Zanzibar is a beautiful island which offers good sites for diving and snorkeling with great adventure. The best diving is in the north end where there are several good resorts but if you fancy a swim with dolphins its in the south. The temperature of water ranges from 25oc to 29oc and the visibility is 15m to 60m.It is advised to snorkel when the tide starts to come in instead of when it’s outgoing because it brings sediment and lowers the visibility. Some consider snorkeling and diving best months to be between September to march but anytime is good time.

Here is a list of a good places,

Chumbe Island Marine Sanctuary- the best place for snorkeling about 35m N W of the main beach. A permit is required at the Marine park but worth it ,it serves two purpose, conservation and good snorkeling.

Leven Bank- north of Ras Nungwi is the best dive spot on high slack tide. Boat dives are also available here but no snorkeling.

Mnemba Island-south-east of Nungwi high tide current offers very good diving and okay for snorkeling.

Bawi Island-near Stone Town , divers have to overcome high current tide but the best dives in the east of the island.

Nyange- south west offers excellent marine life with stone fish, scorpion fish

Pwaku, murogo and mwamba ukombe- south of Stone Town where big parrot fish and jelly fish can be seen.

Hunga sekina, Pembe- excellent subject to current. Intresting fish like large spinney lobster, crocodile fish, scorpion fish, dusky batfish, eagle rays and barracuda can be seen.
Mbwangawa, chakatuni Ametatu Kitchafi, Haji- north east of island well known for good ranges of reefs suitable for all levels of diving.

The highlight or the treasure of snorkling is to spot Hippocampus the seahorse,a very hard to find species sometimes transparent because it changes color. It has armoured plates all over their body and belong to Syngnathide family which include pipefish. They are notably the only species in which the males get pregnant while the females produce eggs.The males carry the eggs for 40-50 days.

Although it is claimed the salty waters of the Indian Ocean corrodes every skeleton of a ship or a plane at an amazing speed, there is hope. In the form of a the Great Northern sunk in 1900.The hull is broken in two pieces and the shape is intact .It has become part of reef of Stone Town and can be enjoyed.The other search is for a small plane that crashed in 2004 in the channel between Dar es Sal;am and Zanzibar.Some independent divers are still looking for the whereckage.

The frilled shark, also known as a living fossil, a primitive species that has changed little since prehistoric times was spotted by a fisherman who thought that it was an eel like species.
He alerted the officials at the Awashima Marine Park in Numazu, who captured it and filmed it.

An official at the park is quoted to have said:

We believe moving pictures of a live specimen are extremely rare, They live between 600 and 1,000 meters under the water, which is deeper than humans can go.

The shark appeared to be in poor condition when park staff moved it to a seawater pool where they filmed it swimming and opening its jaws. Eventually it died. Unfortunately large numbers also die in the nets of bottom trawlers.

Via: Reuters

Australia can be proud since the reef is in line for the major award of best practice in travel and tourism development. There are just three finalists in this category.

The other two finalists are Greenbox Trading As Responsible Tourism (Ireland) and The State of Vermont (USA). The awards will be given in Lisbon, Portugal, on May 11

The awards are conducted by The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) takes two points into consideration:

• Outstanding tourism product
• Helps to protect the cultural and natural heritage of our planet.

WTTC president Jean-Claude Baumgarten said.
Is quoted to have said:

Providing sustainable livelihood is a long-term goal and we are delighted to honour the world’s leading examples of where this goal is actually being pursued

Well I hope rising temperatures do not result in the destruction of the worlds most beautiful natural reef.

Via: Yahoo news

The Yucatan peninsula remains one of the most popular travel destinations in Mexico with visitors from around the world. Most tourists can be found on the white sand beaches and in the crystal clear waters on the Caribbean side, it is popular for cave diving as well especially now that Nohoch Nah Chich, the world’s longest underwater cave system has been discovered near near Tulum, Mexico.

British cave diver Steve Bogaerts said he and Robbie Schmittner, of Germany, have found flooded underground passages connecting this cave system with the Sac Actun cave system, a discovery that shows how interconnected and vulnerable the Yucatan’s underground water system is.

