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Cover OCT.qxp_April Cover(final) 04/09/2017 10:23 Page 1

DIVE 2017 BUMPER SHOW ISSUE!

BRITAIN’S BEST-SELLING DIVING MAGAZINE

OCTOBER 2017

divernet.com

B-24 BOMBER WW2 aircraft gives up its sad secrets

DOZZI DAYS

TRUK LUCK

Fish-finding at an inland site

Thrilling journey through time in wreck nirvana

TREASURE SHIPS From a unique wreck in Croatia to England’s own Invincible

MAGIC ANDA

Name to conjure with in the Philippines

MALDIVES: TOO MANY FISH?

MUSTARD IN THE ROUND

THE GENIUS OF PETER SCOONES

9 770141 346176

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£4.40

Aqaba Tourism (FP) – 10_17.qxp_Full Page Bleed 11/09/2017 10:40 Page 1

Venom Frameless Eye Candy just took on a new meaning.

Treasure chests and Diver Tests

I

T’S HOODS OFF TO diving archaeologists everywhere this month, because we’re awash in fascinating finds. Two massive excavations of 18th-century wrecks are going on in England this summer, and we look at the historic artefacts that are being extracted, often in very difficult conditions.

Dutch East Indiamen the Rooswijk on Goodwin Sands we cover in News, but we have no less an ace cameraman than Michael Pitts giving us a personal glimpse through his lenses at the exciting Invincible warship excavations in the Solent.

FIRST IN

First In OCT.qxp_May First In 05/09/2017 10:59 Page 03

Take a look at his photograph of a diver holding a blue-green bottle, and tell me you wouldn’t want to have been under water with him at that moment.

Our cover reflects a similar scene, if in rather bluer water. Shot in Croatia by Arne Hodalic, it shows two divers unearthing a small vase, and it’s no ordinary find. It’s one of some 100 items recovered so far from a unique shipwreck, a Venetian trader carrying nowrare examples of Ottoman Empire craftsmanship.

STEVE WEINMAN, EDITOR

Croatia should be firmly on wreck-divers’ radars, because so much is going on in those waters. We’ll dish up more in coming months, too, but for October we have another personal account of being involved in wreck-diving with a purpose in the Adriatic, from Gemma Smith.

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This is a very different diving project, one of a number to recover the bodies of US military personnel missing in action from past conflicts.

Underwater archaeologists use their techniques to explore another rare relic, a B-24 Liberator bomber lost in 1944 in 60m.

One aspect leaps out from all the accounts of these amazing diving projects – they stir strong emotions in the divers involved.

S

TRONG EMOTIONS were generated among the divEr team when our Technical Editor Nigel Wade died earlier this year, and we carry a final celebration of his photographic wizardry in this Dive Show issue. At the same time we’re very pleased to announce Nigel’s successor as divEr’s equipment-tester in chief – Steve Warren.

Steve will be testing the latest dive-gear with the continued assistance of Mike Ward, who has held the fort so ably in recent issues. Talking of archaeology, as we were, both writers have been contributing regularly to this magazine since the last century!

Many of you will know Steve, not only as a regular contributor but as an instructor and former dive-store proprietor. divEr has always prided itself on its independence and impartiality in product testing, and in the interests of full disclosure, because Steve co-owns Inon UK he will not be testing any new photo or video-related gear. That’s now Mike’s province, along with technical-diving products.

Apart from the regular divEr Tests of individual products we expect to include more equipment round-ups, buyer’s guides and special features in future. I hope you enjoy our new dive-kit double act.

Oh, and Steve does write at some length about photographic gear in this issue, but in the past tense – it’s a celebration of another great underwater imagemaker. Peter Scoones was not only a great wildlife cameraman but a technical innovator whose work is still reflected in equipment and techniques used today.

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St Helena Tourism (FP) – 10_17.qxp_Full Page Bleed 24/08/2017 13:01 Page 1

& G N I V I D I N E AC T I V I T I E S MAR

Discover the abundance of life and beauty of the South Atlantic Ocean. Swim with whale sharks, explore historic wrecks, follow dolphins and humpback whales on their journey and marvel at the many endemic species of marine life that call our coastline home.

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@sthelenatourism

Contents OCT.qxp_Layout 1 05/09/2017 10:56 Page 5

the magazine that’s straight down the line…

OCTOBER 2017

Volume 62 No 10

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

CONTENTS

Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Nigel Eaton nigel@divermag.co.uk Editor Steve Weinman steve@divermag.co.uk

FEATURES

Publishing Consultant Tony Weston tony@divermag.co.uk Production Manager George Lanham george@divermag.co.uk Technical Editor Steve Warren mediadiversteve@gmail.com Webmaster Mike Busuttili webmaster@divernet.com Advertisement Manager Jenny Webb jenny@divermag.co.uk

20

Truk Lagoon’s stormy past and blissful present

27

A Liberator aircraft in Croatia reveals its secrets

Rusty Pilgrimage ...................

Dive / Bomber

Senior Advertisement Executive Alex Khachadourian alex@divermag.co.uk Advertising Production David Eaton david@divermag.co.uk Subscriptions Manager subscriptions@divermag.co.uk Marketing, Sales & divEr Bookshop Dorothy Eaton dorothy@divermag.co.uk uwp-mailshop@divermag.co.uk

32

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

HOW TO GET divEr MAGAZINE 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 Magazine, at the above address.

NEWSAGENT: If you prefer to buy divEr over the counter, please order from your newsagent. All newsagents can obtain divEr, but in case of difficulty notify the Subscriptions Dept 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. 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 Ltd. 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 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 and printed by Henry Stone Printers,The Invicta Press, Lower Queens Road, Ashford, Kent TN24 8HH.

www.divErNEt.com

Michael Pitts reflects on an historic wreck-site

44

…of another ace cameraman – Peter Scoones

51

Step inside for a DIVE 2017 preview & planner

64

Treats aplenty on a trip to the Philippines

74

Jack Perks dives this inland site for the first time

Accounts Assistant Julian Auty accounts@divermag.co.uk

EDITORIAL CONSULTANTS

Invincible 50’ 44.34N, 01’ 02.23W

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The Technical Genius ..............

Dive Show Guide Partial to Anda’s Abracadabra. . . . .

A Dose of Dozzi Nigel’s Way . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A tribute in pictures to Nigel Wade

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Smothered in fish in the Maldives

95

Another wreck in Croatia, with a special cargo

Glassy-Eyed and Laughing The Secrets of Sveti Pavao. . . . . . . . . . . .

COVER IMAGE: On the Sveti Pavao wreck in Croatia,

by Arne Hodalic

The biggest online resource for scuba-divers

www.divernet.com 5

divEr

Contents OCT.qxp_Layout 1 05/09/2017 10:56 Page 6

Britain’s best-selling diving magazine

CONTENTS REGULARS 3

First In

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News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

19

Beachcomber

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Be the Champ! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

85

Technique

101

Trewavas The entertainment value of diving with Italians

102

More ideas for your next diving holiday

106

Our two new testers get down to work

112

New but untested diving products

122

Water colouring – unusual dives in Siberia

Editor’s view

Too many deaths – but many treasures found too

What happens when coastguards get into trouble?

Alex Mustard looks into the circular fisheye lens

Simon Pridmore examines boat etiquette

Booking Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Diver Tests Just Surfaced Deep Breath. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

PLUS 114 Dive Holiday Directory 116 Liveaboard Directory 118 Classified Ads 120 Dive Centre Directory 120 Advertisers’ Index Here 121 –Subscribe and get an Apeks diving watch! divEr

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@DIVERMAGAZINE 18,500 followers

http://tiny.cc/b2uld 8000 likes @diver_magazine

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News OCT v2.qxp_DIVER grid 01/09/2017 17:27 Page 8

DIVER NEWS

Guests from the Overseas speed away from the burning vessel.

Rebreather diver dies in shallow water in Cyprus A

BRITISH REBREATHER DIVER died on a shore-dive in less than 2m of water after watching his two children training in Green Bay near Larnaca, Cyprus.

Experienced technical diver Martin Dash, 46, from Liverpool, was on a family holiday with Alex Woolerton, his partner of 22 years, and their two children.

Dash was on the shore kitted up with his rebreather ready for a dive on the other side of the bay with a staff-member from the Dive-In Larnaca centre, who was not present at the time.

Dash entered the water some time after mid-day on 13 July to photograph his 16-year-old daughter, an Open-Water Diver, and 11-year-old son, who were undergoing divetraining in shallow water with two instructors.

His daughter later said that she had

exchanged OK signs with her father before seeing him swim away.

Some eight minutes after Dash had submerged, Woolerton was swimming when she saw a diver being pulled from the water and start to be given CPR on the beach.

Because a large number of divers were training in the bay, she did not realise at first that it was Dash.

Despite some 40 minutes of attempted resuscitation by a Dive-In employee and others, Dash failed to regain consciousness. He was taken by ambulance to hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Two post mortems took place before Woolerton was allowed to fly his body home two weeks later, but back in Liverpool the Coroner ordered a further post mortem.

Cause of death had been declared by the Cyprus authorities to be asphyxiation by drowning, although

there was reportedly no water in Dash’s lungs.

The diver was using a new closedcircuit rebreather that he had bought just before his departure. An ISC Pathfinder, it replaced an ISC Megalodon that he had used for the past nine years on deep dives, diver friend Stephen Bennett-Squires told divEr, describing Dash as ”very efficient and skilled, having a ticket to 100m but passing that when the dives required”.

In the days leading up to the fatal incident Dash had carried out six dives down to around the 40m mark on the Zenobia ferry wreck, said Woolerton, diving through Dive-In Larnaca. There had been no reported problems, although she told divEr that he had complained to her about charging issues with the unit. ”Martin was always so careful and particular about everything,” she said.

Martin Dash.

Cyprus Police retained the rebreather pending investigation although, according to Dive-In’s legal representative, the cable of its primary console had been disconnected while Dash was being brought out of the water, ”destroying the unit’s integrity and leaving no way to have full data on its working condition”.

Woolerton told divEr that her partner’s dive-computer had not registered a dive, and also that she had been told that his mouthpiece was still in place when he was recovered from the water. n

DIVERS RETRIEVE MAIN TELEGRAPH FROM LUSITANIA

divEr

8

DAHRRGA

RMS Lusitania.

Regional, Rural & Gaeltacht Affairs (DAHRRGA) and with the consent of the wreck’s US owner Gregg Bemis,

The recovered telegraph. reported that they had located the telegraph on the seabed and marked its position.

It was brought to the surface under the supervision of an archaeologist from the department’s National Monuments Service.

The Lusitania was struck by a torpedo from a German U-boat on 7 May, 1915, while sailing from New York to Liverpool. The cause of a second explosion that resulted in the vessel sinking with the loss of 1198 lives is still being investigated.

The wreck is covered by an

PJS2005

RECREATIONAL DIVERS have recovered the main ship’s telegraph from the WW1 wreck of the RMS Lusitania at the Head of Kinsale off Ireland’s west Cork coast. The artefact is now undergoing preliminary conservation ashore.

Previous attempts to raise the telegraph a year ago had proved unsuccessful after equipment failed, although another telegraph was recovered from the wreck last October.

The divers, licensed by Ireland’s Department for Arts, Heritage,

Underwater Heritage Order because of its international and historical importance. ”I understand that the telegraph is undamaged and in excellent condition,” said Culture Minister Heather Humphreys.

She said she understood that Bemis intended ”to place the telegraph and the pedestal successfully recovered last year on display in a local museum, along with other artefacts he has recovered during earlier dives – which is great news for the local community”. n

www.divErNEt.com

News OCT v2.qxp_DIVER grid 01/09/2017 17:28 Page 9

DIVER NEWS

Woolley claims oldest diver title on Zenobia wreck

Insurer withdraws cover for Guernsey divers A LEADING INSURER has withdrawn cover for sport-divers in Guernsey in the Channel Islands because of concerns about current arrangements for hyperbaric treatment there.

Dive Master Insurance says that resident divers raised concerns with it a year ago, but describes its subsequent attempts to discuss the matter with the States of Guernsey’s Health & Social Services Department (HSSD) as ”disappointing”.

A hyperbaric facility was provided at no charge on Guernsey for many years, but when it closed the state was required to maintain cover for the many commercial divers working there, particularly in St Peter Port harbour.

A new 2m chamber was therefore installed in Guernsey’s Princess Elizabeth Hospital in 2016, and for the first time charges were imposed.

Commercial divers have to pay a £150 daily stand-by charge when diving. Should they or any recreational diver require treatment, however, this is charged at a flat rate of £30,000, regardless of the number of treatments required.

Dive Master’s concerns have come to a head ”not so much because of the cost, but because the chamber doesn’t have its own clinical director on site,” Managing Director Bob Archell (above) told divEr. If the chamber is needed it is operated by non-specialist hospital staff, with advice available from DDRC Healthcare on the UK mainland. ”It’s an unusual set-up, more usually found with offshore facilities such as oil-rigs for commercial divers – but commercial and recreational diving are two very different activities,” said

www.divErNEt.com

Archell. ”Commercial divers are constantly monitored and supervised, and medically assessed, unlike recreational divers. That’s why we feel that proper medical triage on-site is essential.”

According to the HSSD there have been four treatments involving the chamber since it was set up – and all involved recreational divers.

Two were paid for under standard travel-insurance policies; one was for an uninsured diver, with a means of payment since agreed; and the other is the subject of a continuing dispute. ”We’ve only ever withdrawn cover three times – in Australia in the 1990s and in Cyprus in 2012,” said Archell.

In Dive Master’s statement to policy-holders – some 50 of whom are based in Guernsey – it said that it had made its decision reluctantly but considered the fixed-fee charge ”nontypical or customary when compared to charges for similar treatments in mainland Europe”.

Dive Master recently teamed up with two other major specialist insurers, Diver Alert Network (DAN) and AquaMed, to form the Global Association of Diving Assistance Providers (GADAP).

One of GADAP’s remits is to examine what might be regarded as billing anomalies in treatments for recreational divers, and Archell says the other members have given ”100% backing” to Dive Master’s move, though they are still understood to be providing cover at present.

Dive Master says it is investigating alternative arrangements for its policy-holders: ”I’m confident that we should be well on the way to having a good interim solution so we can soon offer reinstatement of policies to all our clients, both domiciled on Guernsey and visiting divers,” Archell told divEr. n

CYPRUS-BASED BRIT Ray Woolley dived the Zenobia ferry wreck in Larnaca on 28 August – in a bid to be recognised by Guinness World Records as the world’s oldest scuba-diver.

The current holder of that title is Erwin Paul Staller of the USA, who carried out a Ray Woolley. dive in Turks & Caicos three years ago when he was 93 years, 163 days old. Woolley’s dive took place on his 94th birthday.

He needed only to complete a 12m dive for half an hour to beat Staller's record, but went on to dive for 41min, reaching a maximum depth of 38m.

Carried out with 22 other divers, the dive was said to have been filmed, photographed and documented according to GWR requirements, though it could be several months before the record claim is ratified.

Woolley’s continuing nonagenarian exploits have been recorded before in

divEr (Diving Milestone for Veteran Ray, July 2016).

He carried out 51 dives to a maximum 45m depth in his 93rd year – he was aiming to complete “39 @ 93”, as he had done “29 @ 92” the previous year, but threw in an extra dozen dives.

Woolley was born in Cheshire in 1923, served in the Royal Navy during WW2 and became a radio engineer.

He joined Portland & Weymouth BSAC in 1960 and was first posted to Cyprus in 1964 while working for the Foreign Office, joining BSAC 107S on the island and becoming an advanced diving instructor.

He has worked and dived in various parts of the world but retired to Cyprus in 1999, rejoining his old club and basing himself near Limassol.

Woolley reckons water sports are the best way to keep fit, and swims in his pool for two hours a day. n

THE BIG QUESTION Ups and downs of diving Sorry, it’s a space-saving Big Question this month (Small Question?), but we’ll be back to our normal half-page next month.“Have you ever experienced the effects of a severe downcurrent or upcurrent on a dive?” we asked you last month. Almost two-thirds of you have, apparently, and those who haven’t couldn’t really say too much!

YES ”Doing a safety stop, I got sucked down to 12m then spat back up to 1m all within a few seconds.” Justin Ruggles ”Kylerhea Narrows [Skye] – exhilarating to the point of near-death.”

Steve Mclaughlin ”Several times, including the Maldives, Pemba and Daedalus [Red Sea].”

Bruce Coles “In the Maldives. I started a safety stop at 5m one minute and found myself down at 15m in the next. Simply frightening.” John Williams “I used to work in the Maldives and regularly when seasonally strong currents were running we had washing machines – we had currents take us from 30 to 15m in seconds and vice versa, but as long as you’re aware that it can happen, you can handle it.” Mark Watts “Don’t fight it, just relax and enjoy the ride!” Mike McLaren “In the washing machine at Stanger Head, Scapa Flow, I went up and my buddy went down!” Andy Gilbert

Go to divernet.com to answer…

THE NEXT BIG QUESTION Do you prefer to use the dump-valves rather than raising the corrugated hose when dumping air from a BC? Please answer yes or no, and feel free to elaborate

9

divEr

News OCT v2.qxp_DIVER grid 01/09/2017 17:29 Page 10

DIVER NEWS

Cannon and U-boat sites win protection HISTORIC ENGLAND

A

HISTORIC CANNON SITE in Dorset and a WW1 U-boat wreck in North Yorkshire have both been granted protection by the British government on advice from Historic England (HE).

The cannon were discovered in two locations in 2010 by Weymouthbased Shipwreck Project divers.

An inshore site close to Chesil Beach contains eight cast-iron guns identified as English 24-32-pounders, cast between 1650 and 1725.

Their varying lengths suggests that they were cargo on a merchant ship.

An offshore site 220m further south contains another seven castiron English cannon, one probably a six-pounder, cast in the second half of the 17th century.

Sediment build-up has made it difficult to date the guns at either site, but the one offshore is believed to be the wreck of a sailing ship and, as the cannon are unlike those found inshore, it could be a different wreck.

Clockwise from top right: Photo-mosaic of inshore Chesil cannon-site; multibeam bathymetry image of UC-70; in the U-boat’s control-room.

Possibilities are the Dutch West Indiaman De Hoop, which stranded at Chesil Cove in 1749, and the British cargo vessel Squirrel, which stranded on Chesil Beach the following year.

HE says the sites have significant potential for further study and comparison with existing cannonsites such as West Bay and Salcombe.

The U-boat is the German Imperial Navy’s UC-70 mine-laying submarine,

commissioned in 1916. It conducted 10 patrols and sank 40 ships during the war before being bombed on 28 August, 1918 off Whitby, with the loss of all crew.

The Type UC II-class is regarded as the most successful submarine design in history. UC-70 was discovered as part of HE’s recent work to research and survey WW1 submarine losses in UK territorial waters around England.

Divers are allowed on protected wreck-sites, of which there are 53 around England, if licensed by HE. Two current protected historic shipwrecks, HMS Colossus in the Isles of Scilly and the Hazardous in Bracklesham Bay, West Sussex, have now had their protected areas increased, following the discovery of archaeological material lying outside the previously designated areas. n

Jail sentences for Chinese shark-poachers in Galapagos waters IN A VERDICT INTENDED to fire a warning shot across the bows of vessels fishing illegally for sharks in leading scuba destination Galapagos, a court in Ecuador has sentenced 20 crew from a Chinese refrigerated cargo vessel to between one and four years in jail.

Fines totalling US $5.9 million were also imposed for taking sharks from the reserve.

The Fu Yuan Yu Leng 999 is

divEr

10

reported to be the biggest ship ever captured in the Galapagos Marine Reserve, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It was intercepted by the Ecuadorean Navy on 13 August and its crew arrested.

The vessel, which has now been confiscated, was carrying some 300 tonnes of fish, consisting mainly of 6600 sharks. The catch included near-extinct and endangered

species such as hammerheads, and baby sharks, an indication that fishing had taken place within the reserve.

The detention of the vessel sparked an official complaint to the Chinese embassy in Ecuador’s capital Quito, and demonstrations by environmentalists outside it.

Protesters were reinforced by members of the Galapagos community, who feel that the

Pacific islands’ livelihood from fishing and tourism is under threat from poachers.

Ecuador’s President Moreno has stated that he will not stand for violation of the nation’s maritime sovereignty by any foreign fishing fleet – referring to up to 200 Chinese-flagged vessels that are alleged to be operating in the Galapagos Islands’ exclusive economic zone. n

www.divErNEt.com

News OCT v2.qxp_DIVER grid 01/09/2017 17:29 Page 11

FOUR DIVERS DIE OFF IRISH AND SCOTTISH COASTS THE BODY OF A CANADIAN technical diver who had gone missing off Donegal’s north coast two days previously was recovered by a diveteam on 14 August.

It was located during underwater searches about 20 miles off Fanad Head, and brought ashore at Downings for formal identification.

The unnamed diver, who was in his 60s and from Ottawa, was part of a group that had been exploring the 65m-deep wreck of the WW2 convoy rescue ship Pinto from a charter-boat.

Helicopter and boat searches coordinated by the Irish Coast Guard from Belfast had continued until it was concluded that the man would not be found at the surface. Sea conditions were described as heavy and challenging.

The diver had last been seen on an 18m decompression stage by other

members of his group.

Another death had occurred on 28 July off Donegal, when English diver John Alwright was reported to have been swept into a cave by currents.

The 57-year-old from Langford, Beds, was visiting the area with a divegroup, and the incident occurred near the village of Portnablagh.

Alwright was reported to be unresponsive when he was brought to the surface by fellow-divers.

Mulroy Bay Coast Guard and Sligo’s Rescue 118 helicopter attended the scene and the diver was treated using a defibrillator, but he was pronounced dead after being airlifted to hospital.

A post mortem was carried out as part of a police investigation.

The following day, two Scottish divers died after being recovered from the sea at Castlebay on the Hebridean island of Barra.

A ferry-skipper alerted Stornoway Coastguard in late morning after seeing the men’s unmanned boat.

One diver was reported to have been seen surfacing briefly before submerging again, possibly to go to the assistance of the other.

RNLI Barra lifeboats, a Coastguard rescue helicopter and the Barra Coastguard Rescue Team attended the scene and pulled the men from the water about 80 minutes after the call, but they were later declared dead.

One of the men was named as Iain MacDougall, 39, a Castlebay resident said to be an experienced diver who sometimes dived for shellfish commercially. His friend Ryan McGuckin, also 39, was visiting the island from London. Western Isles Police stated that there appeared to be no suspicious circumstances. n

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James Eagan Layne stripped of ghost gear AROUND 100KG OF ”GHOST GEAR” – abandoned fishing nets – was removed from the popular wreck of the James Eagan Layne off Plymouth by divers in the first weekend of August.

The task was carried out by an experienced team of six Ghost Fishing UK divers, using the boat Outcast from Aquanauts Dive Centre, skippered by Dougie Allen.

Working in poor visibility, the team carried out four dives to remove monofilament netting from the stern and a mass of nylon net from the bow of the JEL. ”The monofilament on the James Eagan Layne is no longer a hazard to divers or wildlife, while the bow is a much tidier place without the netting blowing in the swell,” stated Ghost Fishing UK later.

The divers had surveyed the wreck the previous week, releasing entangled spider and edible crabs in the process. ”We hoped they would not return to the nets, and luckily they

The team with the results of their work.

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Land + Sea 25% OFF

Removing the ghost nets. had stayed well away, to enable us to cut away the netting from the wreckage and send it to the surface,” said Ghost Fishing UK’s Secretary Christine Grosart. She said that the netting was found to have begun to damage the wreck in places.

The bags of ghost gear were

CHRISTINE GROSART / GHOST FISHING UK

returned to Plymouth Fisheries, and will be recycled into Econyl yarn, which is then turned into sustainable textiles such as carpets.

Representatives from project coordinator Healthy Seas and partners Aquafil, which makes Econyl, and carpet-manufacturer Milliken joined Ghost Divers on the dive-boat. ”The Healthy Seas initiative is really exciting, because it brings together a whole range of stakeholders and is solution-based,” said Veronika Mikos of Healthy Seas on the day. ”According to a new report, by 2050 there will be more plastic in the seas and oceans than fish. We have to work hard against it, not to let it happen. Today again, we made an important step in that direction.”

Find more at ghostfishing.org n

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News OCT v2.qxp_DIVER grid 01/09/2017 17:30 Page 12

DIVER NEWS

Environmentalists outspoken on Maldives â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;catastrophicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; prospects studying Maldives reefs since 2011, and says that coral cover has been declining year by year.

Last yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bleaching event caused by global climate change and increasing sea temperatures killed off many corals, it says, and this year â&#x20AC;?most reefs were even more devastated, with signs of death and destruction everywhereâ&#x20AC;?. â&#x20AC;?Of course there are always opportunities for some recovery, but the problem is that impacts just keep increasing â&#x20AC;&#x201C; sedimentation, pollution, oceanwarming, overfishing, ocean-acidification, you name it, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all here in the Maldives, which is why the reefs are in such bad shape, and many are unlikely to recover,â&#x20AC;? says expedition scientist and Marine

X-VISION ULTRA

BIOSPHERE EXPEDITIONS

D

IRE WARNINGS ABOUT CORAL destruction and the future of the Maldives have been issued by international conservation body Biosphere Expeditions, in the wake of its eighth annual reef survey expedition. And resort development is among causes being held to blame. â&#x20AC;?The corals that are the foundation of the Maldives archipelago are dead or dying, following the Great Barrier Reef down a path of catastrophic decline, death and destruction,â&#x20AC;? is the hard-hitting conclusion of a report calculated to alarm the many fans of the popular diving destination.

Biosphere Expeditions, a member of IUCN and the UNâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Environment Programme, has been

Drs Matthias Hammer and Jean-Luc Solandt.

Conservation Society coral expert Dr Jean-Luc Solandt. â&#x20AC;?Indeed, many of the resorts in central areas where we have surveyed are where weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve recorded the most catastrophic declines, as the intensity of human impact is highest there.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;?Without this coral foundation, you do not have an economy, a country or a basis to live on,â&#x20AC;? says Dr Matthias Hammer, Biosphere Expeditions founder and Executive Director, â&#x20AC;?and the Maldives are in the process of destroying this foundation of their survival as a nationâ&#x20AC;?.

Expedition leader Catherine Edsell reports that â&#x20AC;?this year we saw foreign investors, in conjunction with the Maldives Ministry of Tourism, reclaim 7km of land to build tourist islands akin to those in Dubai. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The dredging and dumping of millions of tonnes of sand smothers the corals in silt and kills them for miles around.â&#x20AC;? Affected coral cover can return to pre-bleaching abundance within 12 -15 years â&#x20AC;&#x201C; but only if there are no other pressures on it.

Apart from sedimentation, ocean acidification and human impacts, Rafil Mohammed of local NGO Reef Check Maldives says that â&#x20AC;?rampant overfishing is another serious problem. Each year there are more visitors, more demand for fish and shrinking fish populations. This too is a very serious threat to our countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s futureâ&#x20AC;?.

Find Biosphere Expeditions research reports from 2011-2016 at biosphere-expeditions.org n

CENTER OF VISION. EDGE OF PERFORMANCE. SUSANNAH COGMAN

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Divers check the reef. divEr

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News OCT v2.qxp_DIVER grid 01/09/2017 17:31 Page 13

How a GoPro helped to find missing ring TALES OF LOST JEWELLERY recovered through diver searches may be familiar, but a recent twist in the Cayman Islands was the application of technology in the form of a camcorder.

Visiting diver Jessica Pasquarelli realised that her wedding ring was missing after returning from a dive on the USS Kittiwake wreck off Grand Cayman, according to a report in the Cayman Compass.

Pasquarelli assumed that her ring was lost for good on the 77m-long wreck, but fortunately instructor Mark Rowe from Divetech, the centre that had organised the dive, had been asked to capture her entire dive on a GoPro. He encouraged her to go through the footage, in the hope of narrowing the search area.

Following his advice,

Pasquarelli spotted that the ring had been on her finger when she swam into one of the ship’s recompression chambers, but was missing when she emerged.

The next day an instructor dived the wreck and found the ring lodged beneath floor-plates in the chamber. ”Words cannot explain how much I appreciate them and how they went above and beyond for a customer’s ring that was lost in the ocean,” said Pasquarelli.

“This is proof that there are still good people in the world who truly care.”

“It was great that we had the GoPro footage to find it,” Divetech’s owner Joanna Mikutowicz told the paper. ”We’ve had people lose wedding rings, cameras and flashlights before, but we have never been able to find them for them.” n

19-year-old dies freediving off Zakynthos A BRITISH WATERSPORTS instructor died on 6 August while freediving off the island of Zakynthos in Greece.

Harry Byatt, 19, was using a monofin and mask when he failed to resurface from a dive. A spokesman for the Peligoni Club resort where he worked told the BBC that the alarm was not raised until five minutes after he started his dive.

Byatt was found unconscious on the seabed at 30m and brought to the surface. He was taken ashore where he was given CPR, but was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital. A coroner’s report was being prepared. n

Into Their

World San Diego Ensenada Guadalupe

Perils of interfering with antiquities in Med… SIX GREEK SCUBA-DIVERS have been charged with illegally diving on a Roman shipwreck and removing antiquities from it.

