X-Ray Mag #26
Did you know that reef fish are flourencent and that CO2 makes oceans noisier? Did you ever wonder how the jellyfish get its sting? Explorers find hundreds of undescribed species on Australian reefs. Want to know how to pick Ocean-Friendly Sushi? Steve Jones explores blue waters off three Caribbean islands while Barb Roy guides us below the emerald surface of British Columbia. Charles Stirling reviews Bangaram Island, India. GirlDiver, Cindy Ross, test-drives a designer DPV, the XScooter, and French painter and diver, Stephane Braud, shares his portfolio luminous blue underwater scenes.
Main features in this issue include:
Bangaram Island
Dreaming of diving off an uninhabited tropical island? Doing this by liveaboard boat is one approach, but here, on Bangaram Island, one can live the island dream while staying on the island itself, which has enough infra-structure to make it comfortable.
They are off limits even for the original inhabitants who have been trying to return for many years.
Deconstructing a 330m World Record Dive
This is the moment I have waited for for years. I sit comfortably on the side of Denis Bignand’s dive boat and under my fins, which are already dangling in the water, I have a 400 meter drop off.
I look around. I see Porto Polo just a short distance down the coast. At my feet is a big buoy under which 350 meters of rope is suspended with a 50kg weight attached in the other end. It is waiting for me.
Girls on Speed
Hollywood blockbuster Mission Impossible III shows Ving Rhames diving beneath the Vatican on an XScooter DPV to save Tom Cruise from the prison below. Now, GirlDiver takes a look at the XScooter Dive Propulsion Vehicle (DPV) from a gentler perspective. Serious DPV diving for a girl? Is it too big? Too powerful?
In the world of diving, we have necessary gear, and we have fun accessories. The accessories of diving are used to enhance your diving experience, as fashion accessories are used to enhance your clothing selections.
There is a difference in designer handbags, as all women know. You’ve got the limited edition Prada bag versus the Coach purse at the local fine department store. One purse will cost thousands, whereas the other handbag, mere hundreds.
Night Photography
Night diving is the ultimate for many divers. Underwater photography without light is challenging, but with a few additional pieces of camera equipment and special techniques you can master this as well.
All living creatures, and especially crustaceans, which leave their dwellings in the dark, are best captured with close-up or macro photography. Sleeping fishes can often be approached by inching closer and closer until you are just a few centimetres away. This gives you the opportunity to get close-up images of their eyes and fins, which, during daylight, are virtually impossible. Many UW-photographers ask me if flashing strobes will disturb a sleeping fish. Good news! It is scientifically proven that sleeping fish are not disturbed by strobes.
No Secret for Victoria!
What does a fish exporter from Norway, a Chief Information Officer and diving instructor living in the Netherlands, a renowned lawyer based in Cyprus, a Project Manager working in Sweden, and an expat French Technical Diving Instructor have in common?
Spyrou and Verdier had been discussing diving the HMS Victoria since the summer of 2007. The impressive wreck is quite unusual in the sense that it stands up vertically rising up from 140m to 77m with her bow deeply embedded in the thick layer of sediment.
Pay & Play
The ocean has been regarded as a global commons whose resources are inexhaustible and therefore free for the taking.
Total government spending worldwide on protected areas has been estimated to be US$3.2 billion per year, but there are no statistics available that show how much of these US$ 3.2 billion were specifically allocated to marine and coastal protected areas.
Thetis Island
Tallen, my youngest daughter and part-time dive buddy entered the cool emerald coloured water with me as the current slowed to a stop to change direction (slack). Full of anticipation, Tallen and I descended down the southwest side of Virago Rock within Porlier Pass, a .65 km (.4 mile) wide channel between the islands of Valdez and Galiano.
The rocky reef below wore a blanket of light pink coralline algae, dotted with tiny white and orange anemones. Before long the area opened up, revealing our prize—the wreckage of the 32-meter (105-foot) steamer tug, Point Grey, built in 1911.
Three Caribbean Islands
It’s not by chance that the producers of the Pirates of the Caribbean series of Hollywood movies chose St Vincent and Dominica as locations. They both offer the rustic charm and unspoiled richness of environment that can, with little effort, take you back hundreds of years.
St Lucia is a maturing package tourist destination, with well established dive schools offering multi-lingual instruction and guidance for both beginner and experienced divers; Dominica is a nature tourist’s idyllic location offering more adventurous dives and above water scenery that is equally as spectacular as that below water; St Vincent, on the other hand, has become known as the “muck diving critter capital of the Caribbean”—a photographer’s dream offering a diversity of species that rivals Lembeh Straights in Indonesia, but with one difference: these are Caribbean species, and many cann