Location: Okinawa, Japan The Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium is the world’s second largest aquarium and part of the Ocean Expo Park. It has the largest acrylic window in the world, measuring 8.2 meters by 22.5 meters with a thickness of 60 centimeters. The main tank holds 7,500-cubic meters of water.It is credited with breeding whale sharks. Images

The Blue Hole is 200m in diameter and plunges deep. It is a dive that needs to be treated seriously many have lost their lives here, disoriented by narcosis. It has been explored to a depth of 195m but is believed to be deeper than 300m in parts. Quite apart from the abyss itself there is a tunnel leading from the Blue Hole out to the sea at around 56m which has the appearance of a brilliant blue window. Located about thirty minutes jeep ride from Dahab, it is accessible from shore with entry into the blue water just a few metres from the rocky shoreline. Divers can then drop down an enclosed chimney in the reef exiting at 30 metres or so onto the sheer wall. Images

Last night, did you party hard and get so intoxicated that you were not aware who dropped you home? Did you wake up this morning and peep out of the window, only to find yourself among barracudas or exotic parrotfishes? No, you were not dreaming, because it was an actual experience that you had of momentarily staying in an ‘aquarium’! Jules’ Underwater Lodge, a tangible offering in commission, is a submarine constructed 30 feet under the tropical mangrove locale of the Emerald Lagoon in Key Largo, Florida. The lodge, named after the author of the literature classic ‘Twenty Thousand League Under The Sea’, Jules Verne, was founded by Ian Koblick and Dr.Neil Monney. This lodge is a style house that provides the inhabitants with a tinge of relish. A number of to-be-installed undersea and on the sky concepts have been presented in the past, including treehouses ( and ewok-style houses) that are fast becoming part of the current fashion. This underwater lodge was initially a research laboratory ( known as La Chalupa). It was installed in order to investigate the continental shelf off the coast of Puerto Rico. Currently this submarine has all the modern facilities, including two air-conditioned private rooms, a common multi-purpose room, VCR/DVD, over-stocked kitchen, surround sound system and a spacious dining and entertainment area. The lodge shields itself from the compressed air boundary that fills its rooms, and is completely submerged in water. The land-based ‘Command Center’ provides clean air, water, power and communications to this underwater lodge ( via an umbilical cord). The ‘Command Center’ also keeps track of all processes at the lodge. In order to reach this lodge, guests have to dive 2.1 feet under the pond. On their ‘wet’ entrance, the guests appear from a 5.7 feet ‘moon pool’ that is located at the base of the underwater cottage. The cottage itself rests on stilts 5 feet above the water floor. The submarine escapades of the guests begin after they have taken off their gear and had a warm bath. The lodge offers impressive view of the varied flora and fauna through the 42′ viewport window that is charted in every bedroom. Two separate couples are generally hosted in the lodge, with each couple being offered a private bedroom. The rest of the facilities is shared between the couples. The lodge can be booked by family groups of up to six people. Additional guests can be accommodated in the living room. The cost of living in the lodge is $1195 per night. A stay at Jules’ Underwater Lodge is ideal for any honeymoon trip. source:elitechoice

Deep-water divers have always been the daredevils of diving, pushing far into the dark labyrinth of water-filled holes and extreme ocean depths. If you are one of them then read on for the perfect destination for extreme cave diving thrills! The Bushman’s Hole in the Northern Cape province of South Africa, provides just this kind of opportunity. It is the third-deepest submerged freshwater cave (or sinkhole) in the world, approximately 270 meters deep. A trip into this cave is for the professionals since it holds major challenges of deep diving decompression. The narrow entrance is claustrophobic, but once you reach the vast main chamber, it’s surreal beauty is like a calling death trap, waiting to be explored . Keep going, through a narrow shaft running for another 150 feet, and finally it all opens into a vast freshwater cavern tall enough to hold the Eiffel Tower, and deep enough early 1,000 feet to mesmerize the most experienced, technical cave divers in the world. Its like spacewalking that propels you to the unexplored. Challenges of deep cave diving: � Danger of getting trapped or lost � Breathing deep-dive gas mixes – usually a combination of helium, nitrogen and oxygen known as trimix – at extreme underwater pressure can kill you in any number of ways. � At depth, oxygen can become toxic, and nitrogen acts like a narcotic – the deeper you go, the stupider you get. It can be compared to drinking on an empty stomach. � If you don’t breathe slowly and deeply, carbon dioxide can build up in your lungs and you’ll black out. � Decompression can cause all the nitrogen and helium that has been forced into your tissues under pressure to fizz into tiny bubbles, causing ‘the bends’, which can result in severe pain, paralysis and death. That is why extreme divers spend hours on ascent, sitting at targeted depths for carefully calculated periods of decompression to allow the gases to flush safely from their bodies. Dave Shaw The world over, just about 10 people have completed successful dives below 820 feet and out of them at least three ran into serious trouble in the process and two have since died. Dave Shaw and Shirley were attempting the deepest underwater body recovery in history in which Shaw lost his life.He died doing what he loved and bringing the body of Deon Dryer for his parents , ten years after his death. While its beauty calls don’t let it undermine the clear and present danger of diving here. After all local legend states that a black serpent lives in its dreary depths. And no doubt the serpant in this case are the toxic poisonous gases. Image Source: ABC

