COVER STORY Southern Cross Club, Little Cayman walls, boobies, bites and Bloody Bay Little Cayman's walls are considered among the best in the Caribbean, but the island itself has a few down sides, from searing temperatures to night insect madness - compliments of the coconut bug, whose carcass burns your skin if you swat it. When you're out in the middle of nowhere where there's not much to do but dive, duck the heat, and eat three meals a day, what counts is the quality of the diving, the meals - and the air conditioning. Find out what our correspondent thought of the walls, the fish life, and his stay at Southern Cross Club, from the rooms and the meals to the resort and its dive program - along with his tips on how to avoid the wounds of the fearsome coconut bug. The Rest of Little Cayman On Little Cayman, Southern Cross is hardly the only game in town. There are several other choices, each with its own appeal. Most have their own dive operation. Check out some of the other places to stay and how they stack up with divers. Christmas Island Despite Christmas Island's location smack-dab in the middle of the Pacific, the island's an easy trip, only three air-hours from Honolulu. Our correspondent visited Christmas with plenty of questions: Had the corals recovered from the serious bleaching they sustained during the 1997-98 El Niño? Would the fish life live up to its reputation for diversity and abundance? What sort of meals, resort, and dive operation would he find on an island where nothing grows - and no one even lived until the middle of this century? The answers, it seems, are complicated: diving on Christmas, our correspondent says, "will cause one person to rave, another to wonder." The Story of Christmas Christmas Island, the world's largest coral atoll, was named for the day in 1777 when Captain James Cook first happened upon it. It remained uninhabited until the 1950s, when the British chose it as the site for their nuclear weapons development project. The Answer to Inflatable Sharks In the June, 1999, issue, we wrote about Florida inventor John Underwood, who'd recently patented a "shark protection device" consisting of a hypodermic plunger attached to 3000 psi of compressed air that divers could discharge into an attacking shark, causing a sudden embolism. Underwood hoped our readers could provide some feedback and a few good names for the device, and, sure enough, they did - from those who noted that it wasn't a new idea to the reader whose choice of name was "Use It on Yourself First." Live by the Internet, Die by the Internet The online diving forums are a bully pulpit with an amazing reach. The forums have turned word-of-mouth recommendations into an immense market force, one that can build businesses-or tear them down. But should a business go under because one angry customer is very vocal? Get the full story here. Don't Even Think About It When searchers in boats and helicopters combed the Florida Keys for missing scuba diver Kerry Steven Scheele, 28, who was diving off a boat about a quarter mile offshore, they didn't know that he'd already swam underwater to Big Pine Key, ditched his diving gear in the mangroves, and caught buses and hitched rides to his girlfriend's place in Wisconsin. Why Divers Die: Part I, Embolisms and Boating Accidents While "the bends" gets plenty of press as a killer of divers, it's rare indeed when a sport diver dies from the bends. Embolism is the killer, bends the injurer. Our article discussing the 57 Americans who died while diving in 1997 focuses on dive deaths attributable to embolism and boating accidents. Counting Divers Down Three divers diving with Dixie Divers off Deerfield Beach, Florida, were left behind on May 24 when the boat's novice captain forgot to count heads after an afternoon dive and headed back to shore without them. Fiji and Saba Warning The diver's world is full of surprises, and some recent ones concern the possibility of volcanic eruptions in places long considered low-risk. Discovery of the volcanoes may upset the plans of divers and international visitors who've booked resorts along the international date line for millennium parties. Flotsam & Jetsam The 325' cargo ship Balboa, which lies in Cayman's George Town Harbor, will be getting a new home, while members of the British Sub-Aqua Club who've had convictions for pedophilia or cruelty to children are finding that the organization's no longer willing to make room for them. We correct the dates reported as the Fijian hurricane season in our June article on the live-aboard Nai'a: Fiji's hurricane season runs from December through March.

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