package but with selfcatering accommodation, diving, lunches on dive days and airport transfers, from £915pp.

8 divesainthelena. com, www.stsa. co.sh, www.sthelenatourism.com

RAINER SCHIMPF

Twelve miles west of Grand Cayman is a pristine kidneyshaped coral bank often referred to as the fourth Cayman Island, said to feature dramatic drop-offs populated by turtles, sharks and both reef and pelagic fish.

Depths and distance make the 12-Mile Bank inaccessible to most divers, but Divetech is taking a land-based rebreather-only group of divers on expeditionary boattrips from 19-26 August, and offering the possibility of technical dive profiles down to 75m.

“12-Mile is unique in that it is remote and seldom explored,” says Divetech General Manager Tony Land, who led an exploratory

completing a “merger of equals” that they say has been under discussion for four years.

Free Maldives video course Emperor Maldives is offering guests a free video workshop on a Best of Maldives trip from 1522 January. Divers aboard Emperor Virgo interested in the subject can get the benefit of professional advice from diveguides Marc & Marilen Chicano.

They will be looking to improve skills on manual, semiauto and automatic video

equipment from GoPro to digital tape cameras, covering white balance, focus, underwater shooting and editing using iMovie for Macs and social-media sharing.

Their work can be sampled at bit.ly/2dOhUFH.

8 www.emperor maldives.com

8 www.diveworld wide.com www.divErNEt.com

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HOLIDAY NEWS

BOOKING NOW…

IN BRIEF

Adopted: Ixchel the bull shark

WITH SHARM EL SHEIKH airport still closed to divers flying direct from the UK, La Pespes fast Red Sea ferry from Hurghada has been maintaining a way in. With the devaluation of the Egyptian pound it has announced a price hike, but could still represent value if its timings suit your connections. The price now is US $40 one way, sailing on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from Hurghada at 8am, back at 6pm.

Pro Dive International’s dive centre on Mexico’s Riviera Maya has taken the unusual step of adopting a bull shark.

Named Ixchel after an ancient Mayan goddess of fertility, motherhood, the moon and healing, the shark has been adopted for an initial five-year fee paid to the Saving Our Sharks (SOS) conservation and research project, which focuses on the local bull sharks.

Ixchel can be distinguished by her bent dorsal fin and inquisitive behaviour, says Pro Dive. At 2.5m she is one of the largest females of the 23 bull sharks registered by SOS. One result of the co-operation is to be development of a manual setting standards for bull-shark diving in the Riviera Maya and Mexican Caribbean.

You never know, you might get to dive with Ixchel – seven nights’ allinclusive at the newly renovated Allegro Playacar with 10 dives – one

8 www.lapespes.com INON UK IS ARRANGING an underwater photography workshop aimed at all levels at Siladen Resort & Spa in Sulawesi, Indonesia from 4-11 September.

Prices start from £1680pp for a garden room with all food, workshop, 12 guided boat-dives and transfers. Workshops in the Philippines and Palau are being planned for 2018.

8 www.inonuk.com THE COZUMEL SCUBA FEST in Mexico has been postponed until 4-8 May, should you wish to join in the fun in 2017.

8 www.cozumelfest.com

Places are apparently being booked up fast for next September when US divers Ned & Anna DeLoach run their fifth Lembeh Fish and Critter Hunt at Eco Divers Resort Lembeh in North Sulawesi, Indonesia.

The couple, known as co-authors of best-selling tropical Pacific marine-life ID books, are there from 30 September to 14 October, running free week-long workshops on reef fish and invertebrate ID, behaviour and photography for guests staying at the resort.

A special offer at that time of US $1105 covers an eight-day stay sharing an air-conditioned room on a full-board basis, with six days of boatdiving on air (up to three guided dives daily) and transfers.

In the shorter term, you can stay at the resort until the end of March for $800pp for six days on similar terms but with four days’ diving.

Or stretch out with an 11-day Lembeh and Manado combo trip (staying at Eco Divers Manado @ Mercure for five days) for $1445pp.

8 www.eco-divers.com www.divErNEt.com

for £1279pp (two sharing). An optional extra if you time it right is the Sailfish Run Safari for US $186.

8 www.prodivemex.com

Tec safari in Red Sea blue o two has a new technical-diving itinerary called North Red Sea by Tekstreme Diving. It regards the skeletal Lara wreck on Jackson Reef as the highlight, providing open bulkheads and debris fields to explore, and describes the coral-covered Gulf Fleet wreck as “highly technical” due to its position.

There is also Thomas Canyon, ranging from 40 to 90m with three arches and a variety of marine life on the wall and in the blue.

Begun in 1997 as a TDI facility, Tekstreme Diving is said to be one of the only active BSAC technical training facilities in Egypt, and is also a PADI TecRec and SSI centre. It offers bespoke tec safari trips the length of the Red Sea. The next week aboard Red Sea Adventurer runs from 3-10 March, and costs from £1115. This includes return flights from London to Hurghada, transfers, full board and all diving and fuel surcharges.

FROGFISH PHOTOGRAPHY

The DeLoaches are coming

with the bull sharks, two in Cozumel, two cenotes dives plus the Mama Viña wreck – comes with free nitrox and airport transfers in a “dive & relax” deal

8 www.blueotwo.com

BACK TO THE ‘80S Red Sail Sports in Grand Cayman is celebrating its 30th anniversary by offering what it says are 1980s dive-rates in 2017 dive-package prices! Its “Back to the 80s” package starts at US $307 for three days of diving, a saving of more than $100. Four days costs $382, five $447.

Packages include daily two-tank dives, 2550% discounts off additional diving, a sunset catamaran sail, commemorative T-shirt and free entry to the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame Museum.

Red Sail Sports opened for business at the Hyatt Regency Grand Cayman in the first week of January, 1987 and now has five locations on Grand Cayman.

8 www.redsailcayman.com

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BOOKING NOW…

HOLIDAY NEWS

Discovering Oman

Oman, seven hours’ flight from the UK, offers great diving diversity, says Regaldive. Hard and soft corals, rays, leopard sharks, morays, turtles and schooling fish are among the attractions, plus whale sharks in summer (when it can also get very hot).

Seven nights at the Millennium Resort Mussanah in Muscat costs from £1106pp (two sharing). It is said to offer access to more than 40 Gulf of Oman dive-sites, including the UNESCO-protected Daymaniyat and Fahal Islands.

The price includes flights, transfers and seven nights’ half-board. A three-day dive-pack at £173pp includes two unguided boat-dives a day.

Alternatively, seven nights at the Marriott Salalah Beach Resort near Salalah and Mirbat costs from £1352pp. This southern area of Dhofar can be dived from October to May, and Regaldive reports a “huge range of vastly unknown dive-sites, wrecks, unusual kelp forests and marine life including dolphins, sharks, octopus, turtles and the occasional humpback whale.” £1352pp covers flights, transfers and B&B (two sharing). The three-day dive-pack costs from £136pp.

8 www.regaldive.co.uk

Lanzarote packages include underwater museum

CACT LANZAROTE / JASON DE CAIRES TAYLOR

The 5* Princesa Yaiza Suite Hotel Resort in Playa Blanca in the Canary island of Lanzarote has introduced two diving packages designed to reflect the appeal of underwater sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor’s recently opened Museo Atlantico for both beginners and experienced divers.

The resort’s PADI Open Water Diver course includes guided diving of the “underwater museum”, which is accessible only to snorkellers and scuba-divers.

The 60 human sculptures were designed “as an exploration of how artwork can be altered to eventually become a part of its environment”.

The courses run on most days and the 473-euro pack include equipment, certification, all dives and museum entrance fee (7-9 euros for divers).

For more experienced divers, Princesa Yaiza offer a six-dive package, including the guided Museo Atlantico tour alongside the resort’s regular boat and shore dives such as Flamingo Wall and Punta Berrugo, complete with ancient shipwreck. The price is 249 euros.

Princesa Yaiza, which includes a thalasso & spa centre and no fewer than eight restaurants, charges from 206 euros a night for B&B accommodation (two sharing).

8 www.princesayaiza.com

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CONSERVATION DIVER

RICHARD ASPINALL looks at how to make your reef-dives even better – for you and the coral

WHAT EXACTLY IS CORAL? I

’M GOING TO MAKE quite a few generalisations here that may well have biologists screaming, but here goes.

The basic building block of a coral reef is the coral polyp. Each polyp contains a mouth surrounded by a ring of tentacles often containing nematocysts (stinging cells), a digestive system and not a great deal else.

Imagine a small anemone and you’re warm.

Some corals are single polyps, such as the cup corals found around UK coasts or the disc-like mushroom corals of the tropics, but most are colonial and arise from asexual division of other polyps as the colony grows.

Some of the colonies we call coral are not actually coral at all. Fire coral, for example, is

a type of hydrozoan. But generally we have two categories: hard coral and soft coral.

Biologically, corals are found within the class Anthozoa (literally “flower animal“).

Within this are groups of more closely related animals such as the Octocorallia, named for their eight tentacles per polyp.

Next time you’re enjoying Dendronepthya soft corals at Ras Mohammed, you can give them their posh name but waste no time trying to count their tentacles, or you’ll miss the shoals of big stuff and strain your eyes.

The stony corals are in the Hexacorallia sub-class (multiples of six tentacles), and most of what we consider “proper” corals are in the order Scleractinia. These are the stony corals that form reefs, or get in the way of

LL DIVERS REMEMBER THEIR first coral-reef dive experience.

For me, it was on the generally unexciting site of Ras Katy, an easy check-dive location for boats leaving Na’ama Bay on the northern Red Sea liveaboard circuit.

I had recently qualified as an Open Water Diver in a cold quarry in autumn, and here I was seeing brightly coloured tropical fish swimming around real coral bommies! I’ll never forget that experience.

We all know that coral reefs are threatened and that we should be concerned for their well-being, but I want to offer some suggestions as to how we can best enjoy these remarkable habitats.

the wreck, depending on your point of view.

And there are many more sub-categories that are constantly being revised.

Corals lay down calcium to form the reef, and in essence, as they metabolise, they alter the pH level inside their skeletons.

This causes dissolved substances in sea water (mainly calcium) to form tiny crystals that build up in layers at the polyp’s base.

Each coral species does this slightly differently, hence the unique shapes.

Because this process depends on light, scientists can analyse coral skeletons from the past to estimate growth rates and learn about previous climate patterns. This is a finely balanced process, and as the seas become more acidic, corals will suffer. ☛

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6 WAYS TO BE A BETTER REEF-DIVER

1

BUOYANCY, FINS, REGS AND GAUGES… BUT MAINLY BUOYANCY

The check-dives I mentioned have several functions. They tell divers and guides that their kit is working, but also make sure we get our buoyancy right.

I’m still surprised that so many people dive overweighted, and find it hard to control their buoyancy over all those fragile and often very old coral growths they’ve paid so much to enjoy.

Remember also to adopt a good body position, and consider using trim weights if necessary. This will protect the reef but also make you more streamlined,with all the benefits that offers: lower gas consumption, longer dive time and less strain on your legs.

We’ve all at some time in our diving careers felt we needed extra weight to get down, and stay down, but if you now feel you need to work on your buoyancy and trim, take extra care over the coral and work with your dive-guide.

As you relax and gain confidence, it will get easier.

And dive-guides are there to assist – I’ve yet to meet one who wouldn’t rather help you get your buoyancy and trim correct than see you plough into corals or kick up silt in a wreck.

Make sure to secure those regs, dangling cameras, reels and SMBs, too.

I’ve often seen huge reel/SMB combos on long lanyards dragged across coral by divers who are finning well above it.

Make sure that you have your clips and lanyards rigged correctly before you leave home.

Fins can be a problem too. There is nothing more sickening than feeling through your fins the scraping and snapping as a cloud of delicate coral life tumbles to the seabed. You may well get a telling-off from the guide and feel awful for the rest of the dive.

Adopting a horizontal position and being properly trimmed will help to stop you kicking downwards, and we should all take real care in swim-throughs, overhead environments, wrecks and when negotiating complicated reefs made of bommies and channels with limited turning-space.

Try to build a mental image of yourself that includes your fins.

Try using a different type of fin-kick when around corals and delicate life.

Flutter-kicks can be usefully small but my preferred kick, which does take some time to master, is the frog-kick, with knees bent and fins above the plane of the body, allowing forward propulsion and a good degree of control.

2

TAKE YOUR TIME AND ENJOY THE MACRO WORLD

The diversity of life on coral reefs far exceeds that found in all other marine habitats, but much of it is quite small and really good at hiding and, like me, you may be contemplating adding stick-on lenses to your mask to help those tired eyes.