They were arrested by Coast Guard officers near the village of Limeni, on the Peloponnese coast, on 22 August.

The arrests of the men, aged between 34 and 50, followed a tip-off, according to local media.

Their vehicle was searched and artefacts found in it were recovered and sent to be evaluated by the Underwater Antiquities Ephorate, the body that controls maritime archaeological activities in Greece.

Scuba-diving gear found in the vehicle was

confiscated and the men were taken before a public prosecutor and charged with violating laws on the protection of antiquities and cultural heritage.

Y Meanwhile, another warning against interfering with eastern Mediterranean underwater heritage – British snorkeller Toby Robyns was still in jail in Turkey as divEr went to press after finding 13 ancient coins on the seabed at Turgutreis – and trying to fly them back to Britain in his cabin baggage.

The 52-year-old ambulance-driver, from Southwick in West Sussex, was arrested on charges of smuggling historic treasures at Bodrum airport. n

…BUT FAKE ANTIQUITIES ALSO PROVE TEMPTING TURKISH DIVER Murat Yaman, who owns Poseidon Diving School in Gumuldur in the western Turkish province of Izmir, produces his own underwater sculptures based on classical themes – but he appears to have been too successful in making them look realistic.

As a result they have became the target of treasure-hunters convinced of their historical value, according to a report in the Hurriyet Daily News.

Following commissions from local hotels, Yaman created

www.divErNEt.com

Murat Yaman. sculptures resembling fragments of classical columns or statue heads to form an ”underwater museum” around Tavsan Island,

with his dive-centre taking guests diving to see them. Then some of the artworks started to disappear.

Confirmation that the thefts were the work of treasure-hunters came, he said, when he was approached by people who were unaware that he was the creator of the sculptures – and asked to steal them on their behalf. ”People started spreading the word that my sculptures have genuine historical value, and they ended up getting stolen because of treasure-hunters. I’m sick of it,” he told the newspaper. n

Come talk to us at DIVE, booth 430, to find out why reluctant divers try Guadalupe Great White Shark diving once, and get hooked for life.

Call your favourite tour operator!

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News OCT v2.qxp_DIVER grid 01/09/2017 17:32 Page 14

DIVER NEWS

Rooswijk wreck finds on N Ramsgate harbour workshop where the finds are being conserved.

PHOTOGRAPHS: HISTORIC ENGLAND / RCE

Dive-team member with glass brandy bottle.

EW FINDS FROM THE wreck of the Rooswijk, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) vessel that sank on Goodwin Sands off Kent in January 1740, have been displayed at open days in Ramsgate in August and September.

An international team of maritime archaeologists has been diving and recording the historic wreck this summer, and excavating storage rooms and living quarters in the stern.

Rigging block recovered from the site.

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A member of the dive-team at work on the wreck.

Items such as wooden seaman’s chests, pewter jugs and spoons, glass bottles, ornately carved knife-handles and shoes have been recovered and brought ashore at Ramsgate for ”firstaid” conservation.

The Rooswijk was on only her second voyage, heading for Jakarta (then Batavia) with a cargo of silver ingots and coins, stone blocks and iron bars, when she sank with no survivors.

Originally discovered by a sports diver, the protected wreck-site was partially excavated in 2005. It is managed by Historic England (HE) but all remains are owned by the Dutch government.

The #Rooswijk1740 project is led and financed by the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands. ”The Goodwin Sands has been a treacherous place for ships throughout the centuries and is now a treasure trove for archaeologists,” said Project Leader Martijn Manders. ”It is also popular with sports divers. ”The rapidly shifting sands mean

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News OCT v2.qxp_DIVER grid 01/09/2017 17:36 Page 15

DIVER NEWS

COLLECTION OF THE FRIES SCHEEPVAARTMUSEUM.

display in Kent Glass bottle.

PHOTOGRAPHS: HISTORIC ENGLAND / RCE

A Dutch hekboot similar to the Rooswijk. that the site is even more exposed now than it was during our initial dives to assess the condition of the Rooswijk last year. This makes the excavation urgent.”

The site is classed as ”high risk” on the Heritage at Risk register. ”We are excited about this project because the Rooswijk is a showcase of modern underwater archaeology in which co-operation is essential,” said Manders. ”It provides unique opportunities for young professionals and the public to participate and is a project through which we can learn about our shared past and who we are.”

Only a third of the 250 VOC shipwrecks around the world have been located, and the Rooswijk is said to be the first to be scientifically researched or excavated on this scale.

From Ramsgate, finds will be taken to an HE storage facility to be

Ceramic jug neck.

Pewter tankard.

Copper-alloy oil-lamp.

Pewter spoon.

Leather shoe. assessed, analysed and conserved, and later returned to the Netherlands, though some may later be made available for display in Ramsgate.

Further information is available at historicengland.org.uk n

Ornately carved wooden knife-handle.

MAS

KENT & ESSEX DIVERS SET EXAMPLE ON FINDS MORE THAN 100 archaeological and historical marine finds have been submitted during the first 12 months of the Marine Antiquities Scheme.

Ranging from Neolithic and Roman relics to more recent candlesticks and remnants of modern ordnance, the finds have been recorded mainly by scuba-divers.

The MAS is an initiative designed to improve knowledge of underwater heritage and protect it by encouraging the voluntary recording of items found in English and Welsh waters.

Launched in July 2016, it is funded by the Crown Estate, managed by Wessex Archaeology and modelled on the British Museum’s Portable Antiquities Scheme.

Finders report online or through an app that provides feedback and includes guidance on reporting finds to the Receiver of Wreck.

Archaeological experts then research the submitted item’s origins and history, with their

www.divErNEt.com

findings eventually published on the publicly accessible MAS database.

Only 13 records have been published to date, although this is set to double shortly, the Crown Estate told divEr, with the rate of reporting expected to increase over time, mainly during the diving season. ”To date, the majority of the finds have come from Kent and Essex, reflecting the especially active diving communities in those areas,” says the Crown Estate.

Divers who possess ”legacy finds” – items recovered and reported in previous years – are also invited to submit them to the MAS database.

One example was an almost-complete saltglazed stoneware barrel costrel, or flask, probably German and 17th century. This was originally recovered more than 50 years ago on a Channel Islands dive to around 18m that also revealed cannon, cannonballs and lead sheeting.

Other finds reported have included onion

Legacy find: a stoneware flask. bottles dating to around 1700, square gin-bottles and 19th and 20th-century pottery.

Unusual items have included remnants of a ship’s funnel or ventilator that was to be used in an art exhibition, and a 19th-century surgeon’s pestle.

The MAS app for iOS and Android phones and tablets can be downloaded from app stores – or submit finds online at marinefinds.org.uk n

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News OCT v2.qxp_DIVER grid 01/09/2017 17:41 Page 16

Next Stop:

More super-corals identified – in Red Sea T

Los Angeles

Cabo Socorro

HE LATEST NEWS of ”super-corals” that might be capable of resisting the bleaching effects brought on by climate change comes from the Gulf of Aqaba in the northern Red Sea. Working in laboratory conditions, scientists from EPFL and UNIL in Switzerland and Bar-Ilan University and the InterUniversity Institute of Marine Sciences in Israel exposed Stylophora pistillata corals for six weeks to the sort of high water-temperature and acidic conditions expected to occur in the region in the future.

They found not only that the corals didn’t bleach, but that they appeared to adapt to the stressful artificial environment and improve in condition.

Stylophora pistillata, better known to divers as smooth cauliflower or hood coral, does not necessarily show the same resilience in other parts of the world.

It is thought that after the last Ice Age only the most resistant specimens were equipped to recolonise the warm waters of the Red Sea from the Indian Ocean – and by the time they gained its

Stylophora pistillata coral. northern reaches the water had in fact became cooler, leaving them effectively over-resistant.

The corals in the Gulf of Aqaba may be equipped to resist climate-change effects but they remain exposed to other threats such as local pollution and overfishing. Stylophora pistillata has an IUCN classification of Near Threatened..

So the scientists want countries in the region – Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia – to co-operate to protect the reefs on which the coral is found.

They want time to be able to unlock more of its secrets, and

hope that it could eventually be used to re-seed dying reefs elsewhere.

Australian researchers recently identified ”super-corals” in New Caledonia, as reported in divEr (The Super-Corals That Offer a Beacon of Hope, August).

That scientific team has since been seeking similarly resistant corals on the Great Barrier Reef.

The study Common ReefBuilding Coral in the Northern Red Sea Resistant to Elevated Temperature and Acidification is published in Royal Society Open Science and can be read at rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org n

Come talk to us at DIVE, booth 430, & find out why Nautilus is the best option to dive Socorro Island.

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Waitrose funds MCS clean-ups SUPERMARKET CHAIN Waitrose is donating £500,000 from carrier-bag sales to the Marine Conservation Society (MCS), which is using the funds to create a new series of around 1000 beach- and river-cleaning events over a year.

And, for the first time, many of the plastics collected by volunteers are set to be sorted and recycled. ”Beach litter has steadily risen over the two decades that MCS volunteers have been recording it on UK beaches,” says MCS Beachwatch Manager Lauren Eyles. ”Last year, on average in the UK, 694 items of litter were

MCS

Call your favourite tour operator!

collected for every 100m cleaned. ”Plastic bottles and carrier-bags, nappies, balloons and tiny plastic pieces can be found on almost every beach in the UK – either washed up, blown there or dropped. But we can all do something positive to help – find your nearest event and get stuck in!”

The MCS, which hopes that the events will attract more than 10,000 volunteers, had previously worked with Waitrose on its sustainable seafood programme. Register as an organiser or volunteer for the Waitrose Beach & River Clean-up series at mcsuk.org n

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Exmouth advertorial – 10_17.qxp_Layout 1 30/08/2017 10:31 Page 33

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her very shallow draft, we can load directly at the jetty and explore those very tricky-to-get-to locations, off limits to all other boats. Twin 300hp outboards get us out to the furthest parts of the reef in style and comfort, with a maximum of 15 divers.

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Moored right on Ningaloo Reef, she is ready and waiting for a quick trip to those elusive dive sites like ‘Hole in the Wall’. So join us for amazing, aquatic, eco-tours – watching wildlife in the wild!

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iving is our passion and we can hardly wait to show you what Ningaloo has to offer. A big range of sharks and other large fish swim up from the continental shelf, just offshore.

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Dive Sangha (FP) â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 10_17.qxp_Divesangha 08/08/2017 13:16 Page 1

Beachcomber OCT.qxp_Beachcomber 05/09/2017 11:12 Page 19

BEACHCOMBER Playing with fire So there they were, on the club outing. Half the team were sitting on the tubes of the RIB post-dive, enjoying some pleasant sunshine as they waited for the second wave to complete their dive when one of the gents lit a cigarette.

Not as common as it used to be, maybe, but you see the odd fag on dive-boats now and then. There was enough breeze to carry the smoke away, and as soon as the next head broke the surface the cigarette was put out so that the smoker could lend a hand getting the divers safely back aboard.

Put out… by stubbing the glowing end on the tube of the RIB. The rest of the club immediately leapt into action and scooped water over tube, smoker and ciggie to avert disaster, and avoid a long swim home.

Ring-bound The course of true love seldom runs true, but with a bit of grit and determination it can be wrestled back on track.

Evan Nadeau and his fiancée Erin Helfen went for a walk around a set of well-known local waterfalls and decided on a quick dip in the pool at the bottom, which was lovely. Not long after setting off back, Erin realised that her diamond engagement ring was no longer on her finger, and the couple quickly realised that it must be in the pool where they had swum.

Not being the sort of chap to give up easily, the next day Evan borrowed some scuba gear from a pal and headed back to the pool.

LETTING DOWN YOUR GUARD Michael Sparks and Samuel Ragsdale are members of that august body the US Coast Guard service, and they’re keen divers.

One day recently they took their boat eight miles offshore and dropped their anchor into a wreck they wanted to explore, kitted up and headed off into the water.

Yes, both of them at the same time. I bet you’ve already worked out where this is headed.

As they swam around the wreck they heard a loud popping noise, but thought nothing of it. Well, you wouldn’t, you often hear odd noises under water, and very rarely ever find out what caused them.

After a thoroughly decent dive, the pair headed back to their anchor and started to follow the line up to the surface, for a total distance of approximately one

foot, which is how much rope was still attached to their anchor after the line had parted.

On the plus side, they now knew what had caused the popping noise. On the minus side, when they reached the surface their boat had vanished.

It took him more than two hours, by the end of which he claims that his knees were blue with cold, but he found the ring.

UK wreck-divers are constantly reminded of wartime when they dive many of the casualties that lie in British waters, but it’s odd to think that the world of commerce can still be affected by events that took place so long ago.

The Nemo Link project will see the laying of a pair of gigantic underwater cables across the North Sea and the Channel, and through it Britain and Belgium will be able to exchange electricity, should one have a bit much and the other need a bit extra.

But before the cables can go down, any dangerous litter on the seabed has to be found and raised. So far that has added up to 12,000 items, 1200 of which were potentially dangerous, including mines and other unexploded ordnance from both world wars.

Eight explosive devices have been raised and destroyed off Belgium, four off France and six in UK waters.

It’s a minefield In October 1917, World War One was still raging furiously across the mud of Flanders and the cold, grey wastes of the North Sea, but that was a long time ago and the Great War has been over for almost a century.

We’ve had another world war since then, but that one has been over for more than 70 years.

Michael managed to kick up a bit and look around, and did catch site of their craft as a wave washed past and lifted him further out of the water, but it was three miles away.

Kitted-up & ripped

Man and fish Japanese diver Hiroyuki Arakawa is 79 years old and has been diving for 60 of them. Thirty years ago he spotted a female Asian sheepshead wrasse that looked to have been hurt, and he started to care for it by feeding it crabs and generally fussing over it.

Yoriko, as he calls the fish, lives

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in Hasama Underwater park in Tateyama, Japan, and since that first meeting Arakawa has seen her almost every day, and the pair are reported to have forged a unique bond.

So much for the idea that fish have a memory span of 20 seconds.

According to the Tenby Observer, scuba-diving is one of the caloriebusting activities that will allow gymlovers to work out on the beach.

I know you can’t actually scuba dive on a beach, but I think the paper might have a point. The most calorieintensive part of any dive is kitting up, especially if you’re climbing into a tight wetsuit, and you can do that on the beach, no problem.

I almost wrote no sweat, but that would be wrong.

So, eight miles offshore and no boat. Can you imagine how they felt? No, me neither.

Dropping their weightbelts so that they would be more buoyant, they settled in to float peacefully along and wait for help. They had told people where they were going, so were confident that it was just a matter of time, and it was.

Happy ending. Except, you need to bear in mind that the US Coast Guard rescues daft people for a living. Can you imagine the ribbing they got when they were safely out of the water?

And can you imagine how long it will take them to live it down?

I expect that when they retire, whoever presents them with their gold watches will remind everybody about the time they lost their own dive-boat.

Vlad the Impaler

It’s holiday time, and if you’re Vladimir Putin it’s time to get your kit off and head back to nature to be filmed doing something robust, manly and adventurous to remind the Russian people why they keep on electing you president.

This year it was spearfishing for pike.

Allegedly it took the snorkelling president two hours to hunt down and spear his smallish pike in icy Siberian waters, and he filmed most of it on his GoPro if you’re interested, just like us ordinary folks.

Mind you, can you imagine Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn doing anything like that?

Bone shaken Imagine diving for lobbies and finding yourself hooking out a human skull, with other bits of skeleton nearby.

That’s exactly what happened to a Florida couple.

It hasn’t been possible to say how long the bones were in the water, who they used to be or to determine cause of death, but those two won’t forget the day they didn’t find a lobster.

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Truk pt.1.qxp_DIVER grid 05/09/2017 11:04 Page 20

RUSTY PILGRIMAGE Today every square centimetre of the globe can be inspected from satellites, but during WW2 the Imperial Japanese Navy managed to hide most of its Pacific fleet inside a fortified atoll in Micronesia. When US Forces discovered the truth about Truk Lagoon, it was game over – yet the violent strike took the Japanese completely by surprise. In the first of a two-part feature, JESPER KJØLLER reports on the action and its incredible legacy Pictured: Momokawa Maru’s engine-room is a rusty wonderland of panels, gauges, lamps and dials.

Right: Explosion hole on Shinkoku Maru. Truk Master has two DPVs for rental, useful for exploring larger wrecks.

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Truk pt.1.qxp_DIVER grid 05/09/2017 11:04 Page 21

TRUK DIVER

E

VER SINCE WATCHING Jacques Cousteau’s documentary Lagoon of Lost Ships when I was a kid, I had wanted to visit the place, so far from my native Denmark. Thousands of wreck-dives later, and 25 years after being certified as a diver, I finally find myself in Truk Lagoon for the first time.

I want to start the adventure wellrested and fine-tuned to the Pacific time-zone, so having arrived at the small airport on Weno, I plan to adjust my jet-lag at Blue Lagoon Resort, where I have booked two nights before boarding the Truk Master.

The road from the airport to the resort is in poor condition, but the scenery is exotic. Women walk along the road in colourful outfits with flowers in their hair, as if they have just stepped out of a Gauguin painting.

Strangely, the cars all seem to have

right-hand steering, yet they don’t drive on the left here. Perhaps that’s why so many cars lie wrecked beside the road?

Blue Lagoon Resort is a somewhat shabby lodge with a very laidback service concept. However, it is said to be the best resort on the island. I remind myself that Truk is a poor and remote location, and I spend most of the two days in the resort reading up on the historical background of the adventure that lies ahead of me.

Secret fortification There were already ties between Japan and Truk in the late 19th century, when Japanese seafarers began visiting the islands inside the enormous atoll. After World War One, Japan was formally awarded a mandate to govern Micronesia as part of the Treaty of Versailles. ☛

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Truk pt.1.qxp_DIVER grid 05/09/2017 11:06 Page 23

TRUK DIVER Japanese expatriates settled on the islands and developed the infrastructure.

The two cultures blended, with interracial marriages not uncommon, a fact evident today in the locals’ facial features and names.

As Japan became increasingly militarised in the 1920s and ‘30s, naval officers recognised the advantages of the sheltered lagoon, and secretly turned Truk into a fortified stronghold.

The lagoon was ideally situated halfway between Hawaii and the Philippines, and Truk became Japan’s principal naval supply station for both commercial and military operations in the Pacific theatre.

The military reinforcement of the lagoon was in direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles, but the Japanese managed to carry out the fortification in utmost secrecy, and no foreigners were allowed to visit the area.

Knowledgeable crew I leave terra firma to board the Truk Master. It’s a stark contrast to the weary resort – on the boat everything is clean, effective and streamlined. The local crew-members are very friendly, helpful and speak excellent English, and the liveaboard is roomy, with large cabins and plenty of space for cameras and gear.

The satellite-based wi-fi on the boat is probably the fastest and most reliable in Micronesia. However, it’s expensive to use, so it’s wise to keep your Internet time to a minimum – or get off the grid completely for a while.

The boat is captained by the experienced British skipper Martin Cridge, an enthusiastic wreck-diver, and our 10-day trip is led by the young but very competent Cruise Director Aron Arngrímsson from Iceland. Martin and Aron’s combined extensive knowledge of the wrecks and their enthusiasm for Truk adds an extra dimension.

In addition, the local dive-guides on Truk Master know every nook and cranny of the wrecks – they have literally grown up on them.

The boat has a nice reference library in the saloon, so after setting up my equipment and camera I continue my studies of Operation Hailstone while waiting for the trip to commence.

Sitting Duck The Americans suspected that Truk Lagoon was used as a Japanese anchorage, but they had no idea of the massive scale of the military operation inside the lagoon. More than 40,000 Japanese civilians lived and worked on Truk. More than 1000 war and supply ships were moored there, and a total of five airfields supported close to 500 aircraft.

Among the vessels were battleships, www.divErNEt.com

CHUUK or TRUK?

Chuuk has been the correct and current name to use since Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) was formed in 1979.

Chuuk means “mountain” or “mountainous” in the local tongue. Using Truk is like calling Sri Lanka Ceylon, or Thailand Siam. However, the place was called Truk during the war, and also when the wrecks were rediscovered by the Cousteau team in 1969 – and, crucially, Truk Lagoon remains a wellknown brand all over the diving world.

Top: The HA-GO tanks on the deck of San Francisco Maru are tiny, but the Japanese still managed to squeeze three soldiers inside them.

Above right: This truck chassis with its intact steering wheel is slowly rusting away in the forward hold of Sankisan Maru.

Right: Ships of the US Pacific fleet anchored at Majuro in the Marshall Islands, shortly before leaving to attack Truk.

cruisers, submarines, aircraft-carriers and, in addition, a huge number of auxiliary vessels, supply ships and tenders.

As the war progressed, the Allied forces gradually came closer and closer. Early in February 1944, the lagoon was overflown by two American PB-4Y Liberator reconnaissance aircraft from a base in the Solomon Islands.

The Japanese tried to shoot down the spy planes, but the American pilots managed to escape, with revealing recce photos. The secret was out. The US generals immediately started planning an air-raid from aircraft-carriers. Operation Hailstone was conceived.

The Japanese commanders, realising that Truk was a sitting duck, decided to evacuate the more valuable warships to another base in Palau. But many cargo ☛

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Left: On the operating table inside the infirmary on Shinkoku Maru, someone has arranged a cluster of large bones, but they are probably not human remains.

Above: Compass binnacle on the bridge of the wreck.

vessels stayed behind, and others were still incoming, not knowing that their cover was blown.

Some of the ships were unable to move because they were under repair, or in the middle of off-loading cargo. There was also a shortage of fuel.

A few vessels were empty, but many had holds and decks packed with tanks, mines, artillery, land vehicles, aviation spare parts, fuel and other supplies for the Japanese war machine.

Still lifes After a few warm-up dives, it’s time to dive the mighty Shinkoku Maru, which is completely encrusted with soft and hard corals. The superstructure is so overgrown with marine life that the wreck took an extra-hard beating during the hurricane of March 2015. The additional weight from the corals made the funnel collapse in the rough weather.

There is so much nature to be enjoyed on Shinkoku that you almost forget that this is a reef of metal. Everywhere, clouds of glassfish swarm in the shadows

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between huge branches of soft coral.

Every square centimetre is covered with corals or huge sea anemones with their clownfish. The railings of the vessel are invisible behind all the growth.

A grey reef shark follows us from a distance, and the local turtle peeks out from one of the holds and swims away slowly.

With so much life, it’s no wonder that Shinkoku Maru is a popular night-dive.

But if for a moment you should forget that you’re diving a renowned WW2 shipwreck, you’re reminded of that reality when you navigate through the explosion hole in the starboard side, and wriggle into the huge engine-room.

The lower parts are quite narrow, and require a guide who knows the route well.

The upper part of the engine-room, on the other hand, is an enormous cathedral with a dim shimmer of light that penetrates through the skylight at the top.

Up on the deck, which is at around 1820m, there are plenty of details to enjoy.

Partly covering the dial of the stern

Below: The wrecks hold many telegraphs – this one is on the bridge of the Shinkoku Maru.

machine telegraph sits a white sea anemone complete with a small resident anemonefish.

It’s tempting to describe Truk Lagoon as the world’s largest underwater museum, but someone has misunderstood the concept a bit. I assume it is well-meaning local dive-guides who have arranged the line-ups of artefacts so typical of Truk.

On most wrecks, you’ll see still-lifes of bottles, porcelain, boots, ammunition, gas-masks, cookware and all kinds of knick-knacks neatly arranged in photogenic positions.

A more naturalistic approach would convey a better impression of life on

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board, but I’m sure these arrays were put together with good intentions.

Inside the superstructure, we swim into the infirmary, complete with operating table. Someone has arranged an assortment of large bones on the table, but I seriously doubt if they are human.

On the bridge, there are no fewer than two intact machine telegraphs and a nice compass-housing, but the bridge is swarming with so much fish-life that it’s almost impossible to take pictures.

I’m only a few dives into the trip, but I’m inclined to nominate Shinkoku Maru as my preliminary favourite. Its combination of all the intact maritime hardware, the impressive marine life and the cathedral-like engine-room will be hard to beat.

The historic setting is what makes the dives on Truk unique, and I dive back into the history-books while off-gassing before the next dive.

Above: A typical Truk Lagoon still life of gas-masks and ammunition cartridges on a beam inside the hold of Nippo Maru.

Above right: Assortment of medicine bottles found on Sankisan Maru – these displays must be made by local dive-guides.

One-sided battle On 16 February, 1944, a powerful US naval assault force consisting of cruisers, battleships, aircraft-carriers, patrol subs and supply and support vessels approached the lagoon undetected.

The fact that the Japanese had evacuated the heavy warships made Truk far more vulnerable, and even if the Imperial Japanese forces suspected a forthcoming attack, they were still caught off-guard when Operation Hailstone began at sunrise the following morning.

Grumman F6F Hellcat fighter planes swept over the lagoon, wiping out the Japanese air power.

At the beginning of the war Zero fighters had outclassed Allied fighter planes, but they were no match for the new, powerful Hellcats, and the Japanese pilots were young and inexperienced. www.divErNEt.com

Right: US dive-bombers over Truk.

The air attack on Truk was so swift and forceful that it resembled the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor in 1941. It was payback time.

Many Japanese planes never got airborne – they were demolished on the ground. Others were shot down as they lifted off, or during short, violent dogfights with the Hellcats.

The US forces established control of the airspace over the lagoon in just a few hours, and soon began to launch wave after wave of bombers to attack the nowvulnerable cargo ships as well as the land installations.

Throughout the rest of 17 February and into the 18th, Douglas Dauntless, Grumman Avenger and Curtiss Helldiver bombers dropped their lethal payload on the defenceless Japanese fortifications and cargo vessels. It was a one-sided battle.

Operation Hailstone resulted in the Japanese losing three light cruisers, four destroyers, eight smaller warships, 32 merchant vessels and approximately 275 aircraft.

Nature takeover From the beginning, the dive operators in the lagoon have been aware of the importance of guarding the underwater treasures that attract the visitors. Good care has been taken to protect the wrecks against pillaging.

When leaving the islands, one’s baggage is likely to be thoroughly searched (I was told that there is no X-ray machine at the airport). If you get caught with any relics from the wrecks in your luggage, you risk a fine of US $10,000, or even a jail sentence.

Inevitably, some articles have disappeared over the years. However, there are still so many interesting objects on board the vessels that there is plenty for everyone to appreciate in situ.

After 73 years at the bottom, the ships are slowly breaking down. One thing is the corrosion, which naturally sets its mark and over time obliterates the metal, but the extensive coral colonisation also helps to blur the contours and details, especially on the shallower wrecks.

In many places the wrecks are so ☛

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TRUK DIVER The smell of gasoline After the war, nobody paid any attention to the Japanese ships on the bottom of the lagoon. The world tried to heal the wounds after World War Two, and hardly any salvage efforts were launched.

The locals in Truk had to deal with the toxic reality of the war of which they never wanted any part. Many of the ships were leaking oil and aviation fuel in significant quantities. Even today, the smell of gasoline is evident above the surface on a few of the wrecks.

Above: Every square centimetre of Shinkoku Maru has been taken over by nature. Even the telegraph in the stern has been occupied by a white anemone.

encrusted with corals that you need a good imagination (and a solid knowledge of maritime architecture and function) to understand what you’re looking at. I kind of like it.

There is something encouraging about seeing how the underwater flora and fauna reclaims its space, given enough time. It’s like watching the roots of a big tree squeezing through a thick layer of asphalt. Sooner or later, nature’s takeover in Truk will be complete.

Life on the islands just continued, and the abandoned military installations either found a civilian purpose or were just left to decompose as nature took over.

The wrecks were forgotten. And soon Truk was also forgotten.

Until a certain French underwater explorer turned up 25 years later… l Next month Jesper Kjøller continues to explore modern-day Truk, while tracing the footsteps of Jacques Cousteau.

TRUK MASTER The newest liveaboard in the region, Truk Master takes up to 16 guests on seven- or 10-night trips in the lagoon, plus occasional trips to Bikini Atoll. Given the long-distance travel, time difference and sheer amount to see, 10-night trips are strongly recommended. The vessel has four decks providing space for relaxation, dive equipment and camera preparation, and caters for technical divers on open- and closed-circuit, masterliveaboards.com

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AIRCRAFT DIVER US dive-teams are working around the world to find the remains of armed forces personnel missing in action from past conflicts, and the process can bring significant wrecks into focus – none more so than a WW2 B-24 Liberator in Croatia. GEMMA SMITH was part of the team.

Photos: BRETT SEYMOUR, NPS/DPAA

O

NE LATE AFTERNOON in March 2017 in Boco Raton, South Florida, I stand in the blazing sunshine and wait. The temperature even in the shade is hot and uncomfortably humid. Despite this, I am busily putting on extra layers to keep me warm.

It doesn’t matter how uncomfortable it makes me right now – in a few minutes when I’m several thousand feet in the air in an unpressurised, cold and draughty B-24 bomber, I know I’ll be glad of it.

