AquaVenture, who we dived with on our club trip to Malta last October, recently ran a photo competition – and who do you think came third?
Our very own Diving Officer, Gary Coles, with his excellent shot of an inquisitive moray eel surrounded by colourful coral. Congrats to Gary!
Check out more awesome pictures of our Malta trip from Gary, Solty, Jane and Clare, as well as an excellent dive report from Jane, in our story Malteaser: The Lighter Way To Dive.
How much do we love Monty Halls? His latest series takes us into the striking corals and diverse life of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
The Great Barrier Reef series appears on Sunday nights at 8pm on BBC2. If you haven’t yet seen it, watch it here on iPlayer!
For two weeks following Monty’s series, there was also an amazing two-part programme called To Boldly Go, in which Dr Kevin Fong discovers how unsuited human biology is to living on much of the planet – and how we have developed the technology to let us survive there.
His first programme, Down, was about how to survive underwater, and shows Dr Fong escaping from a sinking helicopter and walking through a tank of sharks.
Excellent TV!
Finnish ice-diving videographer Juuso Mettala made this incredible video of three divers, all upside down, using a lake’s icy roof as their floor!
The video was filmed under Lake Saarijärvi, one of Finland’s many ice-covered lakes, where ice diving is a popular sport.
Dry suit divers usually wear ankle weights to keep the air from getting caught in their boots and causing a diver to turn head-over-heels, but these divers have mastered the technique as an art form.
Watch the video here and post a comment below! Thanks to Laura Bellis who sent me the video from one of her buddies at Brisbane BSAC – hope you’re enjoying sunny Oz, Laura!
We’d like to wish all our members a very happy New Year – here’s to more great diving in 2012! What’s on your hit list this year? What’s your dream dive site, and where are you planning to dive?
To get you in the mood, here’s a picture of the Blue Corner Wall in Palau, Micronesia, one of the 100 best dive sites in the world as voted for by Scuba Travel readers – check out the full list for inspiration by clicking this link.
See you underwater!
Kudos to our interpid members Martin, Jane, Ali, Mike, Richard and Troy, who recently braved the chilly but millpond-like waters off the coast of Abersoch. Read Jane’s dive report below!
Remember, Remember, the 6th of November – you might think I’ve got the date wrong but we were certainly spot on with the weather.
Martin Hall and I needed to complete some elements of our Dive Leader training so we headed off to the Llyn Peninsular on an early Sunday morning in November.
We were accompanied by our trusty Instructor; Richard B, dive buddies; Alison Newby and Mike Pritchard, Boat Cox’n; Troy (who needs a surname?) Milward, and our minders; Mrs B, Bob Huyton and Liz Wright.
Our expectations on the weather and sea state weren’t great considering the time of year but being ‘roughty toughty’ divers we weren’t going to let that deter us from our mission.
Neptune though, smiles on the brave (or is that ‘laughs at the foolhardy’) and we were blessed with brilliant blue skies, glorious sunshine, an empty beach and a flat calm turquoise sea full of seals.
We launched the club rib from the golden sands of Abersoch and dived on the south-east side of Carreg-y-Trai reef. Ali and I landed on the wreck of the ‘Timbo’ (5.11.22) judging by the metal plates and girders we saw.
We also found a lot of slate pieces which by all account are from an earlier wreck - that of the ‘Omnibus’ (2.10.1869).
We finished our dive with an interesting drift, all the while shadowed by a number of playful seals. For those of you interested in marine flora and fauna, all I can say is that we saw loads of kelp, crabs, starfish, empty mussel shells and one swimming octopus.
Martin and Mike conducted a ‘figure 8’ in depth survey of the reef complex, but they wouldn’t tell me what they saw.
The water temp was around 13c and the viz really no worse than we have experienced all summer on the coast. Surface conditions really were a peach though. I personally put it down to Martin’s skills as Dive Manager for the day; others may say we were just lucky. If only summer’s diving conditions could have been like this!
PS: I didn’t mention the mermaids or Monty Hall because you’d just think I was making up the rest of it too.
Click ‘Read the rest of this entry’ to see pics from Mike and Jane!
