ScubaBrucie

Spanish fishermen are one of (no, probably THE) biggest suppliers of shark fins to the Asian market. In the process they have just about eradicated the Atlantic Blue Shark. Go to any fish market and you will see small juvenile fish and crustacea of all species for sale. They go into soup. Every Spaniard thinks [...]

I have seen them repeatedly, day after day, on every dive, at Richeleau Rock in the Andaman Sea. Twice saw 2 cross over in front of me. Also have seen in the Maldives. You will find them, seasonally, in Mozambique, Seychelles, Nigaloo Reef in Australia and Djibuti. All year round you will find them at [...]

The basic problem is that there is a lot of small stuff I want to look at underwater but there is no way to magnify properly. Due to the laws of physics a conventional magnifying glass loses two thirds of it’s power underwater. Quite simply it is the difference in refractive index between the lens [...]

Then why does Egypt ban dive gloves? Oh and shark fishing? Because a huge amount of their income comes from visiting divers and they don’t want the asset that divers come to see ruined. Obviously some are  perfect divers and never touch the living reef. However in my experience gloved divers do touch the reef, sometimes [...]

I have dived Protea and Aliwal. I also did the shark course on Walkers Cay with Jeremy Stafford-Deitsch and have dived with them in the Sudan, Palau etc. Sharks evolved over tens of millions of years without humans in the water. So to them we are alien. This means they are going to treat you [...]

Part One: Firstly I would like to apologise to all the lizards who have gone to meet their maker (or not, depending on your faith). It wasn’t deliberate and it wasn’t personal, in fact I even tried to avoid you. But if you choose to dart under my wheels at the last second there isn’t [...]

Different dive locations seem to have special emphasis on different aspects on diving. On Sharm it’s training, Manado it’s photography, Puerto Galera it’s tech and on Bonaire there is a great emphasis on underwater naturalism and fish ID. This is probably the result of having at least 4 specialists there: Dee Scarr, http://www.touchthesea.com/ , of [...]

http://www.english-nature.org.uk/pubs/publication/PDF/ourcoasts21.pdf http://eng.msc.org/ http://www.wwf.org.uk/researcher/issues/livingseas/index.asp#uk http://newsrss.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3110082.stm http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/oceans/supermarkets/fish_list.cfm (probably best) http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1604953,00.html

Tourettes video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbFTdiBa9cg&NR Richard Pyle. He is that rare combination of top academic and actionman. For over 16 years he has been diving deep on a very regular basis. From before modern technical diving was invented (in fact he helped invent it!). He has been on a constant succession of expeditions aound the world. [...]

2003 started quiet with Menorca trips in July and September for the normal cave and cavern stuff with Salgar diving. In October we went on a liveaboard out of Hurghada on Sea Serpent to cover the middle bit of the Egyptian Red Sea, doing the Brothers, Daedelus, Elphinstone etc. The highlight was the Oceanic White [...]