Although I’m looking forward to the opportunity to fly in Witchcraft, the only remaining airworthy B-24 in the world, this trip isn’t about just having fun. It’s all about learning the ins and outs of this type of plane for the most meaningful and sobering underwater archaeological job of my career, coming up later in the year off the small island of Vis, in Croatia.

Understanding the layout of this bomber, and where to find things, is going to prove important to our team.

During World War Two, the USA produced only three long-range, fourengined, heavy-duty bombers in any real numbers: the B-17, B-24 and B-29.

Much has been said about the most famous of these, the sleek and elegant B-17 “Flying Fortress” and, later, the B-29 “Super Fortress”. However, the ugly duckling of the group, the B-24 “Liberator”, is nowadays too often overlooked for its more glamorouslooking brothers, despite the innovation of its design and the part it played in helping to win the war.

Our project is going to focus on the wreckage of one particular B-24, now lying at a depth of 37-60m in the Adriatic Sea – the Tulsamerican. This was the last B-24 to be built by the Douglas Plant of Tulsa, a joint project financed by the Tulsa community, the people of Oklahoma, and factory workers. It became a community icon, and remains so to this day.

It flew many successful missions in the war until the fateful day of 17 December, 1944. Having survived a vicious dogfight with the Luftwaffe, the badly ☛

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damaged Tulsamerican was attempting to limp back to the Allied airfield on Vis for repairs when it crashed into the sea.

The speed and angle with which it hit the water caused the fuselage to rip in half, the aft section eventually sinking into deeper water at around 60m.

The cockpit almost completely disintegrated, but the forward section remains relatively intact.

Of the 10 men on board, three of the crew were unable to get out of the plane in time. One is believed to have drifted away while still on the surface, but the pilot and the navigator are thought to remain within the wreckage to this day.

Our team wants either to return these men home, or definitively prove that they are no longer there. One way or another, we want to bring closure to their families.

W

E ARRIVE IN the Croatian city of Split in mid-June to meet the rest of our team. Most are familiar faces, with whom we have worked over the past few years on the Antikythera project in Greece, but there are some newcomers.

This is a project carried out primarily with the DPAA (Defence Prisoner Of War / Missing In Action Accounting Agency), a US government agency formed in 2015 from within the US Department of Defence. Its sole mission is to recover military personnel listed as missing, from all past wars and conflicts all over the world, so we also have representatives of that organisation along on this project.

We all feel it’s important for the crewmen to be returned to their families, and are united by our common goal.

Project life is never without its complications, and this one is also a massive collaboration between many different organisations, including not only the DPAA but Lund University of

Above and below: The dive-team works on the wreckage of the B-24 bomber, still only too recognisably a large bomber.

Sweden, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the US National Parks Service and the Croatian Navy.

We have multiple-PhD archaeologists on our team, professional divers, underwater photographers and videographers and an underwater rigging team, as well as a dry-land film-crew, who will join us later for a documentary they are making

for NOVA TV about our mission.

Our first job once we reach Vis is to move all our gear, including rebreathers, stages, compressors, pumps, dredges, scooters, survey grids, rigging gear, specialist bone-detection devices and much more, to the large Navy vessel on which we are based.

On the first night of our stay I get a wasp-sting on my eyelid, and spend the next couple days with an eye swollen to the size of a tennis ball. These things happen on expeditions, and it’s just one aspect of being in a remote place with basic living conditions. Either you accept it or you find a different career!

Wearing an eyepatch and looking like a pirate for a few days is insignificant in relation to what we’re trying to achieve.

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UR RECONNAISSANCE dive on this wreck is worth every bit of effort the team has put into the project. We have all spent so many months researching the history, schematics and layout of this plane that to see it in the flesh is surreal.

I descend the shotline with Brendan Foley, lead man behind the project, and we see the wreckage of the Tulsamerican appear beneath us for the first time.

Despite seeing numerous photos and video footage, I’m still surprised by how

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AIRCRAFT DIVER the sediment to remain undisturbed.

After our first week of perfect weather, the wind changes direction and denies us access to our site for eight days. It’s a frustration that all divers have experienced at one time or another, but it never gets any easier.

Everyone is keen and motivated to work, but all we can do is watch the waves crashing and the wind howling, and wait it out.

Three of the dive-team do get the chance during this time to dive on another aircraft wreck, a B-17 lying at 72m, which the DPAA believes might also contain remains of a crew-member.

We carry out only one reconnaissance dive, but this is without doubt the most incredible plane wreck I've ever seen. It is almost totally intact, down to propellers still being attached to all four engines. It looks ready to take off from the seabed and start flying again at any moment.

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relatively intact it is.

The aircraft was turned upside down by the impact of the crash, sustaining serious damage, but it is still obviously a plane, and not just a heap of unidentifiable broken metal.

The four radial engines are very broken up, but stand up proudly from the seabed, one with the propellers still attached.

The wings reach out eagerly to each side, and poking from beneath some twisted metal are the flimsy remains of the parachutes that were never deployed.

Dipping our heads under the wings, we see two huge oxygen cylinders that were used for supplying a breathable gas to the crew when at high altitudes.

Ammunition litters the seabed, and the control wheels of the pilot and co-pilot can be seen thrown brutally to one side, where the cockpit was ripped off at a 90° angle. The Tulsamerican will never fly again, but despite the damage it remains something to be admired.

The first week of the excavation goes smoothly. Long days consist of multiple dive rotations followed by wet-sieving on the boat of everything dredged from the seafloor. Two- or three-man teams go in shifts to excavate and carefully waterwww.divErNEt.com

dredge around the plane, where we believe the airmen might still be.

Each working team contains at least one archaeologist and one professional diver to oversee the scientists as they work. It’s a slow process.

The remains we seek could be tiny, and it’s imperative that nothing is missed.

Although no osseous remains are immediately obvious, we do slowly begin to unearth personal equipment. The copilot’s oxygen mask is uncovered for the first time in more than 70 years, and the next day we find the pilot’s headphones, buried in the sediment surrounding the mangled cockpit.

Although this plane was discovered and identified only within the past decade, it is now dived fairly regularly by recreational divers, who have unfortunately begun to slowly strip away the plane. All we hope is that what we seek is deep enough beneath

Above: The Tulsamerican in flight during WW2.

Below: A ramp makes it easy to get back onto the dive-boat.

INALLY THE WEATHER breaks, and we’re able to get back to the job. With only 10 diving days left at the site, we’re eager to finish what we started.

Although we’re keen to disturb the site as little as possible, after further discussions with the archaeologists, DPAA members and the Croatian Ministry of Culture, it’s decided to remove the parachutes from the site. Despite our best efforts, we have been unable to dredge successfully beneath them, and can’t take the risk of closing the site without fully exploring the possibility that remains may be hidden there.

Team one is tasked with the removal job, and by the time Brendan and I drop down as team two to start excavations, it’s clear that we have found our area.

I wish I was eloquent enough to put into words the thoughts and feelings of seeing something lying in the hollow of silt where the parachute had been, and realising that it is possible human ☛

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remains. This could be someone’s brother, husband, father, son, and we are finally going to allow them to go home to their families. It’s an indescribable feeling, and one I don’t think I will ever forget.

Over the next few days we continue to find further possible osseous remains, as

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well as the “Mae West” life-jacket that the men would have been wearing in the event of ditching in the sea.

It is an emotional experience for the whole team, and we are all affected in different ways. The overriding feeling is one of duty to these men, and the commitment to ensure that they are

Above: This view shows all four engines on the intact wings of the inverted aircraft.

Below, from top left: The project team; returning to the dive-boat; displaying the MIA team flag on the wreck.

treated as respectfully as possible now that they have been found. That night we buy a bottle of whiskey and toast these fallen airmen, who paid the ultimate sacrifice in the war.

As the diving draws to a close and we demobilise and start the journey to our next project, my part in this story comes to an end. From here, all possible osseous remains and personal items are sent to laboratories in the States for DNA testing and analysis.

Results may take weeks, months or even years, but it is hoped that all remains can be conclusively linked to individuals.

Easier said than done – often there is no genetic data on file for lost men of WW2, and scientists have to rely on descendants coming forward to get a DNA match.

Sometimes people ask: “Why put so much effort into searching for these longgone men?” The answer is simple: leave no American soldier behind. The DPAA’s motto of “You are not forgotten” still holds true. I’m proud that I was able to play a small part in helping to bring some of these men home.

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A

S AN UNDERWATER CAMERAMAN, I’ve been lucky enough to dive in some of the most pristine seas and remote environments on the planet but also to film in locations where few ever get the opportunity to go.

Filming assignments to the Great Barrier Reef to shoot on a major BBC Sir David Attenborough series; the Solomons and Chuuk to film the aftermath of war in the Coral Seas; and the Galapagos Islands, again for a recent three-part BBC1 series.

Diving on the Saudi Arabian side of the Red Sea and in the Saudi waters of the Arabian Gulf for National Geographic for more than a year contrasting the two seas was also a rare chance. Cave-diving in Norway, under the Arctic ice, the marine lakes of Palau – they are all listed there in my logbooks and passports.

People might think that I could become a little blasé about these opportunities and shun diving in lessexotic locations, but I love my work with a passion, and diving closer to home has never deterred me.

I’m the first to admit that working in British waters and endeavouring to shoot stunning images can present a number of challenges, and nowhere more so than in the Solent Channel.

This stretch of water, renowned for its complex tides, ripping currents and limited visibility, is always a tough place to film. But there is a wealth of history in these waters, dating back to prehistoric times. That makes the challenge so worthwhile, and I’ll never tire of it.

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NQUESTIONABLY THE MOST famous vessel to be excavated, lifted and restored from the Solent is Henry VIII’s flagship the Mary Rose. It was this ship that spearheaded an attack against a French invasion fleet but sank in front of the King in 1545.

The Mary Rose, a veteran of the Tudor navy, is the jewel in the crown of our maritime past, but there are other wrecks lying in these waters, each with a different story to tell. One in particular is once again revealing itself to archaeologists.

Lying barely three miles out from the historic waterfront of Portsmouth in the murky waters of the eastern Solent Channel, is the wreck of the Invincible, which sank in 1758. A French warship, she had been captured by the British in 1747.

Her construction was so significant that she influenced British-designed warships to the time of Trafalgar and beyond – this type of ship became the

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INVINCIBLE

50’ 44.34N, 01’ 02.23W

MICHAEL PITTS, one of the world's leading underwater cameramen, has been turning his attention from wildlife in clear waters to 18th-century human life in green, murky waters. He explains why he has relished the opportunity

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backbone of the Royal Navy.

In March 2012, archaeologist and current licensee Dan Pascoe, following in the footsteps of the previous custodian Commander John Bingeman, who had held the post for three decades, invited me to dive on the Invincible for the first time.

Since then, I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved in recording the remains of this famous fighting ship, with the ultimate aim of producing a documentary film. It’s a story that can’t be ignored, and with each year that passes different parts of the wreck are being exposed.

Nothing had quite prepared me for the sheer size and scale of the hull timbers that protrude from the seabed. On that day in March, so early in the season, we had at least 5m of visibility, with no kelp obscuring the wreck.

It was an exceptional first dive, but it took many more to familiarise myself with this vast site. So much of the hull

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Left: Diver with a bluegreen bottle found intact on the Invincible.

Above: Hull timbers.

Above right: Dan Pascoe with a hatch-cover.

Below: The Invincible pictured in her heyday.

survives, the port side intact, the starboard side broken and scattered. It can be confusing to know exactly where you are, but each dive leaves you better acquainted with how the Invincible lies.

I didn’t underestimate the visibility that day; these are exceptional conditions for the Solent Channel. Quite often you’re diving in a thick pea-greenish broth with little chance of filming, but we had such a good view then and I judge every dive since on that remarkable first encounter.

We were lucky enough to get a few days’ near-repeating of those conditions during the June 2017 excavations. This new phase of the investigation is funded by a £2 million grant from fines imposed by the LIBOR banking scandal.

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HE PROJECT TEAM is led by the Maritime Archaeological Sea Trust (MAST) in partnership with Bournemouth University and the National Museum of the Royal Navy.

The finds, once conserved at MAST’s archaeological facility in Poole, will be exhibited at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.

Diving from mv Avon, a Poole-based work barge, archaeologists, military veterans and other experienced volunteers are working together to excavate the ship and recover the many artefacts that lie hidden beneath the sands and sediments of the site.

In the first dive-season, hundreds of well-preserved artefacts have been recovered. These include sailors’ leather shoes, gunners’ implements, regimental buttons, a variety of rigging blocks and incredible coils of spare cable.

There was even a handwritten wooden label marked “Mainstay Mainsail Halyards”, the rope still smelling of the tar

that was used to stiffen and preserve it.

Nearly 2.5 tonnes of that rope has now been raised. That smell takes you instantly back to life aboard this thirdrate man-of-war of the mid-18th century.

Although I have dived many different wrecks in the Solent, the Invincible is so special. Knowing the ship’s history, you can’t help but be captivated by it.

A grid system of 3 x 3m squares was built from scaffolding poles across the entire bow section. It was within these squares that teams of two divers used the four airlifts. Following the yellow air hoses that snake across the seabed leads you to the site and makes these journeys an interesting and an easy commute.

Especially so, as I have the bulky camera housing with strobes and lights attached to push into the oncoming current.

As I get closer, my anticipation of what the archaeologists might have revealed builds. Seeing a completely intact hatchcover in near-perfect condition being uncovered was exciting enough, but I remember moving to another grid and spotting three huge rigging blocks lying against each other deep within the trench – a sight that literally took my breath away. On any normal dive, you just don’t see stuff like this.

Gliding over and filming the freshly excavated interior and seeing the Invincible’s decks opened up beneath me gave me a real sense of the sailors who once walked on those planks, and the mission they were on.

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RUSTRATINGLY, AND AS any Solent diver knows, suspended kelp wafting in the current is a constant irritant when taking pictures. You just have to choose the right moment to shoot the shot you want; there are no short cuts out there. ☛

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ARCHAEOLOGY DIVER Twenty-four- and 32-pounder gun wads, again with the accompanying tally sticks, each one etched with Roman numerals denoting the size of the wads, were being uncovered by the score from one compartment. Made up from scraps of rope and cordage, they were used to hold the cannonball and charge in place.

Seeing these holds strewn with musket balls by the hundred, with musket flints scattered in among them all, is a rare sight indeed. Make no mistake, this was a ship embarking on a campaign to fight our main adversary – the French.

On 19 February, 1758, the Invincible – the first of seven HMS Invincibles that have borne that proud name – was part of

Above: A diver at work with an airlift above a coil of newlooking rope Left: A diver with a few of the musket-balls.

Below: The 2017 expedition team.

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a fleet of eight warships to sail from Portsmouth to Nova Scotia in a second bid to take the French fort of Louisbourg.

Invincible was an integral part of the task force that ultimately succeeded, but the warship never cleared the Solent Channel.

A series of calamitous events beset the ship. While weighing anchor, its flukes fouled under the bow and then, while attempting to clear the anchor, the rudder jammed.

The Invincible was now in a perilous state, unable to steer. Then, caught by a combination of freshening winds, she drifted onto the Horsetail Sand. Despite valiant efforts to refloat her, including the jettisoning of six of her upper-deck 24pounder cannon, the hull was flooded and the wind that had now strengthened to gale force turned her on her side.

The ship was lost, and over the next 220 years she was slowly entombed by the shifting sands and shingle, much as the Mary Rose had been lost two centuries earlier.

The hull of the Invincible is now being exposed once again. The sands that ☛

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Apeks (MTX-R) – 10_17.qxp_Apeks 24/08/2017 13:09 Page 1

MTX-R MILITARY GRADE ENGINEERING

“During this year’s Expedition Bjurälven, we did some tests with the Apeks MTX-R. The water temperature was 0.5 degrees Celsius. During the purging test we did 30 seconds of purge (all submerged) followed by 5 seconds of normal breathing, then another 30 seconds purge. The regulator INI STY KWJJ ĆT\ TW KJJQ FS^ different after the test. The performance was excellent and we can recommend the MTX-R regulator for use in very cold water. Other regulators we have tested throughout the years MF[J YJSIJI YT KWJJ ĆT\ FKYJW only 5-10 seconds of purging, so we are very impressed.”

Dmitri Gorski

BUILT TO PERFORM BUILT TO LAST Based on the Apeks MTX military cold water regulator, the MTX-R is designed to perform in the very coldest of conditions. With an innovative ¿UVW VWDJH GHVLJQ WKDW KHOSV WR SUHYHQW LFH EXLOG up around the diaphragm, the MTX-R is reliable, rugged and expedition ready.

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Invincible v2.qxp_DIVER grid 31/08/2017 12:38 Page 36

once engulfed this ship are receding as tidal flow, currents and severe winter storms sweep them away. For Dan Pascoe, this presents a dilemma.

While this rare opportunity to see the ship’s huge timbers and structure unfolds, it’s also rapidly causing the wreck’s demise. As the structure is exposed to the elements and the actions of wood-boring organisms that riddle exposed timbers, it will be a race against time to excavate and record as much as possible before it deteriorates and is broken up by the forces of nature.

In a nation so intrinsically linked to the sea, the uncovering and preservation of our maritime past is an ambition shared by many. Although the Invincible project has gained much attention, as yet no broadcaster has come forward to underwrite a full documentary.

But I’m undeterred. As the project moves forward I’ll continue to work with the archaeological team to document the hidden secrets of this ship, which are now being uncovered. When you look back on the footage of the Mary Rose excavations, you realise how important those images are. They are not just for the present, but also a valuable archive for the future.

In September 1980, Invincible was designated as a Protected Wreck under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973.

In 2013 the wreck was placed on Historic England’s list of 10 most at-risk heritage sites. Diving operations will recommence from May to July 2018.

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Below: Diver with a string marker.

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Invincible v2.qxp_DIVER grid 05/09/2017 12:40 Page 37

ARCHAEOLOGY DIVER

Clockwise from here: Invincible’s orlop deck; a sand-timer found on the wreck; the three rigging blocks; a diver with a tampion; recovering timbers from the orlopdeck area.

THE WOODEN WORLD OF THE INVINCIBLE

by JESSICA BERRY, DAN PASCOE & DAVE PARHAM

L’INVINCIBLE, OR INVINCIBLE as she became after her capture from the French in 1747, was of such an innovative and sophisticated design that her build revolutionised British shipbuilding. By the time of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 most of the 74-gun ships, French and British, were built along her lines.

The ship was an experimental build, with many iron knees making her hull lighter and faster and allowing her to carry more guns. She was also the first ship to trial the new lightweight 24pounder guns. We hope next year to find one of these guns that was jettisoned at the time of the ship sinking. This would be a singular discovery, as none are known to have been found. Few were known to have even been made.

It took Invincible more than twoand-a-half days to sink in 1758.

First her anchor stuck in the mud, and then she ran aground on Dean Sands in the Solent.

The sand had risen to unimaginable levels, according to the Portsmouth pilot, who had never seen the like, and so officers and crew were acquitted in the subsequent court martial.

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This summer has seen the first major excavation since Cmdr John Bingeman’s excavations in the 1980s. This first season we worked in the bow section, an area considered most at risk from the ravages of storms.

The structure contains the boatswain’s, carpenter’s and gunner’s stores on the orlop deck, and also artefacts from the general store-rooms in the hold.

We have found a good number of regimental buttons, including those of the Coldstream Guards – the regiment was not known in Canada at that time, so this find is currently an intriguing puzzle.

More than 100 gun-wads – resembling deflated, soggy hedgehogs, and probably as pungent – were found in the ship’s store. These are balls of oakhum that keep the cartridge and shot in position when loaded.

Some we found complete with tally-sticks denoting the type of gun with which they were to be used. Some marked XXIIII or XXIV indicated that they were for the 24-pounder gun.

The wooden world, as shipboard life of the Royal Navy in the 18th century was known, came to life

this summer with some perfectly intact artefacts including rigging blocks, pulley sheaves, barrel staves, spools of tampions and a 24-pounder rammer head.

Uniquely, unlike HMS Victory, the current most famous 18th

century intact ship at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, Invincible contains all its supplies and personal possessions from the day she was lost. Some of the rigging we found, for example, was still coiled on deck. We’ve also found a number of leather shoes and an intact bottle, still corked.

In subsequent excavations, we will extend forward to an area at the bottommost part of the ship.

This has never been excavated. We hope to be able to complete the recording of the coherent portside, and study the way in which the ship was rebuilt in the 1750s.

3D photogrammetry is being conducted at each level we excavate, so the detail will be available to study and will also serve to develop the current 3D trail of the site.

Now that the first season is complete, artefacts are at the Maritime Archaeology Sea Trust’s Archaeological Centre in Poole to be conserved and recorded.

This post-excavation phase will be done with the help of services and ex-services volunteers and disadvantaged youngsters, who are key beneficiaries of the LIBOR grant.

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PNG advertorial 10_17 v2.qxp_Layout 1 01/09/2017 17:55 Page 38

PAPUA NEW GUINEA ! e r e h s t r a t s e r u t n e v d the a

A

DVENTURE DIVING doesn’t come any better than Papua New Guinea.

Located just north of Australia, Papua New Guinea is a rugged, mountainous country that is still largely untamed and unexplored, both on land and under water.

Located in the Coral Triangle, the waters of Papua New Guinea teem with a rich variety of marine life and a wide variety of dive sites, making it one of the top dive destinations on the planet.

Diving adventures are almost unlimited in Papua New Guinea, with divers able to explore pretty coral gardens, towering pinnacles, dramatic drop-offs and mysterious muck sites. And for the wreck diver the country provides an incredible collection of sunken ships and planes, a legacy of World War II, plus numerous artificial reefs created by the sinking of old ships.

While much of Papua New Guinea’s underwater attractions are still waiting to be explored, the country already has a good network of dive centres, resorts and liveaboard vessels ready to take divers to the superb dive sites so far discovered.

With its prime position in the Coral Triangle, Papua New Guinea is located in the world’s richest area for marine biodiversity.

Scientists have discovered over 600 species of coral and over 3000 species of

fish on the reefs of Papua New Guinea, and new species are still being discovered. For the diver, this means a bonanza of species to observe and photograph.

While divers will see a great variety of reef fish and colourful invertebrates throughout Papua New Guinea, most divers leave the country with memories of its larger marine life.

Reef sharks, silvertip sharks, hammerhead sharks, schooling barracuda, groupers, manta rays, sting rays, eagle rays, turtles, sea snakes, dolphins and even killer whales are just a sample of the marine life divers may see.

For the snorkeller, Papua New Guinea also has many sheltered

PNG advertorial 10_17 v2.qxp_Layout 1 01/09/2017 17:55 Page 39

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

coral gardens populated with colourful reef fish and decorated with healthy hard and soft corals.

Besides diving, Papua New Guinea has a wealth of other attractions to keep the visitor occupied for weeks or months.

On the wild side, you can trek the jungles, visit volcanos and explore meandering rivers.

However, one of Papua New Guinea’s greatest assets is its people. The country has an

extremely diverse indigenous population, with more than 800 languages to be found among 1000 different tribal groups.

Visitors are generally welcomed into small villages with open arms, the people keen to share their customs and traditions with guests.

A visit to the highlands is especially rewarding. This is the most heavily populated area of the country, but is also very rugged and picturesque, with villages spread throughout the lush valleys.

Papua New Guinea is a great destination to visit at any time of the year. Many consider May to November the best time to dive, when the southeast trade winds blow, but each area of the country is affected differently by the prevailing weather patterns. The

water temperature is generally 28°C or warmer, but it can drop to 25°C over winter in Milne Bay and Port Moresby.

Travellers coming from Europe have a number of ways to reach Papua New Guinea. Most flights from Europe come via Asia, through Manila with Philippine Airlines and Air Niugini, or through Singapore, Hong Kong, Bali and Tokyo with Air Niugini.

Adventure diving awaits in Papua New Guinea.

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Be The Champ OCT.qxp_Layout 1 01/09/2017 17:06 Page 40

BE THE CHAMP!

As ALEX MUSTARD points out, you don’t see the sort of images that appear on this spread too often in magazines such as divEr, as they don’t suit the format that easily. Yet the circular fisheye lens is a significant tool…

‘For my money, the fisheye is the most important and powerful lens we can use under water’

F

ASHION, SO THE SAYING goes, has nowhere to go but in circles.

It’s an expression that is as true of photography as any other walk of life.

This summer season, Nikon has made much fanfare about its new 8-15mm fisheye zoom, especially because it is the first Nikon autofocus lens that can produce a circular fisheye image.

One thing is certain, it will surely make circular fisheye shots more trendy than ever.

On a full-frame camera, this lens is best thought of as two lenses in one rather than a zoom, because only the two ends of the zoom are really useable.

At 8mm the lens gives a circular image with a ridiculously wide field of view of 180˚ in all directions (it’s hard to keep your feet out of the picture).

Then at 15mm it produces a classic, frame-filling rectangular fisheye image that covers 180˚ from corner to corner.

The arrival of a new fisheye lens from

Nikon is certainly newsworthy, as its last new fisheye was the crop sensor only 10.5mm from 2004, and before that it was the 16mm in 1993.

However, the 8-15mm is pretty much identical in what it does to Canon’s 8-15mm, which was introduced seven years ago.

Furthermore, Sigma has long produced circular fisheye lenses for all SLRs, while Inon’s UFL-M150 wet-lens fisheye offers circular fisheye shooting on compacts.

But before I sound too blasé, as underwater photographers we should always greet any new fisheye lens enthusiastically. In the early days of the British Society of Underwater Photographers, one of the grand photographic aims was to take a clear image of a complete diver in British waters.

It doesn’t sound too hard, until you consider that there were no wide-angle lenses, let alone fisheyes! So the challenge involved designing and building your own

Above: For the circular composition to work, the whole frame needs to be correctly exposed, otherwise black areas will blend into the background.

Taken with a Nikon D5 and Nikon 8-15mm @ 8mm.

Subal housing. Retra strobes. 1/250th @ f/22, ISO 800.

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STARTER TIP Circular fisheye lenses have a risibly wide field of view, seeing 180° in all directions – that is, half of the whole world around you. So it’s very easy to get unwanted elements in the frame, such as your fins, bubbles and even your fingers on the camera’s shutter!

Before pressing the shutter, quickly scan your composition to ensure that there are no UFOs!

underwater wide-angle lens. This is something that Geoff Harwood mastered in the early 1970s with his Vismaster 1 and Vismaster 2 lenses, which were circular and full-frame underwater fisheye lenses respectively. What goes around, comes around.

F

OR MY MONEY, the fisheye is the most important and powerful lens we can use under water, because it offers the widest angle of coverage of any lenses, allowing us to shoot the largest subjects and scenes through the least water, giving the most colourful and detailed pictures.

By definition, fisheye lenses are ultrawide-angles that are designed not to worry about keeping straight lines straight, and achieve their wide coverage with characteristic barrel distortion.

Not having to worry about maintaining a rectilinear image allows lens designers to concentrate on making fisheyes ultra-wide and sharp. Their bendiness limits their appeal on land, but under water, where there are few straight lines, they are transformed from niche lenses to workhorses.

Furthermore, they work much better with dome ports than standard wideangle lenses, giving sharp details into the corners of the frame.

Their party piece, however, is closefocus wide-angle, classically described by Brian Skerry and Howard Hall as “the most beautiful type of photograph that can be made under water.”

Their ability to focus close allows us to fill the frame with medium-sized ☛ www.divErNEt.com

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PHOTO TECHNIQUE

Pictured: A simple image of a snorkeller swimming down towards a reef becomes more interesting through a circular fisheye.

Taken with a Nikon D5 and Nikon 8-15mm @ 8mm. Subal housing.

Retra strobes. 1/125th @ f/14, ISO 800.

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PHOTO TECHNIQUE

subjects, and their ultra-wide angle of view makes them pop out of the background by forcing the perspective.

Circular fisheyes are best thought of as an extreme version of the standard fisheye, and they are challenging to shoot well. I want to use the remainder of this month’s column to run through the techniques for getting the most from this unique optic.

MID-WATER TIP Circular fisheye lenses are easiest to use when shooting available light, and are well suited to photographing big animals, scenery and wrecks. Try shooting straight down to get an evenly illuminated subject, or straight up to capture a silhouette and the whole of Snell’s Window.

R

ULE ONE IS OBVIOUS, but I have seen the problem catch out so many photographers down the years that it definitely deserves stressing.

To use a circular fisheye under water we must remove the lens’s hood and the shade from our dome-port – otherwise the lens will see them!

Some dome-ports have moulded plastic shades that are glued in place, and cannot be removed. Check yours before buying a circular fisheye. But many are secured with small Allen-key bolts and can be removed, assuming

Above: The wide coverage of a circular fisheye makes it well-suited to large subjects, such as big pelagics and wrecks.

Taken with a Nikon D7000 and Sigma 5mm. Nauticam housing. No strobes.

1/125th @ f/11, ISO 200.

ADVANCED TIP Circular fisheyes should not be over-used, not least because the shape of the images makes them hard for publishers to use.