The Oceans, full of mystery have always attracted with their plethora of marine life. Recent years have seen an increase in the popularity of deep sea diving and especially  scuba diving.     Recreational diving gives you a chance to explore the beautiful underwater world. But while in the waters you are in the territory of the ocean predators and remain a venerable target of the food chain. Scuba divers with flippers at times can be perceived as sea lions by the sharks. Protection means awareness, if ever caught in a dicey situation you should know your predator well. After all they are the worlds most feared natural danger to man. In two posts I shall give you a list of Worlds deadliest sharks: 10) The lemon Shark This mammal can see colored images. Comes to lagoons to breed and gives birth in the mangrove roots. 9) Grey reef shark: Their group gets such a major feeding frenzy that they even bite each other in fury! Sand tiger sharks: also referred to as ragged tooth/ nurse sharks their predator instinct can be deterred from the fact that they eat sibling eggs as soon as they are born. They are very fearsome especially because of their ragged teeth. 7) Blue shark: One of the most beautiful sharks, this one hates the taste of steel! Found in New Zealand waters, it forms part of popular shark safaris. If you like you can cosy up with this one in a steel suit. 6) Hammerhead sharks: Don’t be taken in by the shape of their heads , this is what gives them greater agility, compared to others of their species. If you think by hiding you can get away from them you are mistaken, because they catch their prey though sensing electrical impulses. 5) Mako sharks: This biological torpedo is the fastest shark of the world. The cheetah of the sea its speed has not been properly measured reaching unto at least 31miles an hour.

Sperm whales have a voracious appetite, at times devouring perhaps 220 billion pounds a year or more, roughly equivalent to the entire annual harvest of all the commercial fisheries on Earth. For the first time deep sea, predators and their prey were electronically tracked simultaneously to understand hunting behavior. The sperm whale remains a challenge for scientists to research today. Adult males can reach 60 feet in length and females up to 36 feet, Sperm whales are the largest toothed whales, their massive head makes up to a third of their total body length. At the same time, little remains known about the behavior of jumbo squid in the wild. So then what did the scientists do? Randall Davis of Texas A&M University in Galveston and his team used a 25-foot carbon fiber pole to stick satellite-linked tags into the skin of five sperm whales. Marine scientist William Gilly at Stanford University and his colleagues were tagging jumbo squid in the Gulf of California at night. The tags, they used fit under squid fins, were designed to detach after two or three weeks and float to the surface and then transmit stored data to orbiting satellites. What did they find? Squid spent about three-quarters of their time at depths ranging from 600 to 1,300 feet, but at night, they spent at least half their time in shallower waters above 600 feet. They come up following prey such as bioluminescent lantern fish and krill and other crustaceans. Such small marine prey species typically migrate toward the surface after dusk to feed on phytoplankton, or photosynthetic sea life, and return to deeper waters during the day to escape tuna and other predators that rely on eyesight to hunt nearer the surface. Squid were found to often make made rapid nighttime dives from the surface to depths that whales frequent, they might be doing this to cool down. It is probably at this unexpected point that sperm whales get a chance to feed on them. Source: MSNBC