Taken in slowly, coral reefs reveal a level of intricacy that we often miss. The closest many of us come to fully appreciating all the little stuff is perhaps during a night-dive, when our awareness is reduced to the world visible in our torch-beam.

You’re rarely missing out if you travel no more than 50m from your entry-point. Try to look more closely at the coral heads and find the tiny, delicate fish that swim among the branches, or the crabs that spend their lives in aptly named corals such as the bird’s nest or cauliflower. You’ll see them waving their pincers at you, performing their role of protecting the coral and getting a secure home as their reward.

Speeding over the reef you’re likely to see less, though it might take a few dozen dives to realise this. Discuss it with your buddy beforehand, and try a dive on which you find a few bommies and spend time watching the comings and goings there.

Find a cleaning station perhaps, or watch anemonefish in their hosts. Diving is only a race when you’re in a drysuit and desperate to wee.

Above: Coral gall crab.

Right: Redeye goby in staghorn coral – you can see the individual polyps.

Left: Assured buoyancy is the key to enjoying a relaxed reef dive.

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CONSERVATION DIVER

3

LEAVE YOUR CAMERA BEHIND

As someone aspiring to be a good photographer, my camera comes with me on just about every dive, but on that rare occasion when I haven’t charged a battery and it stays on the boat, I have to admit that the diving experience is more satisfying.

Obviously it’s better not to suffer the

4

STAY SHALLOW

Many corals don’t need light to survive and don’t contain symbiotic algae. These are called “azooxanthellate” corals, though you may want to practise before dropping this word into a conversation.

Usually deepwater corals, they survive by absorbing nutrients from the water or catching prey in the zooplankton. Some species with large polyps can even catch small fish and invertebrates.

In general, however, most require light. That’s why I believe that the shallows hold the best a reef can offer. If you want high-energy diving, go where the energy is greatest!

If you usually spend your time in the 20-30m range looking for morays you’re missing a world of tremendous colours,

pain of missing out on a shot of a passing manta, so we’re talking about a balancing act here. We all want great pictures, and photography can help you learn about your subjects’ behaviour and allow you to identify animals after the dive. Yet a rest is as good as a break.

Your long-suffering buddy, tired of being your unpaid model and chief critter-spotter, might welcome a little more of your attention, too.

shoals of fish grazing on algae and potentially longer and safer dives.

If you’ve clocked up some depth on recent dives, a long gentle bimble at 10m is a good idea physiologically as well.

Just warn dive-guides if you intend to do this. Their dive-plans will rarely include completing the full dive in the sub-10m zone. It’s also worth staying well away from the reef in anything but the calmest conditions.

In areas of surge the life is fascinating, but it’s easy to be swept into, even onto, the top of the reef. Perhaps stay around 12m unless you can see that there’s no risk of damaging the coral or yourself.

All those colours, by the way, are pigments that the corals produce to protect themselves and the algae living in their tissues from the harsh sunlight in the tropics – especially light in the UV part of the spectrum.

Above: Coral fragments being grown to form new colonies for creating new reefs.

Left: Corals in the shallows.

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5

DO YOUR BIT

We divers are aware that we should all use fewer resources and try harder to limit our ecological impact, but there some very simple things we can do to make an immediate difference.

In the UK we have good recycling facilities, but many dive destinations don’t even have proper waste-disposal, let alone anything close to recycling. I’ve been to many idyllic destinations where, hidden from the guests, all the rubbish is burnt or dumped in the desert, ready to be blown out to sea.

So take less stuff with you, leave unnecessary packaging at home, reuse plastic bottles and take spent batteries home.

And if you chuck a cigarette-end overboard expect a tellingoff, if I’m on the boat.

You might try to minimise your chemical impact on reefs.

Certain chemicals such as oxybenzones, as used in sun-screens, are harmful to corals, and are washed onto reefs by snorkellers and divers, concentrating the chemicals around tourist hotspots.

The global impact of such products is debatable, but remember that many dive-boats empty their waste-tanks at sea. Avoid products that contain plastic microbeads as well.

Production and import of cosmetics using these beads has been banned in several countries (including in the UK from 2017), but there are still huge amounts of these pesky plastics out there.

You might also want to get involved in supporting or actively taking part in research and conservation programs.

Dive shows are a great way to not only donate or buy a T-shirt but to find out more about conservation projects that offer some great diving. ☛

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CONSERVATION DIVER LEARN NAMES, BUY 6 AN ID BOOK, EXPLORE A Red Sea dive might feature astounding growths of Acropora humilis or Stylophora pistillata, but it takes a real expert to know if it was really Acropora hemprichii and Stylophora subseriata.

Scientific names aren’t easy to remember. Over the years people have come up with names to describe coral groups based on their shape and growth pattern: staghorn corals, plate corals, finger corals, brain corals, leaf corals and so on, making them easy to learn.

Biologically these names don’t always hold water, but by recognising that there are different corals on a reef and that different types of corals are found in different locations and conditions, we build a picture of reefs as dynamic places.

Corals compete with each other for light and space and are, however slowly, jostling each other for position. Reefs are violent places full of mini turf wars. A reef with fewer types of corals may be suffering from diver pressure, overfishing, run-off from nearby land or pollution.

Once you can identify one set of corals from another, you start to notice the smaller differences. Admittedly this can be a life-long challenge, as there are roughly 300 species of reef-building corals in the Red Sea alone, and the numbers change regularly as researchers find out more and revise their classifications.

As with all things in life, the more you learn about a subject, the more you appreciate it. Divers have a direct interest in coral reefs and the species that live on and in them, so let’s not take coral for granted.

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Pictured: At nearly 40m, these soft corals grow on a ship’s boiler in the UK. Below: A coral guide liked by divEr staff, www.byoguides.com

UK CORALS T

HE UK IS NOT BLESSED with many coral species but we do have a few of note. Should you be diving amid the polystyrene-like lumps of dead men’s fingers, you’ll be looking at a genuine soft coral, closely related to tropical leather corals.

Reef-building corals are a little harder to find and are represented in UK waters by a few species of cup coral, small anemone-like animals that look attractive, especially the rare sunset cup coral. Most cup-coral species are found in the warmer waters around the South-west, but the Devonshire cup coral, despite its name, is found on many UK coasts.

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The Ghost in the Sea MARIE DAVIES foresakes her usual liveaboard trips to stay on a diving island – and what an island!

She rarely returns anywhere – too many new places to dive – but Malapascua could prove to be the exception

I

PEER INTO THE DUSKY BLUE and a sliver of grey flashes. Wait, was that a shark’s tail or the glint of bream scales? The sun is barely over the horizon, so it’s too murky to tell.

I suck in deep nitrox breaths and check my camera settings just in case. Hovering next to me at 32m is my guide Tata, also on the alert.

Whatever it is, it’s traversed the wall and is circling back around. The shadow glides towards me, revealing a silver

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snout and black saucer-like eyes. With a twist of its torpedo-shaped body I glimpse its long tail, almost half the length of its body.

I still my breath in awe. Bingo! A thresher shark – my first-ever sighting.

The shark swims off but circles back moments later. When a second one joins the fray, I relax. Grooming has begun, so they’ll be here for a while. Visibility is 510m but the water is clear, and minute by minute the dawn-light improves it.

Most divers will never see a thresher in the wild. These migratory deepwater sharks live along the continental shelves of North America and Asia and hunt mainly in open ocean at night.

They’re rarely seen at normal diving depths – unless you travel to the small island of Malapascua, off the northern tip of Cebu in the Philippines.

Here, just after sunrise, threshers ascend 200m up the walls of Monad Shoal to a series of cleaning stations.

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HOLIDAY DIVER: PHILIPPINES Pictured: Thresher shark on the island but TSD is the longestrunning and most experienced, so pretty at Monad Shoal. much has the run of Monad Shoal. As a result, it never feels crowded.

On our second 5am shark dive we turn left at the mooring line and head for Monad Wall. Even without the chance of seeing threshers, it’s spectacular. From the sandy top at 18m, the wall drops vertically to 34m, where it gradually slopes down to a deeper drop-off. Its amphitheatre shape is perfect for shark-spotting.

We don’t have long to wait before a ghost of a shark’s tail flicks in our direction. The shark hesitates before swimming closer – good news for us, as the vis is low this morning.

Soon two more sharks arrive, looping circles below us. When it’s time to head back I spot another, a whitetip this time, with a school of fusiliers trailing behind.

The reef is surprisingly void of fish life, but who cares? The threshers more than make up for it. Four 5am dives later, I still haven’t had my fill of these sleek Zen-like creatures. Knowing this is the only place in the world where you’re guaranteed to see them daily fills me with a sense of privilege and wonder.

T The six threshers we spot on this dive are all of the common variety – pelagic and bigeye are the other species. Common threshers are the largest and can grow to 5m, though ours were within the 1.5-2m range.

Two minutes before I slide into deco we traverse to a flat natural “stage” at 20m, another favourite shark hang-out.

No luck, but a swift movement on the wall catches my eye. I’ve disturbed an octopus mating. Oops, my bad.

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The male dashes into a nearby hole and eyes me for the pesky tourist I am.

Tata waves me over, pointing to two harlequin shrimps under a ledge. I sigh and hug my wide-angle lens.

“It’s OK, Marie,” Tata tells me later with a confident nod, “we see harlequin shrimps at Lighthouse. Promise.”

Tata is one of Thresher Shark Divers’ most experienced guides. After many years of diving, he still gets a thrill seeing the sharks. There are 23 dive-operators

HRESHERS MIGHT BE Malapascua’s main draw-card but there’s so, so much more – walls, wrecks, bustling seamounts and pinnacles, an abundance of critters and the infamous cave at Gato Island.

Mention Gato and Tata’s eyes light up.

It’s one of the more popular day-trips. In fact, TSD has a saying: “You come to Malapascua to see the thresher sharks, but you leave remembering Gato.”

This small rocky island, a leisurely 90-minute boat-ride north-west of Malapascua, has a lot to live up to.

As we descend at the Guardhouse I feast my eyes on rock formations and boulders veiled with pink and white soft corals. Tata and I spend many minutes inspecting red and yellow seafans looking for pygmy seahorses. Alas, a spindly spider-crab is our only treasure.

There’s certainly no shortage of critters here, however – anemone shrimp, zebra crab, spotted scorpionfish and our first brightly coloured nudibranch (Nembrotha milleri) appear. A few finstrokes later Tata points out two examples of my favourite nudi – the Spanish dancer (Hexabranchus sanguineus).

My next treat is a frogfish. It’s hard to miss, a bright tangerine blob perched on top of a rock. A few metres further and a smaller beige one pops into frame. When Tata finds me a painted frogfish, I throw him a thumbs-up.

As my dive week progresses, I realise that frogfish are as common as nudibranchs. On Chocolate Island, ☛

Left to right: Beach outside Tepanee; Harlequin shrimp at Lighthouse; Chromodoris nudibranch.

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076_DIVER_0117.qxp_DIVER_2017 01/12/2016 11:56 Page 076

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HOLIDAY DIVER: PHILIPPINES and a cowfish keep me amused for a while. Then Tata waves me over. I think “jeez, not another nudi?” but no, it’s a large speckled frogfish, not a species I’ve seen before.

Next to it a peacock mantis shrimp twitches at me. Towards the end of the dive, while Tata looks for critters, I hover above the reef, admiring the landscape of sprawling soft corals and anemones.

L

I find two large black ones, each bigger than a human head.

Moseying along the reef, I accidentally startle a pufferfish. It speeds off, revealing a hole guarded by a peacock mantis shrimp, eggs clinging to its body.

Meanwhile Tata searches around in soft white coral and unearths a pale pink seahorse, followed by a deep red one wafting gracefully off to the side. Under a ledge a giant moray opens and closes its mouth at me – its head is the size of the Incredible Hulk’s bicep (no exaggeration).

Clockwise from top left: Nembrotha milleri nudibranch; spider crab; mantis shrimp with eggs; orange frogfish.

A

S WE ASCEND WE FOLLOW a juvenile banded sea-snake poking its head into holes along the reef. Gato Island is not only a marine reserve but a seasnake sanctuary, so they’re another common sight.

At the safety stop we hang over a pyramid-shaped bommie covered with floaty soft corals and gaze at a school of big-mouthed mackerel circling us, mouths gaping.

After a tasty picnic lunch, we jump back in for a second dive, descending 24m to the Cave’s entrance. I follow my guide into the dark cavernous mouth and shine my torch on the walls; a mosaic tapestry of yellow daisy coral dazzles me, along with giant clams and vibrant peach, pink and orange sponges.