Bogaerts and Schmittner spent four years swimming the length of the system, making about 500 dives with scuba tanks, linking one sinkhole lake to the next.

For thousands of years, Mayan Indians depended on water found in the caves and in lakes formed by sinkhole. Now that we know that the water systems are interconnected, it means that pollution in one can easily spread to all.

Source: Discovery

A shipwreck has been found to have $500 million in treasure on board!
Can you believe this?

The richest-ever shipwreck - Black Swan - haul was yielded by the Spanish galleon Nuestra Senora de Atocha, which sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1622.

Image Credit

Tampa-based company, Odyssey Marine Exploration found the wreck containing hundreds of thousands of colonial-era silver and gold coins. There are about 500,000 coins which are expected to fetch an average of $1,000 each from collectors and investors. The value of coins is determined by their rarity, condition and story behind them.

Image Credit

The find was announced on the same day when Odyssey Marine exploration held its annual stockholder meeting. Four years back, the company found thousands of coins worth $75 million after excavating the Republic - a steamship lost in 1865 off Savannah, Ga. But the company was going in loss from 2005 and 2006, however, this find doubled the stock price of the company when the news hit the Wall Street. Odyssey stock shot up 80.9 percent, closing at $8.32 by the time market close on Friday.

Under the terms of an agreement, Odyssey will have to share the finds with the British government. The company will get 80 percent of the first $45 million and about 50 percent of the proceeds thereafter.

For security reasons the company refused to release any details about the ship or the wreck site. The company is likely to return to the same spot for more coins and artifacts.

Source: ABC News

Scuba diving has become an increasingly popular recreation sport. Yet be warned you do need to check with your doctor before going for it. Scuba stands for (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) diving needs proper education, training, certification and medical clearance.

What you must know?

Decompression Sickness: As divers descend, a greater amount of nitrogen and oxygen is dissolved in the blood and body tissues. On ascent, the nitrogen leaves the tissues and body. If ascent is too rapid, the nitrogen will be released too quickly from the tissues and form bubbles in the bloodstream that can block blood flow to vital areas and cause pain in the limbs and abdomen. So come up slow breathing normally.

Nitrogen Narcosis: also called “rapture of the depths’ is a feeling similar to alcohol intoxication. It is caused by breathing compressed air at depths of approximately 30 meters (100 feet) . Treatment is to ascend to a shallower depth.

Squeezes: The most common medical problems are simple “squeezes.” These can affect your middle ear or face mask during descent. Squeezes cause pain in your ears. The pain is caused by the difference in pressure between the air spaces of your ears and mask, and higher water pressure as you go deeper in the water. Squeezes that affect the inner ear or sinuses are less common.

So in which case does one have to take care before Scuba Diving?

• Pregnancy
• Acute infections of the ears or respiratory tract

• Certain pulmonary, cardiac and gastrointestinal conditions

• Seizure disorders

• Sickle cell disease

• Diabetes (hypoglycemic (low blood sugar) episode underwater can be dangerous) and asthma(mild is OK exercise stress test followed by pulmonary function tests should be taken by the individual) If you have hypertension or blood pressure check with your doctor (Some anti-hypertension medications, such as beta-blockers, can pose increased risks)
What can we Do?

• Know the qualities of fish and other marine animals, and the species of coral of the region where you are going to dive.
• To avoid ankle pain practice with fins in a pool.
• Stay within the no-decompression limits

• Don’t take a dive you are not comfortable with.

• Dive as per your experience and training.

• And of course don’t panic.

So if you love scuba diving, then make sure you are fit and always dive with a partner so that you can keep a check on each other.

Via: nj

An interesting part of marine archeology is studying shipwrecks. Off the Albania’s Adriatic coast, a 2400 year old Greek jar floats in the salt water. This jar is the only clue that points towards the sunken merchant fleets. The storage jar or amphora is believed to be part of the sunken ships.

The discovery of the jar marked an important step in the month long survey project that was launched in July. If the project successfully pinpoints the position of the sunken vessels, it could boost the diving tourism.

