Dive Inspirations Scuba News

Now this is technically not related to diving, but it is quite interesting. We’ve run stories before about the horror of shark finning, so this kind of fits in there. We will however spare you the pictures. You’ll have to click the link for that.

Alice Newstead took the drastic action in protest at the practice of finning – where sharks are impaled on hooks, before their fins are sliced off to harvest meat for shark fin soup. The sharks are then thrown back into the ocean still alive.

A crowd gathered outside the Lush cosmetics shop in London’s Regent’s Street to see the 26-year-old impaled by hooks in her back and gasped as blood trickled down her back.

Miss Newstead said: “I am doing this because the demand for shark fin soup and other shark products is wiping out the shark population.

“I have had my torso, legs, arms, stomach and knees pierced before so that I could hang from them, so this is no big deal.

“Being hung from the chest is more painful than the back because it restricts your breathing, but as long as the piercer knows what they are doing then it is completely safe,” she said.

Source

Tags: Announcements, Conservation, Marine Life, Ocean News // Comments Off

This article from the St. Petersberg Times once again brings to light the issue of the lionfish beginning to breed in the Caribbean.

A maroon-striped marauder with venomous spikes is rapidly multiplying in the Caribbean’s warm waters, swallowing native species, stinging divers and generally wreaking havoc on an ecologically delicate region.

The red lionfish, a tropical native of the Indian and Pacific oceans that probably escaped from a Florida fish tank, is showing up everywhere - from the coasts of Cuba and Hispaniola to Little Cayman’s pristine Bloody Bay Wall, one of the region’s prime destinations for divers.

Wherever it appears, the adaptable predator corners fish and crustaceans up to half its size with its billowy fins and sucks them down in one violent gulp.

Research teams observed one lionfish eating 20 small fish in less than 30 minutes.

“This may very well become the most devastating marine invasion in history,” said Mark Hixon, an Oregon State University marine ecology expert who compared lionfish to a plague of locusts. “There is probably no way to stop the invasion completely.”
Source

Could the grouper be the answer?

Tags: Dive Travel, Marine Life, Ocean News, Scuba Diving News // Comments Off

Now that the latest marine census is finally finished, scientist have identified 122,500 marine species in the oceans. They expect that number to rise to over 200,000. Time to get diving, and don’t forget that fish ID card

Scientists have identified some 122,500 species of marine life in the oceans and have managed to clear up some 56,000 cases of double-identity as part of a global research project.
“Convincing warnings about declining fish and other marine species must rest on a valid census,” said Mark Costello of the University of Auckland in a statement Wednesday.

“This project will improve information vital to researchers investigating fisheries, invasive species, threatened species and marine ecosystem functioning, as well as to educators.”

The new World Register of Marine Species (www.marinespecies.org) now contains about 122,500 validated marine species names, and has cleared up the aliases given to thousands of species.

“It will eliminate the misinterpretation of names, confusion over Latin spellings, redundancies and a host of other problems that sow confusion and slow scientific progress,” Costello said.

Researchers aim to finish the project by October 2010.
Source

Tags: Conservation, Marine Life, Ocean News, Scuba Diving News // Comments Off

Mindless shark killing. That’s why. Between the senseless slaughter of sharks by various Asian countries for shark fin soup and and the ridiculous shark tournaments here at home like The Montauk Shark Tournament  the shark populations are plummeting.

100 million to 1 - This is the ratio of sharks to humans killed by one another in 2007. The average number of human fatalities for the last two decades, per the International Shark Attack File, was five. Compare that to the average of eighteen annual fatalities from dogs, and you have more to fear from Fido than you do from Jaws.Source            

But there is a small glimmer of hope on the horizon. At least here in the USA.