I search for baby whitetip sharks, often seen lying on the sand, but find only crabs. Ahead, the tunnel widens and the silhouette of a juvenile batfish leads us through the exit. Just outside the cave, we www.divErNEt.com

explore numerous overhangs and swimthroughs draped with pink, orange and blue corals, as if someone has casually thrown a multi-coloured feather boa over everything.

Now I understand what all the fuss is about. Gato Island, you did good.

If you spend more than a couple of days on Malapascua (and you should), you’ll probably dive its prettiest reef (with the unprettiest name) Bugtong Bato.

It bristles with fish life, and don’t get me started on the macro – so much macro!

Dropping to 18m, Tata points out a colourful nudibranch, then, five fins later, another, then another… and so on. It’s a garden of gastropods!

Focusing on the sea-mount, big balled anemones, juvenile catfish

APUS LAPUS IS A quick boat-trip north. We drop into 14m and I’m instantly reminded of the pretty coral gardens around the Great Barrier Reef.

Clusters of coral-heads sprout yellow, black and red featherstars. A small school of juvenile catfish hunt in the sand, skirting around beige pipehorses.

I find my first squat lobster on pink soft coral. Next up is a shy moray eel, then harlequin and a zebra crabs.

There’s so much macro on this reef that I don’t even give the mantis shrimp or lionfish a second glance.

Towards the end, Tata signals for me to fin like crazy. Later he tells me an octopus was galloping across the reef. I’m not too miffed to have missed it as I spot a hairy albino frogfish, with a fat frumpy jaw.

When it’s time to ascend we hang over a pristine soft coral garden at 8m, a perfect safety stop. Something scurries beside a pink anemone – another peacock mantis shrimp. Nice.

I’m noted among diving friends as being “she who avoids night-dives”, but the promise of mating mandarinfish gets me in the water. The diversity of Malapascua’s creatures keeps me going back for more. Of course, it helps that ☛

Right, top: Soft-coral crab at Lapus Lapus.

Bottom: The coral reef at Bugtong Bato.

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the water temperature is a toasty 29°!

Ever heard of an orange scorpionfish with white pectoral fins? Nope, me neither. But I found one on Lighthouse wreck, easily my favourite night-dive.

This Japanese WW2 landing-craft was bombed just before landing a large shipment of cement. More wreckage than wreck, it’s shallow (3-5m), great for new divers and another perfect location for critter-spotting.

Next to the wreck is the famous Lighthouse mandarin site. At dusk you’re

Top left: An orange scorpionfish at Lighthouse.

Top right: Moray eel.

Above: Blue-ringed octopus.

Below left: The “pretty” anemone crab.

almost guaranteed to see their psychedelic mating ritual.

Such rare sights have their drawbacks – mainly the rest of the dive community.

I’m not a fan of underwater crowds, so my guide and I fin off in search of harlequin shrimps. Not only does he find me a pair, but he’s on top form tonight. When he points to something in the sand my first thought is “flounder”, but then the camouflaged critter moves, scooting across the seabed as it flashes blue circles at me. Ha! A blue-ringed octopus.

Switching to my red strobe, I spend 15 minutes observing the little dude hunting, changing colours and generally being awesome. This tiny cephalopod carries enough poison to kill me, so I don’t forget to give it a wide berth.

N

OW WHEN I THINK OF CRABS I think “meh… booorrrring”, but the sheer abundance and diversity of species around Malapascua is astounding.

Plus, these creatures have character. I can’t help but anthropomorphise a pretty anemone crab with long pink eyelashes –

she’d get a starring role in a Disney animation, for sure. And her “brother” along the reef, the one sitting on a rock sporting a dashing cape? A shoe-in for the next evil crusader on Finding Nemo 3.

Other macro offerings hold up their end too – starry morays, a pair of pegasus fish, twin-spot lionfish, seahorses, large flounders with luminous lime-green eyes, cuttlefish, Chromodoris nudibranchs and banded pipefish. Just under the boat, a demon scorpionfish claws its way along the sand, and I add it my list of potential Hollywood villains!

Warning: if you do your first nightdive on any of the Malapascuan divesites, you’ll be spoilt for the rest of your diving career.

A trip to Calanggaman Island consists of a delicious barbecue picnic on an idyllic sandy beach splattered with palm trees. It’s a good four-hour return boatride, but worth it.

Beneath the waves, it’s even more enchanting. The TSD outrigger drops us onto the top of a reef at 8m, and we swim over to the wall’s edge. My heart thuds as I descend the wall; the deep calls to me. It’s only common sense, training and survival instincts that keep me from going further.

Instead, I follow my guide to 32m and search fans for pygmy seahorses. Tata wafts his hands along a red fan, looking for movement, and I concentrate on a yellow fan next door.

I scream smugly into my regulator when I spot a tiny thread of yellow – a Denise’s pygmy seahorse. Result! Tata gives me a thumbs-up.

Not too far along, we float past bubble coral harbouring a bubble-coral shrimp.

Other macro treasures include an imperial shrimp, Henderson’s hingebeak shrimp and an orangutan crab.

FACTFILE

GETTING THERE8 Cathay Pacific flies from London to Cebu via Hong Kong; Philippine Airlines via Manila. Malapascua is a four-hour transfer away, including a 30-minute boat ride.

DIVING8Thresher Shark Divers (TSD) is a PADI 5* IDC and can arrange dive packages including accommodation and meals ranging from budget to luxury, www.malapascua-diving.com ACCOMMODATION8Marie stayed at Tepanee Beach Resort, one of the newer resorts a short walk from TSD, with air-conditioned rooms and private beach with bar, www.tepanee.com WHEN TO GO8 Any time. Water temperature averages 29°C. CURRENCY8Philippine peso.

PRICES8Flights £420-1200 depending on season. Backpacker rooms start at £9, fan rooms £25 and air-conditioned rooms at £50 per night. Tepanee Resort costs £50-65 per night. Single dives cost £30, a 10-dive package £240. Marine park tax £3 per day, Monad Shoal marine protection fee 85p a dive. Reckon £420 a day for food; a beer costs 85p.

VISITOR INFORMATION8www.itsmorefuninthephilippines.com

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HOLIDAY DIVER: PHILIPPINES I peer out into the clear deep blue, hoping to spot a manta or eagle ray. A titan triggerfish rushes past, and a school of bannerfish. The other group are luckier – they glimpse a thresher shark in the distance (so rare!) plus a turtle swimming in the shallows.

A

FEW WEEKS LATER I’m back home and still thinking about the sharks, and those crabs! Then there’s the quiet, relaxing atmosphere of the island itself, with its great food, Oscar’s Bar’s homemade ice-cream and the friendly professional people at TSD.

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There are plenty of quiet restaurants and bars on the beach and in the narrow backstreets; no cars, only bicycles and motorbikes. Non-diving activities include eating, drinking, watching sunsets, walking and snorkelling.

The last few years I’ve done mainly liveaboard trips. I had forgotten how easy and rewarding island-diving can be.

I always like to move on to new places, but Malapascua is one location I’ll need to itch again.

Especially as I missed out on diving the Dona Marilyn wreck – I’ll bet there are heaps of crazy-looking crabs there too.

Right: Demon stinger.

Below from left: Longnosed hawkfish and pygmy seahorse at Calanggaman.

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BOOK REVIEW

Egypt on the light side Underwater Guide to the Red Sea

by Lawson Wood LIKE MANY DIVERS, I PARE my airline baggage down to the essentials – the stuff I take under water – and there would have to be a good reason to take a guide-book with me when I know I’ll find guidance strewn around the dive-centre or boat in one form or another.

Lawson Wood’s Underwater Guide to the Red Sea is another of those books that looks as if it’s been around forever but is in fact a new offering.

The well-travelled author has written some 50 reference books over the years, but I think this might be the first time he has focused specifically on the Red Sea. Red Sea guides have to slot into a very crowded market. As this is the latest I was slightly surprised to find no references to the current problems for divers wishing to fly into Sharm el Sheikh, which have been going on for more than a year, but I guess it was decided to take the long view and keep fingers crossed.

The short history section concludes in 1989, but rather a lot has happened in recent times.

It happened that I was about to fly to Hurghada when the book landed on my desk, so I looked to see what it could tell me about the diving around those parts.

The small-format book contains 24 pages of general information, 65 of an ID guide to 350 common marine-life species (shown in necessarily small pictures) and another 10 devoted to snorkelling sites.

That leaves fewer than 30 pages to cover scuba-diving in 25 popular areas, so as you might imagine the information is not exactly detailed.

In fact El Gouna/Hurghada gets a single page and a few hundred words, so it would hardly have been worth packing the book for the trip.

Also, if a dive-guide is to the Red Sea, you might expect more than passing recognition of sites in places such as Jordan or Sudan. This is in fact

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the Underwater Guide to the Egyptian Red Sea. The book is very well produced, as we have come to expect from John Beaufoy Publishing, and the photography of a high standard.

However, in the digital age the indepth and more location-specific information available online or at a destination has made such titles a harder sell than they used to be.

This guide-book is fine as a general foundation course in Red Sea diving before someone’s first trip to the area, and the pricing is OK, but if you already have a dedicated fish-ID book there is too little diving detail here to make this a must-have.

Steve Weinman John Beaufoy Publishing ISBN: 9781909612846 Softback, 160pp, £12.99

NORTHERN CELEBRATION Secrets of the Sea: An Underwater Journey Along the Norwegian Coast

by Erling Svensen & Bjørn Gulliksen ERLING SVENSEN’S SUPERB underwater photography and Bjørn Gulliksen’s knowledge of Norwegian marine habitats come together in this attractive and authoritative book.

Yes, it’s Norway, but many of the images will be of

species familiar to British divers and, if you want to demonstrate just why you go diving to friends and family, they cannot be anything but impressed.

After an introduction that describes some of the environmental issues faced by the oceans, the book is organised by broad habitat types.

How different marine species occur according to the environmental conditions at a location is an important theme, and then the book is greatly composed of species pictures.

Some of the ecological principles that determine what lives where are explained and the resulting landscapes (or seascapes?) are brought to life in vivid colours and through water clarity that we rarely see in British waters.

There are urchin barrens through to the rich and colourful communities that occur in tide-swept sounds and on to the coral-reef habitats that come into unexpectedly shallow water in Trondheim Fjord. Fjordic habitats are, not surprisingly, a major feature and, for those British divers familiar with the west coast of Scotland, there will be much that is similar.

Sediment habitats are not forgotten but it is mostly the signs of life at the surface of those sediments that lend themselves to the photographs.

Nevertheless, even sediments can be spectacularly colourful, as evidenced by the photograph of a forest of solitary hydroids, each crowned with flowing tentacles and pink reproductive organs.

Some of the most beautiful images are towards the end of the book in the chapter on open water (pelagial) habitats, where a great variety of jellyfish together with squid and crustaceans and even a starfish larva decorate the pages.

Whales and dolphins are not forgotten but there are plenty of other sources for images of such charismatic megafauna. Finally, the Arctic at Svalbard has a chapter that makes me wish I had been taken to those sites when I went there.

Throughout the text and the photographs, there will be “I didn’t know that” or “who would have thought it?” moments for the reader.

I found the pictures of copepod crustacean parasites on a seaslug fascinating – nothing gets

away without any hitchhikers. I would love to see many of the species that do not occur in British waters – but a trip to Norway will be needed!

This is a large format coffee-table book that you can browse at random, but do read the texts to pick up fascinating facts and to better understand how marine species and habitats “work“. The book will sit well on the shelf of any British marine-life enthusiast.

Don’t get the book confused with Secrets of the Seas – the two books were published at about the same time and, well, that title is now “taken”.

Dr Keith Hiscock Kom Forlag ISBN: 9788293191407 Hardback, 317pp, 449 krone (around £42)

DIVER TAKES A FRESH LOOK Freshwater Fishes of Britain

by Jack Perks

SOME TIME BEFORE he started popping up on TV as its who-yougonna-call freshwater diver, Jack Perks had been writing in divEr about the art of river-diving (Roaming the Rivers, October 2012).

More recently he wrote for us about the freshwater life of Stoney Cove, and was behind the national campaign to find Britain’s signature freshwater fish (the brown trout, the most widespread of British fish, surfaced as the winner, in case you missed it).

Now Jack’s back with his first book, Freshwater Fishes of Britain. I don’t know how many divers he has inspired to follow in his wake and explore our inland waters, but if you’re among them and aren’t already armed with a good ID book, this is for you.