This one was again caught in Japanese Fishing nets. Thought it was caught alive in Tokyo Bay, it died within days. Mitsukurina owstoni is found in the deep ocean, far below where the sun’s light can reach at depths greater than 200 meters. The color of the sharks body, iswas mostly pink, and it uses its long, protrusible jaws to surprise the prey. Source: National Geographic

Would you dare to be submerged in ice-cold waters, waiting for a shark to come and bare its teeth for a mouthful? I don’t expect you to be the bait, rather you will be encased inside a ten-foot-long aluminum cage, dangled off the side of a dive boat. That is the scenario in case you are planning to go on a commercial cave diving trip! The water is freezing and the visibility not very superb. Besides, you get to see the shark up close only if you are lucky, you might not be able to stay in the freezing waters for that long! For jumping into the cave, they attach lead to your wet suit to counter the natural buoyancy. In the last 15 years, ‘cage diving’ has gone commercial. Thousands of tourists a year are now squeezing into wet suits and plunging into shark-infested waters off Australia and South Africa for an intimate look at the predators, which grow as long as 25 feet, can weigh more than a ton, and live between 30 and 50 years. Dyer Island is the only place in the world where shark viewing takes place the whole year round. Image credit Great whites, or carcharadon carcharias, are among the world’s most nomadic creatures, one was recently tracked from South Africa to western Australia and back over a period of nine months, a distance of 12,000 miles which means that they are almost impossible to keep alive in captivity. (Rare exceptions have been young white sharks kept for short periods at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, Calif., before being released into the wild.) If you are interested in cage diving get in touch with White Shark Projects, White Shark Lodge, 16 Geelbek Street, Kleinbaai; (27-28) 384-1774 or (27-76) 245-5880, bookings@whitesharkprojects.co.za or White Shark Diving Company, Kleinbaai; (27-82) 559-6858 or (27-21) 671-4777, or info@sharkcagediving.co.za Source: The New York Times

Walruses are big, bulky semi-aquatic mammals that live in the cold Arctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. They have heavy frames, long white tusks and beady red eyes. They have thick skins and sheath a thick layer of blubber that keeps them warm in the icy Arctic weather. They are not the most attractive of the Arctic animals. Walrus spends one-third of its time on land or ice, while preparing for the next excursion out to the sea. These creatures are found in groups while on land. Walrus’s bulky form comes into its own in the ocean. It can glide through water at speeds up to 35km per hour and can plunge to depths of more than 250m. To attract females, male walrus sings complex, distinct songs formed of clicks raps and bell-like tones. The best singer wins the female. Once about every three years walruses bear young. When a calf is born, it weighs about 60 to 65 kg. Walruses can feed for 48 hours at a time. Threat to walruses: Over the centuries walrus are the easy targets for hunters. They are killed for their blubber, tusks, hide and meat. These creatures are also under the threat from climate change. Warming climate could put pressure on them. However, the walrus feeding on land will not be affected as they have the ability to haul out onto land as well as on ice. Walrus can live to a ripe old age of 40 and when they die they don’t float, they sink straight down to the bottom of the sea. Source: BBC News Images

Finally the top four of these fearsome marine mammals. Sharks are found in all oceans and seas of the world. While many live and feed in the depths of the sea, others hunt near the surface. Their dorsal fins frequently project above the water and bring alive the fears of JAWS. 4) Black Tip Shark: Its large pectoral fins are pointed with black tips. They are powerfull swimmers with a keen sense of smell. They are thought to be the culprit in most “hit and run” attacks on humans.. 3) Tiger Shark: This solitary hunter has a extraordinary sense of smell. With its awesome sense of smell it can pick up the faintest trace of blood in the water and follow it to the source. The tiger shark has electro receptor that allow it to sense even the tiniest of movements in its prey. This makes it a good hunter in dark waters. 2) Great White Shark: Earth’s largest ocean predator, the great white can grow to 36 feet and weigh 4,000 pound. Attacks by these mostly result in fatal injuries. 1) Bull Shark: They eat just about anything that moves; fish; sharks (favorite, baby sandbar sharks); dolphins; rays; mollusks; crustaceans; turtles; bird. Are most dangerous because they are found in Tropical waters and temperate waters, normally found along coastline in shallow waters and by inlets.