Undercurrent Online Update
for Subscribers

For Subscriber David Denson Whiteside (with username 'dwhitesi' exp: 2024-08-20', at dwhite95815@hotmail.com )
March 18, 2012

We've long been fans of the Seacology nonprofit and its efforts to save endangered species worldwide. It has created its first Caribbean-focused excursion, a liveaboard trip to the Bahamas on May 5-12, and Undercurrent subscribers can help this nonprofit out, have a good time -- and get a discount. Stay aboard the M/V Turks & Caicos Explorer while diving at Mayaguana, Samana Cays, San Salvador (where you'll also stop to visit a Seacology-funded "nursery" for the island's endangered iguana) and Conception Island. Seacology will give a $100 discount to anyone who mentions Undercurrent when making a reservation. The price is $2,500 per person, double occupancy. For details, go here

We mentioned in this month's issue that Paul Humann and Ned DeLoach have issued a travel-sized edition of their must-have Caribbean reef fish identification book. Now two of their other books are going digital. You can take copies of the "Reef Fish: Tropical Pacific" and "Reef Creature: Tropical Pacific" with you on your laptop, phone or iPad. The e-books are available in the Blio format (the Blio program is a free download) for Android, iPad, iTouch, iPhone and Windows PC computers. The 2,000-species content is searchable through a page-specific table of contents and a scrolling tool bar. On the iPad, you can go directly to a subject by typing in a species' name. You can highlight and bookmark items, and even keep notes on photos (like where you have seen the species). Further research can be accessed on Google and Wikipedia searches with a single click. Downloads are $30 each. Get the details here

It comes from reader Francine Whittington (Phoenix, AZ), who writes us, "I am the Summit Chair for the National Association of Black Scuba Divers, and I am researching where to take 200 members on a diving trip. I always refer to your site to get honest appraisals of diving in different countries. I love that you don't allow vendors to pay for advertising, it makes your opinions unbiased. Please keep this magazine going!" Help us do so by renewing for a one-year membership for $39.95. Renew here

Imagine that you're coral at the bottom of the sea. You're minding your own coral business when suddenly some obnoxious scuba diver ungraciously dumps sediment on you. How do you free yourself from this sand trap? If you are mushroom coral, you can extricate yourself by inflating and deflating over a period of 10 to 20 hours. But when condensed into less than two minutes, this process is a National Geographic documentary directed by David Cronenberg from the University of Queensland. Watch this great time-lapse video

That's how we write up many of the stories you read in Undercurrent - from informed sources like yourselves. Know of some shady business going down or emerging trends rising in the dive industry? Or you believe a specific matter needs more of a spotlight pointed at it? Go here . We protect your privacy by request but the paranoid can contact me directly by e-mail at EditorBenD@undercurrent.org

Cozumel, the Maldives, the British Virgins, a Port Hardy BC liveaboard, the Solomons, Honduras: these are upcoming travel reports by for our undercover writers who pay their own way and don't announce themselves ... Smoking and diving don't mix, but here's the etiquette for handling it on the liveaboard and at the dive resort . . . who needs a diver's watch? . . . dive resorts, liveaboards and shops to check out if you want to give back to the dive destinations you visit . . . what goes into your wetsuit, and why it costs what it does . . . the continuing debate about whether or not to buy trip insurance . . the latest marine species to be hunted to near extinction . . and much more.

Gear up for the largest mass scuba dive in the history of diving, sponsored by the nonprofit Dive the Coast and taking place along the California coast in June 2013. Until then, test dives will be done to gauge dive distance, depth and air and formulate them for diving longer distances, and California divers are needed to help out with chapters established between San Diego and San Francisco, while coordinators are needed to set up more chapters. Visit www.divethecoast.com for information, or contact kim@divethecoast.com to become a coordinator and/or supporter.

The director of "Avatar," "Titanic" and "The Abyss" -- who is also a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence -- announced he will soon operate a one-man submarine seven miles deep to the Pacific's Mariana Trench, the deepest point in the ocean. Cameron plans to spend as much as six hours on the ocean floor, and will film and take specimens for scientific study. You can see what Cameron is trying to accomplish in this YouTube video, and follow the prep work for his expedition at here

A new study out in the journal "Functional Ecology" says no. Researchers from the University of Miami used satellite tags to track the movements of tiger sharks from Florida and Tiger Beach in the Bahamas, and Florida. It was hypothesized that those from Tiger Beach would stay fixed around the locale due to the availability of food from shark diving operators' bait, whilst those from Florida would be more mobile due to feeding being illegal. Their results actually show that the Bahamian sharks were more mobile, suggesting that the expected behavioral modification due to feeding does not occur. Read a study summary here, and listen to lead researcher Neil Hammerschlaf discuss the findings at here

Like sharks, manta rays are nearing extinction as they are prized for their body parts (their skin is made into leather, and their cartilage is used as a filler in shark fin soup). The nonprofit Oceana discovered that Alibaba.com, the world's largest business-to-business commerce website was selling manta ray leather and started a petition to stop the company from doing so. Nearly 40,000 people signed it, and earlier this month, CEO Jack Ma announced that it would no longer sell manta ray products. It has also taken down its listings for shark fins and other unsustainable animal products. For more information on the status of manta rays, and what you can do to protect them, go to Save the Mantas' website.

To end this e-newsletter on an upbeat note, we leave you with this video of a dolphin rescue at Arrail do Cabo in Brazil. A beachwalker with a videocamera was filming the early morning activity on March 5 when he saw a group of approximately 30 dolphins headed straight toward shore, stranding themselves in the sand. Within three minutes, people on the beach had mobilized, pushing and carrying the dolphins into deeper water, with no fatalities. Ah, if saving all marine life could be this easy.

Ben Davison, editor/publisher

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