Flotsam & Jetsam: Undercurrent 10/2025

Flotsam & Jetsam

from the October, 2025 issue of Undercurrent

Subscriber Content Preview
Only active subscribers can view the whole article here

Marine Scientist Injured by Shark in Costa Rica. For a brief second, a shark wrapped its mouth around the head of 48-year-old Mexican marine biologist Dr Mauricio Hoyos, who was tagging sharks off the remote Cocos Island marine reserve. It occurred on September 27 at the Dirty Rock site (Roca Sucia). Hoyos suffered injuries to his scalp and the left side of his face as well as damage to his air hoses. He made an emergency ascent. The site is best known for hammerhead and marble ray sightings. The crew controlled the bleeding and stabilized him for the 340-mile, 36-hour journey back to Puntarenas. Hoyos was reported to be in stable condition and good spirits. The last fatal incident at Cocos was in 2017, when U.S. scuba diver Rohina Bhandari died in a tiger shark encounter.

Michael Menduno has Passed: Menduno, 73, founded and published aquaCORPS Magazine in the early 1990s. Based in Florida, it was a niche publication devoted to technical diving at a time when a few pioneers like Bill Stone, Dick Rutkowski, Dr Bill Hamilton, Tom Mount, and Billy Deans were finding ways to dive deeper for longer. In fact, Menduno (AKA M2) coined the phrase "technical diving." In the days when the mainstream considered nitrox as a "devil gas " and tri-mix dives were done in secret, there were many fatalities, and Menduno felt the need for a medium to cross-fertilize ideas. He was later instrumental in organizing events such as Tek, EUROTek, and ASIATek and early rebreather forums. After a hiatus, he returned to the diving media recently with the online magazine InDEPTH....

Subscribers: Read the full article here

;