This is a typically attractively produced book from Reed New Holland, making good use of the authors’ well-taken photos – images that might suggest that all our inland

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Don’t tell him, pike – Perks at work for Freshwater Fishes of Britain. waters are as clear as consommé.

Perks, who prefers to use natural light for his photos, set himself the challenge of photographing all the species of British fish and has certainly come up with the goods in impressive style.

Each of some 56 fish species, from the tiny 10-spined stickleback to the mighty Atlantic sturgeon, is illustrated, and the photographs are complemented by brief descriptions – size and weight, distinguishing features, breeding patterns, habitats and so on.

The square format of the book lends itself well to the subject matter.

Particularly striking are the supermacro close-ups of details – an example being a spread showing a three-spined stickleback’s head on the left, with a full-length stickleback eating a worm on the right. The book is a reminder of just how many species live in our fresh waters.

While Jack Perks is a diver and naturalist, this book will of course be bought mainly by anglers. However, rounded up as it is with all sorts of interesting facts and figures I suspect that any divers will find it an interesting read too. It certainly represents a considerable diving achievement on the part of the author.

E’S ARE GOOD FOR WHITTLES Whittles Publishing, which offers a range of diving- (and often wreck-) related titles by Rod Macdonald, Bob Baird, Ron Young, Duncan Price and Mike Clark, has announced that these are now also available as e-books. They can be downloaded in your preferred format from the Whittles section of mybooksource.com

Steve Weinman Reed New Holland Publishing ISBN: 9781921517778 Hardback, 224pp, £16.99

TOP 10 BEST-SELLING DIVING BOOKS as listed by www.amazon.co.uk (20 November, 2016) 1. Fifty Places to Dive Before You Die, by Chris Santella 2. Diving the World: A guide to the world's most popular dive sites, by Beth & Shaun Tierney 3. Scuba Confidential: An Insider's Guide to Becoming a Better Diver, by Simon Pridmore 4. Deco for Divers: A Diver's Guide to Decompression Theory and Physiology, by Mark Powell 5. Scuba Diving Hand Signals: Pocket Companion for Recreational Scuba Divers, by Lars Behnke 6. Dive Truk Lagoon: The Japanese WWII Pacific Shipwrecks, by Rod Macdonald 7. Underwater Foraging - Freediving for Food, by Ian Donald 8. Diver Down: Real-World SCUBA Accidents and How to Avoid Them, by Michael Ange 9. Stars Beneath The Sea: The Incredible Story of the Pioneers of the Deep Sea, by Trevor Norton 10. Scuba Diving Malta Gozo Comino, by Peter G Lemon

www.divErNEt.com

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WELL AND TRULY

TESTED

Simple is the watchword as NIGEL WADE carries out tests on basic items – a reel, an SPG, a dive-bag and an entry-level computer. It’s all about the workmanship…

REEL

KENT TOOLING 50M COMPOSITE RATCHET REEL I RECENTLY HAD THE PRIVILEGE of being a guest at one of London’s most iconic structures, Tower Bridge. We went into the engine-rooms, with the enormous coal-fired, steam-driven motors that raise and lower the bridge, a testament to the engineering feats of a bygone age.

They showcase what could be achieved by casting iron and brass, then machining the metals to fine tolerances.

I mention this visit because a recent arrival at the divEr test centre had me reminiscing about those long-gone Victorian engineers.

It’s a ratchet-reel built from a combination of modern plastics and good old-fashioned stainless steel, using engineering of which I’m sure the Victorians would have approved.

The Design Manufactured to very high standards, Kent Tooling's 50m composite ratchet-reel is a lighter version of the maker’s popular all-metal reel.

It’s built with a backplate made from composite plastics and all other components fabricated from precision-cut 316 stainless steel.

The trigger mechanism is a simple springloaded lever; it has a knob with a locking-pin to enable the reel to be set for either ratchet or free spool modes.

The reel has a stainless line drum that’s 90mm in diameter and 45mm deep and holds 50m of high-strength line.

The line is prevented from spilling from the spool edge by a stainless line-guide, fitted to the backplate by hex key bolts with adjustment slots to fine-tune the clearances.

All other reel components are secured using stainless-steel pan head hex bolts, leaving a rounded finish without sharp edges to shred water-

softened skin.

The reel is supplied with an attached stainless piston-clip for mounting it to a suitable D-ring and comes with yellow (pictured) or black backplate. There is also a choice of yellow, pink or orange line colours This model comes in other capacities and sizes divEr

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from 40m to 150m and both left- and right-hand configurations. The 50m reel weighed in at a little over 900g, and is claimed to be 400g lighter than its all-metal equivalent.

In Use I mainly employed the reel for what it’s been designed for, the deployment of delayed surface marker buoys. A large loop tied in the running end of the line meant that it could be passed through the buoy’s attachment point and over the reel before being pulled tight.

This results in a foolproof, snag-free connection without any failure points.

Under water, the reel was set into free spool mode with a quick twist of the spring-loaded

The wide line-drum and line-guide on the Composite Ratchet Reel.

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DIVER TESTS

Release lever in ratchet mode (top) locked in the free spool position (below).

knob on the release lever, before depressing it until the locking-pin located its corresponding hole in the backplate.

I filled the buoy with exhaled gas and the DSMB shot to the surface while the reel smoothly and effortlessly paid out line.

As soon as the buoy had completed its journey, it was a simple task to release the locking pin and place the reel into ratchet mode, allowing me to hang onto the tight line connected to the world above.

The reel’s handle was of the correct proportions to easily wind in the line on ascent, even when wearing bulky dry gloves.

During subsequent dives I also used the reel to lay line, as if penetrating the confines of a wreck or cave interior.

In free spool mode it was easy to lay the line but, unlike the dedicated wreck-reels from the same manufacturer, this one lacked the ability to add resistance by tightening the spool against the spindle.

The problem is that this ratchet-reel spins so freely that a momentary lapse of concentration can, and did, result in it overrunning, leaving me with a bird’s nest of line to sort out.

SPECS PRICE8 50m, £99 MATERIALS8 Composite plastics, 316 stainless steel

ORIENTATION8 Left- or right-hand versions AVAILABLE SIZES8 40m, 50m, 65m, 75m, 100m, 125m and 150m

COLOURS8 Black or yellow backplate, choice of pink, orange or yellow line WEIGHT8 906g CONTACT8 www.divingproducts.co.uk

DIVER GUIDE ★★★★★★★★★✩

Conclusion In an age in which plastics are king, it’s unusual to find a dive tool that’s been engineered to exacting mechanical standards using mostly metal. I say mostly because, as with everything nowadays, some plastics will inevitably be involved.

The engineers of yesteryear would, I’m sure, have given a quiet nod of approval for the design, precision and workmanship involved producing a reel that’s robust, functional and fit for purpose. ■

SPG

APEKS TEK GAUGE AFTER A CAREER SPANNING more than 30 years as a professional firefighter, I’m only too aware of how important it is to know how much gas is available to breathe from a cylinder.

For the emergency services it’s one of the most risk-critical aspects when wearing opencircuit breathing apparatus in toxic, hostile environments, Running out of gas isn’t just stupid but is likely to prove fatal. That said, it’s also one of the easiest things to avoid – all you need to do is check your contents gauge at short, regular intervals.

I’ve trawled through the divEr Test archives but couldn’t find a single review of a submersible pressure gauge, or SPG, which surprised me. So I decided to put a high-end, standalone analogue instrument through the test workshop.

The Design The Apeks TEK Gauge has a black face to help reduce glare and to preserve night vision in lowlight environments. The numerals, intermediate markers and the single hand have a luminescent coating and glow when charged from a light source (usually a dive-torch).

The unit has a chrome-plated marine brass body with a tempered glass face. Its 52mmdiameter scale reads from 0-360 bar with a maximum working pressure of 300 bar, and weighed in at 200grm (without a hose) on my digital scale. www.divErNEt.com

The instrument’s sealed and waterproof body houses a common Bourdon tube mechanism. This works on the principle that a curledup metal tube tends to straighten when internal pressure is applied, causing the tip to move; the movement of the tip drives the hand via a geared mechanical linkage to indicate a reading against a fixed scale.

For safety reasons the back of the body has a blow-out disc that’s designed to fail and release internal pressure should the Bourdon tube rupture, thus preventing the glass face fragmenting outwards.

The gauge was supplied with an 80cm-long high-pressure rubber hose carrying a burst pressure rating of 1500 bar.

The Tests The first thing I did was test the TEK Gauge for accuracy. This was something I couldn’t do without enlisting the help of a former colleague from the Fire & Rescue Service Breathing Apparatus Section.

The Fire Service’s technicians use precise ☛

The gauge has luminescent markers and hand.

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measuring instruments to ensure the accuracy of their own contents gauges. When the TEK Gauge was tested it delivered a result of +/–2 bar, which the technician eloquently described as “a pretty accurate gauge” as he scoffed my blackmail lunch at the local boozer.

I like to mount my SPG using a simple but effective piston-clip that’s cable-tied to the end of the hose. Tec-diving purists will be wincing and firing off emails of condemnation to the Editor, followed by a detailed description of the proper way to do it using doubled-over O-rings or loops of nylon line, but the simple, cheap and nasty cable-tie method has never let me down – well, not as yet.

Under water, the weight of this instrument makes it negatively buoyant, and for that read “stable”. Once it’s clipped off on a well-placed BC D-ring, it’s always where you expect it to be throughout the dive.

This might not sound like a big deal, but when you’re constantly checking the reading (as you should be during a dive) it makes the operation as simple as possible.

The black face enabled the contrasting dial markings and, more importantly, the hand to stand out, so a quick glance is all that’s required to assimilate the information.

A red band between the 50 and zero bar markings enhances awareness, highlighting the

SPECS PRICES8 Gauge only, £61. With 80cm hose £90

MAX WORKING PRESSURE8300 bar SCALE8 0-360 bar SIZE8 52mm diameter DIAL8 Black, luminescent numerals and hand BODY8 Chrome-plated marine-grade brass WEIGHT8 200g (without hose) CONTACT8 www.apeksdiving.com/uk DIVER GUIDE ★★★★★★★★★★

fact that the dive should be over at that point, while maintaining a safety margin.

Conclusion The humble SPG is a crucial instrument, and one that should receive more than a cursory glance (pun intended).

The Apeks TEK Gauge proved to be accurate, and it’s robust construction and well-considered layout keeps it simple and easy to read. It should last a lifetime.

I can’t think of a single negative comment to make, so I’ll finish with the same advice I used to

The gauge is stable when mounted using a piston clip. give my trainee firefighters: “Gauge check, gauge check, gauge check, then check again.” One day that procedure might just save your life. ■

COMPUTER

MARES PUCK PRO+ I’VE TESTED SEVERAL VERY COMPLICATED dive-computers over the past year. Most have been high-end, full-on technical mixed-gas contraptions capable of calculating decompression profiles for everything including diving with hypoxic helium-based gas mixes, and some models have installed apps for functions not even related to diving.

I’d stick my neck out and say that these complex computers are required only by a minority of divers. Most of us just need an

instrument that calculates nostop recreational diving without any bells and whistles.

So this month it’s the turn of a simple entry-level unit to be tested, one that’s likely to appeal to the masses and not make them burst into tears as they hand over their wonga.

The Design

The single CR2450 li-ion battery is user-changeable.

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The original Mares Puck wrist-mounted computer, introduced a number of years ago, has undergone a revamp and emerged as the Puck Pro+.

The body seems to have been on a diet, but while it’s slimmer than its predecessors the display has gone and eaten all the pies and expanded.

This has been achieved by repositioning the single menu access button to the bottom side of

the body to leave more room.

The largefont, segmented LCD display sits behind a tempered mineral glass face and is laid out in three sections with depth on the top, no deco limits (NDL) in the middle and dive-time plus nice to know stuff such as the current water temperature at the bottom.

The body and adjustable buckled strap are made using polymers, as is the removable battery cover housing a standard userchangeable CR2450 li-ion button battery.

The Puck Pro+ body measures around 62mm in diameter by 18mm deep and weighed in at 113g on digital scales.

It comes in black/black (pictured) or black/white colour schemes. www.divErNEt.com

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DIVER TESTS of 99min and 35 hours of logbook memory with PC downloadable profiles and upgradeable firmware via an optional PC interface cable.

In Use

The Puck Pro+ has been on a diet and had its button repositioned.

The Software This instrument is a two-gas nitrox divecomputer compatible with oxygen concentrations from 21-99% and a PO2 range between 1.2 and 1.6 bar.

