What do you think of the hot topic of solo diving. Is it ok if done correctly and under the right conditions or is it a step to far.

Personally I think its a bad idea. It does not matter how well trained or experienced we are or how good our kit is things do go wrong and accidents can happen and if you are on your own you have no back up.

Shaun

Shaun

A day after Singapore’s biggest supermarket chain announced that it will stop selling shark’s fin, another supermarket has said it intends to do so by the end of the year.

A spokesman for Carrefour told The Straits Times on Friday it will no longer sell shark’s fin after its current stock runs out.

He said the French supermarket chain, which has outlets at Suntec City and Plaza Singapura, is doing this on its own initiative, as a socially responsible retailer.

Three other supermarket chains - Sheng Siong, Giant and Shop N Save - said they have no plans to stop selling shark’s fin. However, all three added that they do not advertise or run any promotions on their shark’s fin products.

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_752875.html

Caroline

Shaun

How does under £18 per person per night sound in a cosy, heated wooden wigwam camping cabin.

Wooden Wigwams offer the ideal 4 season camping holiday or short break, for group’s families and couples. A great low cost alternative to youth hostels, B&Bs;, self catering or camping.

Presently most people are spending between £35 - £60 per person per night in hotels and B&Bs;around Chepstow, not to mention petrol travelling to and from the National Diving & Activity Centre.

Wigwams are the ultimate eco cabin, secure and lockable the wigwams truly offer all year round camping, and the best bit, no pitching a tent in the rain!

We believe we will be the only UK dive centre to be able to offer onsite accommodation at such reasonable rates and we hope to have the new wigwams in place in the first quarter of 2011.

http://www.ndac.co.uk/news/2011/01jan/05_news.htm

I am 58 years old and have been diving for 40 years since I went to the Navy Seals Dive School in the Phillipines in 1971.  I was a Marine Recon Special Forces guy and one of the only non-Navy guys to ever get “Honorman” from a seals diving school.

I live in northern California and I dive many times a year on the north coast and made it to Hawaii this year for some of that sweet warm water high visability diving that we don’t have here in North California.  I have made hundreds of open water dives in my day, but I truly enjoy free diving for spear fishing which is mostly what I do these days.  Once in a while I do some spear fishing with buddies with tanks when they have a boat, which I don’t.  I usually dive off the shore in the rocks and it is no less fun or productive than with a boat.  I can stay out a lot longer and hunt till my heart is content.

Buddy diving on the north coast is almost impossible anyway.  The water is so murky usually that when you go down and look away from your partner for a split second, you lose him or her.  You spend all your time going up and down so me and my diving friends usually just dive alone, even if we are with others.  Much of the time, I just overweight and once I am on the bottom, I set chum out, find myself a little nook to sit in , let the air out of my BC and sit down and wait!  Lazy, isn’t it?  Sometimes I hunt under the rocks but when the fis is 8 or ten feet, you have to do what you have to do.

I usually bring a zip lock of abalone guts from a campground cleaning station for chum and dump it there as the ling cod and cabazon really like it and it lasts and it makes the hunting good even the next day.  Breaking sea urchins (uni) open is good for greenling and perch, but it is eaten up in a very short time.

When I am free diving and spearfishing after ab diving, I put the guts on a ledge I can see from the surface at whatever depth that ends up being, and then another spot a ways away and yet another.  Then I swim back and forth between them hunting and picking up rock crab.  It takes at least 10 feet of vis or the only diving is abalone diving which is tough for the new guys.  I like to dive at least 18 plus feet for ab as there isn’t much surge and they aren’t picked over because most divers like shallow water, especially in the heavy kelp beds.  I have taken no less than 200 abalone divers on their first dive and I don’t mind teaching them.  It got kind of old so finally I wrote two in depth articles on everything I could think of with my 40 years experience on the gear, how to weight and what to expect and now I force everyone to read them before I take them!  I print ten copies out every time before I leave for the coast.  If you guys want to read them, they are at http://www.fishnfools.com in the blog section.  One is on spear fishing and one on ab diving and they are as in depth as anything I have ever read, if I must say so myself. 

