SCUBA News 107

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SCUBA News (ISSN 1476-8011)
Issue 107 - March 2009
http://www.scubatravel.co.uk
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Welcome SCUBA News number 107: thanks for subscribing. This month we've started posting SCUBA News on Twitter, the micro-blogging service. Go to http://twitter.com/SCUBANews if you wish to follow our diving news stories there.

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SCUBA News is published by SCUBA Travel, the independent guide to diving around the world.

Contents:
- What's new at SCUBA Travel?
- Letters
- Bookshelf: Ghosts of Rosevear and the Wreck of the Nancy Packet
- Creature of the Month: Spotted Dolphin
- Diving News from Around the World

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What's New at SCUBA Travel?
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Dolphin Photo Gallery

We've launched a new photo gallery dedicated to diving with dolphins at
http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/photodolphin.html

Diving Italy

Discover the best dive companies and dive sites in Italy at our newly updated Italian section.
http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/italy/

Diving Centres in Dahab, Red Sea

We've added more diving centres to our Dahab page.
http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/redsea/dahabdive.html#Dahab-dive

Diving Indonesia

Find diving centres in Indonesia: Sulawesi, Sumatra, Gili Trawangan, Lombok, Komodo, Alor, Irian Jaya and Bali.
http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/indonesia/diving-indonesia.html

More...

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

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Letters
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From the Diving Board...

Can anyone help me find the perfect place for a 2-week diving holiday in April or May in the Maldives? I'm looking for great diving but a really quiet, remote, simple island, as basic as possible with hopefully no children. A simple beach hut would be perfect.
Thanks

AquaDynamic
We are booking our diving holiday for end of september into october (16days). We were thinking of going to Koh Samui and Koh Tao but from the looks of things the only good dives are sail rock and Chumphon Pinnacle. We dived at Koh Phi Phi and the Similans last year which was highly recommended and seems to be better than the gulf coast. Has anybody dived in Malaysia or Indonesia in Sept-October? what was it like both diving and weather wise? was you shore based or on a liveaboard?
Thanks in advance

Vonny
Diving Board.

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Bookshelf: Ghosts of Rosevear and the Wreck of the Nancy Packet
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Todd Stevens and Edward Cumming
Ghosts of Rosevear and the Wreck of the Nancy Packet
MIBEC Enterprises, 2008
210 pp. £12
0-9542104-5-X

The wreck of the East India packet ship, Nancy, is linked with a legendary haunting of Rosevear Island in the Isles of Scilly (UK) where the ship was lost. This book covers the modern-day search for the wreck by divers, the legend, the history of the wreck and the lives of those who died.

The book is a collaboration between Todd Stevens and Edward Cumming, both enthusiastic divers and shipwreck historians.

The Isles of Scilly are the most Southwesterly point of the British Isles, and a noted diving area. It is famous for its many shipwrecks.

The first part of the book tells the tale of the haunted island, and the life of the woman supposed to be doing the haunting. She was actress Ann Cargill, who led what was then considered to be a scandalous life. She was a child actress, eloped with various men before becoming prenant by a man not her husband: ships captain John Haldane. They ended up in India until the British Prime Minister, no less, decided that her behaviour was such that she be sent home.

Towards the end of the book is the story of how the two authors and their diving friends discovered the wreckage of the Nancy, using newspaper reports of the day and their own local knowledge.

The book is partly factual and partly the authors' imaginings of what might have been said, thought and done by the participants. It contains many photos and illustrations and is well researched.

For those diving, holidaying or living in the Scilly Islands this book is worth buying. The topic is probably too specialised to be of interest to a wider readership. Also I would have preferred either a purely novelised account of the shipwreck and people involved, or for the book to be just factual without the fictionalisation. I found the two together rather offputting.

About the Author
Todd Stevens was "an East London drop out heading nowhere". He and his brothers took up diving with the BSAC in Northampton in 1979 and he credits the sport keeping him "on the straight and narrow ever since". In 1999 he moved to the Isles of Scilly to hunt out undiscovered shipwrecks and found the stern of Colossus in May of that same year. Later he wrote a book about his experiences with the Colossus. Along with his wife Carmen, who is also a keen diver, he is now head of a small team that actively hunts for undiscovered historic wreck sites. Ed Cumming has over 40 years diving experience and relocated to Scilly from Weymouth in 2005.

The Ghosts of Rosevear is available by sending a cheque for £12 (including p&p) made payable to CUAU to Todd Stevens, Ghosts of Rosevear, Pilot's Retreat, St Mary's, Isles of Scilly, TR21 0NA. Alternatively visit the web site at http://www.ghostsofrosevear.co.uk/.

