|
headlines on your own web pages for free! Click here for details.
|
SCUBA News 96~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Welcome to the April issue of SCUBA News. This month we have another Red Sea competition for you to enter. I hope you enjoy the newsletter, but should you wish to cancel your subscription you may do so at http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/news.html Contents: __________________________________________________________ What's New at SCUBA Travel? 
Discover the best dive operators and dive sites in Thailand at our newly updated Thailand section :ADVERT__________________________________________________ Dive Belize in Exotic Luxury at St. George's Caye Resort. Seven miles from Belize City. Visit us at www.gooddiving.com or call 1-800-813-8498. Pamper yourself at our all inclusive island paradise! Valet Diving, snorkelling and gourmet food await your arrival. ___________________________________________________ADVERT: Read about the dive sites, dive operators and accommodation options in Malta and Gozo. We've updated our list of the bestselling SCUBA books and DVDs of the last 3 months. As usual, "Dive Atlas of the World" by Jack Jackson heads the list. "World War II Wrecks of Truk Lagoon" makes a welcome re-entry and the "Underwater Photographer" appears for the first time. __________________________________________________________ Red Sea Dive Guide Review and Competition 
Sharm El Sheikh - Egyptian Red Sea Regular readers will be familiar with the format of these dive guides from Travelling Diver. A collection of double-sided A5 pages each packed with information about one dive site, ready to be inserted into a 3-ring binder. This, the fifth guide in the series, is dedicated to the dives around the popular diving area of Sharm El Sheikh in the Egyptian Red Sea. It features 16 dive sites, including the wreck of the Thistlegorm and the Shark and Yolanda Reefs, which have been voted amongst the top ten dives in the world. The sheets are attractively laid out and easy to follow. There is a space for you to enter the particulars of the dive: maximum depth, surface interval, temperature, etc. Then comes the information. First the site overview giving a brief description of the dive. For example, the Shark and Jolanda entry says "Part of the Ras Mohammed marine park, this is one of the most famouse dive sites in the Red Sea. Shark & Jolanda offers shark sightings, exciting drift dives and an unusual cargo of porcelain toilets, from the wreck of the Jolanda". An excellent 3-D map shows the topography of the site with depths clearly illustrated and notes on features of interest. There then comes two suggested routes to take on the dive. The description of the dive gives loads of information - quite often more than you would get in a much larger format book. The publishers even manage to squeeze in a photo of a typical undersea creature of the area, with notes on its behaviour. Finally, there is an area to write your own dive notes. Being a person who likes to write copious notes on what I've seen this too small to be of much use to me, but if you prefer not to write essays on every dive then it should do. Although the idea of these guides are to be a dive guide and log book combined, you do not have to use them as such. I would still recommend them as a very good reference for divers who prefer to write their dives up in their own notebooks, or are with a diving agency that don't use a 3-ring format log book. My only criticism is that it is very expensive to buy the whole set. Perhaps in future the publishers could offer a discount at their web site for people buying all 5 guides? If you are going diving in Sharm El Sheikh then this is a very good buy. The briefing you get from this log-book/guide is often going to be much better than the briefing you get from your human guide. The guide is available from Travelling Diver, Amazon.co.uk, Waterstones and other bookshops. About the author Win the Diving Guide to Sharm El Sheikh We've two copies of the diving guide and log book to give away. To enter the competition go to the Travelling Diver web site at http://www.travellingdiver.com/find_your_dive_site/sharm_el_sheikh.phtml then tell us the name of the first dive site they list in the pack (it begins with A). E-mail your answer to news@scubatravel.co.uk before 31 May. __________________________________________________________ Ocean Facts: Nutrient-Rich Upwellings 
When organisms in the sea die they sink, taking their nutrients to the depths. The nutrients don't stay lost at the bottom for ever though, otherwise there would be very few animals in the surface layer. In polar and temperate oceans, as the surface water gets cold it sinks and forces the nutrient-rich water up from the depths. This process is called overturn. Storms also mix up the layers and this constant churning process is why the waters around the poles are such rich feeding grounds. This is also why the temperature at the poles is so crucial because if the surface water warms up, this massive food factory is effectively shut down. In tropical and subtropical oceans, the surface water never gets cold enough to sink. Here nutrients are provided by upwellings. This is where the wind causes water to move, and the gap left is filled by nutrient-rich water flowing upward from the deep. Regions of upwelling can support large populations of fish. In waters of the coast of Peru an upwelling results in huge numbers of anchovy. Towards the end of the year the winds die down, the upwelling decreases and the water warms up. This is called En Nino. In some years the warm, nutrient-poor waters flow back east and the anchovy disappear, causing knock-on effects for many other species. The nutrients that arise from the deep encourage seaweed growth and support blooms of phytoplankton. This forms food for animals higher in the food chain: fish, marine mammals and seabirds. This can make for good dive sites: other upwelling regions include the Galapagos and Western Australia. __________________________________________________________ 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. Glucose pre-dive drink may prevent decompression sickness Decompression sickness is caused by nitrogen being released from the blood too quickly, forming bubbles which may expand and injure tissue. Anything that reduces bubble formation should decrease the risk of decompression sickness. Researchers from the French Navy have found that drinking 1.3 litres of a saline-glucose drink an hour and a half before the dive decreased bubble formation. This provides an easy means of reducing decompression sickness risk. :ADVERT__________________________________________________ Golden Buddha Beach Resort have launched a Whale Shark Exploration Programme. Divers can photo-tag whale sharks to contribute to the conservation and research efforts. Visit http://www.goldenbuddharesort.com/sea.html for details... ___________________________________________________ADVERT: Boat kills 2 divers in Red Sea An Egyptian medical official says two Polish scuba divers were killed when they were hit by a speedboat in the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheik. Hospital authorities identified the Polish victims as Jona Kosic, 45, a man, and Wizo Kosic, 43, a woman. Four commonly found sunscreen ingredients can awaken dormant viruses in the symbiotic algae called zooxanthellae that live inside reef-building coral species. The chemicals cause the viruses to replicate until their algae hosts explode, spilling viruses into the surrounding seawater, where they can infect neighboring coral communities. Zooxanthellae provide coral with food energy through photosynthesis and contribute to the organisms' vibrant color. Without them, the coral "bleaches"—turns white—and dies. 
