Beach diving is an inexpensive and fun way to explorer your underwater world. I love La Jolla Shores in San Diego, it has bathrooms and showers for quick after-dive rinse, it keeps my car and gear a whole lot cleaner.
But what about when your diving in an area with out showers? I've seen surfers use water jugs/bottles to get the sand off there feet and gear but it's not as convenient when your trying to spray off sand from all your dive gear.
Enter in HotJugz. No, it's not some dodgy Internet site that you shouldn't be visiting at work but a portable pressurized and insulated shower.
It works like a hand-pressurized pesticide sprayer, you pump the handle, it pressurizes the contents and has a shower head with a coiled hose.
But wait! There's more! It also is insulated so you can keep the water hot or cold over a longer period. So, you could fill up your HotJugz (I love typing that) with hot water, do your dive, come back to your car and get a hot shower.
Brilliant!
They range in price from $50 to $60 dollars, so while not cheap they are a great idea.
This is so cool and totally puts our office fish tank to shame. It's a habitrail for fish. It looks like two fish tanks, connected by an acrylic tube. Of course, this started a debate in my office on how it works but alas we couldn't figure out how this works.
I was informed that Ike Brigham, the founder of Ikelite, passed away last week via email, but I was waiting for confirmation that it was true before I posted it.
Ike was very active on Wetpixel and so when I saw that Eric posted it, it was enough confirmation for me.
Ikelite started out making lights, underwater compasses and finally the strobes, photo and video housings that they are now known for. Ike was known for amazing customer service, where he personally would get involved and solve a problem.
He had been battling an illness for years and he will be missed.
Apeks, my favorite regulators, have come out with a new line of regulators which have an integrated LCD in the first stage which informs the operator if it's "healthy" enough to dive.
So just by glancing at the top of your first stage regulator, you can see if the reg is up to snuff or needs to be serviced. It's a very cool idea in principle and a perfect gift for your techno-gadget-diver-geek.
Here is how it works. The first stage has a very small integrated microprocessor that reads the intermediate pressure of the first stage and calculators if it's within the manufacturers tolerance range and displays a simple status message, like "OK" or "SVC".
Another interesting feature is that it has a timer/calendar to calculate how long it's been since you last serviced it, so this is like the regulator equivalent of the "check oil light".
The status unit is powered by a battery that will need to be replaced every two years.
The unit is on the new line of regulators in the XTX product line and cannot be retrofitted to existing Apeks regulators. You can see which here, on the rather horrible Apeks website. Strangely, they are still using John Bennett, who died diving, to promote their regulators.
Researchers in Japan, no not those but ones looking for the elusive Giant Squid, have succeeded in filming a live one on the surface. More importantly, they've got video on the CNN article and the thing is HUGE.
Unfortunately, it died while they were trying to capture it, and hopefully, they are going to study it for it's scientific value and not for it's suitability as a menu item.
This is the same team that succeeded in getting still shots of a giant squid that we've talked about before.
Apparently, the Nazi's were a little desperate at the end of WWII and decided that they would load up a submarine with some scientists and weaponized mercury and set sail for Japan. The thought being that mercury-toting Japanese would somehow divert attention away from Germany. Long story short , the British sank the submarine not far from the Norwegian port it left from.
A 19th Century Ship has been found in Lake Ontario, for those of you not in North America, think in-land sea, calling them lakes is an insult to how large these things are.
Anyway, being the sole mode of transportation for a few centuries, the lakes have had their share of maritime disasters and the lake bed is strewn with once might ships.
Looks like a pair of shipwreck explorers have found one of these lost souls, the Milan, which sank in the 1840s and do to the magic of a fresh water, low oxygen environment, the ship is still intact. They built and used an ROV to film/explorer this wreck which is approx 200 feet down.
Now all they need to do is get a group of tech divers out there.
Stumped on what to give your favorite diver this holiday season?
How about adopting a sea creature for Chrismahanakwanzaka! Of course, you don't get to take your little dolphin, sea turtle, shark or whale home and junior won't get to take him in for show-and-tell but it will help protect these animals.
It's like $25, but it will seem much more expensive when you tell them you bought adopted a sea creature for them. Oh and you get a cookies cutter in the shape of the creature you pick.
A bad day at work for me is traffic, back-to-back-to-back meetings and missing a deadline for some of the projects I own. A bad day for a Sea World whale trainer is being pinned at the bottom of the tank by a whale. Which is exactly what happened yesterday during a show at the park.
The orca or killer whale, Kasatka, 30, pulled the trainer underwater during a performance. The other trainers, after most likely internally freaking out, were able to persuade the whale to surface, allowing the trainer a breath of air.
The trapped trainer was able to calm the whale and swim to the side of the pool where he got out and was taken to the hospital. He's is listed as injured but good condition.