That said, they are a valuable tool to have in the camera bag, especially when looking for a way to create something different with a common or ordinary subject.

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that the bolts haven’t been locked in place by a build-up of salt. Removing dome shades greatly increases chances of scratching our dome-port, both above and under water, so take care.

Being forced to dive without a dome shade is one of the main drawbacks of the 8-15mm zooms. Furthermore, the lack of a shade and a lens-hood increases flare when shooting into the sun, something from which the new Nikon does suffer.

Lighting circular fisheye lenses is similar to working with a standard fisheye. The most important thing is to keep our strobes pulled well back, so that they don’t poke into the frame.

As a guide, start with them pulled back so that the front of the strobes is in line with the back of the housing. Always use diffusers to help them cover the wide angle of the frame, and to give a more even illumination of the subject.

Balanced-light images are the way to go, because without ambient light the

circular frame won’t show up. In shallow water or when shooting wrecks or pelagics, we can shoot a circular fisheye effectively using only available light.

The final challenge is to find a composition that works. A good guide is to find an image where the whole circle of the frame is illuminated. If part of the frame runs to black, then the edge of the circle blends in with the rest of the frame, ruining the effect.

This can be a problem when shooting inside wrecks and caves, and also when shooting scenery, where the bottom of the frame is dark, deeper water. There is no single solution; it is just something to guard against when planning our shots.

Although circular fisheye shots are likely to be very much in vogue following the introduction of the Nikon lens, it’s valuable to remember that this is for niche images. Used sparingly, it can be very impactful. Use it too much, and it will bore and frustrate the viewer.

Remember that circular fisheyes are nothing new – in fact, all early fisheye lenses produced circular images, and photographers were very excited when a fisheye was finally released that filled the frame and produced a much more useful rectangular image.

Circular fisheyes are currently on trend, but we can be just as sure that they won’t be in fashion forever.

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Malta advertorial 1017.qxp_Layout 1 01/09/2017 17:56 Page 43

ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE

MALTA–

“the great diving success story”

A

NEW DIVE SITE has been created in Malta that divers from around the globe have been flocking to enjoy.

On first thought an artificial reef might spring to mind, and although Malta does offer many exciting examples of deliberately sunk wrecks, this is not the case. Until recently, the impressive Azure Window – made even more famous through its role in the popular TV series Game of Thrones – stood on Gozo’s coastline.

The Azure Window collapsed in March this year, and although this devastated the people of Malta it created a new opportunity for divers globally; the magnificent site that was once marvelled on the surface can now be explored underwater. If diving with a locally licensed dive school, you’ll now be able to join in the fun of discovering this intriguing dive site full of impressive sheer slabs and swimthroughs.

Malta is actually the Mediterranean’s number-one-divedestination, and one of the best in the world. In the most recent divEr Awards, the magazine’s readers voted Malta the 2nd Best Diving Destination of the Year, with divEr calling it “the great diving success story of the Mediterranean as far as UK divers are concerned.”

The calm, crystal clear waters surrounding Malta, Gozo and Comino are filled with shallow reef sites; caverns and other outstanding topographical features like the famed Inland Sea Tunnel, Blue Hole and an abundance of wreck-dives – some of historical significance and others artificial reefs. Many of the wrecks are located in conservation areas that promise not only historic engineering but a wealth of marine life – an underwater photographers dream.

If you are yet to visit the Maltese Islands, as a diver you may have heard of the following shipwrecks – Um el Faroud, Clendi, Cominoland, Karwela, Imperial Eagle, Rozi, Stubborn and P29 – which are found on the sea floor surrounding the islands. As well as vessels, Malta has a number of famous wartime, aircraft wrecks such as the Blenheim bomber and Bristol Beaufighter.

Find out more about Malta by meeting us on stand 354 at DIVE 2017 – NEC Birmingham, 21st & 22nd October!

S

PEND A WEEK on the Maltese Islands and your logbook will fill up fast. Diveable year-round, the islands offer excellent diving conditions, including visibility up to an astonishing 50m, even when diving at 30m deep.

For beginners, or more experienced divers looking to boost their qualifications, Malta’s wide range of sites makes it an ideal place for training. Many courses are available, along with shore-and boat-diving packages, all offering outstanding value.

The English-speaking islands are a short three-hour flight from the UK, with a range of economy airlines flying directly to Malta daily. You will find accommodation options to suit all budgets as you enjoy the year-round mild weather, perfect for diving.

Malta’s capital city, Valletta, is currently preparing for its role as the European Capital of Culture 2018. It’s easy to explore the city and learn more about the incredible history, architecture and archaeology that Valletta has to offer. Soak up the culture and take a break to enjoy delicious Mediterranean cuisine and Maltese wine at a selection of waterfront restaurants.

If you’d like to remain active even when you’re not diving, the Maltese Islands have a multitude of exciting activities to pursue.

Why not try wind-surfing, kitesurfing, kayaking, mountain biking, rock climbing or explore the destination by boat.

Find out more about Malta’s diving opportunities at maltauk.com/diving

www.maltauk.com/diving

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techni

cal

THE GENIUS OF v

PETER SCOONES B

UT FOR A WINNING WAGER on the 1965 Grand National and the prescience of divEr Magazine’s founder, Bernard Eaton, some of the world’s finest underwater documentaries might never have been made.

Though luck helped Peter Scoones to begin his career in underwater filmmaking, he rarely relied on it after that. Instead, an incredible fusion of knowledge and skills enabled him to become and remain one of the world’s best underwater wildlife cameramen.

TV series including Planet Earth, Life in the Freezer and Blue Planet sit alongside one-off specials such as Reef Watch, Malice in Wonderland and Great White Shark.

Scoones’ work enthralled the public and won him two Emmy’s. He had a gifted eye for shooting naturalistic sequences that told a compelling story, and his immense knowledge of marine life enabled him to film intimate behavioural moments in the wild as they happened, instead of filming captives in tanks.

Crucially, he could also craft the equipment needed to push back the frontiers of underwater film-making.

He could imagine a sequence that the limitations of existing camera or lighting equipment made impossible, and then design a camera rig to make it happen.

Scoones’ death from cancer in 2014, when he was 76, robbed producers of one of their greatest talents and audiences of unknown filmic treasures, just as the BBC Natural History Unit was embarking on its most ambitious underwater filming project to date: Blue Planet 2.

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IONA, SCOONES’ DAUGHTER and a film producer herself, draws on a cigarette. We’re sitting in the garden of her father’s Wanstead house. “Dad was a genius,” she exults. His passing hit her hard, and she craves wider public recognition of his achievements, envisaging a television documentary about his life.

I knew Peter Scoones, though not well. I was often the beneficiary of his considerable generosity. He spoke at underwater-photography events I was

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Peter Scoones, who died three years ago, was a celebrated wildlife cameraman, but many feel that the extent of his influence on image-making through his technical innovations has been under-appreciated.

STEVE WARREN is among them…

hosting. Often, despite fees being agreed up front, he would decline payment. I’d do my best to even things up on the rare occasions he wanted housings and parts from my company to cannibalise.

He also gave me underwater camera equipment for my collection. I hoped to exhibit this as part of a modest tribute, and Fiona had invited me to his workshop to discuss it.

In the early 1960s, the British SubAqua Club’s Brighton & Worthing branch founded an annual diving conference, attracting star players including Jacques Cousteau. BSAC had been running only a few years.

Bernard Eaton, a young journalist, took on the responsibility of creating a newsletter for BSAC members. In time, this would became divEr. Eaton was enthusiastic, forwardthinking and bold. In 1965 he created an underwater photography competition to go with the conference, inviting competitors from around the globe to submit their best underwater photographs and films.

One entrant was Scoones, who had studied photography in the RAF on his National Service. In Aden he had built a housing for a cine camera from Perspex aircraft windows and made his first underwater movie, Breathless Moments.

Scoones didn’t have the money to attend the festival – until Jay Trump won the National. His winnings paid his way to Brighton, and Breathless Moments won Gold for Best Amateur Film.

TV producers took note – then shied away. Scoones had made his film on standard 8mm film, a hobbyist’s format. It was unscreenable on TV. He never shot another frame of 8mm.

For a while he worked in the printing rooms of Fleet Street, then

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PHOTO DIVER

the centre of the British newspaper industry. His mastery as a colourist would later inform his work with underwater video cameras. On the side, he continued to pursue his passion as an underwater photographer, joining up with journalist Colin Doeg to co-found the British Society of Underwater Photographers in 1966.

“The genesis of BSoUP began with Bernard,” Fiona explains. “It was his foresight in staging the underwater festivals that connected the individuals who had been out there doing their own thing. Dad always credited him for that.”

This small group of hardcore enthusiasts were making much of their own equipment. Little kit was available off the shelf; it was very expensive and often very limited, regardless of price.

Advances in underwater photography often come from adapting new landcamera technology. 35mm film allowed for comparatively small, lightweight cameras to be used for reportage. In the ’50s, rangefinder cameras such as the Leica that took 36 pictures per roll were the usual choice for surface photo journalists.

Rangefinders don’t allow for the close focusing needed for macro photography, yet many housings were built for Leicas and their clones. Focus was set by guess; pictures composed through a gunsight.

Only modest wide-angle lenses were available. For working close up with smaller subjects, the “in” system was the Rolleiflex in, ideally, a Rolleimarin housing. It took only 12 pictures per load, but had a more advanced viewfinder.

It had two lenses. The upper formed the viewfinder and was used for focusing and framing; the lower took the picture. The housing had a swing-in close-up lens for macro images. However, it lacked interchangeable lenses, so could not be used for wide-angle work.

In 1959, Nikon launched the Nikon F professional 35mm camera. It was compact, and featured reflex viewing – you viewed and focused through the taking lens. This overcame the problems of near focusing and framing issues with rangefinder cameras and, unlike the www.divErNEt.com

agricultural,” says Doeg, now 89. “What mattered was that they handled like a dream. They were as easy to use as a Rolleimarin, the housing developed by legendary underwater explorer Hans Hass and the manufacturers of the Rollieflex camera, and I don’t know of any higher accolade than that.”

“The Nikon F was ideal for risking under water in a Perspex box, but I had neither the skill nor the equipment to make one.

I eventually persuaded Peter to make a housing for it, and the result was a great success.

“He managed to find a pentaprism somewhere, so you looked through a viewfinder, like a land camera, and it had interchangeable ports – a wide-angle one for a 20mm lens, another for an 85mm.

“As far as I know, no-one else at the time had tried a short telephoto lens under water. He thought I was out of my mind even to think of it, but he still made the special port, whereas a variety of telephoto lenses or zooms are commonplace today.

It proved a delightful outfit to use.”

Above, from top left: Fiona Scoones with an early Bolex 16mm; Lewis Photomarine housing for Leica; Colin Doeg’s Nikon F and housing.

Above right: Colin Doeg.

Below right: Early 8mm film cans.

Rollei, the lenses were interchangeable.

Extreme wide-angles, game-changing for underwater photographers, could now be used, making shooting large subjects such as wrecks or working in poor vis far more effective. Macro lenses that focused steplessly from infinity to just a few centimetres away simplified fish portraiture and critter photography.

The F had another breakthrough feature. SLRs traditionally had small eyepieces that made it impossible to see all the viewfinder when wearing a dive-mask.

The F’s standard viewfinder had this flaw, but it could be exchanged for a special action-finder sporting a huge eyepiece that solved the problem.

The F’s attributes were quickly recognised by Colin Doeg. “It never mattered a jot that the early camerahousings Peter made looked somewhat

A

S THE NORTH SEA oil industry began to open up in the 1970s, Scoones turned his talent to engineering deepwater inspection cameras. He teamed up with young entrepreneur Peter Rowlands, who had recently set up Ocean Optics to sell underwater camera equipment.

With Scoones manufacturing his Underwater Visual Systems equipment for the rigs and Rowlands marketing them, the alliance proved formidable.

Fiona managed to get her hands on a newly released and very expensive Olympus camera. Incautiously leaving it with her dad, she went out. When she returned, the camera was in pieces as he probed its inner workings.

Impressed, he chose to build his MD600 commercial housing around it. This quickly became the industry standard for commercial diving. Rated to 600m, it was mountable on a sub or ROV for surveying where divers could not operate.

It had a special lens system to correct for distortion, essential for creating images for critical analysis of welds, for example.

And it was point-and-shoot, so a diver had only to press the shutter-release.

“In the mid-80s I spent a lot of time with the Scoones housings, a fantastic piece of kit for commercial divers,“ says professional diver Michael Ross.

“I was often hired as both diver and ☛

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photo-tech and worked with a number of different systems for sub-sea inspection purposes. I was also a keen diverphotographer in my spare time, and had a collection of Nikonos gear.

“In my opinion, the Scoones system was everything the Nikonos cameras of the day were not; industrial-strength, heavyduty and simplicity itself for the user.

“Sure, they weren’t sexy with their cylindrical bare-bones appearance, affectionately known as the ‘biscuit tin’ in the trade.

“But possibly the really, really cool thing about the Scoones system is that even after hundreds of hours’ experience I never had a flood – which, sadly, was not the case with my own Nik equipment.”

S

HORTLY BEFORE HE DIED, Scoones gave me a unique sub-sea inspection camera. The MD600 is a housing but the MC70-E is a large-format stereo underwater camera system. It’s the only one he built.

Two cameras with hand-crafted mechanisms are used to photograph from very slightly different angles. The stereo image reveals, to the trained eye, detail that a one-dimensional picture cannot.

Usually, to shoot stereo images, two independent cameras are mounted on a bracket. Scoones’ MC70-E is more advanced – the cameras are conjoined.

To my delight, when I spun off the back cover and plugged in the charger, the cameras powered up. Exposure and focus are fixed. The only control is the shutterrelease. 70mm film yields far larger negatives than 35mm and the reward is much finer definition.

Scoones used top-of-the line-Schneider

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wide-angle lenses in the MC70-E. A disadvantage he needed to overcome is that the superb technical excellence a land-camera lens can achieve is often badly marred by the housing optics.

Usually, simple dome-ports are used to correct terrestrial wide-angle lenses for underwater use.

They correct for refraction, meaning that the lens retains its wide-angle field of view instead of narrowing down the way your eyes do behind your face-mask.

However, edge detail is often soft.

To correct the Schneider’s to the standard required for inspection work, Scoones once again designed a special underwater corrector, as he had for the MD600. Instead of a basic hemispherical port, two precision-ground lenses are combined. Together, they maintain the lenses’ field of view and solve the problem of poor edge-sharpness.

It’s a heavy, costly perfectionist’s solution. The MC70-E is, I assume, the deepest-rated, most expensive point-andshoot underwater camera ever made.

Soon the two Peters began looking for a camera to satisfy the demands of professional underwater photographers.

They chose the Mamiya RB67, a mediumformat studio camera, for three key features.

The film format was as large as you could reasonably handle under water given that, as formats increase in size, so do the camera bodies and lenses, resulting in ever bulkier and heavier housings.

The image produced was rectangular – the “ideal format” for front covers. Many medium-format cameras shoot square images, designed to be cropped to shape later, which sacrifices quality.

The RB67 also had an unconventional focusing arrangement. Usually lenses have a focus-ring built into the barrel that alters the position of the lens elements. The ability to focus close is often restricted unless special macro lenses are used.

The RB67 uses extendible bellows built into the camera body to adjust focus. This enables very close focusing with ordinary lenses, making it especially adept for

Clockwise from above left: Michael Ross; MD600 ‘biscuit tin’ housing; MC70 stereo underwater camera; RB67 Marine,‘amazingly beautiful’.

Below right: Scoones’ shot of the rare coelacanth in the Indian Ocean.

working with smaller subjects.

Ten RB67 Marine housings were built from aluminium bearing the Ocean Optics, London name. Rowlands described it “as amazingly beautiful“, and indeed it is. It features Scoones’ trademark two-element correction port and a superb viewfinder system. Mamiya of Japan bought one for its own collection.

A

ROUND THE SAME TIME, the BBC Natural History Unit was planning an unprecedented wildlife series – it wanted to tell the story of evolution in a 13-part show, fronted by David Attenborough and called Life on Earth.

Fiona relates how her father took the call from Attenborough that would change his life. “Dad was an early pioneer of ROVs to carry cameras into the Christmas trees and along the pipelines of oil- and gas-rigs. David’s ambition was to film a coelacanth in the depths of the Comoros.

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Dad said that his ROV went out on rental only if he went with it!”

On location, the ROV jammed in the reef and was lost. As the crew dejectedly packed up their remaining kit, a fisherman reeled in a coelacanth. Scoones was able to film the animal in the shallows.

The fish kept hanging head-down, which he took as a sign of its impending death, so he kept turning it back to the horizontal. It was only later, when the fish was finally filmed from subs, that it was realised that this was its natural attitude.

But Scoones and Life on Earth had scored an incredible world-first for the NHU. Scoones’ filming career was on the up, but he continued to shoot stills. In 1980, Pentax released a new professional 35mm SLR. The LX was smaller and lighter than its competitors but, for the creative photographer, it also had a hidden advantage. It set a trend for shooting double exposures “in camera”.

This meant shooting two different photographs of different subjects, at different times and often in different locations, on a single negative. A close-up of a small coral might be combined with a wide-angle sunset shot taken from water level. Today, such images can easily be created digitally, but back in the film days they called for phenomenal skill.

“Unlike other cameras the LX was frame-accurate, meaning you could line up the film for the second shot exactly, even if you had unloaded it,” says Warren Williams, a long-time friend of Scoones and an early BSoUP member.

Scoones’ defining double exposure was his entry for the 1986 Blue Dolphin competition. He donated the LX and housing with which I assume he took this photograph to my collection.

Intriguingly, he had adapted a Nikon viewfinder to fit his Pentax. “Scoonsing” became a well-worn term to describe offthe-shelf camera equipment that he had modified or rebuilt to meet his own requirements. Messing with viewfinders was minor league.

For many years, Scoones’ producer at the NHU was Keith Scholey. “Peter’s www.divErNEt.com

Above, from left: Peter Scoones’ modified Pentax LX with his housing; a rare departure from perfection – Scoones’ 1990’s Supercam housing for Sony 8mm amateur video camcorders initially suffered from a leaky record button!

Below: Defining double exposure – this image was a runaway winner in the 1986 Blue Dolphin competition.

impact came from a combination of a number of talents rarely found in one person,“ he explains. “It was Peter’s ability to build his own underwater housings, and his sophisticated understanding of electronic cameras, that drove his innovation.”

“In 1988 the BBC made Reef Watch, a highly ambitious live underwater broadcast. Peter housed the TV camera and discovered how electronic cameras could transform underwater photography by balancing the colour in the camera rather than relying on artificial light.

“Soon after, he housed his own electronic cameras and created a completely new ‘look’ for underwater films that has now been adopted by everyone.”

A

T A TALK SCOONES gave, I remember him casually explaining how he had dived into the innards of an £80,000 Sony broadcast camera to discard part of the Bayer filter to reduce its sensitivity to green.

In the early 1990s, his quest for perfect underwater optics led him to convert

Nikonos lenses, designed for the classic Nikon line of underwater film cameras, to work with broadcast video cameras.

It’s no easy task, but, get it right, and the on-screen results are unbeatable.

Dave Blackham is one of the foremost authorities on underwater optics, and knew Scoones well. His company Esprit Film & Television designs and develops some of the most advanced underwater video equipment there is.

“I’d admired Peter Scoones’ work for many years,” he told me. “He was meticulous in everything he did. I remember talking to Peter and saw that he was accumulating several Nikonos lenses in his workshop which he spoke highly of.

“The problem at the time was that most of the cameras in use for broadcast had much smaller sensors than the Nikonos lenses were intended for. Having adapted several sets of Nikonos lenses myself, I can now better appreciate why Peter was well ahead of the curve in this area.

“To get optics optimised on a standard cinema-grade underwater housing, the addition of a dome or flat port in front of a land lens changes its optical characteristics. Most of the problems crop up with wide lenses, and for the most part that’s usually what the underwater cinematographer wants to use.

“If the dome-port is large enough to accommodate the lens, this usually results in a reasonable-to-well-performing solution. Occasionally it’s excellent.

“But whatever solution you end up with, it will probably be a compromise somewhere along the line. The system will probably be very good, but not stellar.

“In the new world of 6k and 8K Digital Cinema cameras we need better optical solutions for these high-resolution cameras. The Nikonos lenses perform beautifully and are pin-sharp corner to corner. They are used for IMAX productions and also on virtually all of the high-end productions in commission at the moment.

“You can look forward to seeing the results on screen over the next couple of years. They aren’t for everyone and ☛

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every project, but where they can be used there really isn’t anything to perform quite as well as they do. I think that would make Peter smile.”

Danny Kessler, whose partnership with Doug Perrine resulted in the Megafauna exhibition that premiered at the Dive Show, before travelling to various aquariums around the world, recalls Scoones sharing a deceptively simple piece of technology with him, yet another example of his willingness to help others.

“I was on a trip to photograph pilot whales in the Gibraltar Straits,” says Kessler.” The freeboard of the boat made it very hard to hold the housing below the waterline to photograph the whales bow-riding.

“Everyone was cynical, saying it couldn’t be done, until Peter mounted my Subal housing on a pole so that I could dunk it. The special interlocking tubes made from some exotic material meant it was quite lightweight, but the shutterrelease was just a length of fishing line.

“I got some very close angles I’d never have achieved without Peter wanting to fix another challenge. When I saw him afterwards, all he said was: ‘What do we need to do next?’ Scoonesy was a legend.

There is no other way to put it.”

Scoones had turned to polecams to enable him to avoid the intrusion even the quietest diver creates which, in turn, can change the natural behaviour of subjects or simply scare them off. Today, polecams are standard equipment for film-makers.

D

OUG ALLAN IS another exceptional wildlife cameraman, noted for work on and under the icecaps of North and South Poles. He has filmed for SurvivalAnglia, Discovery and, of course, the BBC NHU on epics such as Earth, Frozen Planet and Blue Planet, and wrote behindthe-scenes book Freeze Frame.

Allan spoke at Scoones’ funeral, throwing away his notes and, choking back tears, telling of his kindness when he had repaired a special high-speed camera on which he was relying in Antarctica, and

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lent him his own latest camera while using an older model himself.

Allan’s comments are revealing: “Professionals claim it’s not the camera that takes the great images, it’s the person behind the lens. Well, we would say that, wouldn't we?

“But under water, in a heavy swell, focusing on a fast-moving fish, with one all-too-short chance to put together all the shot sizes for a sequence, then you realise that the camera in your hands is also playing a big part in whether you’re going to be successful or not.

“I’d heard about Pete ever since I began filming in 1983, but it was on Life in the Freezer in 1992 that we first had the chance to work together.

“I well remember having one of his housings in my hands for the first time.

The balance was beautiful, the centre of buoyancy perfect. It didn't tip forward, or back, or roll to one side. It wasn’t some unco-operative bit of kit that was trying to make life difficult, it just sat in your hands, immediately familiar, ready to please.

“The rocker-wheel-style controls, one on the top of each of the two side-handles

on the housing, fell naturally under my thumbs. Roll the left forward and back for focus, the right to alter the zoom. Both progressive: the more pressure you exerted on the control, the faster the change.

“The viewfinder, shaded at the bottom of a long black tube with a sliding dioptre in it so you could adjust it quickly but precisely for your own eyes.

“The dome at the front corrected so that everything was pin-sharp.

“The strength of Pete’s cameras was that you not only had the very best imagegathering technology in there with his specially modified electronics, but you also had an immaculately designed and engineered tool that was so ergonomically perfect that it positively enhanced the creative potential of whoever was lucky enough to be using it.

“I’ll always appreciate how generous Pete was to me, with his cameras and his experience.”

A From top: Life in the Freezer with Doug Allan at work; the quality of the images in Blue Planet caused a sensation.

Below: Peter Scoones contemplates his next dive while on location in the Red Sea.

LL THE HARDWARE APART, Scoones was a world-class diver and a superb underwater naturalist. Until his revolution, most underwater behaviour had been filmed in aquarium tanks, but using his camera that needed no “disturbing lights” his two classic Wildlife on Ones, Malice in Wonderland and Reef Encounter, showed that the underwater world could now be filmed in the same way as land-based natural history.

Shows such as Blue Planet 2 will not be filmed by Scoones, but his legacy to that and future shows remains. Keith Scholey is unambiguous: “No other individual in the past 50 years has been as important in transforming underwater wildlife documentaries.

“Today, on any underwater shoot, a huge array of equipment and techniques are used, but nearly every one of them can be traced back to the genius – Peter Scoones.”

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SHOW PLANNER

Dive Show of the Year at the NEC Birmingham

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Saturday 21 Sunday 22 October

A divEr Group event in association with

SHOW PREVIEW & PLANNER 52 53 57 58 60

Introduction & TekDeck/Tekpool Watch, Listen, Enjoyâ&#x20AC;¦ the Presentations Around the Hall Floorplan & Exhibitors Grand Draw Prize

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SHOW PLANNER

WHAT’S IN IT FOR YOU? I

T’S VERY COMMON FOR experienced divers to bring new or potential divers along to the National Exhibition Centre in October – because they know that the Dive Show is one of the best ways to provide a feel for the world of scuba.

But whether you are a technical diver with dives running well into four figures or are still limited to 18m dives makes no difference in terms of what you stand to get out of DIVE 2017, because as ever there is a great deal for everyone. Even non-divers will

enjoy the huge variety of audio-visual presentations, and if they wish they can even try their hand at breathing under water in the Try-Dive Pool.

If you’ve already knocked around the diving world a bit you’ll know what to expect. You’ll bump into people you’re more used to seeing in neoprene, both on the stands and in the aisles, and enjoy a catch-up. You’ll check out the latest technical breakthroughs on the New Products Showcase and follow up on the suppliers’ stands where you can

eye, try and even buy if the fancy takes you.

You’ll almost certainly have your next dive trip in mind, and whether it’s on a Channel hard-boat, in an Indian Ocean island resort or an Arctic expedition, you’ll find people who can sort you out.

There are multiple opportunities to boost your skills, to get involved with dive-related causes or to branch off in some entirely unexpected direction – perhaps inspired by one of the many talks on offer.

One thing’s for sure – you do need to be there…

HIT THE DECK! on the TEKDECK & in the TEKPOOL The TekDeck was introduced to the Dive Show last year and proved a great success, to judge by the numbers of divers gathering in that part of the hall.

The idea was to provide a programme that would appeal not only to existing technical divers but to any Show visitors who have decided to progress in that direction or just keen to find out if it’s for them. It might also appeal to those divers who are simply curious to know what happens on the dark side!

The TekDeck is co-ordinated by highly respected instructor Mark Powell, who has brought in no fewer than nine well-known names, all experts in

various aspects of technical diving, to share their knowledge and experience with visitors.

Here is the line-up: Tim Gort Kit Configuration (Sat 9.45 / Sun 10.15) Toni Norton Solo Diving (Sat 10.30 / Sun 12.00) Matt Jevon Communication Skills (Sat 11.00 / Sun 1.30) Kieren Hatton JJ-CCR (Sat 11.30 / Sun 2.00), CCR Maintenance (Sat 3.30 / Sun 4.00) Mark Powell Inspiration CCR (Sat 12.00 / Sun 2.30) Gradient Factors Workshop (Sat 3.00) Geoff Creighton SF2 CCR (Sat 12.30 / Sun 3.00)

Tim Clements RedBare CCR (Sat 1.00 / Sun 3.30) Tim Cutter Ascent Techniques (Sat 1.30 / Sun 1.00) Michael Thomas Sidemount for UK (Sat 2.00), Sidemount for UK / Caves & Mines (Sun 11.30) Mark Culwick Shutdowns (Sat 2.30 / Sun 12.30) TekDeck Panel CCR Comparison (APD, JJ-CCR, XCCR, SF2, RedBare) Q&A (Sat 4.00) With four talks dedicated to particular rebreather models as well as a CCR forum, divers are invited to try them out, along with other items of technicaldiving equipment, in the adjacent TekPool.

The pool is run by Lance Palmer Diving, and their staff and experts in the products will be on hand throughout to advise and inform.

SAVE 35% – DIVE 2017 tickets cost £14.50 on the day, but only £9.50 (& £1 booking fee) in advance. Book now at diveshows.co.uk

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SHOW PLANNER

WATCH, LISTEN, ENJOY… on the divEr STAGE

For timings of appearances, which vary between the Saturday and Sunday and may be subject to change, visit diveshows.co.uk or check timetables posted at the Show.

Paul Rose More Wild Dives to Save Our Pristine Seas Always a popular speaker, Paul Rose is not an easy man to pin down, as he spends much of his life trotting the globe, diving at cherry-picked locations as Expedition Leader of NatGeo’s Pristine Seas programme. But he goes out of his way to make it to the Dive Show because he loves talking to divers, and he will cover recent expeditions to rarely dived south Atlantic islands Tristan da Cunha and Ascension.