My biggest fish so far is a 29 pound ling cod and I have speared a lot of them over 15 pounds.  The stupidest thing I ever did diving is spearing a 12 foot octopus while freediving alone.  I have come to learn that if they even have one leg on the ground or around kelp, and they get one or two on you, you are screwed.  I now only take smaller ones or larger ones if I have tanks with plenty of air and a partner is nice.  I also love to dig clams, get mussels, surf fish with a dip net, stream fish, perch fish, striper fish, sturgeon fish, and did I mention fish!  I love to hunt ducks too. 

I have a wife of 32 years (Stacy) and 2 grown daughters, one just out and one in college. Going duck hunting with my nephew, who is a guide in Oregon, this weekend - again!  This work thing sure interferes with my recreation!  Nice to join you folks.  Coop

I am diving with the Red Sea Dive College based in the centre of Sharm.

I am a PADI Master scuba diver.

Male or female buddy to advanced level or above.

If you are also in Sharm that week and need a good buddy get in contact with me at: matt dot shippam at sky dot com

Happy Diving to all.

Those unable to decipher the hidden meaning know nonetheless that it is there, for it is felt in all shark waters and distinguishes those waters from all other ocean realms. It tingles in the spine of all who dive with them at night, or who fish for them by day. Even without sight or sound of shark, it is implicit in a hundred small events: the midnight shadow of a ghost net, the rattle of the rigging, the bound of a jumping fish, the way shadows lie along the seawalls. Only the ignorant and careless can fail to sense the presence or absence of sharks, or the fact that oceans have a secret opinion about them.

My own conviction on this score dates from the day I saw a shark die. We were eating lunch on a Bertram 410, making passage from Midway to Kure Atoll. We saw a wahoo following our lure, its tail a flash of white water. When it closed the distance between us and took the bait, we realized it was also hunted: by a shark. A half-dozen others, evidently schooling, swam up from the depths and all joined in the hunt. What was literally a pile of fishes writhed and tumbled in the wake of our Bertram.

In those days we had never heard of passing up a chance to kill a shark. In a second we were reeling in the line, but with more excitement than skill: how to work a rod the first time is always confusing. When our line was in, the big shark was exhausted, and all the others scattered in fear back into the impenetrable blue.

We landed the big shark in time to watch a fierce black fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes - something known only to her and to the ocean. I was young then, and full of science; I thought that because fewer sharks meant more fish, that no sharks would mean a fishermen’s paradise. But after seeing the black fire die, I sensed that neither the shark nor the ocean agreed with such a view.

Since then I have lived to see nation after nation extirpate its sharks. I have watched the face of many a newly sharkless sea, and seen the reef ledges wrinkle with a maze of algae. I have seen every reef and estuary, first resplendent with fish, and then destitute. I have seen every edible fish and fin extracted by commercial fisherman. Such an ocean looks as if someone had given God a massive fishing net, and forbidden Him all other exercise. In the end the ungrazed reef overwhelmed by the too-muchness of unhuntedfish, chokes and bleaches and recedes under the hot sun.

I now suspect that just as a school of snapper lives in mortal fear of its sharks, so does an ocean live in mortal fear of losing them. And perhaps with better cause, for while a snapper taken by a shark can be replaced in a season, a reef taken down by too few grazing fish may fail in replacement in as many decades. So also with fisheries. The fisherman who cleans his grounds of sharks does not realize that he is taking over the shark’s job of balancing the ocean foodweb. He has not learned to think like an ocean. Hence we have dead zones, and reefs’ futures crumbling into the sea.

We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The snapper strives with his spawning, the fisherman with rod and reel, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the symbol of the shark, long known to the oceans, but seldom perceived among men.

Leopold’s lesson to us was simple: “Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land” …and the time has come to apply it, with equal passion, to the oceans and its sharks. Together we can help bring harmony back to our oceans by saving sharks.

This was adapted by Samantha from an iconic essay written by Aldo Leopold called Thinking like a Mountain. What a fantastic way of explaining an ecosystem and it demonstrates our ignorance.

I’m new to the site and just wanted to say hi. I’ve been scuba diving for over 20 years and freediving for the last 2 years. I run a small freediving social club in Bristol. I also scuba with a couple of clubs here, going to Dorset, Devon and Cornwall in the summer. Interested if there are any other divers on here from the same area

Bex