Undercurrent Online Update
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For Subscriber David Denson Whiteside (with username 'dwhitesi' exp: 2024-08-20', at dwhite95815@hotmail.com )
December 17, 2016
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Training agencies and others insist that before diving with a liveaboard or dive operator, one must sign a “Waiver of Rights. How do you feel about that? Do you think it’s right that an operator might be seriously negligent, leading to your loss of life, and yet be protected from the legal ramifications? Do you freely sign the waiver or attempt to modify it? Help us with a story and email us to tell us what you think of these waivers and any experiences you may have had with them. BenDEditor@undercurrent.org

The multi-national women instructors working at Stuart Cove’s Dive Bahamas are starring alongside notable local dive sites, complete with sharks, in Stuart’s 2017 calendar. In each B&W photo, a different one is holding her breath while submerged and wearing very little apart from the expression on her face. For $9.99 you can order from www.stuartcove.com

Nowadays we dive in ever more remote locations. But what are you going to do if you are off on a liveaboard in the middle of the Indian Ocean or at a remote resort with no airstrip and a chamber hundreds of miles away, and suddenly display symptoms of DCS? The textbooks tell you to go to a hyperbaric treatment facility straight away, but that might be three days distant. A man with plenty of relevant experience, Bret Gilliam, has given it some thought and come up with a solution. You may not like it. All will be revealed to subscribers in January’s issue of Undercurrent.

We’ve attempted to bring you those most interesting video clips of the underwater world on our Facebook page. Many thousands of people have enjoyed them but the clip that was most appreciated this year was that of Sue Austin, an internationally acclaimed multimedia, performance and installation artist, zooming about a Red Sea reef underwater in her Pegasus Thruster-powered wheelchair. In repurposing her wheelchair to create fantastical art, Sue reshapes how we think about disability.

While Sue Austin’s adapted wheelchair costs around $9,300, disabled diver Igor Skikevich, 51, reckons he’s about to go into full production of what he calls a “submarine wheelchair” that will cost about $1000. Disabled Skikevich, from southwest Russia’s Rostov Oblast region, came up with the idea after a dive trip to the Sea of Japan. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/disabled-diver-invents-scuba-chair-9421005

Are you aware of our free trip planning aid for subscribers? The Mini Chapbook lets you customize a set of reports from any dive destination, selecting just what online reports you want in it: choose years of interest, the destination, whether liveaboard or dive resorts, the areas within (e.g. Raja Ampat in Indonesia) and even the dive operators. You can quickly generate a small section specific to your needs, for viewing on your screen or downloading as a pdf to take with you. Whereas the 2017 Chapbook contains this year’s reports, in the Mini Chapbook you can include more recent and older reports as well. And you can generate as many Mini Chapbooks as you wish. Give it a try. Go here.
More info here.

Recently, what was said to be a spectacular and award-winning picture of a great white shark breaching by National Geographic photographer Bob Burton went viral. But there is no such photographer as Bob Burton and the picture was not awarded ‘Photo of the Year’. It was, in fact, the digitally manipulated work of a Russian 3D graphic artist who goes by the name of Alexyz3d. Sorry to disappoint you!

Members of the Undersea Voyager Project have made 50 dives in the clear blue waters of Lake Tahoe to train for an upcoming project to circle the world’s oceans. What did they find? Proof that some of the lake’s most persistent myths were just that – myths. There was no sign of Tahoe Tessie (a fabled Loch Ness- type behemoth). Or the perfectly preserved bodies of murdered mobsters from the 1930s rumored to be there.

A Hawaiian tragedy and its effect on liability waivers. . . Another treasure find claim . . .An appeal by a shark lover . . .Stay away from that propeller . . .Treasure trove in Lake Travis . . . Clarification of lithium batteries in your flight bag . . . Shark Doc, Shark Lab . . . Talk about tank valves . . . What you should know about the Irukandji . . . and much more.

The Undercurrent bookshop offers a number of publications that will interest a diver. Take a look here where you will find everything that’s recently been reviewed.

Ben Davison, editor/publisher
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