To curb the illegal practice of removing shark fins at sea, U.S. officials announced Thursday that all sharks caught in the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico must be brought ashore with their fins attached.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also reduced by 85 percent the commercial fishing quota for the sandbar shark, a popular species for the Asian delicacy of shark fin soup. Recreational fishermen also will be banned from catching and keeping sandbar sharks.The new rules, which also reduce and set quotas for some other sharks, will help rebuild populations, NOAA says. Sharks take years to mature and they produce few offspring, making them vulnerable to overfishing, said Jim Balsiger, an acting assistant administrator.The rule will take effect July 24.AP NEWS         

Now don’t get us wrong, we are not against sport fisherman who catch and release. We are not against fisherman who put food on our plates. But we are FIRMLY against the useless slaughter of sharks soley for the use of their fins, and the barbaric ways in which sharks are killed in uncontrolled tournaments like the The Montauk Shark Tournament . It seems that today, in 2008, people would have more understanding about the affects of removing these apex predators from the wild. Obviously the idiots who run the The Montauk Shark Tournament don’t get it. They should take a look at the Quiznos MadFin Tournament to see how it should be done.

Tags: Conservation, Marine Life, Ocean News, Scuba Diving News // Comments Off

This is some sad news. Hopefully it is only temporary, because Bikini is one of those dives that is on almost every divers “must dive” lists. 

The flagship tourist destination in the Marshall Islands — a World War II fleet of ships sunk by nuclear tests at Bikini Atoll — will shut down in two weeks after sustaining unprecedented losses.

The unreliability of the one local airline and skyrocketing fuel prices torpedoed a once-thriving scuba diving business that lured thousands of visitors from Europe, America and Australia to this former nuclear test site in the Pacific, Bikini Atoll Divers manager Jack Niedenthal said Tuesday…

“After 13 great-though-challenging years as one of the premier wreck diving and fishing tourism sites in the Pacific, Bikini Atoll will be closed to tourists as of June 11,” Niedenthal said. “We have made this decision due to the unreliability of our local airline, Air Marshall Islands, and also because of the rapid rise in the world price of fuel, which has made all of our operating expenses just skyrocket beyond our means.”
Source

Tags: Dive Locations, Dive Sites, Dive Travel, Marine Life, Ocean News, Scuba Diving News, Travel Advisories // Comments Off

We’re back. Where were we? Click Here. 

Tags: Announcements // Comments Off

  We’re going to go with creepy. We go diving to look at living creatures. We don’t venture into the blue to see dead coral and fish bones. Leave that to the archeologists! The idea of swimming through an underwater cemetery just creeps us out. 

The Neptune Memorial Reef, which opened last fall, is seen by its creators as a perfect final resting spot for those who loved the sea. They hope that one day the reef will cover 16 acres and have room for 125,000 remains.”This is simply as good as it gets,” said Gary Levine, a diver who conceived the reef and is now a shareholder in the company that owns it.The Neptune Memorial Reef is located in open waters 3¼ miles off the coast of Key Biscayne, which means any certified diver can visit. The artificial reef’s first phase allows for about 850 remains.The ashes are mixed with cement designed for underwater use and fitted into a mold, which a diver then places and secures into the reef. A copper and bronze plaque is installed with the person’s name, date of birth and death. There is also a line for a message.  Source     

Tags: Dive Locations, Dive Sites, Ocean News, Scuba Diving News // Comments Off

This is a very disturbing story breaking out of Taiwan. We hope it turns out well in the end.  

An all-out search for eight missing scuba divers in waters off the Kenting National Park at the southernmost tip of Taiwan had not yielded any results as of last night.Officials at the Coast Guard Administration said yesterday the search will continue today.The eight holidaymakers — six men and two women — were reported missing while scuba diving in waters near Chihsingyen (Seven Star Rock), located some 12 nautical miles southwest of Kenting in the southernmost county of Pingtung.They left for Chihsingyen along with four other members of a Kaohsiung diving club aboard a yacht early in the morning. The 12 began scuba diving in waters between Oluanbi and Chihsingyen at 10:30 a.m. and were supposed to return to the yacht at 11:30 a.m.However, eight of them failed to return to the yacht on schedule.Source  

FOLLOW UP:

All of the eight missing Taiwanese scuba divers were miraculously rescued yesterday after nearly 48 hours of drifting in the ocean offshore Taiwan’s eastern county Taitung, said the local coast guard yesterday.

