| ARTICLESNauru: Island of the Damned There are no words or pictures that can adequately capture what mining has wrought in Nauru. The small atoll has essentially been tonsured. One would be hard-pressed to find a place that has been more wasted by the global economy...Dealing with the Dictator: Fiji's Frank Bainimarama Like many military leaders before him, Frank Bainimarama can be autocratic, stubborn, wilful, obstinate and disdainful of the traditional nuances of civilian politics. He may also be the best hope for true democracy in Fiji...Wayne's World: What killed two scuba divers at School Sink Scuba diving buddies Joseph Hartranft and Yessic Spencer plunged into the green water leading to a labyrinth here known as "Wayne's World" — and a day later, they still hadn't come out...Sipadan All Over Again: Scuba Tourism Killing Perhentian's Coral Reefs Severely degraded by an onslaught of dive resort profiteers, Perhentian is on the verge of becoming the next Sipadan, a victim of irresponsible, unsustainable, "Go Eco" dive tourism...Cousteau vs Cousteau: Going for the Green When diver Jacques Cousteau died, he left behind a legacy of ocean exploration. But as his grandsons Fabien and Philippe look to seize his nautical throne, another tragic, troubled legacy has resurfaced...Tina Watson: Scuba Diving Accident or Brutal Murder? Tina Watson died scuba diving. It looked like a tragic honeymoon accident until her suspicious family and a dogged detective exposed what they believe is a brutal murder – by her husband, Gabe...Dive Vanuatu: Dive the Coolidge The Coolidge, built in 1931, was named after Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the United States. It measures 200 metres long and 25m wide and could accommodate 3,500 passengers. In 1941, the Coolidge was converted to a troop transport...Dive the Red Sea: Dive In to Dahab's Vibe Located on the western shore on the Gulf of Aqaba some 80 kilometres north of the internationally renowned resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh, the Red Sea backpacker mecca is as close to perfect as it gets...Raising the Dead: A True Story of Death and Survival Less than half a minute after the emergency began, Don Shirley was stabilised. His descent was arrested and he was breathing safely. Nearly 250m of water and 70 decompression stops lay between him and open air. He began to ascend...Gloom and Doom Tourism Boom: Going, Going, Gone Forget about Cancun and the Cayman Islands. From the tropics to the ice fields, doom and gloom is big business. Instead of being the first to scuba dive at a pristine coral reef, adventuresome travelers are lining up to be the ones to see things last...Visionary Bill Stone: Counting On Unmanned Vehicles Here's another Stone vision involving robots: Extracting huge amounts of water from ice at Shackleton Crater at the south pole of the moon. Why? To convert it to rocket fuel for gas stations in Earth orbit that would fill up spaceships...Plastic Ocean: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch A vast swath of the Pacific, twice the size of Texas, is full of a plastic stew that is entering the food chain. Even when plastic is broken down to a single molecule, it remains too tough for biodegradation...When Divers Meet Their Fate Unable to sit up, stand, or walk, Jona remains optimistic of one day being able to do all the things he could do before fate delivered a cruel blow in late April. He's a casualty of the dreaded decompression illness...Race to Find $20m Nazi Gold Stash A British expert has said he is certain the treasure lies in steel ammunition boxes sunk deep in the sand in waters less than a nautical mile off Bastia in northern Corsica. The gold alone - said to be 440lb - would be worth more than $4 million...Diving and Death: Florida's Spiegel Grove It was just after 10:00 a.m. when divers on boats and back at the Key Largo docks heard the urgent call on their marine radios: three missing divers aboard the Spiegel Grove. All three died and still no one knows exactly what happened....Verde Island Passage: Centre of Centre of Marine Biodiversity Situated between Verde Island and Puerto Galera, Verde Island Passage in the Philippines has been described as the "center of the center" of the world's marine biodiversity in a joint study by America's Smithsonian Institute...Sub Seekers: The Hunt for Chile's First Submarine Somewhere below the surface of Valapariso Bay, hidden in the harbor's dark, frigid waters and half-buried in murky sludge, is a unique 140-year-old object that has been filmmaker Juan Enrique Benítez' consuming obsession...Here We Go Again: Fiji Coup #4 Tourism numbers are bound to fall off sharply as bookings are cancelled in light of the latest coup. On top of this, aid inflows are likely to be