Jack Perks Freshwater Diving in Britain A diver who made his name exploring Britain’s rivers and lakes, Jack first wrote about riverdiving in this magazine five years ago and has since made many TV appearances as a freshwater specialist. He also recently penned the book Freshwater Fishes of Britain and dives with some of those fish elsewhere in this issue. He’ll have plenty of tips on diving in salt-free environments – and taking pictures in them.

Mark Powell Dive Instructors - Can We Do Better?

Technical instructor and agent provocateur Mark Powell will be busy organising the TekDeck technical-diving speaker line-up, but takes time out to address the pressing question: Diving Instructors: Can We Do Better? It won’t be the first time Mark has confronted an audience with a controversial question and gone on to provide a full and compelling answer.

Andrea Zaferes Ultimate Underwater Movement (Sat) Drills & Games to Strength Your Dive Skills (Sun) Revisiting from the USA after making a deep impression last year, the underwater forensic investigator and rescue/ recovery instructor takes us through techniques she teaches in her workshops. “Ultimate Underwater Movement”, if you wondered, is about refining buoyancy control to take you to a level at which you can move in water like marine life!

Sally Cartwright Bluebird!

On the 50th anniversary of the loss of Donald Campbell’s Bluebird speedboat in a 328mph crash, technical diver Sally Cartwright recalls the dives that took place, and the team effort required, to recover the iconic craft and its daring skipper from deep, cold and murky Coniston Water in the Lake District. Intriguingly, further dedicated work has finally resulted in the Bluebird working again.

Marcus Greatwood Extreme Location Freediving Marcus is another man without whom a Dive Show can hardly be described as complete, and recently his NoTanx freediving team has been carrying out more extreme-location breath-hold expeditions in Wales and elsewhere in Britain – he’ll talk us through some of them. “You don’t have to dive deep to enjoy freediving, and you don’t have to travel to the edges of the planet to do it either,” he says.

SAVE 35% – DIVE 2017 tickets cost £14.50 on the day, but only £9.50 (& £1 booking fee) in advance. Book now at diveshows.co.uk

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SHOW PLANNER Martyn Farr The Darkness Beckons First published back in the 1980s, by which time this intrepid Welsh cave-diver had already made a name for himself, Martyn Farr’s book The Darkness Beckons became a cave-diver’s bible. Only now, however, has this compendium of world cave-diving been rewritten for the 21st century, and the author will talk about the many exciting developments that made this a necessity.

Rosemary Lunn What’s Wrong With British Diving?

DIVE 2017 presents a great many arguments for UK diving, but should doubts linger, drop in on this talk. “Black, silty, cold and boring” are charges Rosemary says she often hears levelled at the UK, but usually by divers who have never explored its waters. The fact that she does a fair bit of UK diving herself should provide a clue to her response, as she takes us on an underwater tour from 3m to 70m.

Ellen Kuylaerts Photographing Orcas & Other Apex Predators

Shane Wasik Basking Sharks Our next presenter has a marine-biology background, like many of the speakers, but he first surfaced in divEr writing about another passion, for wreck-diving around the British Isles. In fact he loves mountains and caves too, but in recent years he has been dedicated to enabling divers to interact with basking sharks when they arrive off Scotland’s Inner Hebrides during the summer.

WATCH, LISTEN, ENJOY…

For timings of appearances, which vary between the Saturday and Sunday and may be subject to change, visit diveshows.co.uk or check timetables posted at the Show.

on the CENTRE STAGE Alex Mustard & Martin Edge Unseen Images Star billing goes to Britain’s two most illustrious underwater photographers.

Teamed up on Saturday only, they reveal photos for the first time while looking at experimentation, or: “how we play with ideas, make steps forward and backward on the way to creating exciting new work”.

Paul Colley U/W Photo Competitions: Help or Hindrance?

The promising title of this talk from one of the UK’s leading underwater photographers tackles the question of whether competitiveness (and bear in mind that Paul does organise such events) can be counter-productive for the entrants. His conclusions might surprise you, but whether you love or hate such competitions, he’ll also have plenty of advice on how to advance your own photographic abilities.

Photographing big animals in the “snorkelling zone” is an art all by itself, and underwater and wildlife photographer Ellen is a highly skilled practitioner, with active membership of the elite Explorers Club among her many credentials.

As well as talking about orcas in locations such as Norway she will cover big-animal photography all over the world, including the south Atlantic.

Keith Hiscock Fabulous & Fascinating: Celebrating Britain’s Hidden World In UK marine biology they don’t come more eminent than Keith, who will tell the story of seabed exploration in Britain and illustrate some of the habitats that divers can discover – from the extreme wave exposure of Rockall to sheltered inlets, and from marine life on historic wrecks to that on reefs exposed to potentially scary eight-knot currents.

Richard Smith How to Capture Reef Life ‘Au Naturel’ Many of the most successful wildlife diverphotographers were marine biologists with a deep understanding of animal behaviour, and Richard is no exception. He is best-known as a seahorse specialist, and seahorses are notoriously shy about having their pictures taken. So he’ll be looking at how to take photos that capture natural behaviour and cause minimal distress to the subjects.

SAVE 35% – DIVE 2017 tickets cost £14.50 on the day, but only £9.50 (& £1 booking fee) in advance. Book now at diveshows.co.uk

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SHOW PLANNER Paul ‘Duxy’ Duxfield Back to the Future Over the years underwater photography and camera expert Duxy has helped countless newcomers, as well as more advanced snappers, to boost their skills and get more out of their photography. “I want to get back to underwater photography fundamentals and look at what equipment you can buy that will allow you to learn the basics properly but without breaking the bank,” he says.

Saeed Rashid 10 Top Tips on Composition

WATCH, LISTEN, ENJOY…

For timings of appearances, which vary between the Saturday and Sunday and may be subject to change, visit diveshows.co.uk or check timetables posted at the Show.

in the OCEAN THEATRE A rolling programme of talks by or on behalf of exhibitors, including:

CRAIG DIETRICH

The title of this talk was that of the last that photographer and post-processing guru Saeed gave last year alongside the late Nigel Wade, and proved very popular. “It’s everything you wanted to know about composition but were afraid to ask,” says Saeed, who is also the man who co-ordinates the PhotoZone every year and ensures that visitors lack for nothing in that department.

Pro-Dive Mexico (David Jones) Dive Highlights: Mexico & Dominican Republic (above & right) Sat 9.40 Dive Tribe (Claudia Dias) Cabo Verde, a New and Amazing Diving Destination Sun 9.40

Nick & Caroline Robertson-Brown The Bigger Picture Feeding a sea-lion a starfish? No, Caroline is trying to return an offering! She and her husband Nick travel the world in search of exciting subjects, and plan to discuss wideangle photography and how it can tell a story. They’ll share photos of encounters, and discuss how to get the shots.

Saeed Rashid & Simon Rogerson The Digital Clinic Saeed Rashid has a special guest alongside him this year in the long-established Clinic, the forum that gives visiting underwater photographers the chance to put their pressing questions directly to the experts.

Simon has many years’ experience as a leading underwater photo-journalist.

Ocean Spirit, Mauritius (Jill Holloway) Dive Mauritius!

10.20 Philippines Department of Tourism 11.00, 12.10, 2.00 Maluka Divers (Joe Daniels) Underwater Photo Opportunities in Ambon, Indonesia (below left) 11.35 Dive Worldwide Sun 12.50 Fins Attached (Dr Alex Antoniou) m/y Sharkwater: Shark Research in the Eastern Pacific Sat 1.25 / Sun 12.50 Pro Dive UK (Kerrie Eade & Bethan Comley) Top 10 Tips for Dive Professionals 2.35 blue o two 3.10 Professional Diving Academy Sat 4.20 / Sun 1.25 Ocean Maps (Thomas Nemetz) (below) Sat 5.00

David Diley Of Sharks and Man David Diley’s independent documentary about how he went to Fiji and dived with the sharks at the famed Beqa site was his first film, and it must have had one of the longest gestation periods in the history of that medium, though it finally made it to Amazon Prime this year. It’s as much about the man as the sharks, if not more, and his talk may serve as a corrective to anyone who thinks getting on screen is easy!

SAVE 35% – DIVE 2017 tickets cost £14.50 on the day, but only £9.50 (& £1 booking fee) in advance. Book now at diveshows.co.uk

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SHOW PLANNER

IMAGERY UNLIMITED

BROWSING IN STORE

WET WET WET Any diver who uses a camera or camcorder will want to make the PhotoZone a part of their Show visit, and indeed might find it hard to drag themselves away. On the previous pages you’ve seen the names appearing on the nearby Centre Stage and their mission is two-fold, to inspire and to inform your underwater image-making.

But if you need specific advice, whether on hardware, software or technique, the PhotoZone is packed with experts ready to offer one-to-one guidance and solutions to your problems.

It’s a good place to buy equipment, to set yourself new targets or simply to enjoy the views – and all visitors are requested to contribute to the judging of the annual British Society of Underwater Photographers’ Print Competition (above).

If the TekPool is strictly for existing divers, the Try-Dive Pool is for beginners only, and while there is no age limit the prospect of trying on a scuba set and taking it in the water naturally draws the younger members of visiting families.

The try-divers are as carefully supervised as they would be in the sea, and we hope they’ll be inspired. One day they might look back on a long, exciting diving career and recall where it all started – in an exhibition hall near Birmingham…

Many suppliers of dive-gear – manufacturers, distributors and retailers – have already booked their stands and will be keen to show off their latest goodies. There will be plenty of big-name brands to check out.

Get an idea of those you might want to examine in more detail at the New Products Showcase stand near the entrance. Then check out where to find them on the floorplan over the page or in the Show Guide.

What better place to compare offerings from a host of different sources, and talk to the experts to help you make your choices!

WORLD OF CHOICE

BOOST THOSE SKILLS Whether you need to arrange an entry-level diving course, fancy adding to your badges with some speciality training or feel you need the skills to shift into a new gear – using a rebreather or cave-diving, for example – you can compare what’s on offer and arrange everything at the Dive Show.

You’ll find many of the better-known training agencies represented, including PADI, SSI and SAA, as well as organisations who can meet more specialised requirements such as the Nautical Archaeology Society and the Professional Diving Academy.

BSAC will be on hand too with its usual branch training options, and it is once again holding its annual conference at the NEC just across the concourse.

Just as the Dive Show is a proven marketplace for new kit, so it is for divetrips. If you already have somewhere in mind, you’re almost certain to find divers who have dived there, perhaps regularly, and who can offer useful advice. If you have an open mind, just wander and size up the delicious possibilities.

You’ll want to look in at the Caribbean Village, with its island and some mainland possibilities – just make for the sound of steel drums.

The Asia-Pacific Showcase encapsulates that part of the world radiating out from the Coral Triangle, including popular resorts and liveaboards in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

HOME SWEET HOME There’s no place like it, they say – home, that is – and as you may have gathered from the speaker pages, much of this year’s Show is devoted to the pleasures of the diving staycation and the pleasures of British waters.

The British Isles Experience area brings together many possibilities in terms of divecentres and dive-boats not too far from home – plus the chance to drink in the atmosphere of the British Bar and, who knows, perhaps win a free computer in the famous Suunto annual giveaway!

SAVE 35% – DIVE 2017 tickets cost £14.50 on the day, but only £9.50 (& £1 booking fee) in advance. Book now at diveshows.co.uk

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SHOW PLANNER

WHO IS WHERE AT THE SHOW? Food Court

Ocean Theatre

Asia-Pacific

Showcase

The divEr Stage

Caribbean Village

British Isles Experience

Real Ale Bar

Try-Dive Pool

TekDeck

PhotoZone Centre Stage

divEr

NEW PRODUCT SHOWCASE

TekPool

Organiser’s Office

Entrance SAVE 35% – DIVE 2017 tickets cost £14.50 on the day, but only £9.50 (& £1 booking fee) in advance. Book now at diveshows.co.uk

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SHOW PLANNER 4th Element Diving AP Diving Aggressor Fleet & Dancer Fleet Alkin Compressors (C & R Testing) Anchor Dive Lights Andark Diving & Watersports Apeks Marine Equipment Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority Aqua Lung UK AquaMarine Diving, Bali AquaMarine Silver Association of Tobago Dive Operators Atlanta Designs Azores Promotion Board

440 530 356 560 334 680 710 260 710 566 660 CV2 626 242

Barbados Tourism Marketing CV14 Basking Shark Scotland 632 Bauer Kompressoren UK 760 Bay Divers GB34 Billy Shiel/Farne Islands Diving GB14 Blue Corner Dive 248 blue o two 418 Blue Ocean Diving Centre 332 British Divers Marine Life Rescue 668 British Society of Underwater Photographers (BSoUP) P12 British Sub-Aqua Club 840 Buddy Dive Bonaire & Dominica (Bonaire Hospitality) cv28 Bunaken Oasis Dive Resort AP12 Cands Diving Supply Caribbean Tourism Organisation Cayman Islands Charity Link (b/o Guide Dogs) Coral Cay Conservation Coral Divers Sodwana Bay Costa Brava Diving Centres Association Cressi Custom Divers Cyprus Tourism Organisation

480 CV26 CV20 484 380 162 336 576 600 720

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340 628 452 AP14 672 GB2 235 210 AP18 732 CV30 610 S14 772 330 410 414 300 730 CV12 GB24 236 GB30

divEr

Diverse Travel Divesangha Dressel Divers Droversway Catering Dryrobe DV Diving

Easy Dive Egypt Enjay Marine Equator Diving Explora Madeira Diving Centre Explorer Ventures Liveaboard Fleet Falcon Diving Charters Fins Attached Fun Travel & Caribbean Fun Travel

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250 CV32 700 638

Instituto de Turismo de la Región de Murcia 335 Liquid Sports Lochaline Boat Charters LP Diving & Marine Services Lumb Bros (SM) Lustrica Diving Centre Luxury Yachting Maldives

750 GB18 Tech Pool 800 722 636

Magmadive Expeditions Malta Tourism Authority Maltaqua Manta Diving Centre Mares Marine Conservation Society Maritime Archaeology Trust Mermaid Liveaboards Mevagh Dive Centre Midlands Diving Chamber Miflex Xtreme Diving Hoses Mike Ball Dive Expeditions

744 354 416 770 S22 490 638 570 GB12 252 776 742

Nautical Archaeology Society Nauticam UK & UnderWaterVisions Nautilus Liveaboards No Tanx Apnea Norsemaid Charters

952 P14 430 382 GB16

Book ahead, save big!

Admission is £14.50 on the day but only £9.50 in advance, so booking ahead is well worth your while. Families are always welcome at the Dive Show, so children under 14 accompanied by an adult go free.

Northern Diver Ocean Leisure Cameras Ocean Reef c/o Hydroactive Ocean Spirit Olson Oonasdivers O'Three Otter Watersports

820 P6 446 132 288 420/425 540 670

PADI EMEA 240 Pharaoh Dive Club 200 Philippines Department of Tourism 254 Pro Dive International, Mexico & Dominican Republic CV4 Pro Dive UK (Ocean Turtle Diving Ltd) 246 ProDivers Maldives 339 Professional Diving Academy 234 Project Aware Foundation 284 Protech Diving 434 Regaldive Region of Valencia, Spain rEvo Robin Hood Watersports Royal National Lifeboat Institution RSPB

412 337 S22 520 940 244

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870 338 350 AP10 341 182 432 276 274

SAVE 35% – DIVE 2017 tickets cost £14.50 on the day, but only £9.50 (& £1 booking fee) in advance. Book now at diveshows.co.uk

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SHOW PLANNER

WIN A TRIPLE-HOTSPOT

INDONESIAN DIVE-TOUR

WORTH £7000!

divEr GROUP has been lucky enough to be able to offer some astonishing Grand Draw diving holidays to randomly selected Dive Show visitors over the years, but the 2017 prize is right up there with the very best. How does 17 days for two people in Indonesia, spending high-quality time at three of the Coral Triangle’s diving hotspots, grab you?

Yes, that's what we thought when Bristol-based tour operator Dive Safari Asia came up with this outstanding prize, valued at £7000!

Prepare for your mouth to water.

If your name is picked at random from among those of visitors to DIVE 2017, you and a companion will find yourselves jetting off first to Scuba Seraya Resort on the island of Bali.

There you’ll spend five pleasurable nights and your days exploring reefs, walls, critter-sites and the celebrated wreck of the Liberty too.

Then it’s on to the Komodo Resort for another five nights’ stay and plenty of time to experience the diving (and those famous dragons too) in Komodo National Park.

And as if that wasn't enough, your tour concludes with a third set of five nights at Alami Alor on Alor Island,

famous for its underwater critters.

If you’re an underwater photographer, your drives are liable to be overflowing with goodies!

The upshot is that each of you will enjoy 24 dives, plus a half-day trek on Komodo Island and a half-day tour of beautiful Bali. Full-board will be provided by all the resorts, and there will be two extra B&B nights in Bali while you’re in transit. All international flights, internal transfers and connections are included.

Your holiday can be booked for next year between 1 March and 5 June, or 15 September to 1 November because, as Dive Safari Asia says, these are among the best times to be diving in Indonesia.

So as if DIVE 2017 didn’t offer enough attractions already, you now have a very pressing reason to be at the NEC – your name could be on those golden flight tickets!

Find out more about the three prize destinations at divesafariasia.com

Terms and conditions apply.

SAVE 35% – DIVE 2017 tickets cost £14.50 on the day, but only £9.50 (& £1 booking fee) in advance. Book now at diveshows.co.uk

60

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Exhibitor Preview Stand 660

Come and Dive in Cabo Verde!

Stand 772

Sharks, turtles, mantas, rays and fish, millions of fish!

With an enviable biodiversity of any faraway destination, the Islands of São Vicente and Santo Antão have everything you need for your dream vacation.

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SAFARI DIVING

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Stand 630

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We will not be beaten on like for like quotes English owned, award winning dive centre – right on the beach!

Shore, boat and night dives – all same price Dive courses or pleasure diving – 7 days a week!

Come and see the team on our stand 630, or contact Wendy: Tel: 00 34 625 059 713 Email: enquiry@safaridiving.com

www.safaridiving.com Continued overleaf

➥

Exhibitor Preview PAGES – Oct. ’17 v2.qxp_DIVE 2017 05/09/2017 09:32 Page 62

Exhibitor Preview Stand 200

Bunaken Oasis Dive Resort & Spa

Stand AP12

Set in the world-famous Bunaken National Marine Park, Bunaken Oasis offers a truly luxurious diving experience Find out more at

www.bunakenoasis.com ➤ 12 exceptional cottages with modern indoor bathrooms, and sea-view balconies ➤ Enjoy a cocktail in our chill-out bar, before dining on gourmet cuisine ➤ Pamper yourself in our custom-built spa ➤ From water-makers to black water treatment, Oasis was designed to minimise any impact on the environment. Even our panoramic free-form infinity pool is filled with fresh water! ➤ The Oasis dive centre has been designed with the photographer in mind ➤ A full range of dive equipment from leading manufacturers is available for hire ➤ Our dive boats are second to none, with fresh water deck showers, toilets and, above all, space

Visit us on Stand AP12 on the Asia-Pacific Showcase and discover more about a luxurious holiday in one of the world’s premier diving destinations.

Stand 246

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Delivering top class, bespoke training to create confident, caring and capable PADI professionals

• Adaptable Approach • Competitive and fair pricing • Round the clock support • Business help and advice • Business Workshops worth 3 seminar credits • Attendance at IEs • ProjectAWARE focus • Flexible scheduling • Global contacts • Full post-course support

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www.tobagoscubadiving.com Email: atdotobago@gmail.com

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www.liquidsports.co.uk

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Do you believe in magic?

STEVE WEINMAN finds that diving in a soon-to-bebetter-known part of the Philippines casts a spell both by night and day

PARTIAL TO

ANDAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S ABRACADABRA divEr

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PHILIPPINES DIVER

S

O WE SIT ON THE WALL waiting for the sun to sink low enough, which it does at around 5.30, and slip into the water with that sense of gentle excitement that a night-dive never fails to induce, for me at least.

The creatures that come out by night are wasting no time. It’s like driving into a tunnel, and your satnav shifts to night mode. First to shuffle across the sand and settle on a broccoli coral is a mantis shrimp, followed by a red blob with horns and a yellow blob with eyes – the first a nudibranch, the second a juvenile boxfish.

Another juvi, a sweetlips, flip-flops uncontrollably from perch to perch as if intoxicated.

Soon it’s a free-for-all – hermit crabs in a variety of hard and some soft-shelled homes and a coconut octopus that,

unusually, seems to be lacking one; and several sleepy-looking cuttlefish, but then they always look sleepy until they strike, as one of these does, at a passing morsel of supper.

There’s a pair of little red scorpionfish, and a much bigger tasselled one with its belly wedged tightly into a cradle-shaped coral. A fat red fish-head protrudes from the sand (still not sure what that was), and decorator crabs resemble pearly kings, dressed to impress after adding brightly coloured mineral fragments to their garb.

An hour passes, we’re completing a meandering circuit of the house-reef that has brought some exciting new character to light just about every other minute, and then there it is, the unexpected headline act – a blue-ringed octopus not thrilled to have been observed and

Above: Larry (left) and the bangka crew from Magic Oceans.

Left: Harlequin shrimps are fussy eaters – they consume only starfish. They are sometimes even thought to feed their prey to keep it alive for eating later.

Below: Hey BRO – this greater blue-ringed octopus was spotted during a nightdive on the house-reef.

fluctuating between cream and canary colouring, its rings growing more, then less distinct, like those targets in an optician’s eye-test.

I had thought this BRO the star of the show until, as if to score a late winning goal, the biggest nudibranch of all comes flapping by. The brilliant red Spanish dancer disappears into the night and on that note it’s☛ time to surface, bid a very good night to Magic Oceans’ house-reef, aka Magic Point, and make for the lights by the steps.

After a hard day’s diving (hard, who am I kidding?), it can often be tempting to pass on the prospect of a night-dive and head for the shower, the bar, the restaurant and the pleasures of the evening catch-up.

But that’s probably a mistake, certainly at Magic Oceans in Anda, where the night-dives, like the one I’ve just compressed into a few paragraphs, can be even more epic than those in daylight. And that one wasn’t exceptional, just typical.

A

WORD ABOUT ANDA itself. It’s a name worth remembering, and is part of the largely unspoilt Philippines island of Bohol.

The Philippines archipelago is vast and full of diving promise. Covering 116,000 square and highly biodiverse miles, it includes no fewer than 7600 islands, a few of them extremely large, most small.

The diving hotspots so far established – how many must still await discovery? – are scattered, but many can be found in the central set of islands, the Visayas.

At the heart of the Visayas, its Central region consists of the islands of Cebu (well-known to divers visiting Malapascua and Moalboal), the smaller Siquijor ☛ www.divErNEt.com

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PHILIPPINES DIVER and, to the east, Bohol.

Anda, a region based around a town in Bohol’s south-eastern corner, is the easternmost part of the Central Visayas, and is surely poised to become another classic Philippines diving hotspot.

There are only a handful of dive operations there, and while I can't speak for the others I can confirm that Magic Oceans is a class act.

More years ago than I had thought I stayed at its older sister-resort Magic Island in Moalboal, and not only loved the diving but the resort’s boutique style, where guests of different nationalities are gently encouraged to mingle by the friendly Dutch owners.

The same ethos applies at the relatively new and more modern Magic Oceans.

Not that I could really judge the mingling, because I was visiting at the very start of low season in early June, when the weather can become a tad more fluid, and, purely by chance, soon became the only guest in the place.

The previous week it had been busy with a group of 22. By the time I arrived I was able to do a bit of mingling with four other guests from various parts of Europe for a day or two, and then they moved on (something I said?). I was all

Right: A Spanish dancer in full flight is a spectacular sight – the biggest of all the nudibranchs at up to 60cm, unlike most of its relatives it’s able to swim when seeking new sponges on which to prey.

Below: A large number of green turtles hang out on the reef top at Turtle Point and are generally unconcerned about divers.

alone – well, apart from the 45 or so staff.

As the lone guest I should have felt conspicuous, with a responsibility to act as a sort of multi-guest. However, much as I enjoy mingling, was I complaining?

With a personal dive-guide in the shape of the brilliant Larry (my eagle-eyed buddy on the night-dive and every other dive), three boats with fine crew on hand,

fun-loving resort manager Eef Thurlings, a great chef and his team, and lots of other people it was a pleasure to spend time with?

You can bet I wasn't complaining (and by the way, I did just ask for the chef’s recommendation at mealtimes rather than insisting on a choice). I’m sure it was more fun for me than for the resort, but they didn’t show it and I felt privileged.

Obviously I could have indulged myself and made a racket at night, with no other guests to disturb, but I resisted that temptation easily enough, pored over my photos and went to bed early (for me, that’s before midnight).

I

DON’T PROPOSE TO TRAIPSE you through the dive-sites one by one and catalogue the many creatures I saw (even though I just did exactly that with the house-reef night-dive, one of many sites I could have picked to kick off this feature).

It’s especially tempting to get into critter-catalogue mode in Coral Triangle hotspots in which the animal cast-list can be jaw-dropping, as it was in Anda, but it would be easier to tell you what I didn’t see (flamboyant cuttlefish, anybody? I’m sure they were there – I was probably just looking the other way at the time).

Nor do I usually tend to be a wishlist type of diver, instructing the guide on what I expect to see next day. Just as I don’t consider a hill-walk on which I fail to see a golden eagle a waste of time, so I’m generally happy to take dives as they come and see what turns up – it’s the surprises and happy accidents that make diving the joy it is.

The blue-ringed octopus was an exception. I had mentioned to Larry that I’d never seen one, but had then forgotten about it, and had been amazed when he delivered one at the last minute on that night-dive, like a conjuror producing a ☛

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Dive Safari Asia (Philippines FP) – 09_17.qxp_Full Page Bleed 19/07/2017 15:10 Page 1

DIVER’S GUIDE TO PHILIPPINES

Choose the destinations that offer the style of diving you love with our range of Asia based dive safaris.

We’ve handpicked locations that can be seamlessly mixed and matched over a multi-centre trip. Create your own adventure in the Philippines, get in touch to start planning today.

SANGAT ISLAND RESORT

MIKE’S DIVE RESORT

03 05

CORON With 11 Japanese wrecks all in close range and within recreational limits Coron is no doubt Asia’s premier wreck diving location. Topside the region is simply breath taking with dramatic limestone cliffs and beautiful white sand beaches.

01

Buceo Anilao Resort

Dauin With its combination of excellent reefs and superb muck diving, Dauin offers a huge diversity of sites and marine life. Set amongst a network of marine reserves and within easy reach of the renowned Apo Island, Mike’s is the perfect location for an outstanding diving experience.

Solitude Liveaboard

06 02 04

Anilao For the best critter diving in Philippines head to Anilao. There are around 50 dives sites to choose from and all within close proximity of the resort, break up your time for some excellent reef diving on a full day trip to Verde Island.

FISHERMEN’S COVE

01 Sangat Island Resort 02 Mike’s Dive Resort 03 Buceo Anilao Resort 04 Solitude Liveaboard 05 Fishermen’s Cove 06 Amun Ini Resort

Tubbataha The Philippines’ number one location for big fish diving. Combine this with some of the most remote and pristine reefs found anywhere on the planet and you have all the ingredients for a top dive destination. Solitude One operates out of both Tubbataha & Palau.

AMUN INI RESORT

Puerto Galera For a nice balance of everything choose Puerto Galera, you’ll find excellent reef diving, great critters and some wreck diving all within easy reach of Manila. This all makes for a great starting off point before visiting another destination.

BOHOL Our pick for a honeymoon or secluded escape with some great diving along the way.

Beautiful reefs and diverse marine life can be found off the coast of Anda whilst Amun Ini Resort boasts a private 300m beach a few steps from your room.

0800 955 0180 | divesafariasia.com Canningford House | 38 Victoria Street | Bristol | BS1 6BY | info@divesafariasia.com

Anda.qxp_DIVER grid 31/08/2017 12:54 Page 68

dove from his sleeve (though keeping a BRO up your sleeve would be a seriously bad idea) .

If I made it sound as if all those night visitors had just appeared before my very eyes, it was Larry who had made sure I noticed them.

What you need to know about the diving at Magic Oceans is simple. The bangka outrigger dive-boat is moored in sheltered water just off the steps, close to the spacious and well-equipped dive-centre, which is itself close to where you breakfast.

You wade out to the boat to which your assembled kit has already been taken, though they may well have finished building a retractable jetty by the time you go, so getting on and off will be even easier.

Drive left (east) towards Anda town to find an astonishing range of critters at the various sand-channel sites there, or head west and into the bay for gentle drifts on the Wonderwall, finding more critters and decompressing on the reeftop in coral pastures awash with large turtles.

There are some 30 named sites between Pogaling to the west and the excellent Lamanok Island, which we visit twice, in the other direction. Currents are generally on the mild side. Sound good? It is.

Stable, spacious bangkas are always a pleasure to use. Climb back onto yours after the dive, refresh yourself with the

divEr

68

Top from left: A wunderpus; Kubaryana’s nembrotha – even by Coral Triangle standards there is a bewildering variety and abundance of nudibranchs at Anda sites.

Above: Larry’s previous, slightly dowdy, mimic and wunderpus lure.

