Think about this scenario: You and 15 other divers on a liveaboard motor overnight to an isolated, uninhabited chain of islands. The following morning you pour a cup of coffee, step out on deck to salute the dawn and revel in some much-needed solitude. Big surprise! Unfortunately, the early morning light reveals a couple of … Read more
What a fabulous sport scuba diving is. Other sports mostly challenge my sanity, and their blatant inadequacies confirm diving as the superior sport. Take Motor Racing for example. Aren’t you glad I do not squirt you with Champagne on the dive deck after every successful dive? Few realize what this extravagant behaviour actually symbolizes. Squirters … Read more
In the July issue of Undercurrent, you may have read the “Death of a Shark Diver, Redux” story. In the last part, Vanessa Richardson wrote about a French snorkeler in the Red Sea who bled to death from an oceanic whitetip’s bite. It most likely happened because two safari boats had been feeding sharks in … Read more
A call I got recently from Dr. Chip Scarlett of Austin, Texas got my attention. “You have to drop what you’re doing and check out these white shark photos on this guy’s website,” he gushed enthusiastically into my speaker phone. “C’mon, Chip,” I yawned. “I’ve seen more white shark images than a sea lion at … Read more
People are now eating manta rays. That right, those lovely creatures you spend thousands of dollars to dive with in the Revilligado Islands, Yap and the Maldives. It’s all because shark populations are crashing.
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As we watch the sunset at the end of a day’s diving, how many of us delight in ordering the fresh local grouper? Or snapper? Or lobster? And then decry the declining population of critters on the reef before we’ve even digested our meal.
