JULY 2014 EDITION VOL 1. ISSUE 2

DIVE DIGITAL MAG 2014

Dive In To Read More…

Contents Page

Page 2 : Underwater World Cup Held in Shanghai

Page 3 : Shanghai’s Asia Dive Expo This Sept 2014

Page 4 : Underwater Theme Park in Dubai

Page 5 : Hot Diving Spots In Indonesia/ Maldives

Page 6 : Living Micro Organisms Underwater

Page 7 : Essentials Of Technical Diving (Basic)

Page 8 : Essentials Of Technical Diving (Course)

Page 9 : Cave Systems Diving

Page 10 : Cave Systems

Underwater World Cup Held In Shanghai 2014

While the Fifa World Cup happens in Brazil, the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium held its very own Underwater World Cup 2014.

It featured two different coloured teams of fish footballers and even a referee in this special designed water tank.

However, the players failed to move the ball in the end and it ended in a draw.

Shanghai Asia Dive Expo 19 - 21 September 2014

Shanghai Asia Dive Expo/International Underwater Sports & Travel Expo 2014 is organised by underwater3some and co-organised by the Chinese Underwater Association

The International Underwater Sports & Travel Expo is the world’s first underwater sports and travel expo that gathers everything about underwater sports like diving, fin swimming, free-diving and underwater hockey under one roof.

Unlike traditional underwater expos that focus solely on scuba diving, the International Underwater Sports & Travel Expo seeks to promote both underwater sports and the fantastic places you can go to enjoy your favourite subsea adventures.

Reference link is : www.uw3some.com/adexchina

World’s Largest Underwater Theme Park To Open In Dubai

Plans are on the move to build the largest underwater tourism attraction in the world in Dubai: the theme park includes scuba diving and snorkeling in a space modeled after the mythical Lost City of Atlantis.

To be developed by the same outfit that has designed sets for blockbuster movies like “Avatar” and “Pirates of the Caribbean,” the Pearl of Dubai is being billed as the largest sustainable underwater tourism site as it will stretch across five acres off the city coast, reported emirates247.com.

Los Angeles-based underwater developer Reefs World made the official announcement last week. The underwater attraction will be designed to excite the imagination with submerged ruins and references to a mythical, sunken empire.

The artificial reef, to be built in shallow waters of The World islands, will also aim to foster marine life with colonies of algae and soft corals, reported The National earlier this year when plans were still afoot.

The World is an artificial archipelago of small islands constructed to resemble a world map in Dubai.

Reef Worlds also has its eye on developing the waterfront in the Philippines.

The completion date has yet to be announced and confirmed.

Hot Diving Spots In Indonesia/

Hot Dive Sites In Indonesia :

~ Bali

Water levels at 30 meters, 100 feet, the structure attracts great barraccuda, napoleon fish, scribbled file fish, sea turtles, sharks, eels, rays etc.. Currents can be strong and brisk.

~ The Gili Islands And Lombok

Three Gili islands, Trawangan, Meno and Air are small, casual islands with white sandy beaches and of excellent dive spots. Currents can be quite strong, drift diving is the norm along the walls, ridges, canyons and slopes. One will encounter cuttlefish, lion fish, scorpion fish, huge bump parrot fish, whale shark, moray eels etc.. The underwater environment is well cared by as Gili Eco Trust collects contributions from visiting divers and snorkelers to fund special projects like beach clean ups, recycling initiatives and reef conservation activities.

~ Komodo

Komodo island lies in the South of Sulawesi. National park is legendary for its dragons – Komodo Dragons. Plenty of dive sites here, the more well known dive sites will be Manta Alley, End of World and German Flag. Needless to say, marine life is rich here.

And more cool dive sites as stated here :

~ Lembeh, Manado And North Sulawesi

~ Sumatra

~ Wakatobi and Raja Ampat

Hot Dive Site In Maldives :

Diving in Maldives, one is able to spot Eagle Rays, Napoleon Wrasses, lots of pelagic fishes like Giant Trevally or the Barracuda, Manta Rays and the rare Whale Shark.

A likely encounter for the Whitetip and Grey Reef Shark and also Hammerhead Shark. Best location for big pelagic fishes is called the Ari Atoll. Inside the lagoon, the shallow water has many bright colourful coral gardens with a teeming fish life with myriads of reef fishes.

The water is very clear around Maldives and can expect a visibility ranging from 20 to 40 meters. Combined with the amazing marine life, makes Maldives an excellent destination for Underwater Photography.

Living Micro Organisms Underwater

Danny Ionescu holding a rock covered with white biofilm. A massive algae bloom that turned the Dead Sea red in the 1980s convinced scientists that there was life in that famous inland salt lake after all. A new set of studies by underwater researchers indeed shows that Israel’s Dead Sea holds a vast number of living secrets waiting to be revealed.

