Undercurrent Online Update

The smartest and funniest people in the dive industry offer their opinions, stories and advice in frequent blog postings on our website, free for the reading. The latest: Doc Vikingo explains how sleep apnea can affect divers; Bret Gilliam gives his take on potential dive hazards lurking in the deep; and Thomas Goreau of the Coral Reef Alliance explains -- from personal experience, how barracuda attacks on humans are more common than thought. Keep up with our bloggers at http://www.undercurrent.org/blog

We offer the best dive books out there that are must-haves for serious diver's libraries. The latest addition to our roundup - Reef Creature Identification: Tropical Pacific, by Paul Humann and Ned DeLoach, is the definitive guide to 1,600 extraordinary reef creatures in Pacific waters. Also order There's a Cockroach in My Regulator, bizarre, brilliant and true tales taken from 30 years of Undercurrent publications. An added bonus: order books on our website and a portion of the profits are donated to preserve coral reefs.

The USS Kittiwake, a decommissioned U.S. Navy ship, was scuttled on January 5 on a sandy bottom off of Grand Cayman's Seven Mile Beach. The 47-foot-tall ship is at a depth of 62 feet. Nancy Easterbrook of DiveTech dive shop and project manager of the scuttling, told MSNBC.com that the Kittiwake leaned a bit toward starboard as it began to sink, but it landed upright on its keel, and it's now open for divers and snorkelers to explore. See this YouTube video of the ship's scuttling.

Give them to underwater photographer David Arnold of Boston, who has embarked on a project dubbed "Coral Tales, Changing Baselines." He is returning to underwater sites Undercurrent subscribers might have photographed years ago in healthier days to re-take the pictures for an exhibit of yesteryear and today side-by-side images. The exhibit will stress that coral demise is a complicated, poorly understood phenomenon, and that humans are the predominant players - not only in reef stress but reef preservation and hope. This will NOT be an exhibit undermining the magic of diving. The baseline may be changing, but not the rewards of our sport. If you have a gorgeous landscape photograph or two of a reef ANYWHERE that he precisely could photograph again - a reef you know has significantly changed - contact him at northwester@comcast.net Terms may benefit the ego more than the pocket book, but "one step at a time," David says. For a look at a somewhat related project, see www.doublexposure.net

California rainstorms, Northeastern blizzards, Southern ice and sleet have delayed and cancelled thousands of flights in the past month, and they've affected or thwarted most travelers' vacation plans. As divers, have you experienced any travel-related snarls in the past 18 months that cost you time, money and once-in-a-lifetime dive trips? What happened to you, and what were the results? If you had travel insurance, did that help or not? We're planning a story on how good travel insurance is for weather-related problems that cause dive vacations to go awry, and we want to use your stories, both good and bad, as examples. Please e-mail them to me at EditorBenD@undercurrent.org.

The floods currently devastating towns in Queensland, Australia also present a high risk to the central and southern GBR. Large parts of the southern reef are "flooded" with fresh water coming from the mouths of the Fitzroy and Burnett Rivers, and stretching 43 miles off the coast, greatly affecting visibility. And with prevailing tides and winds, Australian scientists expect flood waters to affect reefs all the way toward Cairns, 930 miles north, where the best diving is. Agricultural run-off is expected to have a devastating impact on coral, sea grasses and small reef fish, although bigger fish can swim away from the freshwater deluge.

The ports of Puntarenas are a dangerous place to be, even if you're one of the world's most famous chefs. Ramsey was there to film segments of a documentary about shark finning, when a crew of Taiwanese shark-fin smugglers poured gas over him one day, and then held him up at gunpoint the next when he tried to film thousands of shark fins on their boats. Police eventually ordered Ramsey out of the country. In early January, a marine biologist barely escaped a beating after trying to film shark fins drying on a dock next to Puntarentas' central market. Jorge Ballester of the Marine Turtle Restoration Program was filming when a group of six men approached and began threatening him; he fled into the market and flagged down police. Shark finning is not illegal in Costa Rica.

As of January 1, all forms of fish trawling have been banned in Belizean waters, extending 200 miles from the coast. It's only one of three countries to do so; Venezuela and Palau are the other two. That move is a good step towards polishing up Belize's environmental record, but UNESCO is still calling the country to the mat for its allowance of offshore drilling, mangrove cutting and coastal development, and threatens to delist Belize's barrier reef as a World Heritage site unless more steps are taken to protect the reef and marine life.

Scuba Caribbean (University Press Florida)is an excellent overview of all Caribbean diving (even Cuba) and now the author, Mary Peachin, will give you a special price for an autographed copy if you call 0800-226-3822 ( promotion code DSC10) or email mary@peachin.com. It's only $12 plus shipping. Dealer prices available.

Travel. . . a British dive shop was fined for its role in a diver's death; why don't we do the same over here? . . . part II of our look at rebreathers and the future of open-circuit regulators . . . the dangers of storing air tanks in your home . . . a lawsuit that shows what dive operation you book through affects your chances in court if problems arise . . . how much you, as Undercurrent subscribers, have done to help the whale sharks of Holbox . . . a not so hot liveaboard trip off the coast of Panama and much, much more.

Ben Davison, editor/publisher
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Website Tips and News

In addition to the 2011 Travelin' Diver's Chapbook available to you, you can now easily put together a collection of Undercurrent reader reports on any dive operations that you want. You choose the country and years of interest, then pick which dive resorts/liveaboards you're interested in, and immediately all the reports are made available to you in one neat package. You can view it online, download it, print it as you want. Give it a whirl -- it'll help make dive trip planning a lot easier.

We can now notify you whenever a new reader report is filed on our website -- a free service for subscribers. With this, you do NOT need to check our website every so often to see if there's a new reader report of interest; instead as soon as a new reader report is filed, links to it can be emailed to you, or appear in your browser. This service uses industry-standard RSS ("Really Simple Syndication) feeds -- read about RSS here. Look for the on vaious pages of our website. You can sign up for this feed here. It's easier to use than to explain it, so give it a whirl. And look for more of these in the future.

Dave S. Eagleray, webmaster
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