X-Ray Mag #45

Maybe the concept of ‘responsible shark diving’ sounds a little oxymoronic, but there are many things that you can do to protect yourself and the sharks during your interaction. First and foremost, I can’t stress enough the need to gain as much knowledge as possible about the animals and their environment. To go into the water without at least a basic idea of how the sharks are likely to react is foolhardy to say the least.

As the word, rebreather, gains readership in diving magazines, brings novelty to shows and fills the mouths of renowned instructors many industry professionals are thinking of “rebreatherizing” themselves. This is predictable, as the rebreather has been hailed as the “greatest diving innovation since the regulator”.

As the word, rebreather, gains readership in diving magazines, brings novelty to shows and fills the mouths of renowned instructors many industry professionals are thinking of “rebreatherizing” themselves. This is predictable, as the rebreather has been hailed as the “greatest diving innovation since the regulator”.

Jill Heinerth, whose first job was a newspaper route in her home town of Toronto, Canada, is today a pioneer technical diver and instructor, a renowned explorer of underwater caves who owns a record for the deepest and longest cave dive, and a record for the longest dive into an Antarctic iceberg.

Jill Heinerth, whose first job was a newspaper route in her home town of Toronto, Canada, is today a pioneer technical diver and instructor, a renowned explorer of underwater caves who owns a record for the deepest and longest cave dive, and a record for the longest dive into an Antarctic iceberg.

A small, warm, sub-tropical Atlantic Ocean island with enough tourist visitors to make access easy and facilities plentiful, diving not mainstream but both good and also dependable—this is Lanzarote.

Breathing hyperbaric air causes a syndrome of behavioral and subjective effects called nitrogen narcosis, which limits the work efficiency of divers and is ultimately life-threatening.

To find seclusion, special locations need to be found. One of these is Nuweiba, up in the Northern Sinai Gulf of Aqaba beyond Sharm el-Sheikh between Dahab and Taba.

Why rebreather divers, even more so than open circuit divers, need to be in control and focused when they ascend.

Squids, octopus and cuttlefish (who all belong to the phylum of molluscs) are among the most intelligent animals in the sea, and definitely the most intelligent marine invertebrates. We should in fact ask ourselves if the human mind is capable of thinking as fast as these creatures do.

The northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea is full of new opportunities and fresh dive sites. "Find something new and interesting to report on at the Red Sea" was the assignment I gave myself. Right.