[SPONSORED] Yap Gets the Cover in X-Ray Mag

Yap, FSM – July 29, 2024 – Yap is the cover story and has a 21-page colorful spread in the August 2024 edition of X-Ray Mag, the world’s largest digital […]

Malpelo

Text and photos by Brandon Cole

Q2 2024

Most fans of big animal action are familiar with the legendary Galápagos, Cocos, and Socorro dive destinations. All are remote and remarkable. Far fewer people know of — let alone have dived — another open-ocean oasis in the eastern tropical Pacific region: Isla Malpelo. 

YAP

Text and photos by Mike Bartick

Q2 2024

Shallow coral heads are on both sides of the M’il Channel opening as we slow down to locate our mooring ball. The incoming tide brings clean, blue water into the lagoon, creating opportunities for encounters with one of Yap’s main attractions just a few feet below the surface.

Misool Foundation

By Stephen Frink

Q2 2024

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.

Advanced Underwater Navigation

Text by Kyle Kray; Photos by Stephen Frink

Q2 2024

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

By Madeline Coombs and Frauke Tillmans, PhD

Q2 2024

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).

Curated Corals

By Katey Lesneski, PhD

Q2 2024

This past summer the Florida Keys experienced the effects of a marine heatwave event that lasted longer and was more intense than anything in recent recorded history. By early June 2023 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Coral Reef Watch (CRW) issued bleaching warnings for some areas in the Florida Keys and other locations in the Caribbean.

Historic Dive Helmets

By Leslie Leaney

Q2 2024

Traditional copper and brass deep-sea dive helmets often attract the modern dive community’s attention. International interest recently spiked when a helmet believed to be from the dawn of American professional diving sold for a record-setting $54,000 in Wichita, Kansas.

Derek Abbey

By Kyle Kray

Q2 2024

I started diving while I was in flight school in Pensacola, Florida. One day I thought, “I’m right by the water. I’ll go try it out.” I got certified and found that flying and diving share a lot of similarities.