revised—and sanctions imposed—as Fiji's neighbours review diplomatic relations with the military government...When You're 600ft Deep: It's Easy to Die It isn't the rough weather, freezing temperatures or the eight-hour dives carrying out installation and maintenance work on oil rigs, that are the most gruelling aspects – it's the experience of living in the infamous saturation chamber for a month at a time...Undersea Mining: Treasure at the Bottom of the Sea As the prices of land-based natural resources rise, new technologies including remote-controlled underwater vehicles might soon be crushing undersea rock containing metal ores and pumping it to the surface...Last of a Diving Breed: Sponge Diver Phil Fatolitis In the old days of brass helmets and dangerous depths, Phil Fatolitis was a model of macho. Now he's a model of longevity. The old man still dreams about the bottom of the sea. He dreams about sponges, about tiger sharks...Dazzling and Diverse: Dive Puerto Galera Oriental Mindoro's center of natural beauty is Puerto Galera, with its beaches, coves, superb natural harbor where the Spanish ships took refuge during storms, marine life, corals, scuba diving sites, falls and bay (recently adjudged one of the 10 best in the world)...Tourist Industry Fat Cats Rake In Tsunami Windfall The tragedy is that many of tourism's downsides may be exacerbated by the tsunami reconstruction plans. From Thailand to Sri Lanka, the tourist industry saw the tsunami through dollar signs...Raising the Dead: The Incredible Story of Deep Diver Dave Shaw When extreme diver Dave Shaw set a world depth record in the blackness of the Boesmansgat cave in South Africa's northern Cape last October, his elation was marred by a grim discovery...Did Pirates of Yore Get a Bad Rap? Pirates, the new argument goes, got a bad rap in many ways. The popular image of pirates as a gang of sadistic monsters led by a despotic, possibly deranged captain is largely a product of an early 18th century propaganda campaign against them...Topside Attractions: Dive In to the World's Top Topless Beaches The French are credited with many great inventions, such as the bicycle, pasteurization and, the barometer, but one cultural contribution that rarely makes it into the history books is sunbathing au naturel...One Obscure Clue Leads Divers to Gallipoli Shipwreck Below them was TSS Kanowna, a passenger ship that sank in 1929 off Wilsons Promontory. Until Melbourne shipwreck explorer Peter Taylor came across an obscure archival clue recently, the ship's final resting place was a mystery...IMMARBE issues marine casualty report: Wave Dancer Over three years after the Peter Hughes Wave Dancer capsized in Belize killing 20 passengers and crew, IMMARBE has finally released its investigation into the causes of the accident...To Live and Dive in Honduras The Bay Islands off Honduras's northern coast have two claims to fame among adventurous scuba divers: They are incredibly affordable and encounters with whale sharks, the world's largest known fish, are frequent...Turks & Caicos: Another Paradise Lost to Tourism Developers Arrive after the tourism developers take over and all you get is another silly, overpriced variation on the global tourism theme park complete with Vegas-style hotels, PADI dive shops and junk food...Mutant Aliens Attack Hawaii This isn't your ordinary invasion. It doesn't come with military might or green-skinned pseudo humans with overgrown almond eyes. There is no aircraft with flashing lights landing in the yard to the supernal soundtrack of do-do-do-do...Unplugged, Unspoiled, Uncrowded, Unbelievable Cheap: Dive Roatan Savvy adventure travelers looking for more value and less development than increasingly crowded and pricey tourist resorts in Belize and Costa Rica are heading for Roatan in Honduras...Canary Islands Volcano Could Trigger Monster Tsunami Research scientists say that the eruption of a volcano in the Canary Islands could trigger a ''mega-tsunami'' that would devastate Atlantic coastlines with towering waves as high as 330 feet...Tsunami: Why America's Coast Would Be Toast It sounds like a Hollywood disaster movie. A dangerous volcano in the Canary Islands erupts, sends a giant tsunami travelling faster than a jet aircraft into the major population centres of America's east coast...Deep Dark Secrets: Shipwreck Hunters Find the Benjamin Noble "The Noble is the Loch Ness Monster, the Holy Grail of shipwrecks, at least in western Lake Superior...it was always such a mystery. None of us who hunt for shipwrecks expected it would ever be found"...To Hell and Back: Death in the Depths of Sistema Huautla Mapping the last uncharted land on earth is a dangerous proposition and the odds of survival at close to a mile deep aren't great. One slip, one momentary