When Ian Usher wanted to make a short film using his dog, Baxter, as its subject, he really wanted to take some underwater shots of the dog swimming. Rather than invest in an underwater camera and attendant housing, however, he decided he’d just make the housing himself. Using a borrowed Panasonic camcorder, some plumbing pipe, a piece of glass, and some sealant, Usher made his housing for $19. Here’s how he did it:
If you’re on the hunt for some dive site information, then you might want to check out the aptly named dive site directory. Begun by Clare and Matthew Slightam as a free source of reference for the diving community, it’s a great resource for divers trying to scrape together information about potential dive destinations, especially those that are a bit off-the-beaten-path. When it began, dive site directory featured only 80 dive sites covering 3 countries. Today, it houses over 510 dive sites in 25 countries!
A shark expert says there’s no reason for the public to be alarmed.
“It’s their ocean basically,” says John Naughton, Pacific islands environmental coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service. “People if they use common sense they should minimize the chances of encountering sharks.”
Recent shark attacks and sightings no cause for alarm says expert
A recent item on Channelnewsasia.com highlighted the increasing popularity of diving amongst Singaporeans - the idea that it’s an expensive hobby has been thrown off and now many students are signing up to try out scuba. Now Singapore itself is not famed for its pristine waters, so I was wondering where these guys go to dive. Given their country’s location at the end of peninsular Malaysia, Singaporeans have a huge choice of world class, accessible dive spots around them. A quick Google found two established Singapore dive schools - Waikiki Dive and Orpheus Dive.
Singapore Scuba Diving - divehappy.com: Scuba Diving In Thailand and South East Asia
John Moore runs Divebums, a San Diego-specific dive information website. Over the years, he’s made marine-themed t-shirts and calendars. However, his most recent creations focus on the little known — but increasingly popular — specialty courses known as Stupid Diver and Advanced Stupid Diver. These courses, of course, are only offered through the dive instruction organization known as the Professional Association of Stupid Divers (PASD). Once you complete the certification requirements (which are, very, very easy to do), you can get your own t-shirt and proclaim to the world that you’re a proud member of the Association of Stupid Divers!
Professional Association of Stupid Divers’ T-shirts Available NOW! - Divester
Unless you live in the Caribbean, and the water temperature is constant, knowing the sea’s temperature in advance of going diving would be great. If that happened, you could select accurately your exposure protection even before leaving home. In an effort to provide divers along Santa Catalina Island with this ability, Catalina Conservancy Divers (CCD) has installed a number of “temperature devices” (known commonly as thermometers) at multiple locations and depths around the Island.
Recently, a team of 9 engineering students from Rochester Institute of Technology constructed a ROV capable of diving to 400 feet. Dan Scoville — a 2005 RIT grad who claims to have located 3 virigin, undisclosed wrecks in Lake Ontario — led the team and largely financed the project. Scoville and the team intend to use the ROV this summer to explore the wrecks in Lake Ontario as well as to search the Atlantic Ocean.
Engineering Students Make ROV Capable of Diving to 400 Feet - Divester
Reporting in the June 1 issue of the journal Nature, scientists from six institutions detail how male guppies with the most colorful — and most rare — patterns are more likely than their more commonly colored counterparts to survive in the wild.
“This study provides very solid support for frequency-dependent survival,” said principal investigator Kimberly A. Hughes, an animal biologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “We found that rare color patterns of these guppies had a highly significant survival advantage.”
Underwater Times | Study: Colorful, Rare-Patterned Male Guppies Have Survival Advantage in the Wild
A rare pair of critically endangered Hawaiian monk seal twins — only the fourth set of twins ever documented — was brought to Honolulu from Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge aboard a U.S. Coast Guard C-130 Hercules aircraft early yesterday.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Service are working to ensure the pups are given the best chance for survival and hope to return them to Midway Atoll, where they were born, in the fall, officials said.
Monk seal twins receive crucial care in captivity - The Honolulu Advertiser
Overfishing presents a much greater risk to the kelp forest ecosystems that span the West Coast — from Alaska to Mexico’s Baja Peninsula — than the effects of run-off from fertilizers or sewage from the shore, say scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The findings have important implications for the design of California’s Marine Protected Areas.
In an article published in the May 26 issue of Science, researchers describe the first study to compare the top-down versus bottom-up human influences on the food chain of the kelp forest ecosystems.
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