“PURA VIDA!” our dive guide, Sergio, exclaimed with a relaxed smile. Eight dive buddies, Sergio, and I just had an incredible experience: A 35-foot-long whale shark swam a few feet over our heads at one of the better-known dive sites at Cocos Island, Costa Rica. …
DAN INTRODUCED THE FIRST standardized emergency oxygen course for divers as lay providers in 1991. More people trained in oxygen delivery means that providers in dive locations worldwide need to have emergency oxygen units available. Obtaining oxygen refills, however, is an ongoing problem …
JUST BEFORE SUNRISE I make a cup of strong Indonesian tea and feel the familiar rush of anticipation that always builds when I dive where no one else has. From the liveaboard’s top deck I squint at a string of islands— just green dots from here — that stretch offshore from the Fakfak Regency …
TO FIND THE FIRST DESCRIPTION OF A LARVAL PEARLFISH in the wild, I had to search back to the early 1980s annals of blackwater diving and Christopher Newbert’s account of drifting 40 feet down a lighted downline tethered to a dinghy bobbing on a night sea somewhere off the Kona, Hawaiʻi, coast. The story appeared […]
MOST PEOPLE KNOW the historical significance of D-Day, the infamous day when Allied forces landed on the shores of western Europe on June 6, 1944.
Few people, however, know the story of the men who went into these enemy waters before them. Armed with nothing but a mask, fins, and a knife …
WOULD YOU BE SURPRISED TO LEARN that treasure is beneath the surface of Lake Michigan? It’s true, and these treasures give us glimpses into our history. They aren’t found inside shipwrecks — the wrecks themselves are the treasures.
IT IS MAY 1940, AND GERMANY HAS BEEN AT WAR WITH THE UNITED KINGDOM for more than eight months. Tensions are high across western Europe. It appears inevitable that Italy, under the fascist government of Benito Mussolini, will enter the war aligned with Germany. In Naples, Capt. Lorenzo Muiesan of Italy’s SS Umbria, a maritime […]
IT’S NO SECRET THAT CARIBBEAN REEFS ARE IN CRISIS. Many stony coral species face an uncertain destiny, and some scientific predictors point toward extinction in the near future for some species.
What is the value of a dead reef compared with the value of a living marine ecosystem?
DEAN HOLLIS, FOUNDER OF SWIM AND DIVE RETAILER DIVENTURES, grew up in Lakeland, Florida, as a third-generation Floridian. “I spent the first 22 years of my life in Florida, where I pretty much lived in the water,” …
DIFFERENT TERMS CAN SOMETIMES DESCRIBE the same piece of equipment in the dive industry. What some divers call a dive light, for example, others call a dive torch. They are physically identical, so the names are interchangeable …
