When Tiny Toxins Fight Back
Sometimes the tiniest critters can pack the greatest punch. Phytoplankton, which are unicellular microalgae, can cause mass mortalities of animals such as dolphins and manatees and be the source of serious human illness.
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Sometimes the tiniest critters can pack the greatest punch. Phytoplankton, which are unicellular microalgae, can cause mass mortalities of animals such as dolphins and manatees and be the source of serious human illness.
Many divers seek interactions with sharks, but others actively seek to avoid them. As long as sharks are in the water, people will look for ways to reduce the lethality of a shark bite or decrease encounters altogether.
I’m 14 years old and a newly certified scuba diver. I’ve heard that many years ago divers got certified because of Jacques Cousteau or an old TV show called Sea Hunt, but those were way before my time.
Smalltooth sawfish are critically endangered, making them exceedingly rare to encounter on dives in Florida. Some scientists believe sawfish face the greatest extinction risk of any family of marine animals.
The spectacular ecosystem of Indonesia’s Raja Ampat offers ample opportunities for fish portraits and macro shots with a 100mm lens, but the broad expanses of pristine hard corals punctuated with colorful soft corals and sea fans made it difficult for me to forego using my wide-angle lens during a recent liveaboard trip.
Most divers’ love of the sport stems from a drive to explore a foreign environment. With exploration must come the ability to navigate. Nowhere else on Earth can one become more lost than in a liquid, while simultaneously requiring constant individual concentration on safety techniques, breathing gas, buoyancy, horizontal trim, depth, and time.
Pieter-Jan van Ooij, MD, PhD, is the head of the Department of Research, Innovation, and Education at the Royal Netherlands Navy’s Diving Medical Centre (DMC).