Undercurrent Online Update
for Subscribers

For Subscriber David Denson Whiteside (with username 'dwhitesi' exp: 2024-08-20', at dwhite95815@hotmail.com )
February 15, 2017
Cancel all Undercurrent emails

Undercurrent’s Facebook page recently featured a clip of video shot for Scuba Diver Life of a regular Stuart Cove shark-feed dive at a wreck off New Providence in the Bahamas. A British popular newspaper, the Daily Star had a different take on it when it published the story, reporting it as “a nightmare moment when scuba divers are outnumbered by circling sharks.”

It goes on to say that the video shows two scuba divers barely able to move while attempting to take photographs of the wreckage of a boat because they are totally surrounded by sharks. “Little information is known about where the incredible sight was captured, but the sharks are believed to be blacktip sharks.” They even got the species of shark wrong: They are Caribbean reef sharks!

(Got your interest?) Subscriber Michael Groarke, based in Singapore, asks, when it comes to protecting your camera, “Do you know anything else you can put in your case that will absorb a large amount of water and is readily available? Suggested to me by a Malaysian lady who said it saved her camera: She saw the water in the housing and tipped the housing to let the liner draw the water and aborted the dive. She was still using the same camera a year later when we met her in Ambon.” Some people put a new tampon (with the string cut off) inside the housing. Groarke has a lot of fascinating tips that we’ll share in a future issue.

Have you seen Alex Mustard and Calluim Roberts’ latest book Secrets of the Seas? It’s just one of the latest books to be reviewed by Undercurrent. This winter take a look at www.undercurrent.org/UCnow/bookpicks.shtml where you’ll find that and many more ideas to keep you stimulated while you’re sitting inside in the warm.

Have you read Shark Doc, Shark Lab by Jeremy Stafford-Deitsch? It was reviewed recently in Undercurrent. Things don’t always go so well there. In February, Dutch celebrity biologist Dr Freek Vonk was badly bitten on the upper arm during filming for a television series while accompanied by biologists from the Shark Lab. You can read more about it in the March edition of Undercurrent.

plunges to depths of about 300 feet. The state shut the cave down during 1993 to 2003, but divers have argued it is safe with proper training and experience. The October 2016 deaths of Patrick Peacock and Chris Rittenmeyer, both experienced divers, has prompted an online petition urging Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to close or regulate it. And on January 8, Charles Odom died while surfacing from a dive, the 11th known death. The www.change.org petition asks how many more lives need to be lost for this place to be closed? Others say it’s the equivalent of Mount Everest and nobody has petitioned for that to be closed despite so many climbers losing their lives in an attempt to climb it.

Dave Moran, editor and MD of Dive New Zealand and Dive Pacific tells us his magazine business is up for sale -- lock, stock and barrel -- and it could be a bargain for any publisher who is passionate about scuba diving, especially in that part of the world. You can see what it’s all about by going to www.divenewzealand.com. Interested parties should contact Dave direct at davem@divenewzealand.co.nz

This important and ever-growing resource is the result of input from you, the reader. Not beholden to any advertising revenue, Undercurrent is unique among diving media. Send us your reviews of dive operators, liveaboards, and resorts you’ve dived since November by filling out our online form at www.undercurrent.org/members/UCnow/SubRRTopMA.php. You can also follow the link “File a Report” on the left side of our homepage at www.undercurrent.org Or after logging in, follow the “Reader Report” link in the top navigation bar.

The Mini Chapbook is a free travel planning aid that 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. Sea of Cortez in Mexico) 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. More info here: http://www.undercurrent.org/UCnow/MiniCBkFAQ.php

We were oversubscribed with material with the February issue so had to hold over a few items until March. These include more on those pesky liability waivers and your take on such things . . . There’s also more on emergency in-water recompression with important points-of-view by some notable medics and a response by Bret Gilliam to their criticisms of his protocol . . . Do you want a quick way to improve your underwater pictures saved as jpegs? We take a look at a quick and inexpensive solution to get the colour right . . . Our travel features cover a trip to Raja Ampat and a collection of travel tips. Watch out for pieces on the Thai Aggressor, Cozumel and the Pelagian coming soon too . . . And of course, there’s much, much more.

Ben Davison, editor/publisher
Contact Ben

We are gradually making progress on making our website more mobile-friendly, i.e. so that important parts are easier to read on your mobile phone, and you don't have to scroll horizontally to look at the pages. We are proud to announce that we just so converted all 9,000+ individual reader reports to a mobile friendly format, and are continuing to work on other parts of our website. So if you access any of these on your mobile phone, you'll have all the info you need in an easily readable format.

And, as always, if there's any significant problems with these, or anything else the website for that matter, please contact me at problems@undercurrent.org. For any problem you see, be sure to tell me:

• the phone you are using (e.g. iPhone 6s, Google Pixel),

• the browser (e.g. Safari, Chrome),

• the operating system (e.g. ios 9.3, Android 6.01), and

• what page you are having the problem on (http://www.undercurrent.org/...)

If you can send a screenshot of it, that would help. (Note: we have seen some problems with the display on older iPhones running Safari, but there's nothing we can do about those, other than recommend you either upgrade the ios version or use a different browser.)

Dave S. Eagleray, webmaster

*** Do Not Reply to This Email -- This Address is NOT monitored ***

You have received this message because you are a current subscriber/Online Member and/or are a current paid subscriber to the former print edition of Undercurrent . To manage your account settings, visit our Account Center.