SCUBA News 104

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SCUBA News (ISSN 1476-8011)
Issue 104 - December 2008
http://www.scubatravel.co.uk
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Welcome to December's SCUBA News. Our best wishes of the season to you. This month we have a competition to win a copy of Northern Red Sea Wrecks and Reefs from Travelling Diver. See our review below for more details. To enter just tell us how many diving guides there are in the Travelling Diver series. Visit their website to find out at http://www.travellingdiver.com/.

I hope you enjoy the newsletter, but should you wish to cancel your subscription please do so at http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/news.html

Contents:
- What's new at SCUBA Travel?
- Letters
- Review and Competition: Northern Red Sea Wrecks and Reefs
- Diving News from Around the World

__________________________________________________________

What's New at SCUBA Travel?
===========================

Diving the Red Sea

We've given the Red Sea section a major overhaul. There are more dive centres, more descriptions of dive sites and more marine animals, photos and descriptions. What's more the navigation has been redesigned to make it easier to find what you are looking for. Includes Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Sudan.
http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/redsea/

Diving Turkey

More dive sites and dive operators are now in the Turkey section.
http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/europe.html

More...

For regular announcements of what's new at the site see the Diving Board at
http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/viewforum.php?f=2

__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________

Letters
======================================================

Which operator is connected to the JolieVille Resort? We have only two days in Sharm, need some gear.

Bob Russell

Any answers post at the Diving Board at http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/ or e-mail SCUBA News

__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________

Review and Competition: Northern Wrecks and Reefs
=================================

Northern Wrecks and Reefs
by Rik Vercoe
Published by Travelling Diver
£12.50

This is the 6th in the series of the Travelling Diver Guides. It covers the wrecks and reefs you may visit on a liveaboard departing from Hurghada or Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt.

Like the other guides, this one comprises a loose-leaf pack of pages in full colour, each dedicated to a single dive site. Every page gives a detailed dive site description or wreck history, with room for you to write your own notes. There is also a very good map of the dive site, information on difficulty and location. As well as being a guide the pages are designed as a dive log, with boxes for you to fill your dive details: sea conditions, temperature, maximum depth, bottom time, etc.

The guide really does manage to pack loads of information into a small space and covers most of the dives you will do on a week's liveaboard holiday. However, 9 of the 16 dive sites in the new guide are also covered in Travelling Diver's earlier publication Red Sea Wrecks Northern Egypt. So if you already have a copy of this you will experience some duplication. The extra dives you get in the new pack are: Shark Reef and Jolanda, The Alternatives, Small Passage, Sha'ab Umm Usk, Siyul Kibeer, Sha'ab el Erg and Umm Gamar South.

The pack has two spare logbook sheets with room for you to log four dives. The sheets are standard 3-hole diving logbook size.

As with the other guides these pages make it easy for you to have a record your dives in much greater detail than the few notes most of us scribble down about the site. Focusing on a very small area - just the dives you might experience on a week's trip - means the guide is compact and light. No need to pack several thick, heavy books. The downside of course is if you visit different areas of the Red Sea often, it can become expensive to have to buy a new guide for each trip. Although not if you win one in our competion.

Win a copy of Northern Wrecks and Reefs
We've two copies of the dive guide log book to give away. To win your copy just tell us just tell us how many diving guides there are in the Travelling Diver series: visit http://www.travellingdiver.com/ to find out. To enter e-mail your answer, together with your name and address, to news@scubatravel.co.uk before 31 January 2009. Note: your details will be deleted when the competition ends - you will not be sent any junk mail.

If you are not lucky enough to win a copy you can purchase one from http://www.travellingdiver.com/ or from amazon.co.uk.

__________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________

Diving News From Around the World
=================================

If you would like to read the diving news as it happens, without waiting for this newsletter, then grab the SCUBA News feed from http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/scuba.xml It's free and automatically updates you with the latest SCUBA news via your web site, e-mail or any news feed reader.

Oceans

Professional diver and explorer Paul Rose reveals an astonishing hidden marine world of lost cities, forgotten shipwrecks, underwater caves and submerged volcanoes. He also looks at life in the ocean habitat, from great white sharks to the myriad exotic, but rarely seen, creatures that thrive in the extreme conditions miles beneath the surface. This book, like the landmark television series it accompanies, examines the possible consequences of upsetting this delicate balance and its impact on global warming.