The gas-switching operation is automatic at the gas’s set maximum operating depth (MOD).

The modes include Dive, Bottom Timer, Planner, Logbook and Sleep – it’s of note that the Puck Pro+ doesn’t have Free/Apnea modes and doesn’t include a digital compass.

The computer has a maximum displayed depth of 150m, maximum displayed dive-time

The first thing I noticed was how well this lightweight instrument sat on my wrist. The strap was long enough to encircle the extra bulk of my neoprene drysuit, and stayed in place as the suit compressed at depth.

However, as a photographer I prefer to mount my dive-computers onto camera-housing strobe arms, and the Puck Pro+ sat perfectly in this position. All that was needed was a quick flick of the eyes from the viewfinder to the display and back again, without missing a shot.

The display’s sharp graphics were easy to read, and once I’d got used to the layout a quick peep was all I needed to digest important information such as current depth, dive time and the all important NDL. The solitary button access to the menus and settings was a thing of intuitive splendour.

Short single pushes scroll through the menus and a two-second push enters each section or activates the backlight in Dive mode, so it could hardly have been simpler.

On the downside, I started to miss being able to access a digital compass. It’s a tool I frequently use, especially in turbid conditions.

Conclusion This simple entry-level computer covered nearly

SPECS PRICES8 £210 GASES8 Two, air or nitrox 21%-99% ALGORITHM8RGBM Mares-Wienke (10 tissue) DISPLAY8 Segmented LCD BACKLIGHT8 Yes AIR INTEGRATION8 No INTEGRATED COMPASS8 No ALARMS8 Yes, audible and visual POWER8 User changeable li-ion CR2450 CONTACT8 www.mares.com DIVER GUIDE ★★★★★★★★✩✩ all the bases for my recreational dive needs.

I could use it with air or standard nitrox mixes, and in the unlikely event that I’d ever be diving the much-maligned “Bantwin” (an independent twin-tank set-up with air in one and nitrox in the other) it would tell me when to switch gases on ascent.

Navigating the menus was a walk in the park and the display was crisp and easy to read. The lack of a digital compass was however an annoyance, and seemed at odds with virtually every other modern dive-computer.

Otherwise for me, as a seasoned diver, I’d be more than happy to use this computer when diving within recreational limits.

In a way its simplicity would seem like a breath of fresh air in a world choking on overcomplicated electronic gadgets. ■

LUGGAGE

AQUA LUNG EXPLORER DUFFEL AT THIS TIME OF YEAR, some of us will be escaping the depressing UK winter and heading to tropical destinations with the promise of sun, crystal seas, spectacular reefs and perhaps a post-dive mojito or two.

It’s also the time for us to dig out our trusty old dive-luggage, only to discover that a dozen mice have scoffed their way through the bottom and are holding a rodent rave inside.

Just such an event has taken place in my workshop, leaving me wishing I hadn’t placed it out of bounds to my cats.

The loss left me looking for a new dive-bag, one that doesn’t eat into airlines' paltry weight limits but will comfortably take everything I need for an overseas dive trip.

Aqua Lung may have saved the day in the form of a Duffel from its 2016 Explorer collection. www.divErNEt.com

The Design The main material used to construct this humble bag is robust PVC-coated 1680-denier polyester.

The base is made from a reinforced V-diamond material complete with corner guards.

The front has a zipped pocket capacious enough to take Aqua Lung’s Explorer regulator bag, and contains an organisational pocket panel. The front also has webbing strips with anchor-loops for hanging easy-access gear, and

can be used to secure the bag to a boat-deck in rough seas. Main access is through a zipped tarpaulin panel at the top.

The Explorer Duffel measures 73 x 36 x 36cm and has a capacity of 95 litres. It weighs 2kg empty and comes with a double haul handle and padded keeper along with a removable shoulder-strap.

The bag comes in an all-black with royalblue accents with grey webbing haul straps ☛

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DIVER TESTS Conclusion

In Use I loaded the Explorer Duffel with a full set of dive-kit, plus essential travel items such as a toothbrush, a few T-shirts, a pair of beach shorts, a couple of pairs of undercrackers and a small first-aid kit. Pleasingly, it weighed in at only 15kg and I knew I had at least 5kg to spare before the airport check-in Gestapo read me my rights.

I was then left with a bit of a dilemma – should I take more clothes, or more dive-gear?

The simple answer was both, as I certainly had the room. The bag’s cavernous interior wasn’t nearly full, and in fact I could even take a spare wetsuit, you know – just in case.

Hang on a mo – I was travelling to the Caribbean and transiting via Grantly Adams International airport in Barbados.

There isn’t a single baggage trolley there, and the porters charge a staggering amount of dollars to move your bags from arrivals to the transit desk. But 15kg is an extremely manageable weight, so I decided to leave it as it was, carry it between terminals myself and spend the saved dollars on a couple of beers.

This is the advantage of this delightfully lightweight but seemingly tough piece of diver

luggage – it can comfortably take all you should ever need for an overseas trip and it’s unlikely to tip the scales over the edge due to its own weight.

The shoulder-strap has a small pad, as do the twin haul handles – they add a bit of comfort when humping the bag about.

The tarpaulin top will also help to keep the contents dry when the baggage-handlers abandon it on the runway during the tropical downpours that seem to greet everyone arriving in the Caribbean.

But remember, tough as the material may be, ultimately this is a soft bag, so the contents will be vulnerable to indelicate baggage-handling.

CHOOSE

OTTER

EXPEDITION-GRADE DRYSUITS FOR EVERY DIVER

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OUR CUSTOMERS!

Made to Measure Available

OTTER BRITANNIC MK2 TELESCOPIC DRYSUIT z Neoprene neck warmer as standard

z Drysuit hood and zippered suit bag/changing mat included z Choice of Si-Tech or Apeks valves (standard or DIR position)

z Telescopic body with neoprene strap slider

z Optional dryglove and quick replacement neck seal systems

CALL US TODAY ON 01274 379480 86

SPECS PRICE8 £55 MATERIALS8 PVC coated 1680 Denier polyester, tarpaulin

SIZE8 73 x 36 x 36cm WEIGHT8 2kg CAPACITY8 95 litres CONTACT8 www.aqualung.com/uk DIVER GUIDE ★★★★★★★★✩✩

The Essentials of Deeper Sport Diving SAVE An authoritative book on the physiology and requirements of deeper diving, defined as ranging from 24m (80ft) to 40m (130ft).

Born from a concern that divers are venturing deeper than ever before due to changing technologies, the book tackles nitrogen narcosis, tables, computers, dive techniques, use of mixed gases and more.

The text is geared for divers of all levels of experience, and illustrated by black and white photographs and tables.

£8

z Choice of dry socks and rock boots or Otter boots

z Choice of pockets z Double knee-protector pads

WWW.DRYSUITS.CO.UK z SALES@DRYSUITS.CO.UK

divEr

This is a bag for the weight-conscious travelling diver; it doesn’t have wheels and a rigid base to aid in transporting it around an airport, hotel or resort and would need to be physically carried as opposed to being pulled or pushed along.

It looks to be a tough bit of kit, although I can’t verify this as I’ve only just packed it for the next trip, and haven’t yet had the chance to see what damage the baggagehandlers can inflict behind closed doors.

I’m not a fan of the large logos on either side of the bag, as they don’t just advertise the maker but tell anyone who cares to look that it’s filled with expensive and highly sellable dive gear.

A few strips of black duct tape will sort that out, and then this Explorer Duffel should be just fine. ■

Available from

Underwater World Publications at £8.95 (normally £16.95) plus £2.00 postage & packing

* p&p applies to UK and BFPO addresses only; for overseas rates, call 020 8941 8152

OR go to http://www.divernet.com/medical/p303372-the-essentials-of-deeper-sport-diving.html

and white Aqua Lung livery, plus a discreet diveflag logo and a writeable nameplate.

TO ORDER: CALL The divEr Bookshop on 020 8941 8152 www.divErNEt.com

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Venom Frameless Eye Candy just took on a new meaning.

Exclusive features include...

• “Gummi Bear UltraSoft” silicone creates an incredibly soft yet reliable face seal • Rigid silicone skirt that is soft but won’t collapse, distort or fold • Schott Superwite® UltraClear lens allows up to 96% of available light to reach your eyes • Exclusive Atomic “Wicked” styling makes a striking design statement.

Co-Molded Silicone Two different hardness silicone materials are co-molded together to form the mask skirt which is bonded directly to the glass, eliminating the need for a frame and providing maximum viewing area.

Atomic Aquatics Europe GmbH www.atomicaquatics.co.uk

JUST SURFACED January.qxp_Layout 1 28/11/2016 07:45 Page 88

NEW BUT

UNTESTED The latest kit to hit the dive shops

Scubapro Nova 2100 SF Dive Light 4444 This dual-beam dive-light is equipped with six Cree LEDs delivering a 2100-lumen 65° wide beam as well as an 800-lumen 15° spot beam.

The Nova boasts five light modes plus an emergency signal mode and has been depth-tested to 100m. It’s supplied with a rechargeable li-ion battery, Goodman and pistol-grip handles and a wrist lanyard, all in a zippered EVA carry case. Expect to pay £499.

8 www.scubapro.com

Beuchat Aquabionic 1 Fins

4444

Aquabionic Warp1 fin-maker Cetatec has partnered with French manufacturer Beuchat International, the result being this futuristic fin with universal spring-straps with 75mm of adjustment. It comes in blue, black, yellow, red and pink in three sizes with Beuchat livery. Prices to be confirmed.

8 www.beuchat-diving.com

GoPro Hero5 Black Action Camera

5555

The latest release from the inventors of mainstream action cams is the GoPro Hero5 Black. The camera features a simple one-button control, 2in touchscreen, 4K video capture @ 30fps, 12MP RAW+WDR photo-shooting and electronic image stabilisation. The camera’s case is rubberised, making it waterproof to 10m, but can be upgraded to 60m with the addition of the maker’s dedicated dive-housing. Other qualities include exposure control, hands-free voice operation, stereo audio and GPS. The Hero5 costs a penny under £350 plus £45 for the 60m dive housing.

8 www.gopro.com

Exposure Lights Action9+ Dive Light

6666

This new light from UK maker Exposure Marine delivers 1000 lumens of white LED light through a 9° beam and boasts burntimes of 4hr on full power and 16hr on low power. It has an anodised aerospace aluminium body, integrated USB rechargeable li-on battery with gold-plated magnetic charging connections, push-button and “tap” adjustable beam outputs, and traffic-light output and battery-status indicators. The light is depth-rated to 100m and costs £229.

8 www.exposurelights.com

Seac Komoda 5/7mm Wetsuits

3333

Komoda translates from Italian as “comfort”, and this new wetsuit from Seac is claimed to live up to the name. The material used is Yamamoto neoprene made from natural limestone and with a honeycomb structure. The materials and manufacturing process are said to result in suits that offer superior thermal properties and durability while being lightweight for travel. Available in male and female versions, the 5mm and 7mm thicknesses cost £249 and £269 respectively.

8 www.seacsub.com divEr

88

JUST SURFACED January.qxp_Layout 1 28/11/2016 07:45 Page 89

JUST SURFACED

Nauticam Canon 5D MK IV Housing

5555

This housing caters for the latest Canon full-frame 30.4MP digital SLR camera, the EOS-5D Mk IV. It features the maker’s Integrated Vacuum Check & Leak Detection System, and has twin Nikonos flash connectors for electronic strobe triggering, with an optional LED flash trigger available. Without ports, the housing costs £3512.

8 www.nauticam.co.uk

Nautilus Lifeline Marine Rescue GPS 4444

Waterproof W50 Fullsuit

5555

This new Swedish-made 5mm wetsuit is the next instalment in the Waterproof Sports Series. Made in gender-specific designs, it has a waterproof personal accessory dock (WPAD) for optional expandable pockets, reinforced shoulders, seat and knees plus a sturdy PK #10 back zipper with a moulded PU Velcro tab designed to adhere only to the Velcro area. Expect to pay £189.

8 www.cpspartnership.co.uk

This new personal diver-location device, which uses AIS and DSC technology, is half the size of its predecessor and is claimed to work anywhere in the world without need for a dedicated base unit. Neither are special licences, registration or an MMSI number or desktop connectivity required. The unit boasts five-year battery life with user-replaceable power-cells, is depth-rated to more than 140m and is said to transmit its GPS location (accurate to within 1.5m) to vessels up to 34 miles away. The introductory price-tag is £175.

8 www.nautiluslifeline.com

5O YEARS IN A FLASH!

