Undercurrent Online Update for Non-Subscribers

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November 26, 2022

Ghost Fishing for Eleven Millennia. A diver has discovered the remains of an ancient fish trap, estimated at 11,000 years old, off the coast of Alaska. It was 165 feet deep in water, 44°F cold. Imagine how many unfortunate fish it has caught while it's been down there.

The Heaviest Bony Fish. Researchers have recorded a 6050-pound bump-head sunfish Mola alexandrini in the Azores, North Atlantic, surpassing the record female (misidentified initially as Mola mola), weighing 5070 pounds caught off the Japanese coast in 1996. While scientists estimate it's about 25 years old, they are uncertain because the lifecycle of sunfish is poorly understood. Just published in The Journal of Fish Biology.

Looking for a Gift for Your Grand Kid? Long-time diver, accomplished dive mystery writer, and part-time Cozumel resident Paul Mila has produced a great little sea turtle book series for little kids. Order right here.

The Perils of Veracity in Reporting. Senior Editor John Bantin reflects on the perils he encountered in reporting the truth in diving media. He looks back at how the industry initially reacted against it and why he's now with Undercurrent. It's a new Insider's Blog. You can read it here.

If You've Seen This Cute Little Fellow, You Were Too Deep! From fish on stilts to creatures of ooze, the strange denizens of the deep uncovered during investigations of two new marine parks 1,500 miles off Australia's west coast were a dream come true for researchers. The new marine park territories will protect 285,000 square miles of ocean around Cocos Keeling and Christmas Islands. Researchers collected a treasure haul of species after sampling habitats with small trawl nets from 200 feet down to a depth of 18,000 feet. You may read more about it here.

Dive Travel Insurance Woes? Let Us Hear from You: COVID disrupted dive plans for thousands upon thousands of divers, and many lost lots of money. We're still working on a story about travel insurance for divers, and if you have had any insurance problems, we would like to hear about them. Not just with DAN or DiveAssure, but with any insurance carrier. Let us know how your reimbursement went, good or bad. Please tell us your story. Write to BenDDavison@undercurrent.org, not forgetting to add your town and state.

PADI Goes to Court. PADI will soon be required to testify before a jury in Montana in connection with the death of teenage scuba diver Linnea Mills in November 2020. A judge has overruled PADI's denial of responsibility for the actions of the Gull Dive Center (Missoula, MT) instructors involved in the incident and says the organization must be included as a defendant. PADI is accused of negligence in its oversight of a PADI-affiliated business.

Singing Turtles. Scientist Gabriel Jorgewich-Cohen, a Ph.D. student at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, has found that turtles, previously thought to be silent, actually communicate with sound. Jorgewich-Cohen suggests they went unheard because their sounds were hard to detect. Sea turtles will sing from within their eggs to synchronize hatching. They also make noises to indicate they want to mate. Perhaps they're singing "Happy Together."

$3000-worth of checked-in scuba gear goes missing. It failed to arrive in Bali in October, nearly ruining the vacation of an Australian diver. It's been an ongoing problem with the Aussie airline Jetstar, which located the bags several days later in Melbourne. Had the diver stuffed an Apple tag in his bag, he could have told Jetstar where it was. See the September issue of Undercurrent for details.

This Month in Undercurrent: On the Roatan Aggressor in the Bay Islands, Honduras . . . Stay Away From Those Propellers . . . Fish Can Save Dying Reefs . . . Climate Change Eliminating Florida's Turtles . . . Raja Ampat, St.Lucia, Rangiroa, Vancouver -- Our Readers Tell It Like It Is . . . Undercurrent Has Been Awarded a Grant . . . How to Create Great Videos With That Action Camera . . . Unsafe at Any Depth? Repeat Problems With a BCD Brand . . . Carbon Monoxide is a Killer -- CO Alarms . . . Instructor Killed by Mismatched Tank Threads . . . Have You Seen This Pink Manta? . . . When Your Adrift in the Sea -- Electronic PLBs . . . Aqualung Recalls the Exotec BCD . . . Hydration, Diving, and SIPE . . . Check Your Kit Before a Dive Trip . . . and much, much more.

Undercurrent Tells It Like It Is. Unique among diving media, Undercurrent is only answerable to its subscribers because it carries no advertising and has no industry clients to appease. It tells it like it is. Subscribers get 11 issues of the newsletter every year, together with a mid-month update and the Travelin' Diver's Chapbook in December, plus access to more than 10,000 readers' independent reports of resorts and liveaboards, made from their personal experience, on the Undercurrent website. I am offering you a seven-month trial subscription for just $19.95. And I'll send you a FREE download of the 40-page e-books Eight Great Liveaboards (and One Disaster) and Eight Great Dive Resorts (and One Dog). If you want your money back at any time during this period, you'll get it, a promise I've kept since we started publishing in 1975. Click Here.

Ben Davison, editor/publisher
BenDDavison@undercurrent.org