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Creature of the Month: Spotted Dolphin, Stenella attenuata
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There are two types of spotted dolphin, the Atlantic and the Pantropical. We are concentrating today on the Pantropical, Stenella attenuata. You may see Stenella attenuata in the tropical and subtropical waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Spotted dolphins feed on many varieties of fish and squid found near the surface of the water.

They reach maturity between 6 and 8 years of age or when the animal is about 2 m long. Mating and calving take place throughout the year. The calving interval is believed to be about every two years. However, when populations are stressed - such as when huge mortalities are suffered from being entangled in tuna nets - mating takes place at an earlier age and calving at shorter intervals. Gestation is eleven and a half months and calves are nursed for 11 months.

The spotted dolphin is the species, which has suffered the most in the incidental take in the purse seine nets of the tuna fishery. For reasons unknown, yellowfin tuna and spotted dolphins tend to travel together. One theory is that they feed on the same food but at different levels. Tuna fishermen watch for the dolphins, then set their nets and encircle both dolphins and tuna, killing dolphins in the process. Millions of dolphins have died in the nets during the past forty years. In addition, several thousand are killed each year for food in drive fisheries in Japan.

Further Reading:
American Cetacean Society Fact Sheet

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Diving News From Around the World
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If you would like display this news on your web site then go to http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/newsfeed.html to find out how. It's free and automatically updates your web page with the latest diving news.

97% of Divers disturb seabed: Males worst

Most SCUBA divers disturb the seabed in marine protected areas, Spanish researchers say. Inexperienced males carrying a camera or torch are the worst offenders.

The Diver's Handbook

Published today: 2nd edition of The Diver's Handbook by Alan Mountain. A good book for beginners it covers training, first aid, photography, wreck diving, ice diving etc.

Underwater photography competition: entries now being accepted

International Festival of Underwater Photography, Films and Children's Artwork is now accepting entries on-line. Upload your photos before April 22nd.

BSAC Photographic Competition 2009

Likewise, from now to the end of November, the British Sub-Aqua Club are inviting monthly submissions of underwater photos. Each month they will select the best 9-15 shots to go forward to the grand final.

Madives bans reef shark fishing

The Maldives has extended the ban on reef shark fishing to cover their entire territorial waters. A ten-year ban was imposed in 1998 to cover the seven atolls where tourism had been established, on the assumption that many tourists visited the Maldives to see sharks. But with the spread of tourism to almost all atolls in the country, they have decided to expand the ban to encompass all reef shark fishing across the Maldives within a 12 nautical mile radius.

Four Thousand Year Old Coral Found

According to research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, newly applied radiocarbon dating of the deep water corals Gerardia and Leiopathes species show that their growth rates are extremely low, and that individual colonies live for thousands of years. The longest-lived specimens were Leiopathes species, which are black corals, at 4265 years old.

Tourist diving numbers down 25pc

The north Queensland scuba diving industry in Australia says tourist numbers are down 25 per cent on the same time last year and it is likely to get worse.

UK government carbon targets 'too weak' to prevent dangerous climate change

Official advice being used to set Britain's first carbon budget is "naively optimistic" and will not stop dangerous climate change, experts from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research say.

Fins evolved from gills, research suggests

The genetic toolkit that controls the development of gills in sharks, is the same as that used by animals to build fins and limbs, according to research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Humpback whales steal birds' dinner

Humpback whales have come up with a novel way for getting an easy snack - stealing birds' dinners. A BBC crew filmed seabirds carefully corralling unwieldy shoals of herring into tightly packed "bait balls" from which the fish are easy to pluck. But they discovered that passing whales would wait for the birds to complete their hard graft before devouring the ball of fish in a single gulp. The team said this was the first time they had seen this behaviour.

Loss of small fish may be starving the oceans

According to a report by Oceana, there is widespread malnutrition in fish, marine mammals and seabirds because of the global depletion of the small fish they need to survive. These "prey fish" underpin marine food webs and are being steadily exhausted by heavy fishing, increasing demand for aquaculture feed, and climate change.

Diving Southeast Asia

From the authors of Diving the World, a new dive guide covering 400 popular sites in Southeast Asia. From the pristine, isolated reefs of Indonesia's Spice Islands to the lively marine and land environments in The Philippines' Puerto Galera. It also features helpful listings of where to stay, eat and drink and who to dive with.

Follow SCUBA News on Twitter

You can now follow SCUBA News updates on Twitter, the micro-blogging service.

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