Scuba With Bill

Good news and bad news in the same article.

The humpback population roaming the North Pacific, estimated at about 10,000, is believed to have been growing at annual rate of about 7 percent since the mid-1990s. And as more whales swim to Hawaii from icy feeding grounds off Alaska, Canada, Russia and Japan, boaters are navigating around some 1,000 calves born in Hawaiian waters each year.

“As long as the population continues to get bigger, it’s going to keep happening,” said Joseph Mobley, a professor at the University of Hawaii-West Oahu who researches whales.

Whale collisions on the rise around Hawaii

It’s gotten a bad rap due to the recent violence but Bali is a beautiful place to dive.

Several friends of mine have told me about diving in Bali over the last few months, and the Liberty shipwreck continually crops up as a place to visit. You can walk in straight off the beach to go see the Liberty, and it’s a haven of marine life at whatever depth you decide to explore it. Besides the Liberty, there are numerous other sites to explore in the Tulamben area, and if you get very lucky, you might get to see the legendary Mola Mola, or sunfish.

During Hogan’s second dive of the day, his doctors believe, too much pressure built up in his lungs, causing gas bubbles in his arteries. Called an arterial gas embolism, the condition damaged his spinal cord and led to paralysis.

Many have died as a result of the diving condition, but some have lessened the damage after undergoing intensive hospital treatments where they breathed 100 percent oxygen.

Hogan believes he also could have reduced the harm to his system had he reached a hospital sooner. He is now paralyzed from the waist down.

Disabled on scuba dive, man sues Coast Guard

An excellent piece from Dive Happy on diving the Similan Islands:

One of the reasons why diving the Similans is such a great experience is because there’s a natural sense of build up over the four days of the liveaboard . You start off in the Similan Islands proper, doing some easy reef dives that offer spectacular bommies like East Of Eden, which is so covered in fan and soft corals and alive with different fish species that it’s been regularly filmed and photographed by the likes of National Geographic. By the second day, you get to dive the more challenging big boulder sites like Elephant Head Rock and North Point, where truly huge rocks several storeys high have rolled together to create a labyrinth of swimthoughs and shelter for the fish. There’s something exhilarating about being at 20 metres passing over the top of one of these rocks - and then watch it drop away another 30 metres below you as you fly off the side. Turtles chewing on coral hide around them, and within the canyons formed by the rocks you can find clown triggerfish, probably my favourite fish of all.

The evidence suggests dolphins share the human ability to recognise themselves and other members of the same species as individuals with separate identities. The research, on wild bottlenose dolphins, will lead to a reassessment of their intelligence and social complexity, raising moral questions over how they should be treated.

Dolphins ‘know each other’s names’

Sometimes tough choices have to be made.

“The reality is the nets and the current program is the safest option available at the moment,” Mr Beattie said.

“I know that there will be some in the conservation movement who are not going to be happy about what happens to whales and to other marine animals like turtles, but the Government has to make a choice.

“It is an ugly choice between people and marine animals and we have chosen people.”

Exciting and shocking at the same time.

A pod of killer whales attacked and killed a grey whale calf in Monterey Bay. The calf’s mother tried to fend off the attackers by swiping them with her tail. But in the end, the grey calf, even though it was bigger, was no match for the half dozen orcas.

The Underwater Times is reporting some good news in the DAN/SSS debate:

In a news release dated April 26, 2006, Divers Alert Network (DAN America) and clinic members of the SSS Network of Recompression Chambers (SSS) announce that they have reached a settlement in the recent legal action over billing practices.

CAPE PANWA: The Phuket Marine Biological Office (PMBC) is considering building a 200-million-baht “Dolphin Center” near its aquarium as a way of treating people with disabilities and promoting tourism.

The project, which has already been approved in principal by Phuket Governor Udomsak Uswarangkura, would be run jointly with Danish marine biologist and dolphin expert Judith Kongsted.

PMBC Director Wannakiat Thapthimsang told the Gazette “The Danish researcher has welcomed us to join her in researching ways to treat people with disabilities, such as paralysis and autism, by allowing them to interact with dolphins.

“This has been done successfully in many countries already and would also help promote Phuket as a tourism destination,” he said.

He said that although the project had already been approved in principal by the Governor, there were still many issues to consider.

He had reservations, he said, about the idea of using dolphins to treat disabled people because this smacked of commercialism using a protected animal. “It is now just a proposal,” he said. “We must do more research – we are not even sure whether dolphins can treat such patients effectively,” he said.

The proposal has already come under fire from the UK-based Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS), which argues that it is “impossible to accommodate the mental, physical and social needs of dolphins in captivity and that it is cruel to confine them.”

In a letter to the Gazette, the WDCS also raised concerns about the idea of treating people through interaction with captive dolphins.

“These [concerns] include the welfare of the animal – including the lack of respite for the dolphins, which is inherent in programs where dolphins are forced to interact, and the potential for injury an d mental disturbance from irresponsible human behavior – the risk of aggression toward people and the potential for disease transmission between human and dolphin,” the WDCS wrote.

Funding for the project, if it does go ahead, will be primarily from foreign donations, K. Wannakiat said. A committee meeting is scheduled to take place on April 29 to discuss fundraising issues. Those interested in donating or learning more about the project can email Ms Kongsted at: judith.kongsted@mail.dk

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The Phuket Gazette
17:00 local time (GMT +7)