Empowering Adaptive Divers

WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS, you make lemonade, as the saying goes. Such was the case for Jen Overturf. She suffered a spinal injury at her sixth thoracic vertebra from a dirt-biking accident in 2003 that left her paralyzed from the waist down. After the accident …

Mike Bartick: Blackwater Beckons

WHEN MIKE BARTICK GOES TO HIS 40-YEAR HIGH SCHOOL REUNION in a couple of years, he’ll have to explain how a Southern California kid ended up living mainly in the Philippines and becoming one of the world’s most innovative marine life photographers. His trajectory will be …

Snapping Turtles

THE ANCESTORS OF MODERN SEA TURTLES shared the oceans with ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs during the late Jurassic period 150 million years ago. Their descendants now inhabit reefs and oceans around the world.

Peter Bennett

MOST DIVERS KNOW PETER BRIAN BENNETT, PHD, DSC, AS THE FOUNDER OF DIVERS ALERT NETWORK, through which he brought significant changes in how we understand and enact dive safety.

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The Trip of a Lifetime

IN 2018 AND 2019, MY HUSBAND AND I traveled to 50 locations in 35 countries over 14 continuous months, spending more than 250 hours underwater to research a dive travel guidebook for National Geographic.


In 2018 and 2019, my husband and I traveled to 50 locations in 35 countries over 14 continuous months, spending more than 250 hours underwater to research a dive travel guidebook for National Geographic, A Diver’s Guide to the World: Remarkable Dive Travel Destinations Above and Beneath the Surface.

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Confessions of a Yahoo Diver

A COMMERCIAL DIVER FRIEND TOLD ME YEARS AGO that people like me — recreational divers who do commercial diving work — are often referred to as yahoos.
I was always comfortable underwater and, at 78 years old, still am.

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Practice Crucial Skills

WORKING AS A MATE ON DIVE BOATS for the past 22 years has allowed me to be a part of many interesting situations. When teaching scuba classes, I use one particular situation as evidence of the importance of maintaining skills through regular practice.

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After the Accident

Being involved in a traumatic event can take a toll on everyone: dive professionals or rescue divers who perform a rescue, lay providers who help with CPR and first aid, and dive buddies or bystanders.

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 Do I Need Medical-Grade Oxygen?

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 …

Do divers need Medical-Grade Oxygen

The Peculiar Life of Pearlfish

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 […]

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