Browsing: Scuba Features

Scuba Features New Zealand
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Best of: New Zealand’s South Island

The South Island of New Zealand is known for its diverse and spectacular landscapes including remote national parks, golden beaches, World Heritage status rainforests, glaciers, and Mount Cook. Made famous by The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, it is a popular holiday destination for those seeking outdoor adventures and adrenaline highs.

Scuba Features Graeme Barber
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NitrOx Fun!

NitrOx, EANx, DNAx, Safe Air, OEA; many names and acronyms for the same thing, oxygen enriched air. Once maligned, now just largely misunderstood, NitrOx is a part of the modern diving experience for both recreational and commercial divers. This article is less fun than previous entries, but if you’re considering diving NitrOx, it’ll help dispel some of the myths and falsehoods about it for you!

Scuba Features Northern New Zealand
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Best Of: New Zealand’s North Island

New Zealand is known for its wilderness areas on land but it is also home to 36 marine reserves and a spectacular array of dive sites. With accessible coastlines and hundreds of offshore islands, there are opportunities to dive wrecks, subtropical reefs, explore arches and dive within kelp forests, to name but a few. It is also possible to dive with rays and sharks, given that 26 species of ray and 113 species of shark have been recorded in New Zealand waters. There is something suitable for all dive preferences and abilities and here are our top picks of diving the North Island.

Scuba Features Critters
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Blueringed Madness!

I am definitely not the first person to write about the Blue-ringed Octopus, but once you’ve seen one for yourself it is quite understandable that divers get excited about them. Blue-ringed Octopus are one of the few invertebrates you can call “cute”. Small size (Check!), adorable way of crawling around (Check!), innocent looking (Check!) and iridescent blue rings they look like something out of a cartoon (Check!). With the added level of spice that these are also one of the world’s most venomous animals, it’s only normal that people are interested in these critters.

Scuba Features Chad
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Pirates and Blue holes!

People often ask me what my favourite dive is. While it is hard to distinguish after thousands of dives around the world on dazzling reef systems and tantalising encounters with sharks and dolphins and all those classic ocean superstars that we all know. One of my answers is often received with a confused expression on the face of the enquirer.

Scuba Features 1929-tsunami-15-02-17
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The Great Tsunami of 1929

Tsunamis are such uncommon events on the East Coast that the term itself is rarely used. Yet on November 18, 1929, the unthinkable occurred. A large scale earthquake rocked the eastern coast of North America at 5:00 p.m. In St. John’s, Newfoundland, although no serious damage was sustained, the quake shook buildings, broke dishes, and upset furniture. Most people did not know what and earthquake was and thought it was an explosion.

Scuba Features David Suzuki
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Indigenous people are fighting for us all

In the 1990s, the David Suzuki Foundation embarked on a program to develop community economic projects with coastal First Nations. Between 1998 and 2003, my wife and foundation co-founder, Tara Cullis, established relationships with 11 coastal communities from the tip of Vancouver Island to Haida Gwaii and Alaska, visiting each several times.

Scuba Features Paul von Blerk
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Interview with Paul von Blerk, Project Specialist, Kwazulu-Natal Sharks Board

Paul von Blerk specializes in electronic shark repellents with the Kwazulu-Natal Sharks Board Maritime Centre of Excellence. He’s worked with the Shark’s Board for 34 years, and for the last couple of decades, he’s dedicated his life to creating and testing an alternative, eco-friendly system that keeps both bathers and sharks safe. Throughout April, Oceans Research assisted Paul in testing an electronic device on our Mossel Bay white sharks, with incredible results.

Scuba Features Dr Ryan
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Interview with Dr Ryan Kempster, University of Western Australia

Dr Ryan Kempster is a shark biologist and founder of the non-profit organisation Support Our Sharks (SOS). He obtained his B.Sc. (2005) and M.Sc. (2007) in marine biology in the UK, and went on to complete a Ph.D. at the University of Western Australia (UWA) in the sensory biology of sharks. Dr Kempster recently spent a month with Oceans Research working on his shark deterrent project.

Scuba Features Steve Rosenberg
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The Cozumel Splendid Toadfish

The Island of Cozumel, a popular dive destination that is located just off the eastern edge of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, has many unique and beautiful reef fishes. No other reef fish is so closely identified with Cozumel diving than the Cozumel Splendid Toadfish.

Scuba Features princess-sophia-1
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The Princess Sophia Shipwreck

At 10 PM, October 23, 1918, the Canadian Pacific passenger ship, the SS Princess Sophia left port at Scagway, Alaska with 298 passengers, men, women and children, largely from Dawson City, Yukon, and a crew of 65.

Scuba Features Photo Tips
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How to think of a lighting scheme

In advertising photography before taking a picture you think about the positioning, the power and color of the lights whether they are flash or continuous, in underwater photography thinking how to light the scene before us does not, or however often the underwater photography are linked to positions standards of its flash, often with the result of having, is, the subject well lit but also obtain almost flat illumination from passport photo.

Scuba Features Halifax
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Halifax explosion’s toll in 1917 only surpassed by WW2 atomic bombs

As Canada celebrates its 150th birthday this year it is worth noting that a war has never been fought on its land. But the weapons of warfare brought death and destruction to Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Canada’s Atlantic seaboard 100 years ago. On December 6, 1917, the French ship Mont-Blanc left its anchorage at Halifax to join a convoy that would cross the Atlantic en route to the First World War battle grounds.

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