NEXT ISSUE SO GOOD, IT’S BAD Fiji’s take on world-class shark-diving…

ATLANTIC BLUES … and Cornwall offers its own shark experiences

MAINLAND MACRO Wakayama, where Japanese ‘stay-home’ divers go

DOLPHIN RESCUE A tale of persistence from Gozo’s Inland Sea

www.divErNEt.com

COLIN DOEG

Colin Doeg, co-founder of the British Society of Underwater Photographers, guides us through a full half-century of image-making evolution

ON SALE

19 JANUARY 89

divEr

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01/17

DHD – January 2017.qxp_Holiday Directory 30/11/2016 11:29 Page 91

HOLIDAY DIRECTORY FACILITIES INCLUDE:

Hotel or guesthouse

Self-catering

Equipment for hire

Dive boat charter arranged

Suitable for families

Packages from UK

Compressed Air

Nitrox

Technical Gases

BSAC School

PADI Training

NAUI Training

TDI Training

SSI Training

DAN Training

Disability Diving

PAPHOS

CANARY ISLANDS

CYDIVE LTD

LANZAROTE SAFARI DIVING LANZAROTE Playa Chica, Puerto del Carmen, Lanzarote.

Tel: (00 34) 625 059713, (00 34) 928 511992. www.safaridiving.com E-mail: enquiry@safaridiving.com English owned, award-winning BSAC School and Seamanship centre, SSI Instructor trainer facility and PADI dive centre. Open every day of the year. Daily shore and boat dives, night dives too – all same price. Great deals for groups, universities and the solo diver.

Myrra Complex, 1 Poseidonos Avenue, Marina Court 44-46, Kato Paphos. www.cydive.com Tel: (00 357) 26 934271.

Fax: (00 357) 26 939680. E-mail: info@cydive.com PADI 5* CDC. First Career Development Centre in Cyprus and Eastern Mediterranean.

MALTA (inc. GOZO & COMINO GOZO GOZO AQUA SPORTS Rabat Road, Marsalforn, MFN9014, Gozo, Malta.

Tel: (00 356) 2156 3037. www.gozoaquasports.com E-mail: dive@gozoaquasports.com PADI 5* IDC & DSAT Tec Rec Centre, BSAC Dive Resort.

Premier Technical Diving Support Service.

S’ALGAR DIVING Paseo Maritimo, S’Algar, Menorca.

Tel: (00 34) 971 150601. www.salgardiving.com E-mail: info@salgardiving.com Facebook: menorcasalgardiving PADI 5*, BSAC Resort families, groups, fun & tec = all welcome!

SRI LANKA NORTH EAST COAST

DIVE POINT Parmenionos St. No4, Tombs of the Kings Rd, Kato Paphos, Cyprus 8045. Tel/fax: (00 357) 26 938730.

E-mail: divepointcyprus@hotmail.com www.divepointcyprus.co.uk British BSAC/PADI instructors.

CROATIA RAB ISLAND

NILAVELI DIVING CENTRE

MALTA AQUAVENTURE LTD The Waters Edge, Mellieha Bay Hotel, Mellieha MLH 02. www.aquaventuremalta.com Tel: (00 356) 2152 2141 Fax: (00 356) 2152 1053 e-mail:info@aquaventuremalta.com PADI 5* Gold Palm. Watersports available.

Ward 1, 9th Mile Post, Nilaveli, Trincomalee, at the High Park Beach Hotel. Tel: 0094 (0)77 44 36 173.

E-mail: info@nilavelidiving.com www.nilavelidiving.com PADI 5* Dive Resort, S-23912.

Open 1 April to 30 September daily, 8am-6.30pm.

KRON DIVING CENTER Kampor 413a, Rab 51280. Tel: (00 385) 51776 620.

Fax: (00 385) 51776 630 Email: office@kron-diving.com www.kron-diving.com SSI Diamond Training Center.

GREECE CRETE CRETE UNDERWATER CENTER Mirabello Hotel, Agios Nikolaos, P.O. Box 100, P.C. 72 100. Tel/fax: (00 30) 28410 22406.

Mob: (00 30) 6945 244434, (00 30) 6944 126846. www.creteunderwatercenter.com E-mail: info@creteunderwatercenter.com IANTD Nitrox training. Groups, individuals & dive clubs welcome.

SOUTH COAST UNAWATUNA DIVING CENTRE No. 296 Matura Road, Pellagoda/Unawatuna, Galle.

Tel: 0094 (0)77 44 36 173.

E-mail: info@unawatunadiving.com www.unawatunadiving.com PADI 5* Dive Resort, S36133. Open 15 October to 10 April daily, 8am-6.30pm.

INDONESIA CYPRUS

ALOR ALOR DIVERS

LARNACA RECOMPRESSION CHAMBER 24/7 professionally manned and fully computerised, privately owned and operated 14-man recompression chamber, internationally approved and the DAN Preferred Provider for the island. If in doubt … SHOUT! Poseidonia Medical Centre, 47a Eleftherias Avenue, Aradippou, Larnaca 7102, Cyprus.

24hr Emergency Dive Line: +357 99 518837.

E-mail: info@hbocyprus.com www.hbocyprus.com

Jl. Tengiri N. 1 Kalabahi, Alor Island, NTT, Indonesia.

Tel: (00 62) 813 1780 4133.

E-mail: info@alor-divers.com www.alor-divers.com Pristine. Diving. Exclusive. Covert. Destination.

PHILIPPINES THRESHER SHARK DIVERS Malapascua Island, Daanbantayan, Cebu 6013.

Tel: (00 63) 927 612 3359. www.thresherdivers.com E-mail: dive@thresherdivers.com British, PADI 5* IDC, IANTD.

THAILAND PHUKET/SIMILANS SHARKEY SCUBA 363/10 Patak Road, Karon, Muang, Phuket 83100.

Tel: (00 66) (0)89 725 1935, (00 66) (0)86 892 2966.

E-mail: info@sharkeyscuba.com www.sharkeyscuba.com Fun and smiles with Sharkey, the British company with the personal touch.

MALAYSIA BORNEO, SABAH

TO ADVERTISE YOUR DIVE CENTRE HERE, CALL 020 8941 4568

THE REEF DIVE RESORT (Mataking Island), TB212, Jalan Bunga, Fajar Complex, 91000 Tawau, Sabah. Tel: (00 60) 89 786045. Fax: (00 60) 89 770023. E-mail: sales@mataking.com www.mataking.com PADI 5* Dive Resort.

SPAIN BALEARIC ISLANDS – MENORCA BLUEWATER SCUBA Calle Llevant, Centro Civico Local 3, Cap D’Artrutx, 07769 Ciutadella de Menorca.

Tel/fax: (00 34) 971 387183. www.bluewaterscuba.co.uk E-mail: sales@bluewaterscuba.co.uk Dive the famous Pont D’en Gil cavern!

Please remember to mention divEr Magazine when replying to any of these advertisements

91

Liveaboard Directory – 01_17.qxp_Liveaboard Directory 30/11/2016 12:18 Page 92

LIVEABOARD DIRECTORY AF

Aqua-Firma

bo2 blue o two CT

DWw Dive Worldwide

HD

Holiday Designers

RD

Divequest

0

Oonasdivers

STW Scuba Tours Worldwide

OD

Original Diving

DQ

Crusader Travel

Emp Emperor

CT DWw STW UD

AUSTRALIA – Cairns Spirit of Freedom www.spiritoffreedom.com.au Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

26 11 Y 37m steel

GALAPAGOS Humboldt Explorer www.explorerventures.com

Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

240V Y Y Y N

CT DWw

AUSTRALIA – Cairns Spoilsport

ST

www.mikeball.com

Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

16 8 Y 32.3m

Scuba Travel

DWw DQ RD AF STW Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

26 15 Y 30m alum

Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

21 11 Y 37.5m GRP

www.explorerventures.com

www.explorerventures.com

DQ Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

RD 110V Y Y Y N

Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

20 10 Y 38.2m wood

www.maldivesdivingadventure.com

DWw 110V Y Y Y N

MALDIVES – Malé M.V. Sea Spirit

www.seaqueenfleet.com

www.scubascuba.com

Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

CT 20 10 Y 27m wood

Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

220V Y Y Y Y

HD

EGYPT – Sharm el Sheikh VIP One www.vipone.com

14 7 Y 30m wood

16 8 Y 29.5m wood

Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

220V Y Y Y Y

RD

CT DWw STW DQ AF www.worldwidediveandsail.com

FIJI S/Y Fiji Siren

Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

16 8 Y 40m wood

Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

220V Y Y Y Y

Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

220v,110v Y Y Y Y

DWw UD AF STW Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

16 8 Y 31m steel

Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

240V Y Y Y Y

RD CT DWw STW AF DQ

PALAU S/Y Palau Siren Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

16 8 Y 40m wood

Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

220V Y Y Y Y

CT DWw UD DQ STW www.worldwidediveandsail.com

220V N Y Y Y

STW

AF RD

Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

16 8 Y 40m wood

Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

220V Y Y Y Y

SOLOMON ISLANDS – Honiara Taka www.solomonsdiving.com

Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

12 6 Y 26m wood

MEXICO – Socorro, Guadalupe AF Nautilus Belle Amie www.nautilusbelleamie.com

Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

16 9 Y 38.2m Steel

PHILIPPINES S/Y Philippine Siren Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

EGYPT – Sharm el Sheikh & Hurghada South Moon

www.trukodyssey.com

240V Y Y Y N

www.explorerventures.com Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

DQ UD DWw STW

www.worldwidediveandsail.com Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

MALDIVES – Malé Eagle Ray

20 10 Y 37.8m alum

MICRONESIA – Truk Lagoon M.V. Odyssey

240V Y Y Y N

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC – Silver Bank DQ Turks & Caicos Explorer II Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

Ultimate Diving

www.oceanhunter.com Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

STW DWw DQ AF

MALDIVES – Malé Carpe Vita Explorer

18 9 Y 35.1m alum

UD

PALAU Ocean Hunter Palau

CARIBBEAN – St. Maarten & St. Kitts DWw Caribbean Explorer II Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

Sportif

Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

MALDIVES – Malé Adora

240V Y Y Y N

S

TSP The Scuba Place

N Y Y N

www.maldivesboatclub.com Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

92

Regaldive

Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

28-30 16 Y 41m steel

MEXICO – Socorro, Guadalupe AF Nautilus Explorer www.nautilusexplorer.com Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

25 13 Y 35m steel

Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

220V Y Y Y Y

TSP UD bo2 DQ Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

120V N Y Y Y

24 12 Y 33m steel

Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

240V Y Y Y Y

DWw DQ

TURKS & CAICOS Turks & Caicos Explorer II www.explorerventures.com

120V N Y Y Y

TSP UD bo2 DQ Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

Pax Cab EnS Lth Hull

20 10 Y 37.8m alum

Elec Cour A/C Ntx CCR

110V Y Y Y N

To advertise in the divEr Liveaboard Directory, call Alex on +44 (0)20 8941 4568 or email: alex@divermag.co.uk

Please remember to mention divEr Magazine when replying to any of these advertisements

DIVER torch-bags subs 1216 copy.qxp_Subs Offers 28/11/2016 10:12 Page 93

SUBSCRIBE TO divEr MAGAZINE AND PICK UP A FREE LED DIVE TORCH

1-year subscription plus FREE Northern Diver Fusion X4 LED diving torch, worth £49

SUBSCRIBE TO divEr MAGAZINE AND PICK UP A FREE RUCKSACK

✹ Take out a TWO-YEAR subscription to Britain’s bestselling diving magazine for £59.95 (a saving of 43 per cent off the normal UK price) ✹ You also receive a stylish Rucksack with divEr Magazine logo (worth £20) ABSOLUTELY FREE

✹ Take out a ONE-YEAR subscription to Britain’s best-selling diving magazine for just £49.95 ✹ You also get a Northern Diver Fusion X4 LED diving torch (worth £49) ABSOLUTELY FREE ✹ Featuring a powerful 3W LED, it gives more than 8 hours of high-intensity light from a single set of batteries ✹ Offer includes p&p for the 12 monthly magazines

Offer worth £101.80 – YOU PAY ONLY £49.95 YES, please send me 12 issues of divEr plus free Torch for £49.95

✹ The divEr Magazine Rucksack features internal and external pockets, plus side mesh pockets and compression straps ✹ Offer includes postage and packaging for the divEr Rucksack and for the 24 magazines

Offer worth £125.60 – YOU PAY ONLY £59.95 YES, please send me 24 issues of divEr plus free Rucksack for £59.95 starting with the __________________ issue

starting with the __________________________ issue

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Address

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Classified page 94-95_01.qxp_Classified LHP 01/12/2016 10:48 Page 94

CLASSIFIED ADS CHARTER BOATS Scotland (Scapa Flow)

Lymington - “Wight Spirit”. Diving West Wight, East Dorset, English Channel. Beginners to technical and small groups. Electric lift. Easy access, easy parking.