Bikini corals recover from atomic blast Half a century after the last earth-shattering atomic blast shook the Pacific atoll of Bikini, the corals are flourishing again. A research diver said "It was incredible, huge matrices of branching Porites coral (up to 8 meters high) had established, creating thriving coral reef habitat. Throughout other parts of the lagoon it was awesome to see coral cover as high as 80 per cent and large tree-like branching coral formations with trunks 30cm thick". Japan whale kill short of target Japan's Antarctic whaling catch fell far short of its target this season, hampered by a series of skirmishes with anti-whaling protesters, the Fisheries Agency said today. The fleet caught only 551 minke whales, compared with the planned catch of 850. No fin whales were caught at all, although it had set a target of 50. "Sabotage by activists is a major factor behind our failure to achieve our target," the official said. Better Mooring for the SS Thistlegorm dive boats Voted one of the best dives in the world, the SS Thistlegorm (Red Sea) was deteriorating because of the numbers of divers visiting it. In December 2007, the Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Association (HEPCA) installed 32 mooring lines at the site of the wreck to help protect it. However, in the three months since the conservation work, at least half of the lines have been damaged. Divers have therefore upgraded the moorings. Microbes could be the key to coral death Coral reefs could be dying out because of changes to the microbes that live in them just as much as from the direct rise in temperature caused by global warming. Changes in sea temperature caused by climate change and global warming affect corals, but they also affect the types of bacteria and other microflora that live with them. When the water warms up, some disease-causing bacteria are more successful and can attack the corals. The corals themselves suffer from heat, which reduces their defences. Also, some of the friendly bacteria that normally live in the corals' guts become weakened, allowing other harmful bacteria to multiply and cause diseases or other problems. French driftnetters will not fish in 2008 Driftnets, a fishing gear that can reach dozens of kilometres in length, were prohibited in the European Union in 2002 because they constitute a threat to the conservation of cetaceans, sea turtles and sharks. Oceana has reported that Italy and France continue using this illegal fishing gear to capture bluefin tuna and swordfish, years after the ban entered into force. The European Court of Justice has refused to grant the French fleet a temporary exemption to permit the use of driftnets. Tiny Mexican porpoise near extinct from fish nets The vaquita, a tiny stubby-nosed porpoise found only in Mexico's Sea of Cortez, is on the brink of extinction as more die each year in fishing nets than are being born, biologists say. A drop in vaquita numbers to as few as 150 from around 600 at the start of the decade could see the famously shy animal go the same way as the Chinese river dolphin, which was declared all but extinct in 2006. Underwater Paradise: The Red Sea, the Maldives, Malaysia, the Caribbean New book by Angelo Mojetta, Andrea Ferrari and Antonella Ferrari is part armchair diver and part field guide. As you'd expect from the Ferraris there are hundreds of colour photographs, plus maps, 3-D reef drawings and biological drawings to accompany the text. __________________________________________________________ * Copyright SCUBA Travel - http://www.scubatravel.co.uk/ 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 CONTACTING THE EDITOR ADVERTISING PUBLISHER Subscribe To SCUBA NewsOur newsletter, SCUBA News (ISSN 1476-8011), is absolutely free. It is a monthly publication, delivered by e-mail. To receive your copy fill in your details below. We will never pass your e-mail address to any third parties, or send you unsolicited e-mail. You will receive an e-mail confirming your subscription. If you don't receive this you have probably entered your e-mail address incorrectly - revisit this page and re-subscribe. Send us your Press Releases
If you have a SCUBA related press release, or would like to write to SCUBA News, please fill in the form below.
|
|
|