Below from left: A peacock mantis shrimp hunts in the open at Laconak; a warty frogfish waits for prey to come its way at Coral Gardens.

sweetest mangos and pineapples you’ve ever eaten, scroll through your pictures, check your fresh tankful of nitrox and go back for more. What could be simpler?

I’ll tell you what’s even simpler – forget the boat and enjoy the Magic Oceans housereef, day or night.

Anda is the sort of place where photographers will have their hands full deciding which way to turn. At some sites such as Laconak you’ll find more nudibranchs in more colourful garbs than you thought existed, and not all tiny ones but those big enough to let you know which way they’re pointing while you’re still at a distance.

You can then position yourself accordingly, and avoid photographing another slug’s backside.

Ghost pipefish, beloved of snappers, are commonly encountered, both the ornate variety that’s so difficult to separate from its frondy background and the robust ones – we found three of those together on one occasion, a male and two pregnant females, according to Larry.

Some species are rarer. Larry knew where to find a single reclusive harlequin shrimp, the photographer’s friend, and as luck would have it this shy celebrity was busy trying to upend a brightly decorated specimen of the starfish they like to eat.

But everything else seemed to be in generous supply. Tiny shrimps present themselves photogenically on bubble corals and anemone tips; pugnacious mantis shrimps peek out of their holes.

Every whip or wire coral had its resident xeno crab or gobies – great for black backgrounds. There are frogfish everywhere if you have an eye for their giveaway fins, from tiny red-and-yellow clowns to huge grey-pink gargoyles guarding the wall – and one bright orange specimen the size of a fingernail.

S

EAHORSES ABOUND – big ones out on the white sand at the sandy sites such as those facing Anda town, and pygmies in numbers on sea-fans at the start of the gentle drift-dive to the west that takes you from Wonderwall to Turtle Point, not far from Magic Oceans.

That dive, which we did several times, is astonishing. It’s one thing to start a wall-drift with a shoe-in pygmy photo-op (five shots maximum, as per a code of conduct), but when you have numerous diversions along the way, including large soft corals enjoying the current, and can decompress at a site like Turtle Point, it’s something else entirely.

I would venture to suggest that the

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PHILIPPINES DIVER

reeftop, with its beautiful hard corals and green turtle population grazing in unruffled tranquility, would qualify in many parts of the world as a prime attraction in its own right. Here, it’s more icing on an already tasty cake.

You want mimic octopuses? They are shy, and we had more success with the very similar but more golden-coloured wunderpuses.

Larry, I’m pleased to note, didn’t resort to scooping them from the sand as I have seen attempted elsewhere – his technique was one of patient seduction, waving a homemade rag octopus on a fishing line gently above a barely visible hole in the sand until the wunderpus, presumably driven into a state of sexual frenzy, was tempted into the open.

We did spend a very long time trying to tempt a mimic out in this way, but with very limited success.

After this, Larry concluded that his bait was “not very good” and went away to make himself a more petite and perhaps less intimidating replacement.

I saw it later, though not in action under water, and am confident that he knows what he’s doing. I wasn’t worried about the shyness of the mimic – several extrovert wunderpuses made my dives.

Needless to say, you’ll find yourself tripping over anemonefish. And I saw a pair of seamoths, the beautiful little armoured fish that trundle across the seabed on their splayed pelvic fins, always in single file, hoovering up small prey

through their long snouts – sadly, yet another species endangered by Chinese pseudo-medicine.

T

HE DIVING WAS CONTINUALLY absorbing, but just in case I should get bored (as if!) the staff at Magic Oceans worked their socks off to entertain me, keen to show me how divers on their deco day or non-diving partners might enjoy themselves on Bohol.

And that too was invigorating. I felt rejuvenated as we took quad-bikes up into the high hills overlooking some of the eastern dive-sites, and later into the famous Chocolate Mountains, resembling a landscape made up of milk-chocolate mallows as far as the eye can see.

We zip-wired 100m up over the Loboc River (which we later travelled down on a floating restaurant). We made 7m jumps into a water-filled sinkhole, enjoyed more nocturnal magic as we marvelled at trees full of fireflies in the mangroves, photographed the tiny indigenous tarsirs and fed the cheeky macaque monkeys.

Bohol really is a lot of fun, and Eef and his staff keep the action spinning along.

It was also good to see that while the resort was quiet the landside staffmembers who wouldn’t normally get the chance were undergoing their basic scuba training in the pool, to make it that much easier for them to understand the guests’ needs (and for fun too, of course).

I started this feature on a night dive, and I’ll brush lightly over the obligatory

Clockwise from top left: Should be a devil scorpionfish but it’s the tasselled variety; a Sarasvati anemone shrimp in bubble coral.

Below: Bargibanti pygmy seahorse, one of a number occupying a single seafan.

Below left: A mandarinfish, but not in the mood for love.

mandarinfish evening dive (the dragonets were there but not doing their explosive mating dance – and why should they?) to end on another night-dive that left its mark on me.

It was at a site called J Eden near Anda town, one we had enjoyed very much by day. After hours, it turned out to be cephalopod heaven, with not one but two wunderpuses (one tiny) and a mimic octopus, none of which required much coaxing to throw the sort of delicate shapes I could happily watch for hours. ☛

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Pictured: Squid in full display mode at J Eden.

Left: A tiny wire-coral goby.

Below left: One of the bangkas.

Below: Staff training in the Magic Oceans pool.

There were small cuttlefish, too, and a tiny white octopus that grabbed Larry’s pointer; two beautifully coloured bobtail squid, and of course many other creatures that weren’t cephalopods at all.

Towards the end of the dive we drifted into a grassier area of sand, and from the darkness emerged two large reef squid.

As I fired from a distance they proceeded to come closer and closer and embarked on a spectacular display which, it became clear, was a response to our lights and strobe flashes.

Anything we could do electrically, they could do better. One would blush a

deep red while the other turned pearly white, as ribbons of psychedelic colour streamed the length of their bodies. Then they’d swap roles.

The more I fired, the more they responded – I was captivated by them.

They aren’t the most exotic creatures but this was an encounter that stuck in my mind, as an interaction rather than an observation.

Sadly, fishermen learnt long ago and to their advantage that squid respond to lights, but that night it was just for fun.

Which is what Magic Oceans and Anda is all about. My suggestion is to go for it!

FACTFILE

GETTING THERE8 Steve flew with Philippines Airlines, overnighting in Manila. You may get cheaper flights (hotels near the airport cost about £45) but it’s a long, slow journey. Magic Oceans provides road transfers from Tagbilaran airport on the south-west coast of Bohol. An alternative is to fly to neighbouring Cebu island and transfer by road and ferry.

DIVING & ACCOMMODATION8 Magic Oceans Dive Resort, magicisland.nl. The bungalows ranged around the pool can accommodate up to 35 divers and are clean and comfortable, with their own wi-fi. The dive-centre is spacious and well-equipped and nitrox is available.

WHEN TO GO8Year-round. December to April are the driest months and considered high season for tourists but rain at other times passes quickly. Water temperature ranges from 26-29°C, peaking in July. July to December is typhoon season but Anda rarely suffers.

MONEY8Philippines peso PRICES8Dive Worldwide offers a 10-day package with flights via Cebu and transfers, twin-share cottage with breakfast and 15 dives each at £2195pp, diveworldwide.com VISITOR INFORMATION8itsmorefuninthephilippines.co.uk

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Dive in to

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A DOSE OF

DOZZI

Above: Access is very easy, just kit up and in you go.

Right: The roach are ready to welcome divers, with some the larger ones hanging round the steps.

Far right: The cliff face is an ideal habitat for zebramussel beds.

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JACK PERKS has become a champion of UK freshwater diving but there was a gap in his knowledge â&#x20AC;&#x201C; he had never dived Dosthill. A recent sunny June day changed all that

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T’S ALL TOO EASY TO DISMISS inland dive-sites as big holes in the ground with a few pike and the odd aircraft, but at their best they can offer some of the best diving in the UK. There are more of them than you think, too, and Dosthill in Tamworth is a hidden gem.

I pulled up at 1pm, the earliest you can get into the water on a Thursday or Friday, although there are longer opening hours over the weekend.

Known as Dozzi by its regulars, the location features beautiful cliffs and woodland overlooking the lake, with a pair of kestrels nesting on the cliff-face.

I had never dived the site before, so wasn’t sure what to expect. What struck me initially was the small size of the venue compared to other inland sites I had dived. It covers only three acres, though of course size isn’t everything.

Dozzi is the oldest inland dive-site in the UK, having operated since 1958, and it’s almost 30 years since it was taken over by current owner Ian Forster, who also owns Gildenburgh dive-centre in Peterborough.

Dosthill is well-equipped for tank refills and offers kit-hire and sales,

changing spaces, hot food and drink and toilets. Staff had even been setting up a hot tub when I arrived.

Since the 2012 Olympics, a surge in interest in outdoor swimming has apparently been sustained, and swimmers often use the middle of the lake to do lengths.

Parking is close to the entry-point, so it’s easy to carry kit to the water’s edge and set up. It was June and the sun was shining brightly, which always makes a difference. I set up my D500 on one of the many benches provided near the water’s edge and started to kit up.

My weapons of choice were an Ikelite housing, Tokina 10-17mm lens and strobe plus a GoPro Hero5 to record some extra video. This was a new set-up, and I was keen to explore the possibilities offered by strobe lighting, because for the past five years I had pretty much used only natural light. The day’s dive was intended to be learning curve.

Access in and out of the water is easy, with steps and stairs located at various entry-points. The clarity of the water struck me – there was a good 6m visibility closer to the surface, and a quick temperature reading showed the

water to be at 18°C. My dive-buddy for the day was wildlife and fish artist David Miller, who was keen to take pictures of pike for an upcoming painting, while I was hoping to find some of the larger roach, which hang around the entry point following divers and picking up scraps that are stirred up.

A large golden orfe was also swimming around the platforms, although it was a bit camera-shy.

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ESPITE HAVING THE STROBE to try it was such a bright day that we were going to have to make the most of the natural light. So we started with a shallow dive to no more than 7m deep on the right-hand side of the quarry.

Although there are some shallower ledges there is quite a sudden drop-off to 24m there, so decent buoyancy control is key.

There are plenty of wrecks in the deeper water, including a wrecktraining container, a Land Rover and, the newest addition, a Jetstream aircraft, along with sunken trees.

A pair of sturgeon that hang around in the deeper water come to investigate divers, sometimes rubbing against ☛

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them, we were told, although there was no sign of them today. The deeper water is quite silty, so it’s best to avoid crashing down into the depths.

It was beautiful to swim under water along the edges of what looked something like a kelp forest, with huge stands of curled pondweed and spiked milfoil, which makes a refreshing change from beds of Canadian pondweed.

The sunken trees covered in zebra mussels and algae looked otherworldly, and made fantastic backgrounds for my images. The zebra mussels are filterfeeders and will remove debris from the water, although because Dosthill is spring-fed it already has very good visibility.

As we made our way to the back of the quarry we came across the training platforms, which sit at various depths for the use of beginners and divers practising safety manoeuvres.

W

E SAW OUR FIRST PIKE, which was a bit sheepish but immaculately coloured and conditioned – it obviously fed well on the roach and perch in the lake.

Further on we came across a second pike, which was hidden in the weeds as we inched our way forward. It stayed motionless. Our best guess was that it had just fed, so we left it alone to get on with digesting its meal.

We found a third pike skulking around the cliff-edges, also hanging motionless until something caught its eye and it fixed a slow, purposeful gaze.

I had never seen a pike hunt before but it was checking every nook and cranny for small perch, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be reincarnated as one.

I had been playing around with the angle of the strobe, favouring it up high, and overall found it a great tool for making the images at Dosthill pop, particularly when deeper down, as with the pike.

Dosthill is a Special Site of Scientific Interest because of its thriving population of white-clawed crayfish,

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which can be seen poking out of holes and cracks along the walls. It’s also a Special Site of Geological Interest, the result of its fault line of limestone over granite.

For me it’s the wildlife and variety that makes Dosthill stand out – it claims eight species of fish, including eels and carp, although I only got a glimpse of one of the koi as it swam past me.

Massive shoals of perch and roach cover most of the edges of the lake, and the fish come in a range of sizes, a good sign of a healthy eco-system.

After 40 minutes in the water I recognised the gun-turret, a sighting that meant we had swum the entire length of the lake! Because we had been diving shallow we had plenty of air left, so we decided to try to photograph the roach at the entry point.

Although a bit more confident than the others around the lake, they still proved somewhat wary. I sat on the 5m platform in one spot and waited for them to get used to me before capturing a couple of images to end what had been one of the best freshwater dives I’ve ever done. It won’t be my last at Dozzi.

Clockwise from top left: Perch patrolling the shallows – they often shadow divers for kickedup food; checking the walls for perch; crayfish graze on algae on the diving platforms; exploring a platform; a pike glides overhead looking for perch hiding in the rocks.

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N.Wade portfolio.qxp_DIVER grid 04/09/2017 17:44 Page 78

NIGELâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S WAY

NIGEL WADE was divErâ&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s Technical Editor and equipment tester until his tragic death from a heart attack earlier this year. He was a popular figure in the scuba world, and at this time of year would look forward to meeting readers as he presented the Digital Clinic at the NEC Dive Show, alongside Saeed Rashid. Nigel will be particularly remembered as an outstanding photographer, so in his memory we present a selection of some of his most special images, with appreciations from fellow-photographers Saeed and Alex Mustard

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ALEX MUSTARD WRITES: “Nigel was so full of enthusiasm for life, that it is still raw to type the “was” in this sentence. I knew Nigel before he started writing for divEr and he always delighted in embarrassing me by recalling that I was the “only photographic big-hitter” who took time to write and congratulate him on his first cover.

“Nigel was a true photo pro above and below the waves, though the two branches of his photography indulged different aspects of his talent. On land, I was awed by all the commissions he did, a specialisation being shooting building interiors, mastering multiexposure high dynamic-range photos that take know-how, diligence and photographic precision to pull off to professional standard.

“However, it was under water where Nigel’s talent shone brightest. A true photo-journalist (a skill few British competition-focused photographers can claim), he had a nose for the story and an ability to communicate it across a series of sumptuous images.

“A few years back we travelled together to Gozo, courtesy of Olympus, to try the then-unreleased OMD E-M5. Obsessed with this new camera, I spent my dives testing its impressive limits.

“Nigel quickly spotted that the real story was a camera being given a proper underwater press launch, and produced a brilliant piece covering both the camera and our gathering (Geek Week, September 2012). I miss him greatly. ”

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Above: On every trip Nigel would have at the back of his mind the possibility of producing a shot suitable for a divEr cover.Sometimes, as with the recent one at the top, it might not have been the one he had in mind!

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SAEED RASHID WRITES: “Nigel and I first crossed paths about six years ago at the Dive Show, and we instantly became good friends.

A few years later we decided to start our now infamous double act at the Show, in the Digital Clinic workshop.

“To start with we were very professional but we quickly learnt to how to push each other’s buttons and try to trip each other up whenever we could.

“We had great fun doing these workshops, and would often swap slides around and ask each other very difficult questions and sit back with glee as the other stumbled over their words. As I type this, I’m still giggling over some of our silly antics.

“It was hard not to be infected by Nigel’s fun outlook on life, and more than once we got into trouble together because we had taken something just a step too far.

Many stories can never be told, although I bet everyone who knew him would be able to guess a few of these.

“I miss Nigel, and never more so than right now, as I’m getting my talk ready for the next Dive Show. Thanks for the fun, pal – I hope I do you proud in all my future talks, and promise never to take myself too seriously.”

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Nigel at the Dive Show,

with Saeed Rashid.

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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.

Technique OCT.qxp_DIVER grid 04/09/2017 17:54 Page 85

TECHNIQUE There is a right way of doing things when you’re on a dive-boat – and then there’s the other way that draws sideways looks. SIMON PRIDMORE aims to keep us on the straight and narrow

ASPECTS OF ETIQUETTE Pt 2 T

HIS THREE-PART SERIES covers a variety of scuba-diving situations in which certain forms of etiquette exist. Not everyone will agree with my recommendations, and I am sure the more experienced among you will have your own particular opinions and bugbears. But that’s all part of the fun.

This month we look at boat-diving.

ON THE DIVE-BOAT All dive-boats and operations have different procedures, and when you’re diving with them the etiquette is to follow these. Listen and be flexible.

If you dive with the operation often and want to do your own thing, there may be room for negotiation. If it won’t compromise and it matters to you, vote with your feet and go elsewhere.

On day-boats, space is often very limited so pack with care, using a gearbag or small plastic crate that fits neatly under benches.

Pack your scuba-gear in reverse order of use: that is, the things you need to get out first should be at the top. Stow your gear neatly out of the way and keep everything together both before and after the dive.

Bring everything you need but only what you need. Keep your phone and cash in a dry-bag in the dry area but keep your spares box with your scuba gear rather than in your dry-bag, as there www.divErNEt.com

is every chance that you’ll be in your suit when your O-ring blows.

Keep out of designated dry areas if you’re wet, even if you have a damp towel around you.

On any boat, never leave a cylinder standing unsupported. They are heavy metal objects, and a falling cylinder can crush a toe, destroy a regulator second stage, crack a mask or demolish a divecomputer as well as causing irrevocable damage to the cylinder-valve.

For similar reasons, keep weight-belts in a box or on the deck and out of the way. Never put weights or a loaded belt on the bench beside you or anywhere else where the movement of the boat could cause them to fall.

The toilet on a boat is called the “head”. This is not because it is where

you should put your head if you feel seasick. The best place to hang your head is over the side of the boat, preferably the side where the wind will carry away your stomach-contents when they appear.

Your fellow-travellers will appreciate this, as will the crewmember whose responsibility it is to clean and unclog the head. The fish under the boat will be happy, too, at the unexpected delivery of manna from heaven.

ENTRY, EXIT AND WHAT HAPPENS IN-BETWEEN Above: Wait your turn away from the ladder.

Below: Perfectly sized diveboat baskets.

When you are geared up and making for the exit, the correct thing to do is move directly and with caution. You have a large object strapped to your back, so it is a little more difficult to squeeze yourself through small spaces.

Etiquette is all about being considerate. Take extra care when standing up and sitting down. Be aware that the person next to you might choose that exact moment to bend to strap on a fin, and will not take kindly to encountering the swinging tail of your cylinder with the side of his or her head.

I have seen countless near-misses in my time, as well as many hits! The two basic rules are: “Look behind you” and “Avoid sudden movements”.

Once in the water, move away from the entry area to unite with your buddy so that others can enter safely. ☛

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TECHNIQUE When returning to the boat, exercise ladder courtesy. Wait your turn. Never hang below someone who is climbing the ladder in case they lose their grip.

Exit the water quickly, then move away directly from the area above the ladder so that others can follow you.

It is worth mentioning one particular aspect of underwater etiquette that is rarely taught in dive courses. From time to time during a dive you will get kicked by a careless fin, or batted by a flailing arm.

The etiquette is to act as if nothing happened, while making a private note to keep a little further away from your assailant in future.

You certainly shouldn’t refer to it once you’re both back on the boat. The other diver might not even be aware of it or, if he or she is, might not know who took the blow and already feels bad.

After all, what goes around comes around and one day it will be you who inadvertently whacks someone in the head, and you will be very pleased if it isn’t mentioned later.

However, if you are the guilty party and you know exactly who you hit, then of course you should take the initiative to apologise afterwards.

Pictured: Take great care when moving around with your gear on, especially on smaller boats.

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.

ON A PERSONAL NOTE Keep it covered up! Diving involves changing clothing, which by definition can involve temporary nudity.

One of the great things about our sport is that it brings together people from different backgrounds, walks of life and cultures, some of whom might not have a broad-minded attitude to public exposure, or share your high opinion of the beauty of your own naked form.

For the comfort of all, therefore, good etiquette requires discretion.

Stay humble. If you are a skilled diver and have a lot of experience, this will be

recognised by those around you without you having to broadcast it. A professional can easily spot good divers by the way they set up their equipment, the way they observe and interact with others, the way they position themselves in the water and the high level of comfort they exhibit with all aspects of the diving environment.

We might not show what we think, but divers who feel the need to announce their exalted training level or high degree of experience loudly to everyone might just as well be raising a large red flag saying: “I am potentially dangerous.”

Rest assured, once they do that, the professionals will certainly be watching them closely – but not for the reasons they might wish.

A final personal etiquette tip concerning post-dive snot: you should point it out to your buddy subtly and with a smile. Fortunately, it is beyond the call of etiquette to offer to wipe it off.

In the next part of this series I will look at the etiquette pertaining to a group of very sensitive folk – underwater photographers.

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GLASSY-EYED AND LAUGHING RICHARD ASPINALL enjoys the marine life at the Amari Havodda resort on Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll, Maldives – but finds that there are almost too many fish around

V

ISIBLE FROM THE SMALL twinengined turboprop plane which flew me down from the capital Male, a few hundred miles to the north, the Amari Havodda resort is built on a tiny island covered in lush vegetation.

From above it resembles an emeraldgreen teardrop, surrounded by pure white coral sand and set amid a network of reefs and channels.

I would be diving with Euro-Divers at the resort, which is set on the western side of Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll. It’s the most southerly atoll of the Maldivian archipelago that I’ve visited, and I was keen to see how the diving would compare with an earlier trip this year to the north. Would the corals be similar, and what about the fish life?

As you’d expect of any Maldivian

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resort, this one has a spa, two restaurants, two bars and a gym. To me it seems that the designers wanted guests to focus far more on the island’s location and sense of simple luxury than to be overwhelmed by glitz and glamour.

The architecture of the Amaya Food Gallery is open and bright, allowing views of white sandy beach and turquoise sea to be an ever-present backdrop. The tropical foliage provides sheltered pathways lending privacy to the villas. Covered but open-air bathrooms allow you to watch the fruit bats coming and going while you take a post-dive shower.

The Thari bar, which looks out over the pool, provides an array of refreshing cocktails too. If your holiday checklist

includes words like tropical, island and paradise, the Amari won’t disappoint.

I enjoyed a beachside villa with my own palm tree and, of course, easy access to the Indian Ocean for a cooling swim.

I was impressed with the Euro-Divers team, who quickly and efficiently sorted out my rental gear and patiently waited for me to analyse my gas-mix on my first morning of diving.

Normally I take my own kit, but I had decided to try to travel a little lighter than normal, and was pleased to find decent hire kit in good condition and from well-known manufacturers. As luggage restrictions get tougher, I can see more of us choosing this option.

My first dives unfolded in a way familiar to anyone who has dived in the Maldives, starting with a good briefing

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Pictured: The glassfish parted to reveal a nurse shark.

Above: Nico beside an unusual reef formation.

as the dhoni (the traditional timber-built boat of the region) headed out to the site, passing low sandy islands surrounded by turquoise shallows and topped by palm trees. We were approaching the line of islands, reefs and sandbars that mark the western edge of the atoll to explore a channel to the ocean, known locally as a kandu.

K

ANDUS ARE PARTICULARLY exciting places â&#x20AC;&#x201C; currents and the nutrients they bring can support huge amounts of marine-life, from filterfeeding corals to sharks.

Footi Kandu was spectacular and, as we dropped to 20m or so, the current was weaker than I expected and I could

enjoy the superb coral growths.

I saw huge table-corals, well over a metre across, providing shelter for untold numbers of anthias and glassfish. The ever-present blue-lined snapper added their yellow colour to shoals of bigeye trevally that flashed silver as they cruised past.

Closer to the coral, butterflyfish and parrotfish nibbled away and a distant whitetip reef shark eyed me warily from the blue. I was pleased to see that the

coral was in fine health, having had an easier time of it during the bleaching event in 2016 than some of the northern reefs.

Back on the boat, we chatted over coffee and pastries about the lack of current. Our guide suggested that you can never really know 100% what the current will do. The phase of the moon, the local weather and the seasonal currents affect what happens amid the complicated jumble of islands and reefs.

I would enjoy several more dives following this easy pattern: a deeper dive first (diving is limited to 30m by law), and then a shallower dive to follow, usually exploring a thila or giri.

These are the local names for shallow reefs, in the case of a giri a very shallow reef, just beneath the surface. â&#x2DC;&#x203A;

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Pictured: Eagle ray.

Below: It would have been a great shot if not for those pesky glassfish!

Bottom: Maldivian clownfish.

Right: Blue-lined snapper.

Of all my day dives, I think I enjoyed the thilas the most. Perhaps the shallow reefs acted like oases in the desert, concentrating the marine life.

On one small thila, known as Kuda Hafza, we enjoyed a 50-minute dive circling the long, thin reef.

Snapper were everywhere, mixing with shoals of goatfish, fusiliers and anthias.

Under every overhang thousands of glassfish gathered.

I had taken plenty of “typical fish shots” but wanted to try to get a photo of my guide Nico among the marine life, to add that “this could be you” element to the pictures.

I spotted a small coral pinnacle that revealed itself to have the eyes and wide mouth of a scorpionfish, the camouflage of which hadn’t been as good as expected.

I

SIGNALLED TO NIC0, and he slowly approached. As he did so, a large cloud of glassfish seemed to think: “Woohoo!

Let’s hide under him and his mate!” They swarmed around us.

I can assure you that glassfish can be very determined to ruin a photo.

I squeezed off a few frames as we both laughed through our regs at the absurdity of our situation. Then something caught Nico’s eye, and there was a beautiful eagle ray slowly flying past, and close enough for a photo, too!

I was once again reminded that you never know what will happen when there is so much life around you. I imagine the scorpionfish was relieved that we had found a distraction.

Mindful of the gentle currents I’d been enjoying, Nico and I set out to explore the house reef for a night-dive later in my stay. I thought that a lack of current might prove ideal for some macro photography.

Just after sunset, we loaded our kit into a small dinghy and headed past the

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luxurious overwater villas, waving at happy honeymooners enjoying cocktails at the Sunset bar as we headed to a point where the reef formed a V-shape into the surrounding ocean.

“There are nurse sharks here,” Nico said. “We might spot them, but I promise to try to find you some nudibranchs.” He knew how much I liked nudi-hunting.

The coral life was again pretty good and, among the coral-heads, the eyes of boxer shrimps glinted in my torch-beam, while featherstars slowly folded as they sensed my light.

Straining my eyes, I tried to photograph the tiny squat lobsters that live within the featherstars’ arms. I had little success, until I came across one particularly finely marked specimen: black and white against its pink-hued host. As far as I’m aware the lobsters blend in over time, so perhaps this guy had only just moved in?

Nico was trying to attract me with his torch, and I could see him making the nudibranch sign.

Perched on a piece of coral and, for once, moving quite slowly (for a bag of goo, they can certainly shift) was a Persian carpet flatworm, resplendent with its black and pink stripes. This is an animal that is not only gorgeous but has quite an interesting sex life (given that it has two male appendages).

H

APPY WITH MY PICTURES, we headed towards the shallows and emerged near the dive-centre’s jetty. I had a memory-card full of fish shots, some good macro stuff but, as yet, a distinct lack of sharks, despite their reportedly being very plentiful.

It’s always hard to know what to do as a photographer. Do you decide to shoot macro or wide-angle for the day? I don’t like changing lenses and opening my housing on deck, so I make that decision

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Top right: Posing with a huge expanse of table coral.

Above: Batfish are always interested in divers.

Above right: Emperor angelfish.

Right: Persian Carpet seaslug.

before leaving my room in the morning.

I had some good photos of night-time marine life up close, I had a few wideangle fish shots, and the glassfish had eventually relented to let me take a few shots containing a diver.

I had a few turtles and batfish and even a photo of a tiny cuttlefish the size of a grain of rice, so I think I was doing a decent job of showcasing just how wonderful the marine life was.

In the end I opted for a zoom lens, wide enough for reef shots yet with a little bit of reach to allow me to get closer to large animals. Ideal perhaps, especially as it was my last day We were visiting Footi Kandu once more, this time from a different side. The current was negligible and the vis was pretty good, allowing me to see the reef structure around us. ☛

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After 40 minutes or so, Nico pointed out an eagle ray and, as we watched it cruise past, we noticed a big cloud of silt on the sand; there was large sting ray doing its very best to ruin the visibility as it hunted in the sand for shellfish.

I was glad of my lens choice, happily firing away at the ray before turning to a nice collection of anemones, each home to a few of the local species of clownfish.

A

S OUR GAS RAN LOW, we started thinking about safety stops and could hear the engine of the dhoni above us. Just then, something large caught my eye. At first, I thought it was a small manta until I saw that long whip-like tail and the patterns on the animal’s back: a rare ornate eagle ray was slowly cruising 20 or so metres below us.

I took a few shots which I knew at that distance would be of no value, but it was only the second time I had ever seen one of these secretive fish, so a poor photo was better than nothing.

Back on the pier, I walked back to the dive-centre happy with my lot in life and ready to go back to my room to pack and pull my camera apart.

“Shall we have just one more dive on the house reef?” Nico asked. He really wanted me to see the nurse sharks. I was 50/50 – I would have been quite happy with eating in the splendid buffet-style restaurant, followed by a few end-of-trip cocktails. But it didn’t take much to persuade me: “Go on then,” I agreed.

