Learning skills from some instructors might be a waste of time. Skills are the foundation of safe and enjoyable diving and the building blocks of all diving certifications. The comment here is not that learning skills is a waste of time, but that if you learn them from the wrong instructor, you may have to re-learn them completely for the skills to be of any use.
The research team from University of Western Australia arrived at this conclusion after a study involving two coral reefs. At one of the reefs (Scott Reef), shark hunters had been legally permitted to hunt sharks while the other reef (Rowley Shoals) was situated in a marine protected area.
Mark Powell qualified as a TDI / SDI Instructor in October 2000, and has been an ardent advocate of this training agency for almost two decades. In 2002 Mark Powell set up Dive-Tech (a dedicated technical diving training facility) and began working as a full time professional. A role that he has continued to this day.
“I am very excited to join the HQ team. The opportunity to help grow this agency is very exciting”, stated Powell.
Stewart is best known for his 2006 documentary Sharkwater in which he examined and exposed the shark-hunting industries of the world and the effect upon the ocean ecosystem.
Rob Stewart, 37, was diving with a small group on the wreck of the Queen of Nassau near Alligator Reef off Lower Matecumbe Key in about 225 feet of water, his sister Alexandra Stewart told Miami Herald on Wednesday morning. He was filming an installment of his Sharkwater documentary series, she said.
In this issue, Simon Pridmore takes a look at the buddy system and concludes that on many occasions your buddy is not your friend, and you would be much better off assuming that this will be the case and preparing yourself, always, to assume full responsibility for your diving.
World-renowned diving medicine expert Dr Neal Pollock gave everyone a lot to think about with his talk on the thoughtful management of decompression stress.
Neal looked at the many factors that can alter decompression stress and the practical strategies all divers can use to optimise decompression safety.
“It is increasingly common for divers to rely on dive computers for their decompression safety. Dive computers do not yet measure or integrate a multitude of factors that can alter decompression stress.”- Dr Neal Pollock.
The lead of the pilot study, Vinisha Ranna, who is also a keen scuba diver, became interested in the problem after she experienced it herself. In her case it manifested as a squeezing sensation in the teeth, known as barodontalgia
In order to see just how common and severe this problem is, she distributed a questionnaire through social media platforms dedicated to scuba diving and collected data from 100 scuba diving enthusiasts. A substantial number replied they experienced symptoms that range from tooth, jaw and gum pain to loosened crowns and broken dental fillings.
Due to the constant jaw clenching and fluctuations in the atmospheric pressure underwater, divers may experience symptoms ranging from tooth, jaw and gum pain to loosened crowns and broken dental fillings. Recreational divers should consult their dentist before diving if they recently received dental care, said lead author Vinisha Ranna, BDS, a student in the UB School of Dental Medicine.
When Shearwater first introduced their new Perdix dive computer in December 2015, I was pretty excited.
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HMHS Britannic was the largest ship to sink during World War I. (Weighting in at almost 50,000-tons she was also the largest ship in the world).
Many argue she is one of the most beautiful, intact, well-preserved passenger liners accessible to divers. It is little wonder that these factors, and the story behind her construction and sinking continue to capture divers imagination.
This video shows a different type of agonistic behaviour, found in the blacktip reef shark. It was created to go with the article entitled Posturing Sharks, published in X-Ray Magazine #76
This sounds simple enough, but not when one considers that the reef - the third largest coral reef in the world - measures nearly 150 miles long and four miles wide. The question of where to place the new corals comes into play.
Enter biology professor Robert van Woesik, from Florida Institute of Technology.
Armed with a US$205,000 grant from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, he and his team are working to identify the habitats and localities in the reef tract that offer optimal conditions for coral survival.
