As you drop into water as black as night, thousands of pulsating squid in search of mates suddenly surround you. Mating activity is everywhere as multiple males attack single females. The excited squids’ chromatophores (pigment cells) flash colors reminiscent of a Las Vegas neon sign and put you in the middle of a living, moving light show. The action is so frenetic that animals are in your gear and bounce off every inch of your body.
During medical school Peter Lindholm joined a laboratory researching aviation, space and underwater physiology, where he developed a passion for breath-hold dive physiology, about which he wrote his doctoral thesis. As one of the physicians for the Swedish Sports Diving Federation (SSDF), he was involved in developing breath-hold dive protocols and training the first instructors of competitive breath-hold diving. After clinical training as a radiologist, Lindholm moved to San Diego, California, where he leads a research group focused on dive physiology and dive medicine.
Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary in Lake Huron off the northeastern coast of Michigan has nearly 100 known shipwrecks, and others are still being discovered. The oldest shipwreck there sank in 1849, but many wrecks are from the mid- and late 1800s to the early 1900s. The location, history and variety of ships — from wooden schooners to freighters — make Thunder Bay special. The wrecks are at various depths, ranging from the snorkel zone to recreational and technical diving levels.
The first step in ensuring the safety of staff, divers and the public is to develop a detailed awareness of the real risks present in all operations performed by dive businesses and professionals. DAN® has produced a brief guide for anyone responsible for safety. The guide offers an introduction to identifying and understanding 17 of the most common areas of concern. These potential incident sources highlight the kinds of considerations that need attention and help operators to better understand how they might apply this knowledge to their businesses.
For more than five years, divers and scientists along the U.S. West Coast have watched a disaster play out before their eyes. Sunflower sea stars fell victim to a wasting disease, which wiped out roughly 90 percent of the global population in 2013. Seven years later, scientists see no signs of recovery. Without the sea stars, the population of purple urchins that sea stars eat has exploded and mowed down entire forests of bull kelp. The West Coast experienced intense ocean warming from 2014 to 2017, and by 2015 divers began seeing urchin barrens — vast swaths covered in piles of spiny creatures and little else.
Pulmonary barotrauma can occur in a shallow swimming pool if a diver holds their breath during ascent or inadvertently floats to the surface while holding their breath. Most dive-related pulmonary barotraumas occur in compressed-gas diving due to pulmonary overinflation during a breath-hold ascent. Pulmonary barotrauma can occur even with normal breathing if there is an obstruction in the bronchial tree that prevents one lung segment’s normal ventilation.
For the founders of three of Indonesia’s dive resorts, the mission was clear: Protect the region’s natural resources by providing economic, educational and environmental benefits while empowering residents to participate in the process. These visionaries blazed a path for a “blue economy” — ensuring sustainable use of ocean resources while promoting economic growth and improved livelihoods for the people who live there.
A diver didn’t heed the divemaster’s warning and was lost at sea. Deploying his large surface marker buoy helped with his rescue. DAN recommends that divers always listen to the dive briefing and follow all directions and always carry an SMB and reel. If your breathing-gas supply is critically low, get to the surface at a safe ascent rate, and then monitor for signs of decompression illness. It is better to deal with DCI on the surface than to run out of breathing gas at depth.
Ocean literacy is important for the public to make informed decisions about ocean restoration efforts and to take increased individual responsibility in those efforts. Younger generations are crucial for developing an ocean literate society, but adequate ocean science education is a challenge for underserved and underfunded schools. Informal educational opportunities run by the Black Girls Dive Foundation (BGDF) fill the knowledge gap and are a resource for environmentally minded students.
If you like the idea of a liveaboard adventure with remote, open-ocean diving where your dive boat is likely the only one on the reef, you’ll love a trip to Flower Garden Banks. It remains one of the best-kept secrets for wilderness diving in the continental U.S., where you can expect rare encounters such as a longlure frogfish on a sponge, scalloped hammerhead sharks feeding or a whale shark swimming by.