Positioned in the lowest spot on earth, more than a thousand feet below sea level, the Dead Sea offers plenty more than a nature lover’s vista. Its black and slimy mud is a remedy for skin disorders, its salty air a tonic for chronic disorders from asthma to Crohn’s disease.

And now — while they didn’t find Cleopatra’s slipper or old rowboats from Roman times — the divers did come across a new series of underwater springs that feed the Dead Sea. Remarkably thriving at the mouth of these underwater springs are new varieties of microorganisms, some never before described by science.

“We went into deep springs up to 150 meters from shore. One wouldn’t expect to find artifacts there,” says Danny Ionescu, an Israeli doing research at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany. After several dives, he and his research partner, Christian Lott, took pictures and brought up evidence of carpets of bacteria in many of the places surrounding the springs. “This is not the typical algae that one finds in the Dead Sea,” he tells ISRAEL21c.

Read more at this link : http://www.israel21c.org/environment/dead-sea-divers-discover-new-forms-of-life/

Essentials Of Technical Diving

Key to any good technical dive program is to start with the basics. If the student does not possess the necessary foundation on which to build technical skills, might result in disastrous results for both the student and the instructor. Strong foundation in diving is required, which is why the entry level technical course is being structured the way it is now.

The “Essentials of Tec” course will teach beginner or expert divers the proper skill sets to be a thinking member of their dive team. Students will develop awareness while being trained on the proper techniques starting with the most fundamental skills while progressing to a more challenging skill set phrase.

Other than the usual and required course requirements needed to start on the basic technical dive course, one has to understand the conxepts for technical diving applications.

The effects of different breathing gasses in context to on-gassing/off-gassing, gas switching at depth and modern decompression theory are also covered. This is the most extensive entry level technical diving program of its kind.

Majority learning of this course is that the student will develop the proper skills and techniques for technical diving. In diving, the primary skills are buoyancy and trim. Upon mastered these skills, technical divers will be have to be able to maintain their position in the water column for an extended period of time.

The problematic area of most divers are propulsion techniques, therefore proper finning techniques like frog kick, backwards frog kick, helicopter turns and other kicking methods will be used and applied.

Cave Systems Diving

The Devil’s Eye cave system is among the most popular and frequently dived caves in the world. With over 30,000 feet of mapped passageway, divers can spend a lifetime of active cave diving and still not see all of it. There are still portions of the cave that have yet to be adequately explored and mapped.

Devil’s Eye is part of the Ginnie Springs resort complex, and provides visiting divers with unusual amenities, such as access to warm showers before and after the dive. Its location on the Santa Fe river means that, even after the Suwannee River caves have flooded, it will remain diveable. In fact, Devil’s Eye generally becomes undiveable only once or twice every decade.

The system has two entrances, Devil’s Eye and Devil’s Ear, located in close proximity to one another. They quickly join each other under water in a large passageway known as the Gallery. Devil’s Ear generally provides faster and easier access; however, divers frequently use the Devil’s Eye entrance for training purposes or simply a change of pace.

Parallelling the Gallery are a series of interconnecting tunnels known as the Catacombs. These are the only popular passageways in the cave that are not lined. This is intentional, as instructors rely on these tunnels to give students extensive reel practice.

Due to of the large degree of traffic the cave receives, and the fact Ginnie Springs’ “No Lights” rule helps keep untrained divers out of the cave, the main line at Devil’s Ear runs right to the entrance. This way, the only divers likely to be running reels into the cave are students in training. (Imagine the potential calamity if ten or more teams of cave divers all tried to run reels through the narrow, high-flow entrance at one time.)

At the end of the Gallery, the cave makes an abrupt right turn, and divers must pass through a wide restriction known as the Lips. Beyond the Lips is a large room, at the far side of which the line passes through the Key Hole. Here divers drop from 70 to 90 feet, and begin snaking through a short, winding section known as the Cornflakes.

At the far side of the Cornflakes, some 450 feet into the cave, divers emerge into the Junction Room. From here the cave begins branching off in several directions, providing the opportunity for numerous circuits and exploration of offshoot tunnels.

The furthest point of penetration in the cave is almost a mile from the entrance. Exploration in this region of the cave makes use of scooters almost mandatory. Fortunately, divers can make hundreds of dives in the downstream portion of the cave before they need DPVs to see new passageway. By then they will have gained sufficient experience to graduate to scooters and staging (Ginnie Springs requires 100 cave dives or DPV certification to use scooters in Devil’s Eye).

Scubareefing Development Team will like to thank everyone for downloading / purchasing/ reading our diving digital magazine for this month of July.

Let’s all strive to continue our dive journey and add on more colourful and interesting underwater to our own personal life portfolio.

Cheers.