My friend cleaned the dolphin tanks at Sea World, she quit after she was attacked by them for the second time. She told me that they hunted her in the pool like a pack of wolves and she only managed to escape by quickly surfacing and getting out of the water. When she reported it to her boss, the didn't do much about it and it became apparent to her that it wasn't something they wanted to get out.
They are wild animals and it's good that no one was seriously hurt but it's most likely not the first time this happened, especially if they already had "emergency procedures".
We've talked about Shadow Divers before; it's the first real mass media publication that shines a light of the fringe sport of deep wreck exploration. The best-selling book chronicles the story of two East Coast wreck divers who discover an unknown Nazi Submarine and their quest to identify it.
The book is being made into a movie and the last I heard it was Ridley Scott, who directed Blade Runner, Gladiator, Black Hawk Down and the ground-breaking 1984 Apple Macintosh commercial. He's one of the best directors out there and usually makes very visually stunning motion pictures, so I was excited to see such a high profile director attached to the project.
With a face only a mother could love, we bring you a nice picture of a blobfish (sometimes called a fathead, and member of the Psychrolutidae family). Living at a pressure that would make it a little tough on swim-bladders, it's evolved a jello-type body and looks like the "Sorting Hat" from the Harry Potter movies but more like a male Elephant Seal.
It is rarely seen by humans as it lives at a depth of 3000 feet or more. It was pulled up in trawling net as part of a research project in Australia and New Zealand.
It doesn't even look real to me but truly is an amazing find.
Looks like a new study is out, which might be the worst week to release a study in my opinion. I don't know about you but I can't operate on all cylinders after a long weekend. Anyway, this study claims that toothless whales, which filter-feed, have "human-like" brain cells. The study also found these same cells in toothed whales, like Orcas.
It's not saying that they have human brains but that researchers see some similarities in whales that only been seen in the brains of humans and great apes. These spindle neurons are thought to be involved in cognition, learning and remembering.
The report state that, "some of the behaviors seen in whales, such as intricate communication skills, the formation of alliances, cooperation, cultural transmission and tool usage".
To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if they find these all over the animal world, as much hunter gathers need to remember where the best feeding spots are and need to learn behaviors, like pack hunting, to successfully get prey.
This is just another reason that we shouldn't be hunting whales, never mind our recent attempts of serial depletion of their species but I just can't see hunting animals that have "human like brains".
A new diving magazine is out on the market, Diving Adventure. I just ordered it based on some reviews from people that I know because I typically support the "little guy" publisher these days.
I haven't received it yet but here is the low down on it's contents.
An article about bait balls off South Africa by Doug Perrine,
A photo portrait of the Solomon Islands by Bret Gilliam,
A technical question & answer about oxygen by Steve Lewis,
and an article about diving off Mexico with hammerheads and mantas by Stan Waterman.
It's not targeted towards folks who are just looking for reviews on liveaboards or which all-inclusive dive resort you should visit on your next vacation, but to people who are out doing some interesting dives around the world.
I could also title this post, or What Lunch looks like for a Great White Shark (GWS).
This was taken in Seal Island in South Africa, home of the leaping GWS that you see on TV. The footage or frame grab in this case is from the BBC series Planet Earth. This shot is simply amazing, but it does remind me that I really don't want to encounter a GWS without a nice sturdy cage.
Submerge isn't just dropping DPVs this holiday season, it's serving up a good old fashion death-ray. While this one won't knock satellites out of the sky or vaporize your enemies, it will give you a serious underwater video light. The named it the "Death Ray".
So for all of you with dive light envy, or if you need a underwater video light to light up a cave or wreck that you are filming, then this is the light for you. It's ingenious, in the fact, that it mounts to a Submerge DPV and uses a nose plug connection to use the DPV's batteries to power this 200 watt HMI light.
By using the DPVs batteries, to power it, you can get an incredible 3 hour burn time. However, this doesn't come cheap, it's $4500 for the light and the DPV mount.
Beach diving is an inexpensive and fun way to explorer your underwater world. I love La Jolla Shores in San Diego, it has bathrooms and showers for quick after-dive rinse, it keeps my car and gear a whole lot cleaner. 
This is so cool and totally puts our office fish tank to shame. It's a 
Researchers in Japan, 
Apparently, the Nazi's were a little desperate at the end of WWII and decided that they would load up a submarine with some scientists and weaponized mercury and set sail for Japan. The thought being that mercury-toting Japanese would somehow divert attention away from Germany. Long story short , the British sank the submarine not far from the Norwegian port it left from.
A 19th Century Ship has been found in 
Stumped on what to give your favorite diver this holiday season?
A bad day at work for me is traffic, back-to-back-to-back meetings and missing a deadline for some of the projects I own. A bad day for a Sea World whale trainer is being 
We've talked about 
With a face only a mother could love, we bring you a nice picture of a blobfish (sometimes called a fathead, and member of the 
Looks like a
A 