Owner/skipper Dave Wendes. Tel/Fax: (023) 8027 0390, e-mail: wightspirit@btinternet.com www.wight spirit.co.uk (66340)

DI V

DIVE 125 E1

25.CO.UK

OUR W

07

764

5 58 53

3

07764 585353

Custom built 42' dive vessel, huge deck space, Diver lift, large wheel house + separate toilet.

Your diving memories deserve the best dive log

REPAIRS/SERVICES WET & DRY SUIT

REPAIRS

Air + Nitrox

Onboard Compressor

WEEKEND SPACES – SEE WEBSITE

ACCESSORIES

All makes, all types

0161 304 8471

www.dive125.co.uk Eastbourne Charters

Great stock designs or create your own

Wales With full shelter deck for all weather, six spacious double cabins with hot & cold water, two showers, two toilets, large saloon, central heating throughout, galley with all facilities and two dry changing areas. Long established, high standard of service. Nitrox, trimix & onboard meals available. Reduced off-peak season rates.

9 Waterloo Court Waterloo Road Stalybridge Cheshire SK15 2AU

Quest Diving. Hardboat with lift. Diving Anglesey and North Wales.

Tel: 07974 249005. Visit: www.questdiving.co.uk (69798) Anglesey. Hard boat diving aboard “Julie Anne” and “Empress”. Diver Lift. Visit: www.julie-anne.co.uk or Tel: 01407831210, mobile: 07768 863355.

(68767)

North East

201 SPACES AVAILABLE Tel: 01856 874425 Fax: 01856 874725 E-mail: dougie@sunrisecharters.co.uk

SO V

EREIGN

DIVING

email: repairs@gybe.co.uk Compact and light weight binders

Seahouses

Logbook Stamps

Dive the Farne Islands aboard Sovereign II & III Seals, scenic and wrecks. Own quality B&B. Fully stocked dive shop and air station. Air to 300bar and nitrox available.

Tank hire also available. Ailsa, Toby & Andrew Douglas.

Tel/fax: (01665) 720760 or www.sovereigndiving.co.uk

South West Venture Dive Charters. For quality diving from Plymouth, visit: www.venturecharters.co.uk or Tel: 07948 525030.

(70026)

Custom Dive Slates Scuba Tags

com

dive - logs And lots more: www.dive-logs.com

South Dive Littlehampton “Final Answer”. Shallow to deep, we cater for all. Skipper and crew on board, availability 7 days a week. Maximum 10. Now taking bookings for 2017. Tel:(01243) 553977 or 07850 312068. Email: ourjoyboat@gmail.com www.ourjoy.co.uk (69874)

DIVE BRIGHTON www.brightondiver.com 10m cat with dive lift.

Individuals and groups. All levels, novice to technical. BSAC Advanced and trimix skipper.

Call Paul: 07901 822375

NOW BOOKING 2017

www.channeldiving.com Midweek diving for individuals. Tel: 07970 674799.

(69562) www.sussexshipwrecks.co.uk “Sussex” Eastbourne. Fast Cat, lift, O2, toilet, tea/coffee. Groups and individuals.

Diver/skipper Mike mobile: 07840 219585, e-mail: dive@sussexshipwrecks.co.uk (66192)

DIVING MEDICALS Dr Gerry Roberts and Dr Mark Bettley-Smith. HSE Medicals and phone advice. Tel: (01202) 741345.

(68191) Diving Medicals - Midlands (Rugby) - HSE, Sports Medicals and advice at Midlands Diving Chamber. Tel: 01788 579 555 www.midlandsdivingchamber.co.uk (67947) Diving Medicals - Nottingham. Sport Diving medicals: £55; HSE Commercial Diving medicals: £120; OGUK Offshore medicals: £110; HGV/PSV medicals £55. Student and Group discounts. Combine any two medicals and pay only £5 extra for the cheaper of the two. Tel: (07802) 850084 for appointment. Email: mclamp@doctors. org.uk (66048) Diving medicals: London. HSE, Sport and phone advice.

Tel: (020) 7806 4028 www.londondivingchamber.co.uk (66531)

Looking for last minute spaces on a UK dive charter boat?

Then click on DIRECTORIES: UK Boat Spaces @ www.divernet.com

www.gybe.co.uk

PHOTOGRAPHY SEAPRO - SUBSEA MODULES are HOUSINGS for SCIENTIFIC EQUIPMENT and VIDEO SYSTEMS Special Packages on Video Cameras and Housings See web site:

WANT TO ADVERTISE?

www.greenawaymarine.com

Email: Jenny Webb, jenny@divermag.co.uk

GREENAWAY MARINE Tel: (01793) 814992

INSURANCE

“PACKAGE DEALS”

Classified page 94-95_01.qxp_Classified LHP 01/12/2016 10:49 Page 95

CLASSIFIED ADS

CLUB NOTICES

FREE OF CHARGE. (Max 25 words).

Non-commercial clubs, no sales.

Active and friendly BSAC club. All year diving in local lake. New and qualified divers of all agencies welcome.

Own clubhouse with 7m RIB and compressor. For further information visit www.mksac.co.uk (64403) Alfreton (Derbys) BSAC 302. Welcomes new members and qualified divers. A small but active club with own RIB, wreck diving a speciality. Contact Charlie on (01246) 236328.

(68370) Banbury SAC. Friendly, active club with weekly meetings and training sessions, own boat, compressor and equipment. Welcome divers/non-divers. www.bansac.org or call 07787 097 289.

(69308) Bracknell Sub Aqua Club welcomes new and experienced divers from all agencies. Meets poolside at Bracknell Sports Centre, Thursdays from 8.30pm. Diving, training and social calendar: www.bracknellscuba.org.uk or tel: 07951 855 725.

(65792) Braintree Riverside Sub Aqua Club based in Braintree, Essex. A friendly club, we welcome divers of all abilities and have an active diving and social programme. Come and join us! email: denise.f.wright2@btinternet.com www.braintreeriversidesac.co.uk (69397) Bristol Scuba Club meets at Kingswood Leisure Centre, BS16 4HR, every Friday, 8pm - 10pm. Diver access to a large pool. www.bristol-scuba-club.co.uk or call: 07811 374944.

(63812) Bromley/Lewisham Active divers required. Full programme of hardboat diving throughout the year.

Check out Nekton SAC www.nekton.org.uk or contact Jackie (01689) 850130.

(68537) Buckingham Dive Centre. A small friendly club welcoming all divers and those wanting to learn. We dive throughout the year and run trips in the UK and abroad. www.stowesubaqua.co.uk Tel: Roger 07802 765366.

(69433) Chelmsford and District SAC meet at 8pm every Friday at Riverside Pool. New and qualified divers are welcome.

See our website for details: www.chelmsforddiveclub.co.uk (68620) Chingford, London BSAC 365. Friendly and active club welcomes divers from all agencies and trainees. Meet Wednesday 8pm, Larkswood Leisure Centre E4 9EY. Information: www.dive365.co.uk Email: loughtondivers365@gmail.com (69208) Cockleshell Divers, Portsmouth, Hants. Small, friendly club welcomes new and experienced divers from all agencies. Meets at Cockleshell Community Centre, Fridays at 8pm. Email: cockleshell.divers@aol.co.uk (64762) Colchester Sub-Aqua Club welcomes experienced divers and beginners. Sub-Aqua Association training. Diving at home and abroad. Meets at Leisure World Friday evenings. Contact Tony (01787) 475803.

(68263) Cotswold BSAC, a friendly club based at Brockworth Pool, Nr Cheltenham, Fridays 8pm. Regular inland diving and coast trips.

Tel: 07711 312078. www.cotswoldbsac332.co.uk (68577) Darwen SAC, in Lancashire, with an active diving programme. Own RIB. new members welcome regardless of agency/training. We provide BSAC training. Weekly pool sessions. www.darwensac.org.uk (69161) Eastern Sub Aqua Club SAA 1073. We are a small friendly dive club and welcome new and experienced divers alike.

We are situated north of Norwich for training. For more information please see out website: www.esacdivers.co.uk (65879) Dream Divers. Very friendly dive club in Rotherham welcomes divers of any level/club. Meet at the Ring O Bells, Swinton, last Thursday of the month at 19.30.

Email: info@dreamdiversltd.co.uk (69699) Ealing SAC, BSAC 514. Friendly, active club, own RIBs; welcomes new and experienced divers. Meets Highgrove Pool, Eastcote, Tuesday nights 8.30pm. www.esac.org.uk (68413) East Cheshire Sub Aqua. Macclesfield based BSAC club.

Purpose-built clubhouse, bar, two RIBs, minibus, nitrox, compressor. Lower Bank Street, Macclesfield, SK11 7HL. Tel: 01625 502367. www.scubadivingmacclesfield.com (65609) East Durham Divers SAA welcome new/experienced divers of any agency. Comprehensive facilities with own premises half a mile from the sea. Contact: John: 07857 174125.

(68663) East Lancs Diving Club based in Blackburn. Friendly and active club welcomes new members at all levels of diving from all organisations. Tel: 07784 828961 or email: ELDC@hotmail.co.uk www.eastlancsdivers.co.uk (69411) Eastbourne BSAC; RIB, Banked air (free) to 300bar, Nitrox, Trimix. Enjoy some of the best diving on the South Coast, all qualifications welcome. www.sovereigndivers.co.uk (65695) Ellon Sub Aqua Club, Aberdeenshire, welcomes newcomers and experienced divers. We dive year round and meet on Thursday evenings. Contact www.ellonsubaquaclub.co.uk (65523) Flintshire Sub Aqua Club based in Holywell, Flintshire, welcomes new and experienced divers from all agencies.

Full dive programme. Meet Wednesdays. See us at www.flintsac.co.uk or call 01352 731425.

(64293)

Hartford Scuba BSAC 0522, based in Northwich, Cheshire. A friendly, active diving club. Compressor for air and Nitrox fills. RIB stored in Anglesey. www.hartfordscuba.co.uk (67287) Hereford Sub Aqua Club, is looking for new members.

Regular diving off the Pembrokeshire coast on own RIBs. Training and social nights.

Contact: rusaqua@googlemail.com (69146) HGSAC. South Manchester based friendly, non-political club welcomes newcomers and qualified divers. Lots of diving and social events. Family. Three RIBs and compressor. www.hgsac.com (68501) High Wycombe SAC. Come and dive with us - all welcome.

Active club with RIB on South coast. Contact Len: 07867 544 738. www.wycombesubaqua.com (69131) HUGSAC - BSAC 380. Experienced club, based around Hertfordshire, with RIB on the South coast. Members dive with passion for all underwater exploration. All agencies welcome. www.hugsac.co.uk (63275) Ifield Divers. Crawley-based club. Twin engine dive boat with stern lift in Brighton Marina.Training for novices, diving for the experienced - all qualifications welcome. www.ifield-divers.org.uk Email: info@ifield-divers.org.uk or tel: 01883 345146.

(64514) Ilkeston & Kimberley SAA 945, between Nottingham and Derby, welcomes beginners and experienced divers.

We meet every Friday night at Kimberley Leisure Centre at 8.30pm. Contact through www.iksac.co.uk (68559) K2 Divers, covering West Sussex/Surrey. A friendly BSAC club, but all qualifications welcome. Training in Crawley, boat at Littlehampton. Email: k2divers@yahoo.co.uk or tel: (01293) 612989.

(68335) Kingston BSAC, Surrey. Two RIBs , clubhouse and bar, active dive programme, two compressors, Nitrox, Trimix, full training offered at all levels. All very welcome. www.kingstonsac.org or tel: 07842 622193.

(69176) Leeds based Rothwell & Stanley SAC welcomes new and experienced divers, full SAA training given. Purpose built clubhouse with bar, RIB, compressor. Meet Tuesday evenings: 07738 060567 kevin.oddy@talktalk.net (69371) Lincoln - Imp Divers. Small, friendly, non-political diving club with our own RIB are looking to welcome new and experienced divers. Contact Richard: 07931 170205.