Mindful of my flight schedule, we agreed a surface interval that would give us a decent amount of bottom time before meeting at the jetty.

We were moving with a purpose, investigating under every overhang and behind every bommie. As expected, shoals of glassfish were everywhere, parting and reforming around us as we passed through them.

And there it was. The glassfish parted and a long grey shape was revealed. I think we spotted each other at the exact same moment, and I’m not sure who was

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the most surprised.

In an instant the 2m fish spun around and shot off into the murky blue, leaving a cloud of glassfish to reorganise themselves into another photographerfrustrating shoal.

I was genuinely amazed, because I had seen a shark or ray on every dive and I think I’d managed to get a photo.

Nico didn’t see the nurse shark as it sped off into the distance and, as I showed him the shot afterwards, we laughed about how the glassfish had allowed me, albeit unwittingly, to sneak up on the dozing fish.

For once, they had done me a favour.

Top left: Turtle.

Top right: Sting ray ruining the vis.

Above: Featherstar squat lobster.

FACTFILE

GETTING THERE8 Several airlines offer direct flights from the UK but, if you’re prepared to change in the Middle East, cheaper deals are available. It’s a 250-mile internal flight onward from Male to Kaadedhdoo airport, where the resort speedboat will pick you up.

DIVING & ACCOMMODATION8Euro-Divers at the Amari Havodda Resort, euro-divers.com, amari.com/havodda-maldives. Nitrox is available at no extra charge.

WHEN TO GO8Year-round. Rainy season is MaySeptember but bad storms are rare and it is still sunny – diving conditions are at their best and you get the benefits of low season with fewer guests.

MONEY8The rufiya. US dollars widely accepted.

PRICES8Return flights London to Male from about £430 return. A beach villa room for two sharing on a full-board basis costs from US $650 a night, although package offers may apply.

A 10-dive package is priced at $440pp for shorediving, with each boat-dive adding $18pp.

VISITOR INFORMATION8visitmaldives.com

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S D N E I R F H T I Diving, DIVING W M A L D IV E S IND O N E S IA E GY P T S PAIN OM AN M AU R IT IU S JAPA N C RO AT IA

Watersports and so much fun!

BOOKING AND INFORMATION:

www.euro-divers.com

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WRECK DIVER

THE SECRETS OF

SVETI PAVAO T

HE ADRIATIC SEA contains many shipwrecks, and diving them can be an exciting experience. It’s even more exciting when you dive a site that was previously unknown to anyone.

In the summer of 2006, two holidaying scuba-divers from Croatian dive-club Sava-Medvescak came across a vase among vestiges of an old shipwreck close to Mljet island in Dalmatia. At the time they had little idea of what an extraordinary discovery they had made, although their group’s leader, archaeologist Jurica Bezak, had an inkling that it could be important.

Bezak told his employer the Croatian

Examining the seabed off Croatia, two scuba-divers discovered a well-preserved porcelain vase. Only the richest people, as it turned out, could afford such pottery in the 16th century. MARJAN ZIBERNA reports, main photography by ARNE HODALIC

Conservation Institute (CCI) about the discovery, and the following summer CCI experts, including Bezak, initiated a systematic examination of the site, and began recovering some of the items they found there.

They named it the “Sveti Pavao

Above: Archaeologists at work on the wreck at a depth of 50m.

Below: Site of the Sveti Pavao wreck, south of Mljet.The wreck site is marked with an X.

Shipwreck”, because it lay close to a dangerous underwater shoal of that name. The serrated rocks, set almost exactly at sea-level, were probably what had brought about the ship’s demise.

The wreck lies in the 40-50m range, so the divers’ work was laborious and ☛

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IGOR MIHOLJEK

KATJA BIDOVEC

Left from top: Some sections of the ship’s belly and its wooden parts remain intact – archaeologist-divers survey the remains, including using vacuum pumps to clear sediment. Their white hoses help with navigation.

Above: An archaeologist cleans a vase with sea water.

difficult. At first it seemed to them that the discovery was that of a relatively unremarkable shipwreck from the 16th or 17th century.

As the work continued, however, it turned out that the vessel was most likely a Venetian merchant ship that had come to grief between 1580 and 1590, and that a substantial part of its cargo consisted of extraordinarily valuable fritware pottery from the Ottoman city of Iznik.

More than 100 examples of these ceramics have been found on the wreck and it’s a unique discovery – no other such ship has ever been found before.

I

Below: The plate is 100 years older than the rest of the cargo and has Venetian origins. It probably belonged to the captain or other highranking officer.

N THE 16TH CENTURY the city of Iznik, which lies 60 miles south-east of Istanbul, was the main Ottoman centre for manufacturing high-quality painted porcelain tiles. Its workshops reached their peak from 1480 to 1670, working under the patronage of the Ottoman court. Tiles were commissioned to decorate many of the most famous places of worship, including Istanbul’s famed Suleymaniye and Blue Mosques.

Iznik also produced a variety of plates, pitchers and cups that were highly appreciated, not only in the Ottoman Empire but among wealthy Europeans.

They would be transported around the continent by merchant www.divErNEt.com

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FEATURE WRECK DIVER DIVER charge of the research from the start.

“Water would have gushed into the ship, but at the speed at which it was travelling, it continued to sail for a short time. This is why the remains are located 200m from the shallows.

“At that time, ships would generally sail along the channel between Mljet and the Peljesac peninsula, so why this one was crossing the perilous shallows south of Mljet we don’t know.

“It might have been chased by pirates, because Mljet was known as a pirate island at that time.”

A

ships visiting major trade-centres such as Dubrovnik, Venice and Genoa.

However, only around 3000 specimens of Iznik ceramics are known to exist today, mostly owned by museums and some by private collectors. Very few examples remain in modern-day Turkey.

D

IVING TO EXPLORE THE WRECK proved challenging from the start.

“Maximum depth is 49m and, of course, if you want to work efficiently at such depth the only thing you really need is time,” says Arne Hodalic, one of the divers involved in the continuing project to explore the Sveti Pavao Shipwreck, working as a photographer to record the finds in situ. “To extend our bottom time and shorten the decompressions stops, we adopted a serious technical approach.

“Dives were limited to only one a day, and after four diving days we would have one day off,” he says. “We were producing our own nitrox 24 mixture, which was slightly above the recommended PO2 limit for such depths, though for experienced professional divers this shouldn’t be (and was not!) a problem. This mixture gave us a few minutes’ extra bottom time.

“A standard dive for each of the 15 divers involved in the exploration was not to exceed the 30 minutes’ bottom time, so we had a simple and slightly safer decompression plan for such a dive.

It would be printed on the info board on the boat, with every diver asked to memorise the deco-stops in case of computer malfunction. A dive-timer was obligatory for each participant.”

Emergency stage cylinders were www.divErNEt.com

installed at the site in case of any unexpected problem or equipment malfunction, and a deco station was placed at 6m with six regulators attached to a 50-litre 100% oxygen tank to shorten the deco stops.

“Diving was into the blue but visibility was really good, and we could already see the bottom approaching when we were at 25-30m,” says Hodalic.

“We had no guideline because the huge white hoses used for the underwater Mammoth vacuum pumps were more than visible in the dark blue of the abyss.

“Water temperature was a pleasant 2325°C, so apart from being bored on the deco stops the 60- to 90-minute dives were pure joy, especially if there were some new discoveries to see at the bottom that day.”

By 2010, the Croatian archaeologists had been joined by more researchers from Venice, and the fate of the ship and the story of its precious cargo continued to be unravelled.

“Crossing the shallows close to Mljet, the ship was likely to have damaged its hull,” explains Igor Miholjek, head of the CCI’s Department for Underwater Archaeology and the man in

Top: Plates, cups, vases, bowls – 16th-century Iznik ceramics are a rare sight.

Above: Restoration of the findings is a long-term process.

Below: The inscribed bell and silver coins.

BREAKTHROUGH CAME when the team located the ship’s bell and coins.

“As soon as the bell was recovered, the number in Latin ‘MDLXVII’ [1567] could be clearly seen. It indicated the year the bell was cast, and revealed the most probable year of launching the doomed ship – the key information for studying it,” says Jurica Bezak. “It also established the year before which the shipwreck couldn’t have occurred.”

Inscriptions on the silver Ottoman coins known as akches indicated that they had been issued during the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Murad III, from 1574 to 1595. So more than 400 years had passed since the ship had wrecked, in which time most of the organic material had been destroyed.

However, remains of the ribs and some other timber parts survived in the sand, leading the researchers to conclude that the vessel had been about 24m long.

Though relatively short, its broad beam would have allowed it to carry plenty of cargo.

Also found in the sand were cannon.

Because of the danger from pirate attacks, artillery was often carried by merchant ships navigating the Adriatic, and Venetian merchant vessels were also subject to attack by the Uskoks, Hapsburg mercenaries who waged guerilla war against the Ottoman Empire.

The lion, a symbol of the Republic of Venice, ☛

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WRECK DIVER WALTERS ART MUSEUM, BALTIMORE

could be seen on the cannon, a clear sign that this was a Venetian ship owned by a wealthy individual.

It had certainly been travelling from the east, most likely Istanbul, and probably heading for Venice. The east coast of the Adriatic offered the most favourable sailing conditions, and better supply options for the three-week journey between these important cities.

T

RADE WAS THRIVING. “Large quantities of glass, expensive fabrics, gold jewellery, glasses, paper, soap and clocks… were exported from Venice to the east,” says archaeologist Lilijana Kovacic of Dubrovnik Museums. “From the Ottoman Empire to Venice came large quantities of cereals, as well as objects of applied arts, raw silk, cotton, silk fabrics, mohair wool, leather, camel-hair fabrics, horse equipment, arabesque-decorated weapons, pottery and a variety of curiosities.”

If the sunken ship off Mljet was carrying such goods, most failed to survive the ravages of time, but much of the pottery seemed to have been carefully stacked in wooden barrels and wrapped in straw or linen, explaining its excellent state of preservation.

“At auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s, prices for such individual items have reached £30,000 and more,” says Igor Miholjek. “I’m pretty sure that the ‘pizza plate’, as we call one of the plates found off Mljet, would earn us at least that much, as it’s very wellpreserved, with a nice glaze.”

Not that any of the finds are for sale.

All the Iznik pottery found at Sveti Pavao is being treated as part of Croatia’s cultural heritage.

Turkish art historian Dr Nurhan

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Atasoy, probably the world’s leading expert in Iznik pottery, has written that the fact that the finds had been loaded aboard a ship for export to European customers “explains the existence of the coats of arms of selected families on individual examples of Iznik pottery, found in the collections of European nobility.

“A wide selection of patterns in this collection and the intricacy of the paintings indicate the broadness of artistic creativity”.

Experts examining the pottery were surprised to learn that it included as many as four of the five styles of pottery decoration developed by that period in Iznik. Each Ottoman Sultan cultivated his own Iznik master, who developed his own decorative style, and before the wreck was found it had been assumed that these styles were discontinued whenever a new Sultan succeeded to the

Above: Map of Venice, from a book that first came out in 1521. The cannon found on the wreck would have been forged for protection against constant pirate attacks.

Below, left to right: A Venetian glass bottle, probably used by the crew; an intact vase; findings have been displayed in Croatia.

throne and picked a master.

However, the finds demonstrated that styles survived both master and sultan – probably because of consumer demand.

Following painstaking restoration work, the CCI and the Mimara Museum in Zagreb first exhibited the Sveti Pavao Shipwreck finds in 2015, accompanied by a catalogue that allowed even a layman an insight into their significance.

“Negotiations are now taking place about exhibitions in London, Marseille and Piran [in Slovenia],” says Miholjek.

“People understand that this is a unique discovery on a global scale.”

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Project Aware (FP) – 10_17.qxp_Full Page Bleed 30/08/2017 13:00 Page 1

The silky shark is classified as Near Threatened on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species™.

Popular with divers in many places, the silky shark is among the shark species most commonly captured in pelagic longline and purse seine gear set primarily for tunas. Much work remains to control its overfishing, but thanks to support of divers like you in 2016, Project AWARE – working alongside other organizations and governments – successfully advocated for international trade controls coming into effect in 2017.

THE NEXT WAVE WHAT MATTERS TO YOU? Your voice counts! For 25 years, we’ve worked together to protect our ocean planet. Tell us what ocean WWW.PROJECTAWARE.ORG issue is most important to you and help us shape #TheNextWave of ocean protection. Vote now.

WWW.PROJECTAWARE.ORG

© Project AWARE 2017

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Bish bash splosh

B

”

LOUISE TREWAVAS

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ELLA, BELLA!” EXCLAIMS THE divecentre boss as I pull the zip of my wetsuit firmly up to my neck. I'm momentarily startled, until I realise that she’s holding a pair of fins against the wetsuit and admiring the colour combination. Yes, I’m diving with Italians.

This is Sardinia, and the über-enthusiasm from both the staff and customers is amazing, if a little exhausting. Or maybe that’s the 38° heat.

I take the fins and try them on. One is huge and floppy, the other fits snugly. Has one of my feet swollen in the heat?

“Ah – no! You'll swim in circles!” declares the centre manager, cheerfully tossing the fins back into a cupboard and fishing out a pair that actually match in size.

Phew. But barely are the new fins in my crate than they are snatched away and replaced again by the dive-guide. He is simultaneously juggling kit and chatting to a large family group who are going snorkelling. “The yellow,” he insists, thrusting a pair of Cressi fins at me.

“Regulator?” I ask lamely, and I’m dismissed with a smile and a wave. Well, who needs to breathe when your fins are perfecto?

The boat is nearly ready to leave. We’re on the dock at the marina, staring down at a huge pile of tangled kit, but no one actually boards. The skipper is having a spirited argument about his cap, which seems to be settled by singing a song and donning some stylish designer shades.

“What time will we be back?” I ask, stepping onto the RIB. “One o’clock – latest,” the guide tells me with a flourish. Which most divers will understand to mean: not before 2pm. And, for Italians, means: possibly 3pm.

Well, who cares about that when the sea is sparkling and crystal clear. Everyone on board is acting as if we’re heading for a party rather than a dive-site.

T

HE PARTY TRICK IS ABOUT to be performed by a refugee from Sierra Leone who is on the RIB as crew. “In my country, we don’t wear all this,” he tells me, gesturing dismissively at the scuba gear. With impressive machismo he jumps off the boat in just a mask and his underpants – bish bash splosh – and attempts to tie into a submerged buoy.

As people shout advice about the location of the buoy, he seems to be struggling not to drown, and yells: “Current!” towards the boat. Full-on drama ensues. The RIB darts over to save him.

Everyone is gabbling simultaneously and grabbing at him as he clings, coughing, to the side of the RIB. Self-propelling yourself back onto a RIB with fins is not easy.

Without fins, it’s practically impossible. So he is wedgied aboard by his Calvin Kleins, accompanied by lots of cheering and backslapping.

I look over at the skipper, who laughs and shrugs as if to confirm: “Yes, he does this every time!” I’m left wondering, is this cruelty or a clever bonding exercise?

Well, who cares about that when everyone is happy fit to burst at the success of the rescue. We roll into the sea, and into the strangeness of… sudden quiet.

Which reminds me that, according to the T-shirt, Italians do it better. And as divers, they certainly do it louder.

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HOLIDAY NEWS

BOOKING NOW…

Atomic proposition

Few divers will ever get to experience Bikini Atoll, as blue o two reminds us, but for the first time next year it is offering that rare trip through its partner Master Liveaboards.

The remote atoll in the Marshall Islands is where the USA tested the effects of atomic bombs on battleships, submarines, destroyers and the famed USS Saratoga aircraftcarrier after WW2. It reopened to divers in 1996 but has been littledived in recent years.

The wrecks are not only historic but well-populated with marine life, and most sit at 50m or more, so this trip is

Stay on Cousteau island…

In the wake of the finally released movie The Odyssey, about the family life of Jacques Cousteau, the JeanMichel Cousteau Caribbean Diving Centre on Petit St Vincent in the Caribbean is inviting guests to discover its charms.

Opened by Jacques’ son in 2014, it is one of only two such centres in the world and offers a range of diving experiences. The private-island resort, which aims to be as self-sustaining as possible, offers accommodation in

22 cottages and villas overlooking 115 acres of forest and cliff-tops, and promises practically deserted beaches, clear blue seas and plentiful life beneath the surface.

Rates start from £841 per room per night (two sharing), which includes three meals daily, non-alcoholic beverages, the use of non-motorised water sports and all facilities. Five days of two-tank dives cost US $750, including equipment hire.

8 petitstvincent.com

for technical divers only.

Truk Master, which carries its own hyperbaric chamber, will take no more than 11 guests the 215 miles from Kwajalein. All divers must be technically qualified and will be able to do at least two dives a day.

Durations are 10, 11 and 14 nights, and the first 11-night trip is on 16 June next year and costs £5368pp excluding flights.

Bookings are being taken for 2019 and 2020, and because such trips are few and far between and places limited, they are likely to fill up fast.

8 blueotwo.com

WHEN YOU SEE RED RED Holidays are a new initiative from Scuba Travel, which says it is offering the chance to dive and sail on one of its popular Red Sea liveaboards at “super-discounted” prices from less than £650.

The prices include seven nights’ full board (twin-share cabin), guided dives, airport transfers from Hurghada, day use of a hotel and buffet lunch on the last day, but flights are excluded unless requested (in which case a £10

admin fee applies). You can book a RED holiday with a £100 deposit (though flights must be paid for when booked) and no further discounts can be applied.

An example of a £650 RED trip would be a Wrecks and Reefs itinerary on Cyclone on 7 January next, and for £695 you could do the same itinerary on Whirlwind from 3 February.

8 scubatravel.com/ redweeks.html

The St Helena connection The isolated South Atlantic island of St Helena has long wanted to share its whale sharks and other attractions with visiting divers, but the impossibility of getting there by air has made it a destination too far.

Now it’s been confirmed that scheduled South Africa Airlink flights to and from Johannesburg and Cape Town will start later this year.

…or visit Dad’s Conshelf You can follow in Jacques Cousteau’s finstrokes and dive his Conshelf II underwater habitat (below) as well as the famous Sha'ab Rumi, Sanganeb’s plateaus and the wreck of the Umbria – if you take a trip to the Sudanese Red Sea. There is shark-diving further to the south, too.

Diverse Travel is offering a sevennight liveaboard trip to Sudan on the

liveaboard Oceanos from £1495pp (two sharing a twin cabin). This includes flights from London to Port Sudan and transfers, plus three dives a day on all but the first and last days (two dives on each). The first 10 bookers receive free nitrox if qualified.

Diverse says the price will save you up to £125. Book by 31 October.

8 diversetravel.co.uk

Initially Airlink will offer a weekly Saturday service via Windhoek in Namibia, the whole journey taking around six hours. The service will replace five-day sea-crossings on the last working Royal Mail ship.

“Not everyone has two weeks to travel to and from the island by ship,” acknowledged the island’s Director of Tourism Christopher Pickard.

Once a month the flight will continue from St Helena to Ascension – another potentially rewarding but difficult-toaccess South Atlantic diving location.

8 sthelenatourism.com BOB ADAMS

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HOLIDAY NEWS

BOOKING NOW…

CHRISTIAN MILER

Take over a yacht in Raja Ampat Ever thought about getting together with friends or family for an exclusive yacht charter in a prime diving area?

If US $9500 a night sounds a lot for roving accommodation in Raja Ampat, perhaps it won’t sound quite so bad split between five couples, plus you get the six nights for the price of five with Ultimate Indonesian Yachts, which has a fleet of 16 vessels.

We make that somewhere in the region of £3600 per head, plus travel.

You would have the run of a new 31m phinisi-style cruiser called Rascal, with five airconditioned cabins above deck level and nine crew includiing dive-guide, on selected dates between November and March.

Two ways to Baa The Thai-owned Dusit Thani Maldives resort on Mudhdhoo Island in Baa Atoll has linked up with watersports specialist Ocean Group to open the Ocean Dive & Sports Centre, and help guests make the most of its proximity to a marine reserve and wildlife hotspot.

Surrounded by house reef, the resort comprises 94 villas on stilts, five restaurants and bars, spa and kids’ club. The Dusit All Inclusive Retreat offer is intended for two guests sharing a beach villa for four nights or more and costs from US $1144 per night, including transfers. A 10-dive package costs US $750.

An alternative location in Baa Atoll is Anantara Kihavah Maldives Villas, which is situated near Hanifaru Bay, the UNESCO-protected Biosphere Reserve. Every year, from May to November, concentrations of krill and plankton make this “the world’s largest natural manta-ray feeding destination”, says the resort, and it offers guests the chance to dive or snorkel with the rays, and, with any luck, with visiting whale sharks.

For a week’s stay during low season, half-board packages for two sharing a beach villa and speedboat transfers start from US $4528pp.

8 dusit.com/dusitthani

anantara.com

8 ultimate-indonesianyachts.com

Bold claims in Turkey

8 kihavah-maldives.

SHARKS ON A SCOOTER

Manufacturer Cayago calls its DPV the Seabob “the fastest water sled in the world“ and, after striking a deal with Stuart Cove’s Dive Adventures in the Bahamas, is offering divers the chance to get around faster in the company of its resident sharks.

“Diver and shark move with

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equal agility and elegance, blending into one world. No longer merely observing from the outside – goosebumps are guaranteed!” it promises. And Mr Cove himself says that the scooter “blends perfectly into the underwater world, and even the sensitive sharks aren't irritated by them”.

If you’re planning a trip, Stuart Cove’s two-tank dives cost from US $134-170 and Seabob rental adds $54 – plus the cost of the required private instructor/guide, $193.

Minimum age is 16 and a PADI Seabob speciality course is, inevitably, on the way.

Ayvalik on Turkey’s Aegean Coast is both famed for its white and red corals yet largely undiscovered, says the Murat Reis Ayvalik resort, which goes on to make the bold claim that it has a “rich underwater landscape similar to that under the Red Sea”.

Diving with the Körfez Diving Centre, guests are promised access to large numbers of moray eels, grouper, octopuses, encrusting anemones and, occasionally, seahorses in clear water.

The resort further promises gourmet cuisine and a spa with sea views. Its Discover Diving package starts from 1255 euros for seven nights’ B&B accommodation, transfers and five dives.

8 stuartcove.com

8 muratreisayvalik.com

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HOLIDAY NEWS

BOOKING NOW…

Xplorer value Regaldive reckons that the Red Sea Liveaboards fleet is a favourite with guests because of the value it offers. A seven-night North & Ras Mohammed packages aboard Vita Xplorer starts from £867pp, including flights and transfers, which the tour operator says represents a saving of up to £96pp.

8 regaldive.co.uk JOHN BUTLAND

Cutting the Egyptian road work If you can get to centrally located Birmingham airport easily and you’re flying out to join the blue Horizon liveaboard next summer, blue o two reckon to reduce transfer times at the southern Egyptian Red Sea end of your journey by four hours. You’ll be able to fly direct into Marsa Alam airport, 15 minute’s drive from the liveaboard’s berth at Port Ghalib.

Flights and sailings will be on Mondays from Birmingham between 30 April and 22 October and on Thursdays from London Gatwick for the rest of the year.

Transfers and last-day hotel-use at the Marina Lodge in Port Ghalib, with access to the beach, pool and luggage storage will be provided.

8 blueotwo.com

DRAY VAN BEECK

Double bubble in Roatan The western Caribbean island of Roatan off Honduras offers varied diving on the world‘s second-largest reef, and the Paradise Beach Hotel on West Bay Beach has put together two diving packages for guests looking to get to the bottom of its underwater attractions.

You could book five nights’ B&B with six dives and airport transfers for US $482pp (including tax, two sharing), or go for seven nights’ B&B with 10 dives at $716pp.

8 paradisehotels.com

Work and play in the Maldives Under its new “Rescue A Reef” programme, Carpe Diem Maldives is inviting up to 20 divers to join another liveaboard-based starfishremoval trip with marine biologists Dr Andrew Bruckner and Georgia Coward from Coral Reef CPR. From 22-29 October work will be carried out on the house reef and areas surrounding a new Raa Atoll resort.

“During our surveys of Raa and Baa Atoll we’ve seen an abnormally high number of cushion starfish,” says Dr Bruckner.“This is a concern, because these animals target juvenile cauliflower and staghorn corals, and these are the corals that

are critical for a speedy recovery from last year’s bleaching event.”

Reef surveys and data analysis will also be carried out.

Divers must be PADI Advanced or above, have “excellent” buoyancy control and ideally a minimum of

70 dives. The price of US $700pp includes seven nights on Carpe Vita with all meals, up to four dives a day, ecology workshops and airport transfers. A $150 donation to Coral Reef CPR will also be levied.

8 carpediemmaldives.com

More Atmosphere Atmosphere Hotels & Resorts is set to add a fourth resort to its Maldives portfolio next July – OBLU Select at Sangeli.

Claiming its location as “one of the best diving and snorkelling locations in the entire Male Atoll”, the 4* resort in the north-west of the atoll will feature 137 beach and overwater villas, four restaurants/bars, spa and Atmosphere Aqua Club dive-centre.

There is already a 4* OBLU at Helengeli, as well as OZEN by Atmosphere at Maadhoo and the 5* Atmosphere Kanifushi.

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Wakatobi (FP) – 10_17.qxp_Wakatobi 25/08/2017 16:53 Page 1

An experience without equal “The diving and snorkelling at Wakatobi is outstanding, that’s well known. But also important is the excellent customer service of every staff member. Wakatobi can teach customer service to any industry or organization. You feel at home the first day, and it just gets better every day after that.” ~Steve and Cindy Moore

www.wakatobi.com

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WELL AND TRULY

STEVE WARREN joins MIKE WARD this month for our new-look twoman divEr Tests. Steve has some fresh ideas for testing BCs, while Mike tries out a versatile suit and some unusual picture-editing software

BC

TUSA BC0102 SOVERIN ALPHA IF YOU REALLY WANT TO MASTER precision buoyancy control and enjoy safer diving, it helps to own your own BC. The reasons have less to do with the BCs themselves than with the human factor.

While some BCs are, as successive divEr Tests have revealed over the decades, better than others, it’s discomfort and unfamiliarity with rental BCs that can prove most problematic.

We don’t dive as well as we could or enjoy our dives as much as we should when we’re distracted by an uncomfortable BC. Unfamiliarity with controls can make us slow to react to emerging problems, such as failing to stop a descent beyond our safe depth with nitrox or preventing a runaway ascent, allowing problems to become emergencies.

So how do you choose a good BC for yourself?

It needs only to be comfortable, provide stability and have trustworthy safety features.

TUSA’s description of its BC0102 Soverin Alpha piles superlatives on top of jargon. Everything it says promises a superb BC, and every feature seems to have a hi-tec slogan to prove it. The “Advanced Weight Loading System” is outdone only by the “Ultimate Stabilising Harness”.

But how does this BC, aimed at single-cylinder recreational divers, measure up to TUSA’s claims?

As divEr’s new Technical Editor, I’m a little embarrassed. A fault-free review looks bad and smacks of foul play and partiality. So let me start by saying that I didn’t much care for the manual.

We won’t be diving with the manual, however, so let’s quickly move on to see how the BC fared.

For a properly weighted diver, the BC0102 should provide enough lift for coldwater wet- or drysuit diving. It uses a single-bladder design made from 500-denier Cordura, an extremely durable material. It’s a stabiliser jacket with divEr

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BC0102, selecting the right size, based on your build, is the rough choice – the fine adjustment is done by adjusting the harness webbing at the back of the BC. This means that you don’t end up with excessive amounts of spare webbing in front, which would make it difficult to tighten the cummerbund or waist-strap sufficiently to get a snug fit. Even if a budget rental BC has this much adjustment, there’s rarely time to customise the fit on location.

Along with the shoulder-straps and waist-strap there is a chest-strap. This has two height positions, which can help avoid interference with drysuit inflators. A small whistle is integrated into this strap, and all the straps use conventional pinch-clip releases.

The BC0102 routes its straps through loops on the bladder, but they actually attach to the backpack, so the harness isn’t really influenced by inflating or deflating the bladder.

The backpack is an alpine type that shifts much of the weight onto your hips. It is substantially padded.

I tested the BC in Gibraltar, where I was hosted by Dive Charters, its only professional dive-centre, and Gibraltar Sub Aqua Club, a BSAC branch. I did a lot of shore-diving, and this meant walks of several hundred metres, involving tackling steep slopes and climbing a lot of steps.

With an all-up dive-kit weight of more than 40kg, this is a pretty good test of a BC’s comfort, and the BC0102 did very well.

Under water, I really liked the harness. Once adjusted on the surface, there was no need to retighten it, despite using a thick coldwater wetsuit to depths of 30m.

Every BC I’ve ever owned has required me to adjust the cummerbund regularly, because they ride up on me – but this one didn’t.

breakaway shoulder-straps and flotation split between channels that run alongside your tank for underwater stability and around the waist for surface flotation. This is the most popular style of BC among sports divers.