Egypt plans world's first underwater museum

A new museum, the first of its kind, is to be built partly above and partly under water. The submerged part of the complex will enable visitors to see archaeological remains on the Egyptian seabed. Other artefacts recovered from the Bay of Alexandria and adjacent sites will be presented in exhibition spaces above water.

Faroe islanders told to stop eating 'toxic' whales

Chief medical officers of the Faroe Islands have recommended that pilot whales no longer be considered fit for human consumption, because they are toxic - as revealed by research on the Faroes themselves. Pilot whale meat and blubber contains too much mercury, PCBs and DDT derivatives to be safe for human consumption.

Fifth of corals dead: only emission cuts can save the rest, says IUCN

The world has lost 19 percent of its coral reefs, according to the 2008 global update of the world’s reef status. The report, released by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, shows that if current trends in carbon dioxide emissions continue, many of the remaining reefs may be lost over the next 20 to 40 years.

Dolphin males leave sponging to the females

Sexual stereotypes are not the preserve of humans - male dolphins seem reluctant to adopt a technique that females are keen to learn. Male dolphins, it seems, are not interested in learning how to use a sponge, but their sisters are. Dolphins were first seen carrying sponges cupped over their beaks in Shark Bay, Australia, in the 1980s. Janet Mann of Georgetown University in Washington, DC, and colleagues have now reviewed data collected during 20 years spent monitoring this group of dolphins and found that, while mothers show both their male and female calves how to use sponges, female calves are almost exclusively the only ones to apply this knowledge.

Antarctic islands surpass Galapagos for biodiversity

A group of isolated Antarctic islands have proved to be unexpectedly rich in life. The first comprehensive biodiversity survey of the South Orkney Islands, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, has revealed that they are home to more species of sea and land animals than the Galapagos.

A Sea of Rubbish

Plastics do not just end up in landfills or pollute city streets. They also twirl inside massive ocean gyres that draw in debris from the coasts without leaving any chance of escape. The most well-known is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that floats inside the North Pacific Gyre between San Francisco and Japan. This massive trash vortex, roughly the size of Texas, consists of an estimated 100 million tons of plastic debris continuously powered by currents in a clockwise fashion. Toothbrushes, umbrella handles, toys and soda bottles make up some of the material floating on the surface of the water. Most of the pollution is made up, however, of tiny pieces of plastic resting just below the surface, too tough for consumption by bacteria. Greenpeace estimates that there are one million items floating inside each square kilometer of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The result is a sea of rubbish that harms marine life.

Hunt for natural oil slicks gets a boost

Natural oil oozing out from the seabed makes up nearly half of the oil that spills into the oceans. Now, a new technique that uses freely available satellite imagery can precisely locate and monitor every major natural seep on the ocean floor.

Coral Reef Loss Suggests Global Extinction Event

The world is on the brink of a massive extinction event, according to the United Nations. Rapid releases of greenhouse gas emissions are changing habitats at a rate faster than many of the world's species can tolerate. "Indeed the world is currently facing a sixth wave of extinctions, mainly as a result of human impacts," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the U.N. Environment Programme. The latest global coral reef assessment estimates that 19 percent of the world's coral reefs are dead. Their major threats include warming sea-surface temperatures and expanding seawater acidification. "If nothing is done to substantially cut emissions, we could effectively lose coral reefs as we know them, with major coral extinctions," said Clive Wilkinson of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network. Overfishing, pollution, and invasive species continue to be risks as well, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

__________________________________________________________

* Copyright SCUBA Travel - http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/
* Reprinting welcomed with this footer included.

We are happy for you to copy and distribute this newsletter, and even use parts of it on your own web site, providing the above copyright notice is included and a link back to our web site is in place.

Previous editions of SCUBA News are archived at http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/news.html

SUBSCRIBING AND UNSUBSCRIBING
Visit http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/news.html and add or remove your e-mail address.

CONTACTING THE EDITOR
Please send your letters or press releases to:
The Editor
SCUBA News
The Cliff
Upper Mayfield
DE6 2HR
UK

ADVERTISING
Should you wish to advertise in SCUBA News, please fill in the form at http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/newsad.html

PUBLISHER: SCUBA Travel, 5 Loxford Court, Hulme, Manchester, M15 6AF, UK
EDITOR: Jill Studholme