“All of us kept talking to each other when we were drifting in the sea,” said one of the divers, 38-year-old Tu Ting-chang after being rescued from the sea yesterday afternoon.

He added that the divers called each others’ names every three minutes to keep every one conscious, and they drank rainwater when they were thirsty, which was why they were able to survive the ordeal.
Source

Tags: Announcements, Dive Locations, Dive Sites, Dive Travel, Scuba Diving News // Comments Off

This is great to see. 

Half a century after the atomic blasts that devastated Bikini Atoll, vast expanses of corals in the area seem to be flourishing once again, much to the surprise of scientists.

American government scientists detonated a hydrogen bomb on the tiny island (a part of the Marshall Islands in the western Pacific) on March 1, 1954, and about 20 other nuclear tests were carried out on the atoll between 1946 and 1958….

A team of scientists recently led a diving expedition into Bravo Crater and found an unexpectedly thriving coral community.

“I didn’t know what to expect — some kind of moonscape perhaps. But it was incredible, huge matrices of branching Porites coral (up to 8 meters [25 feet] high) had established, creating a thriving coral reef habitat,” said study team member Zoe Richards of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.
Full Story

Tags: Conservation, Dive Locations, Dive Sites, Dive Travel, Marine Life, Ocean News, Scuba Diving News // Comments Off

Picture this - You’re off on a nice dive.  You check your gauges and decide to surface. After a nice little safety stop, your head slowly breaks the surface expecting to see the dive boat. There’s only one small problem; it’s not there! We’ve all thought about it, but most of us never think it will ever happen. But what if? What if the dive operator you were diving with just up and forgot about you while you were below? What if they left you?  Well that’s exactly what happened to Dan Carlock of Santa Monica California in 2004. He had signed up for a dive organized by Ocean Adventures Dive Co. on a boat run by Sun Diver Charters out of Huntington California. And now, he’s suing. We generally are not a fan of lawsuits, but in this case we couldn’t agree more. No matter what the “action of the diver”, there is no excuse for leaving a diver in the water. The extra 2 minutes it takes to read a roll call and make sure all divers are on the boat at the end of each dive is not to much to ask of a boat captain and its crew.   There are lawyers who would disagree with that however. In fact, those lawyers represent Ocean Adventures. They say that being left alone in the ocean is one of the risks of diving. We say - BULLSHIT! When a diver signs up for a dive, they do not sign up to be dropped off on their own. The “risk” that they could be abandoned by the dive boat and it’s crew is nowhere in the waiver of responsibility that a diver signs.  And it shouldn’t be. Ever! Nor should it be inferred. Scuba diving is not meant to be a survival sport. Could anyone imagine what would happen to the dive industry if operators were no longer responsible to bring the divers back? Of course we are exaggerating a tiny bit, but that is in essence what Ocean Adventures lawyers are saying.   

Lawyers representing Sun Diver Charters and Ocean Adventures, at whom the lawsuit is aimed, had moved that the judge issue a summary judgment against Carlock on the grounds that, by participating in the dive, he had assumed certain risks — thereby waiving his right to hold the operators responsible.Source          

We just want to say Thank You to Judge Edward Ferns for allowing the suit to continue.

“While (the diving companies have) shown there is a risk inherent in the sport of diving that a diver will become separated from other scuba divers, it has not been shown that there is a risk inherent in the sport … that divers will forget and abandon their co-participants in the ocean …,” Ferns wrote.Source           

We can’t wait to see this play out. We hope a jury tears this dive operator a new asshole and awards a massive judgement against them. Maybe it will send a signal to other shoddy dive operators to shape up.

Tags: Scuba Diving News // Comments Off