Comfort When you own a BC, you never again face being the small guy wearing the XL rental BC because that’s all the dive-centre had left. With the

Pocket and weight-release. www.divErNEt.com

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DIVER TESTS PHOTOS BY NICKY MARTINEZ

and a folding snorkel, current-hook, a couple of slates and a spool and full-size back-up DSMB in the other. As a test, I removed and replaced all of these under water while wearing gloves.

There are attachment points for a knife (not included) above each pocket, and an array of D-rings. Two of these have clips, enabling them to be moved quickly to other mounting-points dotted around the jacket if you want to customise your accessory layout.

Riding typically high in the water with BC inflated.

Stability The main role of any BC is to allow you to achieve neutral buoyancy and trim under water. The BC0102 is a weight-integrated BC, and I balanced it by placing most of the weight in the main waist-pouches, with two small weights in the rear trim-pockets. I used a 15l tank, which I dislike, as I’m only 5ft 8in and 15s tend to roll me.

This proved a very stable jacket. I could hang perfectly horizontally without needing any sneaky fin-movements to prevent rolling or pitching. The horizontal trim is important – it keeps you streamlined, reducing effort to swim and prolonging your gas supply.

It also means that you can work close to the bottom and, if you fin correctly, won’t raise a cloud of silt, especially inside wrecks.

For videographers and photographers, stability helps to keep a camera steady, and assists models in maintaining their poses.

Other Features The plastic backpack incorporates a large top handle. A height-adjustment strap loops over your tank-valve and ensures that your BC sits in your preferred position on your cylinder.

The camband is a joy to use. Normally these have to be unthreaded and slackened off to fit to a new tank, but TUSA’s doesn’t. Once you’ve set it for the diameter of your cylinder, you won’t need to unthread and retighten it again unless you swap to a tank of a different diameter.

Usually cambands also require you to apply a fair amount of force to close the over-centre lever, but you won’t need to fight this buckle to flip it shut – it closes effortlessly. This is nice for anyone, but especially for younger divers or, perhaps, older ones with arthritis.

I was able to pack a popular 50m reel and fullsize DSMB into one of the two zipped pockets,

Safety We live in cynical times. The CE mark is often held up as defining that a scuba product has been thoroughly tested against exacting criteria by wholly objective experts, yet some highly placed safety specialists I know are not convinced. So I examined the BC’s safety features in detail.

I began by testing the inflation and deflation controls. At 11m the direct feed filled the BC in just over 4sec. The push-button is progressive, speeding up inflation the harder you press, though the range is quite narrow.

So it’s very quick to let you stop your descent, for example, while freefalling down a wall.

CE standards require that a BC can dump faster than it can inflate, to reduce the risk of a runaway ascent should the direct-feed stick open. I tested this by inflating at the maximum flow-rate, while keeping the shoulder-dump open, and the BC0102 passed this test, as it should.

I also wanted to test how quickly I could stop a runaway ascent. Holding onto some wreckage, I fully inflated the jacket and let go.

Venting only through the shoulder-dump, stopping distance was less than 1m.

The TUSA also has a bum-dump, and both dumps are easy to locate by touch. A rapid exhaust on the oral inflation/deflation hose elbow is activated by pulling down on the mouthpiece. The dump-valves are very good at preventing water ingress.

The oral inflator is simple to use and has a mesh screen inside to prevent debris such as small pebbles entering the mechanism through the mouthpiece.

Integrated Weights Most recreational-diving fatality victims fail to jettison their weights. The BC0102’s release system is similar to others on the market – pull the handles outwards and the weights are gone. I’m a big fan of this type of release, and have used it myself for more than a decade.

In an emergency, the side-weights can be dropped almost instantly and aren’t confusing to ditch for an assisting diver, though each pouch does have to be jettisoned separately.

The pouches can be loaded after your BC is on. An audible click confirms that they’re locked into place. The handles make it easy to hand the weights up before boarding a boat.

The trim-weights are non-ditchable.

The lever design makes tightening the camband effortless.

water level. It was about 15cm, typical for a BC with this amount of lift and a comfortable height that, in normal diving conditions, should allow you to breathe through your mouth if you’re out of air and have no snorkel.

The height at which any BC will float you doesn’t depend only on the lift.

At the end of a dive a near-empty BC will float you higher, while a wrongly sized jacket, or being overweighted, or having a heavier cylinder mounted higher than mine was, or using a weighty regulator could cause you to ride lower than I did.

The BC0102 supported me vertically, so I wasn’t expending valuable energy fighting to stay upright. Struggling against a BC that is trying to float you face down can quickly become exhausting and unsafe.

I wanted to see how fast I could remove the jacket in the water, either in an emergency or to board a small boat.

My best of three was just under 10sec.

I found it hard to find the chest-strap release, because I couldn’t distinguish it from the whistle easily through my 3mm gloves.

An owner will do better once familiar with the controls.

TUSA deserves credit for using hi-vis colours to make it easier for your buddy to quickly identify the inflate and deflate controls and the weight-release handles in an emergency.

You can get good neck extension and easily roll the victim to get a seal for EAR in the water for a casualty wearing the BC0102.

Conclusion A lot of thought has gone into the BC0102 Soverin Alpha and I found myself impressed by its overall performance as well as TUSA’s attention to detail. ■

SPECS TESTER8 Steve Warren PRICE8 £399 SIZES8 XS, S, M, L/XL WEIGHT83.8kg, Size M (including weightpockets)

DUMP VALVES8 Three D-RINGS8 Six, two of which are repositionable

Surface Performance The contents of one capacious pocket. www.divErNEt.com

At the surface, I measured how far the fully inflated jacket would lift my mouth above

COLOUR8 Black CONTACT8 cpspartnership.co.uk DIVER GUIDE ★★★★★★★★★✩

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UNDER/WETSUIT

SHARKSKIN FULL SUIT A FEW NOVEMBERS AGO, the latex neck-seal of my drysuit split as I was kitting up for a cheeky midweek bimble. It was a bit annoying, but my irritation was soothed when I got my money back from the inland site where I wasn’t diving.

This wouldn’t have mattered much, except that I was due to meet some friends at Hodge Close a couple of days later and was now without a suit. So I went home and exhumed my old compressed neoprene Northern Diver from the loft.

It hasn’t been truly watertight for years, but it’s my trusty stand-by for those occasions when I’m damned if I’m going to miss a dive.

This time, however, I really should have thought the thing through a little more carefully, and remembered to change the undersuit as well.

Hodge didn’t start well. Pulling the thick, stiff old suit on over the top of my Thinsulate wasn’t easy, but I persevered, and even got the zip closed without snagging it.

Bending my arms to get into the BC was hard work, what with all that extra material, but I was finally able to flop into the water and, after a struggle, pull on my fins.

By comparison, the dive was easy. I always liked that suit under water. But then came the ascent, and getting air out of the suit with the undersuit blocking the cuff-dump resulted in the slowest, most cautious ascent in the history of sport-diving, as I clung to the rock wall of the old quarry to prevent a runaway ascent.

If only I’d had the Sharkskin undersuit I’ve been testing recently, it could all have been so different.

In Use The Sharkskin is a remarkable garment. It’s made of a thin, four-way-stretchy material that is both breathable and windproof, so it’s useful above water on the dive-boat or when you’re walking around the site and looking like the sort of diver who really has his act together.

Getting into the Sharkskin was easy. Open the back-mounted zip, step into the bottom half of the suit, pull on the arms and I was almost there.

Unusually, the zip runs diagonally from just above the left hip up to the back of the right

Sleeve with thumb loop

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shoulder, and it turned out that the angle is perfect for pulling it closed using the dangly ribbon attached to the tab.

Putting on my drysuit over the top was equally straightforward. There are stirrups to stop the legs rucking up, thumb-loops on the ends of the arms to keep the sleeves straight, and the material of the Sharkskin didn’t tend to catch in the suit zip, which was nice.

Once on, the undersuit added no feeling of bulk. I was able to walk around without looking as if I’d dropped a roll of carpet from under each arm, and pulled on my BC and fins and clip-stages without feeling constricted.

It was also comfortable enough to wear for a long day without chafing, and if you do get a bit damp it’s said to wick away the moisture. My wrist-seals always weep a bit, but I didn’t notice this with the Sharkskin in the same way that I do with the Thinsulate None of which counts for much if you get cold on the dive. Sharkskin says that its suit offers warmth equivalent to that of a 2-3mm neoprene wetsuit. I’ve no idea if that’s true or not, but I managed a 90-minute dive in my current neoprene suit and was cool but not chilled when I climbed out of the water.

In winter or under a membrane suit I’d have needed more insulation, but the Sharkskin is thin and light enough to layer up easily.

I was able to pull my winter undersuit on over the Sharkskin and couldn’t discern any real difference, except that after two minutes I really needed the breathable effect.

The suit is also said to be odourresistant, which would be nice at the end of a week’s diving trip.

Conclusion As a bonus, if you’re headed abroad to warmer climes the Sharkskin will stand alone as a 23mm wetsuit or can be worn under a thicker suit or even a semi-dry for additional warmth – and because it’s neutrally buoyant under water, you won’t need to add any lead.

And talking of weight, the suit is light enough to drop into your dive-bag just in case.

The only downside I can think of is the price, which isn’t cheap, but it does look well-made and likely to last a long time. Also, that back-zip isn’t convenience-zip friendly.

But then, as a friend pointed out a little more forcefully than I thought necessary, if I was female a convenience zip would be no use anyway, so now I knew how she felt.

All in all, well worth considering. ■

SPECS TESTER8 Mike Ward PRICE8 £285 SIZES89 female – 6-22. 10 male – XXS-5XL WEIGHT8 1kg COLOURS8 Dark grey UK DISTRIBUTOR8 liquidsports.co.uk DIVER GUIDE ★★★★★★★★★✩ www.divErNEt.com

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DIVER TESTS

PHOTO SOFTWARE

VIVID-PIX LAND & SEA SCUBA PICTURE-FIX THE UNDERWATER WORLD IS PACKED with life and full of vibrant colour, but the first time you take an underwater photograph you’ll find yourself looking at a dull greenishblue picture and wondering where all the excitement went.

Yes, you can start to invest in bigger and better camera gear and wide-angle lenses and big flashguns, but wouldn’t it be good if there were a simple-to-use piece of software that would automatically turn your snaps into works of art?

Enter Vivid-Pix Land & Sea Scuba Picture-Fix Imaging Software. Not, perhaps, the snappiest name I’ve heard, but it tells you exactly what the software is intended to do.

Note especially the use of the word “scuba”. Company head Rick Voight is an enthusiastic diver, and it was his disappointment with his own VividPix Giannis D shot showing initial selection panel. underwater pictures that led to the development of the software and the founding of the company.

Pretty good, I thought, but the exhaled kettle on before you start.

There are different versions of the software bubbles at the back of the shot had gone a bit You might reasonably point out that this for PC, Mac, iPhone and iPad, with an Android pink, so I reduced the red in the image, using simplicity is the result of VividPix having far phone and tablet version on the way. The the appropriate slider. fewer tools and controls than other imagecompany also offers software to restore old, That sorted the colour nicely, but seemed to manipulation programmes, and you’d be right. faded and discoloured snapshots to their full make the image duller overall, so I added in a bit If you’re serious about your photography glory, which is another application that relies more vividness to compensate, then saved the you will need more than VividPix can offer, on delivering better colour balance and final picture using the Save Vivid-Pix button. but until you want to do something to your contrast adjustment. picture that this software can’t deliver, don’t let Total time taken: 20sec, give or take.

I chose to try the Windows and ioS versions, Final images are saved in the same file as the it put you off. and found both easy to download and install original and with the same filename, just adding by following the on-screen prompts, as you’d the word “Vivid”, and you can choose to save a expect these days. full-size version of the file, a smaller version for social media or other sharing, or both.

That said, the key question, of course, is does it Your original file isn’t over-written, so if you work? I went back to some of my older pictures want to go back and have another go you can and picked out a couple to try. Both are start again from scratch. available-light shots, one of the wreck of the Once installed, you open the programme and ☛ Giannis D in the Red from there on it’s even easier. Start by clicking Sea, the other of a either Land or Sea, just to the right of centre of playful seal at the the home screen, then hit Select Image(s) to open the file or files on which you want to work. Farne Islands.

The Giannis D Nine versions of the first image you selected shot doesn’t look will immediately be presented for inspection, and all you do is pick the one that looks best to too bad at first sight – it’s clear and has you. Click on it and you’ll find yourself looking some colour – but at two versions of the same picture – your the Vivid-Pix original on the left and a corrected picture on software at once the right, with some simple sliders below the added extra punch pictures for additional tweaking if you feel it and improved the needs further work. colour, which you Try the sliders and you’ll see exactly what can see most they do; what you see is what you get. obviously in the It’ll take you, ooh, maybe five minutes to get sloping deck and to know the software and learn how to use it, VividPix Giannis D shot with the red reduced and the vividness increased. the red of the BC. and that includes the time it takes to put the

Test Shot 1

How It Works

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DIVER TESTS Test Shot 2 The seal image was taken more than 10 years ago on a dull day using an early digital camera.

I know people bang on about dolphins, but give me seals any day – they’re the ultimate aquatic acrobats and I love them to bits.

Dives can blur into one after a while, but I remember that one as though I were still back A UK shot of a seal, showing correction and crop. on the RIB with the seawater running off my drysuit boots and didn’t even get close to showing what a a big, daft grin all over my face. wonderful dive I’d had.

However, I also remember being hugely Which is probably exactly the sort of situation frustrated because the camera wouldn’t focus the VividPix people had in mind. quickly enough to get a decent shot, so I ended So I loaded up the only half-decent image up with loads of blurry, low-contrast photos that I did get, picked my favourite option from the nine versions offered, rotated and cropped the resulting picture and saved it.

It still won’t win any prizes, but it’s a much TESTER8 Mike Ward better match to my memories of the day than PRICES8 US $50 the original.

SPECS

OPERATING SYSTEMS8 Mac, ioS, Windows PURCHASE8Download only CONTACT8 vivid-pix.com DIVER GUIDE ★★★★★★★★✩✩

Conclusion And that’s about what this VividPix software is all about. It’s aimed squarely at divers who take

MASK

IST PI FRAMELESS THIS PRODUCT IS A SINGLE-LENS, low-volume mask with a nose-pocket. The example supplied had a clear skirt, but other colour choices are available, including black.

The IST Pi Frameless provides a wide field of view, including downward vision, which is useful for seeing chest-strap releases, for instance. The skirt is unobtrusive, but does usefully increase your peripheral vision, so it feels good to use.

This is also a nice mask for photographers’ models to wear under water. I couldn’t detect any colour tint or darkening of facial images – some masks impart a green hue or make the face inside the mask look darker than the skin outside.

As this is a mono-lens mask, IST doesn’t offer off-the-rack eyesight-correction lenses. If you want to have this one corrected you’ll need to have custom lenses bonded to the glass.

In Use The soft silicone skirt with its double-seal proved very comfortable on long dives. It sealed extremely well, even over two weeks’ worth of moustache grown specifically for testing masks! divEr

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The strap tightens by simply pulling the end of the strap and slackens by pressing two easily located push-buttons on the buckle.

You squeeze the buttons vertically between finger and thumb, so you aren’t pushing the mask forward to slacken the strap, which can lift seals and cause leakage, and the buttons were easily operable with 3mm gloves.

As with many mask designs, once the strap is

The Farnes seal before and after the VividPix treatment. pictures, rather than photographers who dive.

The sort of divers who simply want to perk up their diving snaps so that they match their memories of the dive and then show them to their buddies in the pub at the end of the day, and all without having to spend hours at a computer.

Understand that, and VividPix works a treat. ■

released it tends to automatically loosen to the “perfect” tension, meaning that it’s tight enough to seal, yet not so tight as to be uncomfortable to wear.

I found it to be the sort of mask I could clear hands-free, which is a benefit if you do have a leak and your hands are occupied operating reels or a camera, for instance.

Breathe out through your nose and roll your head back, and the Pi Frameless drains quickly and completely.

I found the nose pocket easy to use, too – either for pinching my nostrils closed or for blocking them from underneath. However, this type of mask design can be unsuitable if you have been gifted with a large nose. ■

SPECS TESTER8 Steve Warren PRICE8 £39 LENS8Single COLOURS8 Black, clear or white silicone CONTACT8 sea-sea.com DIVER GUIDE ★★★★★★★★✩✩

www.divErNEt.com

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NEW BUT The latest kit to hit the dive shops

Scubapro Hydros Pro BC4444 Built using Scubapro’s “Fluid-Form 3D Gel System”, the Hydros Pro is unlike any other BC on the market, says the manufacturer. Its “BC-4-Life” modular design makes it easy to customise and even easier to repair, it says, while a body-moulding backplate-andharness system is intended to deliver maximum comfort and stability at depth.

With barely any inherent buoyancy, less weighting is said to be needed, while fast drying and compactness when packed should suit the BC well for travel. Available in black, blue and yellow for men in S, M, L and XL-XXL sizes, and white, pink and black for women (XS-S, M and L), it costs £570.

8 scubapro.com

Dive Rite Helmet 3333 As technical diving becomes more popular, more divers employ helmets to prevent injuries in overhead environments such as caves and wrecks, especially when using scooters. They also provide a convenient place to mount lights or action-cams. Safety helmets for surface activities usually contain foam, which makes them bulky, buoyant and awkward under water, but Dive Rite’s helmet contains no foam. It has an inner suspension harness offering fast adjustment for different hood thicknesses and accepts optional light mounts. The price is £75.

8 sea-sea.com

Leak Insure Moisture Absorbent Extra Value Pack

BARE Velocity Ultra Wetsuit

4444

BARE claims that its “Celliant Infrared & Progressive Full Stretch Technology” provides an unsurpassed fit and longer, warmer dives for owners of its mid-priced Velocity Ultra wetsuits. The idea is to recycle infra-red heat that would otherwise be lost from the diver’s body by infusing the neoprene with Celliant, a synthetic polymer fabric. Three grades of neoprene are used in different areas to provide stretch, compression-resistance and robustness where those qualities are most needed. This one-piece, back-entry suit costs £291 (5mm) or £308 (7mm).

8 baresports.com

Every underwater photographer dreads a flood, and Leak Insure packs of absorbent granules are meant to soak up water if the worst happens, and give you time to save your camera.

They also help to prevent housing fogging, a common problem caused by temperature changes, says the maker, which has two new sachet sizes to fit housings with limited space.

The 80 x 20mm Slim and 60 x 20mm Shorty are both sold in 10-sachet packs at £8, saving £2 on buying two packs of five.

8 leakinsure.com divEr

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4444

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JUST SURFACED October.qxp_Layout 1 05/09/2017 10:33 Page 113

JUST SURFACED Dry Bag Pro 3333 This isn’t a “dry bag” as we know it but a bag that’s supposed to help dry things out. Its purpose is to ensure that your wet- or drysuit, swimwear, towel and other damp gear can be hung up to dry without dripping where they shouldn’t – perhaps on the drive home from a dive-site. It’s made from showerproof material to prevent leakage but has mesh panels to allow air to circulate and help dry your kit.

The hanger can support up to 25kg and the bag is lightweight and takes up little space when not in use, according to the manufacturer.

The Dry Bag Pro costs£55.

8 thedrybag.co.uk

Zybax Scuba Cleaner & Odour Eliminator4444

The frame of the new Italica mask is made of polycarbonate with chromed metal inserts and closures and stainless-steel screws. The clear or black skirt uses various thicknesses of silicon and large textured surfaces, which Seac says allows the mask to adapt quickly to any face. Ultra Clear optical glass is fitted and the Italica comes in various colours, and with optional mirrored lens or an Asian Fit version for slimmer faces. A “3D Pivoting Buckle” system is designed for easy adjustment of the liquid silicon buckle. The mask costs £49, or £59 with mirrored lens.

8 seacsub.com

HENLEY SPIERS

Anywhere that dive and swimsuits are hung up they can soon begin to whiff unpleasantly, unless rinsed out thoroughly with a cleaner. This product is claimed to eliminate the unpleasant odours created by sweat and urine and to remove damaging salt and chlorine, prolonging the life of neoprene and lycra products. Sold in liquid form and meant to be diluted, a small amount of Zybax is intended to go a long way – it costs £7 for a 250ml bottle, which is intended to provide up to eight treatments.

8 cpspartnership.co.uk

Seac Italica Mask4444

NEXT ISSUE Mystery Diver is back!

Investigating the business of booking liveaboards

More Blue Planet Inside track on another BBC underwater extravaganza

Axe Murderer Dives Just north of in-the-news Guam, to dive intriguing Saipan

The Truk Story Pt 2

BRITISH BLUE WONDERS

Baitballs? Sharks? Diving birds?

Is it the Sardine Run? No, it’s a day out off Cornwall!

www.divErNEt.com

More amazing wreck dives – and Cousteau gets involved

ON SALE 19 OCTOBER 113

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DHD – Oct. 2017.qxp_Holiday Directory 01/09/2017 15:29 Page 114

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

CANARY ISLANDS 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 dive centre. Approved by the MoD – one of only 10 dive centres worldwide! BSAC, SSI and PADI dive school. Open every day of the year.

Daily pleasure shore, boat and night dives – all same price.

Great deals for groups, universities and the solo diver.

PAPHOS CYDIVE LTD 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.

MALAYSIA BORNEO, SABAH 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.

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.

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.

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.

THAILAND PHUKET/SIMILANS SHARKEY SCUBA

CYPRUS

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.

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

MALTA PAPHOS/PISSOURI CYPRUS DIVING ADVENTURES Makedonias 40, Shop 1, Pissouri Village, 4607.

Tel: (00 357) 97 661046. www.cyprusdivingadventures.com E-mail: info@cyprusdivingadventures.com PADI 5*. TDI. UK trained professionals.

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.

SURAT THANI/KOH TAO DAVY JONES’ LOCKER (DJL DIVING)

TO ADVERTISE YOUR DIVE CENTRE HERE, CALL 020 8941 4568

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9/21 Moo 2, Mae Haad, Koh Tao, Koh Phangan, Surat Thani, Thailand 84280. Tel: (00 66) 77 456126.

Mob: (00 66) 79 700913. www.techdivethailand.com E-mail: djl_kohtao@hotmail.com Recreational, reef, tech, deep, wreck.

To advertise in the divEr Holiday Directory contact Alex on 020 8941 4568 • e-mail: alex@divermag.co.uk

115_DIVER_1017.qxp_DIVER_2017 05/09/2017 10:36 Page 115

Winter Deals Photo: Pete Bullen

Recreational & Technical Diving

November to March

excl. period 18th Dec to 10th Jan Airport transfers t accommodation t Apartment 6 guided shore dives t(wreck, reef or cavern) Tank and weight hire t t Road transport to dive sites

Photo: Russ Easton

Dive & Stay £230 p.p. t 74 night night Dive & Stay £300 p.p. t (Based on 2 sharing a room)

ht g i l l e v a r T Gear hire package

(Wetsuit, BCD, DV & Fins) for just £20 per person per day

Mosta Road, St. Paul’s Bay, SPB 3114 Malta T: +356 21 571 111 or 21 572 558 E: dive@maltaqua.com

Yamamoto foam Comfort and longevity are key issues on the wetsuit choice.

This is the reason why the best Italian designers have created the Komoda. The Komoda is the perfect combination between elasticity and thermal insulation. With innovative Yamamoto rubber, zips with a Water Barrier System and antiabrasion polyurethane protections the new Komoda has been anatomically designed for both, man and woman, to make it so comfortable as a second skin. Seac is synonymous quality, all of our products are rigorously tested and subjected to the highest standards and quality controls.

seacsub.com

Liveaboard Directory – 10_17.qxp_Liveaboard Directory 05/09/2017 10:40 Page 116

LIVEABOARD DIRECTORY AF

Aqua-Firma

bo2 blue o two CT

DWw Dive Worldwide

HD

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THE RNLI DIVER SEA SURVIVAL COURSE AND WORKSHOP Equip yourself with the skills and confidence you need to dive in the cold, challenging waters around UK and Irish coastlines

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Classified page 118-119_10.qxp_Classified LHP 06/09/2017 17:32 Page 118

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Classified page 118-119_10.qxp_Classified LHP 06/09/2017 17:24 Page 119

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Project2_Layout 1 11/09/2017 10:57 Page 1

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DEEP BREATH

Deep Breath OCT.qxp_DIVER grid 05/09/2017 10:41 Page 122

His pictures may or may not be your cup of tea, but with his unusual method of painting them, Russian diver Yuri Alekseev certainly isn’t looking for an easy ride.

ANDREY NEKRASOV tags along to watch him at work

divEr

122

artist paint cold

T

HE FIRST TIME I heard about Yuriy Alekseev, a 52-year-old artist, was on a dive-trip to Baikal, the world’s biggest lake by volume. He was a bit of a local celebrity, I was told.

I didn’t have time to meet him on that occasion, but on my next trip I arrange to go to the small town of Baikalsk where he lives. We meet at his studio and get on well, as he tells me about the art of painting under water in Siberia.

“While diving I was impressed by one site in the Olkhon island region, where you can see the rock going down vertically for almost 800m,” he says. “It’s a real abyss and it took my breath away! It was natural for me to want to draw the views I saw under the water.”

But why not enjoy the view, take photos if necessary and then paint in your comfortable studio? Because, says Alekseev, your perception of the world is quite different when you’re under water, with no sound but that of your rising air bubbles. The inspiration and energy he finds under water is, he insists, inimitable.

He uses ordinary oil paints. Oils can’t be dissolved in water so they cover the canvas smoothly. Brushes, however, have to be replaced by palette knives.

“The biggest problem is the temperature,” Alekseev tells me. “You have to work wearing thick gloves, which makes it difficult even to squeeze paint from the tube. The paint becomes stiffer when the temperature is down to 1°C. “The optical illusion found under water makes everything seem bigger, and the light filtering through Baikal waters changes your perception of colour.”

There is little time to pause and contemplate the scene at leisure, either, with a 90-minute maximum downtime in temperatures from 1-12°.

You have to get straight down to selecting the scene, arranging the easel, tools and paints to your satisfaction and completing your masterpiece.

Alekseev’s studio is a gallery devoted to mountainous and underwater Baikal scenes painted in different seasons.

One small painting in a corner proves to be his initial underwater outing, the world’s first painting created in Lake Baikal. The colours, touch and style are certainly different. We talk the evening away until I fall asleep on the sofa.

I

AM ON A 10-DAY TRIP, and towards the end of it find myself in Listvyanka.

I meet the artist again, along with my pal Kate, who has a part-time job as his assistant. We head for the shore and into the water.

It’s July, and the water is in the 8-12°C range, but unfortunately there had been no storms to clear the water the previous winter, and the vis is only 7-8m in the shallower areas.

Alekseev heads off to locate a subject and Kate follows with easel, canvas, palette knives and paints. I complete the chain with my camera.

At last the artist stops in 5m and indicates where he wants the easel. When everything is arranged to his satisfaction he grasps a tube of paint and makes the first mark by applying it directly to the canvas. Then he takes a palette knife and starts creating.

It all looks rather strange – the rough, wide strokes remind me of someone applying butter to a sandwich. Twenty minutes pass and a depiction of Baikal sponges on a seabed in blue water emerges. I take pictures as Kate circles like a shark, keeping an eye on the maestro’s SPG. Everyone is working away. After just over an hour, the snow-white canvas has been turned into a finished work of art.

Alekseev fins 2m back to appraise his work, adds a final touch and signals to his assistant that she can take everything away. We head back towards the shore.

When the painting is removed from the water and into the sunlight, the colours immediately start changing. It’s hard to pin down – they don’t seem to become dim or darker, just a bit different to how we had first perceived them.

We leave the picture in the sunshine to dry, attracting many passing tourists. The artist proudly explains his creative process to the curious and the amazed.

We share our impressions over a meal and decide to meet again so that I can watch one more picture being produced.

T

HAT DAY TURNS OUT to be cooler,

with clouds hanging above Baikal. We prepare quickly and head into the water.

The procedure is the same, and I position my camera to avoid disturbing the creator.

But this time round it is clearly proving difficult for Alekseev to apply paint to the canvas and the problem seems to be making him a little nervous.

It turns out later that he has decided to experiment with acrylics today, and they are causing problems. Paint and implements fly in all directions as the assistant tries to catch them. We all end up soiled with paint, including our masks.

Step by step, Alekseev adapts to the selfinflicted discomfort of his new priming method, and the blank canvas is gradually replaced by another imaginative Baikal seascape.

We’ve been submerged for 90 minutes, and Kate checks Alekseev’s contents gauge again and again.

And then, at last, the maestro’s face breaks into a smile. I commemorate the moment with my camera and we turn to the shore.

A storm is brewing, so we put the painting in the car – sadly, without giving Yuriy Alekseev the chance to enjoy his moment of glory this time round. www.divErNEt.com

BSAC (Try Tech) – 09_17.qxp_Full Page Bleed 11/09/2017 10:41 Page 1

Want to try rebreather diving?

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Photo: Marcus Blatchford

Suunto (D6i Zulu) â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 10_17.qxp_Suunto 11/09/2017 10:43 Page 1