(69383) Lincoln and District BSAC. Active club with own RIB, compressor and other facilities. Regular trips and training. www.lincolndivingclub.co.uk (69336) Llantrisant SAC, two RIBs, towing vehicle, welcomes new and experienced divers. Meet at Llantrisant Leisure Centre 8pm Mondays. Contact Phil: (01443) 227667. www.llantrisantdivers.com (68519) Lutterworth Dive Club, active, social, friendly. Own RIB, regular trips. Welcomes qualified divers, any agency.

Training at all levels. Most Tuesdays, Lutterworth Sports Centre. www.lsac.co.uk (70038) Mansfield & District Scuba Diving Club, SAA942, Mansfield. Family dive club, diving and social members welcome. Own clubhouse with licenced bar. Regular dive trips and holidays. www.scubamad.co.uk Tel: (01623) 622130. Facebook.

(65219) Manta Divers. Norfolk wreck & reef diving. Small, friendly, experienced club. All agencies welcome. SAA training. www.mantadivers.org (64088) Mercian Divers (BSAC 2463) Active & Friendly club.

New, experienced & junior divers welcome. Own RIB. Based in Bromsgrove, West Midlands. Tel: 01905 773406 www.mercian-divers.org.uk (65391) Millennium Divers. Active, friendly club for all levels and certifications of diver, based in Portland, Dorset. UK diving and holidays. Club social nights www.millenniumdivers.org (68351) Mole Valley Sub Aqua Club. Surrey based SDI club, own RIB, active diving UK & Abroad, training and social events. Trainees/crossovers welcome. Contact: 07552 498558 or email: committee@mvsac.org.uk (68691) Monastery Dive Club (Dunkerton Branch). New divers welcome to join our club. Trips to Plymouth and NDAC. GSOH is a must. South Wales area (Crosskeys, Risca.)

Please text me: Flinty 07971 432803 or email: welshflinty@hotmail.com (65305) Nekton SAC. Based in Bromley, we are a friendly and active SAA Club that welcomes experienced and new divers alike. Info@nekton.org.uk or call Steve: 020 8467 4599.

(68387) Nemo Diving Club. Small friendly dive club offering dive trips and training for non/experienced divers in Retford and surrounding areas. Contact: www.nemodiver training.co.uk (69640) North Glos BSAC 80. Friendly, active club welcomes new and experienced divers. Own boat and equipment with weekly pool sessions, Thursdays, 8.30pm at GL1 Gloucester, (Gloucester Leisure Centre). www.nglos.co.uk (68483) Nuneaton. Marlin BSAC welcomes experienced divers to Pingles pool every Thursday. Active training, diving, social programme in a flourishing club with no politics allowed. www.marlinsac.com (69322) Orkney SAC. Small, friendly active dive club, based in Kirkwall, welcomes divers of any level or club. Own RIB and compressor. Contact Craig: 07888 690 986 or email: craigbarclay31@hotmail.com (69735) Preston Divers SAA 30. The friendliest dive club. Come and meet us at Fulwood Leisure Centre, Preston on Monday nights between 8.00pm - 9.00pm. www.prestondivers.co.uk (64198)

Reading Diving Club. Experience the best of UK diving with a friendly and active club. All welcome. Tel: 01183 216310 or email: info@thedivingclub.co.uk www.thedivingclub.co.uk (69447) Richmond (Surrey) SAC welcomes new and experienced divers to join our active diving, training and social calendar. Meet Mondays 8.30pm at Pools on the Park, Richmond. Tel: 07825 166450 (Gemma) or email: clubmembership@rsac1489.com (67103) Robin Hood Dive Club. Yorkshire based and one of the most active in the country with a full 2016 calendar of trips. All agencies and grades welcome. No training or pool, just a growing bunch of regular divers. www.robinhooddiveclub.com or find us on Facebook.

(59245) Rochdale Sub-Aqua Club. Beginners and experienced divers welcome. Full training provided. Pool session every Wednesday. Club has two boats. More info at www.RochdaleDivers.co.uk or call Mick 07951 834 903.

(65103) Ruislip & Northwood BSAC. Friendly, active club, RIB, welcomes new and qualified divers. Meets Highgrove Pool Thursday nights 8.30pm. www.rnbsac.co.uk Tel: 07843 738 646 for details.

(69469) Scotland Plug Divers. Small, friendly dive club welcomes newly qualified and experienced divers to join us. Regular hardboat diving around Bass Rock/Firth of Forth/ Eyemouth and trips abroad. Tel George: 07793 018 540.

Email: plugdivers@btinternet.com (64638) Selby Aquanauts SAA 1117. Family friendly club, welcomes new and qualified divers. Regular trips UK & abroad. Meet every Thursday, Albion Vaults, Selby at 9pm.

Contact Mark: 07831 295 655.

(69261) Sheffield BSAC36. Friendly, social and active dive club welcomes newcomers or qualified divers. Trips, socials, weekly pool and club/pub meetings, club RIB. See www.bsac36.org.uk (69191) Slough 491 BSAC; small friendly club welcomes divers at all levels. Meet at Beechwood School Fridays 19.30.

Diving holidays and South Coast. Email: malcolm@uv.net or tel: Tony (01344) 884 596.

(69722) SOS Divers (SAA 263), Stourport, Worcestershire.

Founded 1979. Friendly family club welcomes qualified and trainee divers. Own RIB. Contact Althea by email: arannie123@outlook.com (57542) South Coast Divers (SAA 1150) Portsmouth. A friendly and active club welcomes new and experienced divers from all agencies. Email: southcoastdivers@hotmail.co.uk or call Darren: 07449 794 804.

(69224) South Queensferry SAC, near Edinburgh. Two RIBs, gear for hire. Pool training during the Winter; trips & expeditions in the Summer. Pub meeting at Hawes Inn. Call Warren: 07980 981 380. www.sqsac.co.uk (64861)

Steyning Scuba Club, West Sussex. All divers welcome.

Steyning Pool , Monday evenings at 8.30pm. Contact Andy Willett on 07786 243 763. www.seaurchin divers@hotmail.co.uk (63956) Sutton Coldfield SAC, friendly BSAC club, welcomes all divers from trainee to advanced. All agencies. Own RIBs and compressor. Meet every Wednesday, 8.15pm at Wyndley (3.4m pool). For free try dive call Alan: 07970 573638 or Mark: 07787 106191.

(64974) The Bath Bubble Club SAA777 seeks new members. New and qualified divers of all agencies welcome. Weekly pool training, every Wednesday at 9pm, Culverhay Sport Centre, Rush Hill, Bath. Regular diving programme from club RIB. www.bathbubbleclubuk.co.uk (68429) Totnes SAC (Devon). We are an active multi-agency club and welcome new members and qualified divers from all organisations. Two RIBs and own compressor/nitrox, plus club 4WD. Diving all round South Devon and Cornwall.

Visit www.totnes-bsac.co.uk for details.

(68319) Wells Dive Group. Friendly, active club in Somerset welcomes new or experienced divers. Meeting/training at The Little Theatre or the pool on Thursdays, try dives available. Regular RIB diving, trips around the UK and abroad. Visit: www.wellsdivers.co.uk or Tel: Rob, 07832 141250.

(69653) Wiltshire’s newest Scuba Diving Club - JC Scuba Dive Club. Friendly active dive club based in Swindon, all affiliations welcome. Pool sessions, UK & Worldwide trips, shore, boat & liveaboard diving, regular socials.

Affiliated training school, fully insured. Exclusive member benefits. www.jcscubadiveclub.co.uk (68279)

WANT TO ADVERTISE YOUR CLUB? Email: Jenny Webb, jenny@divermag.co.uk

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DEEP BREATH

Recording dives is great, unless you’re that diver MARK DAVIS has chosen to record his diving career through the medium of video – a good way to do it, as long as you remember all the other requirements of diving

I

N 2004, AFTER QUALIFYING as a diver and

armed with my first digital camera, a Sony Cybershot P73, a “massive” 128mb memory card and a secondhand housing, I decided to take the plunge into underwater photography.

On a family holiday to Sharm el Sheikh, I seized the chance to use my new purchase to its full potential. While diving Shark and Yolanda reefs I clicked randomly with the attitude that “if you throw enough mud, some will stick”.

Without a laptop, I could view the photos only back home or straight after the dive in the postage-stamp-sized viewer. Some of them looked like Wildlife Photographer of the Year winners viewed through the viewfinder, but back in the UK on my PC screen, reality hit home.

I was unimpressed and disappointed by the results. Lots of what I now know to be backscatter, the backs of fish frantically swimming away and very blue coral filled my screen.

However, my tactic of throwing enough mud had worked to the extent that I had three photos that, once cropped, I liked the look of. I was hooked.

I WOULD HAVE taken more, but on my last dive I had accidentally put the camera into Video mode and shot a few seconds of a Napoleon wrasse instead of photographing it. The memory had run out quickly.

Back home, this footage was a revelation. This thing has video – wow, I’m an underwater filmmaker! Yes, it was only 640 x 480 resolution, very blue and shaky, but I could see the potential.

For less than £200 I had a camera and housing purchased on eBay that could film 30m down and was small enough to fit in my pocket. OK, the professionals had been at it for years, amateurs too for that matter, but prices had really started to drop, especially with the rise of online shopping.

Over the following years I upgraded and dived the same sites off Sharm with a whopping 2Gb SD card and a red filter. My films were still poor quality,

98

as I now know, but at the time I thought I was Cousteau and posted one on the fledgling YouTube.

To my astonishment, the film quickly generated 8000 views and a handful of positive comments (“This is the most beautiful film I have ever seen,” as one put it. I was now waiting for the call from the BBC Natural History Unit.

A couple of years later I posted another film, filmed while diving in Lanzarote. HD was for the pros, but who needed HD when I had a red filter?

The point was that I was enjoying every step of the process, researching cameras and getting bargains, the filming process and looking for suitable targets and the editing.

A dive now was no longer a mere 50-minute plunge but something far more. On that dive I was lucky enough to film an angel shark shaking itself from its sandy bed and swimming into the blue.

I enjoyed editing the films and watching them long after the dive itself. They were video log-books, long before vlogs, so despite the angel-shark experience after a while I no longer posted the films unless a fellow-diver asked.

I noticed more and more divers taking compact cameras under water, and we’d often swap emails and share photos and films long after the dives.

WHAT WAS WRONG with all this? Well, as the number of cameras increased I started to notice “that diver” – you know, the one who kicks up the sand trying to position himself to capture that angry clownfish or, worse, fin-kicks the coral, or one who needs to spend more time on his or her buoyancy than worrying about the settings on the camera.

Or indeed that diver who bores you back on the boat showing you the moray eel you missed. Was

Blue-spotted sting ray on video and (inset) an early effort.

I posted the film on YouTube, and a month later received an email from a Californian university lecturer who was studying rare sharks and worked in shark conservation. She wanted to use my footage to show to her students. I had no idea that angel sharks were rare. I had seen a few during my dives there and assumed that they were fairly common, but according to her that was not the case.

This was in the early days of YouTube, and I was delighted if my footage could be useful. This just spurred me on. Every couple of years I would sell my camera to finance the next one. The big jump was to 720 HD. I first used my Canon Ixus in Lanzarote and then Egypt, and loved the quality.

YouTube by this time was becoming saturated and it was now difficult to get an audience of more than few hundred, but by now to me it was apparent that filming extended the whole experience.

this me? I know I have been guilty at times, but the fear of being “that diver”, and the need for good skills to take video has, I hope, prevented me from being a regular offender anymore.

I still dive with a GoPro, but I use it sparingly, just enough to create short vlogs – the equivalent of a sentence in a diving log-book. I don’t have one of the big sticks, either, only a small grip.

My GoPro has the capability of filming in 4K, but back in 2004 I didn’t know what HD was, let alone 4K. Can you imagine what Jacques Cousteau could have done if he had had his own action-cam?

We live in an age in which travel remains relatively affordable, and as of now we still have beautiful marine life and eco-systems to see and the technology to record it, so why not?

This technology may be the only way we have of preserving this beautiful planet for posterity, so be my guest – but please don’t be that diver.

CPS (Waterproof W50) – 12_16.qxp_Waterproof 05/12/2016 12:00 Page 1

W50

ULTRAFLEX

W50 ULTRAFLEX

5mm Back-Zip in Stretchy Neoprene with WPAD

• • • •

High-Stretch Ultraflex Neoprene • Arm Antislip WPAD for attaching a pocket • YKK Zippered Legs Kneepads in Very Strong ToughTex Fabric Hi Quality YKK Back Zipper • Seat Antislip

Distributed in the UK by CPS Partnership Ltd.

www.cpspartnership.co.uk

Suunto (D6i Zulu) – 01_17.qxp_Suunto 05/12/2016 12:00 Page 1