lapse of concentration, and you die...S.S. Mohawk: It Was an Ugly Ship and Still Is But... As wreck diving increases, the calls for regulation grow louder: Wisconsin arrested a diver in 1998 for taking a porthole. In Britain, a group called Wreck Respect is agitating to ban all souvenir diving, everywhere...Cozumel: Swallows, Scuba Divers and Cruise Ships Separated from the sprawling mainland resort cities of Playa del Carmen and Cancún by a 12-mile-wide channel, Cozumel is the natural launch point for some of the world's finest diving and snorkeling boats...Scuba Tanks, the Bends and the Hunt for Red Gold On Central America's Mosquito Coast, young men plunge into the abyss with defective equipment to capture dwindling stores of lobster. A tale of U.S. appetites, human misery, and one stubborn American...Female Sex Tourists Hard On Scuba Instructors with Small Dinghies According to scuba instructor Lindsey, they "raped" every one of the male staff, then turned around and rated them on a web site. "One guy got labelled as having a small manhood"...The True Story Behind the Open Water Movie The dive industry's damage-control mechanism was desperate and unpleasant. Ugly rumours started spreading - many of them put about by the Outer Edge's owner, Tom Colrain - that the Lonergans had faked their own deaths...PADI: The Way the FBI Spys on You In May 2002, the PADI voluntarily provided the FBI with a disk containing the names, addresses and other personal information of about 2 million people, nearly every U.S. citizen who had learned to scuba dive in the previous three years...Drifting Alone in the Pacific: A Diver Left at Sea Dan Carlock had not heard the sounds of others surfacing; he had not heard the Sundiver dive boat throttle up and pull away from the rig. But the message of the silence was clear. ''They left me,'' he said to himself...No Limits on Greed: The Death of Wife #4 on Sale for Only $25.95 "Ferreras is one of the icons in the United States when it comes to freediving, but he lost a lot of credibility after Audrey's death. It's considered one of the greatest tragedies in the sport's history"...Shadow Divers: How a Bunch of Amateur Divers Found the U-869 Nazi Sub The wreck was, unbelievably, a World War II vintage German U-boat. Nobody - not the Navy, not the historians, not even the few surviving German U-boat captains - knew what it was doing there...The Peter (Bennett) Principle: Tell 'em I Ain't Dirty or I'm Gonna Sue Your Ass DAN board members are ushering out founding CEO Peter Bennett, who has sued the board of directors for control of the company and is now threatening to sue again...Tahiti: Feed a Shark, Kiss a Ray, Spend a Fortune Goods and services are incomprehensibly expensive. Nightlife equals hanging around the hotel bar, waiting for the hotel's once-a-week Polynesian dance revue or taking in the $88 Tahitian buffet-and-show at Tiki Village Theatre...Safe Scuba Diving Operator? Just Being PADI Doesn't Cut It Be especially cautious of cut-throat deals and cattle boats. I've been on dive boats that nearly capsized in Fiji, been run over by a UK operator, met people who have dived to 60 metres without training in Thailand...Into Harm's Way Everyone knew Hurricane Iris was coming. But the Americans aboard Wave Dancer didn't have to worry--that was the captain's job. While Belize residents were preparing for the storm, the divers continued exploring the country's world-class reefs...Moken Sea Gypsies: Seeing Underwater For centuries the seminomadic Moken people have lived as hunter-gatherers along the coasts of Burma and Thailand. Without masks or scuba gear, they are able to gather food on the ocean floor at depths as low as 23 meters...Deep Trouble: Peter Bennett Goes Down DAN CEO Peter Bennett mismanaged corporate funds, spent member donations extravagantly on himself and his supporters, and tried to secretly gain control of DAN's lucrative insurance subsidiary...Fish Farts: It's Windy Under the Sea A question we have all asked hundreds of times is: How do herring communicate? I'm pleased to report that we may, at last, be getting closer to an answer, thanks to an important recent discovery by fish scientists....Welcome to the Solomon Islands Once the scene of bitter fighting, the Solomon Islands boast not only stunning tropical beaches and pristine coral reefs, but also an incredible legacy of the ferocity of the war in the Pacific, much of which lies beneath the ocean's surface...Road to Ruin: Tourism Resort Developers Threaten Palau's Reef The vital question for Palauans is how much money they need. Because the reality is a tropical island can only bear so much before the environment is severely harmed and culture lost...More Articles | | | |
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