People would be willing to pay their way to check out the vistas of ancient ships underwater. I think this is an exciting time for marine archaeologists and tourists.

Another fascinating part of the project is that the project will scan the 360 kilometer(220 mile) long coastline of Albania. This will use the latest state-of-the-art scanning technology that is available to researchers.

The other aspect of the project is to prevent the looters from gaining access to the wealth of the shipwreck. So, it’s geared towards protecting the wreck(s).

The Albanian waters were a major business route that linked the Eastern and Western Europe. Ships moved right along the coastline to maintain visual contact with the coast. Archeologist Adrian Anastasi agrees with this fact,

In those times ships usually stayed near the shore, to maintain visual contact with land, and all our coastline was a very intensive route for commercial and other traffic.

The find will remain immersed in the water. However, the Museum maintenance will eventually try to reduce the salinity in the water level in order to preserve the historical asset.

RPM Hercules research vessel continues it’s work in the are although, further permission needs to be sought.

Image Credit: Flheritage

Two Macquarie University academics off the NSW’s south coast sighted this remarkably large sunfish, big enough to fill a room and weighing perhaps 1.5 tones.

The two were on their way to investigate an oil spill at Jervis Bay when they spotted this sunfish. People often confuse the dorsal fin of a sun fish with a great white shark.

Dr Harcourt captured the images of the fish swimming with honours student Mathew Kertesz on December 8 last year in about 40 metres of water near the entrance to Jervis Bay.

Images

Neal Watson, Bahamas Diving Association President states:

As the official dive association for The Islands of The Bahamas, we are honored to receive this award by such a prestigious dive magazine. Our 36 members take this award very seriously and appreciate the fact that The Bahamas is one of the few places in the world where divers can get close to, and experience big animals underwater.

This region has a vast array of Marine life:

• Nassau Grouper, the “national fish” of The Bahamas, Estimates reported off Cat Cay indicate that somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000 groupers took part in a recent spawning there. Grouper spawning is timed with a full moon and usually occurs in late January or early February. At that time, shoals, balls and walls of groupers can be witnessed.
• March of Spiny Lobster is a widespread phenomenon, occurring on both the Great and Little Bahamas Banks
• Dolphins, sharks, lots of other corral fish, turtles . you get the thrilling experience of feeding sharks here.

The Bahamas Diving Association is the official alliance of dive operators for the country, consisting of 36 resorts, dive operators and dive liveaboards boats within the Islands . Liveaboards around the world take you to the outer reaches, where few divers go-and that’s particularly true in the islands of the Bahamas.

Diving delights of the Bahamas:

The Bimmis: Some people say that a part of the lost continent of Atlantis lies beneath the waves about 500 yards off of the coast at Bimini Bay. The region is popular for sighting wild dolphins.

New Providence Island/Paradise Island: Way too many awesome sites , you will not be able to visit all of these in a short visit.

Andros: Andros’ barrier reef is third largest in the world, behind Belize and Australia, making it a great haunt for divers. Its beautiful blue holes, formed by collapsed underground caves are most definitely worth a sighting.Underwater explorers can also adventure to shipwreck sites like the Barge Wreck.

Eleuthera: The best bet for a more exclusive beach. Beaware for the current cut here is the fastest.

Long Island: With its shallow bays edging sandy powder soft beaches, Long Island has many possibilities for snorkelers.

Spectacular coral reefs, intriguing ship wrecks,, colorful fish life and much more awaits the novice and the seasoned scuba diver or snorkeler alike. A trip to the Bahamas is a diving trip of a lifetime!

Via: Caribbean pressrelease

Unknown monsters of the deep oceans have fueled our fanciful imaginations with dread and fear. Stories of the giant squid abound but another creature of the depths caught my attention. That is the fifth largest known squid, Taningia danae or the Dana Octopus Squid, it bamboozles with bright light to disorient and hunt its prey.

It emits short flashes from light-producing organs, called photophores, on their fin arms. The illumination in dark waters is doubly beneficial: to measure the distance of the prey as well as hunt it. They are able to alter their direction rapidly by bending their flexible bodies. Studies by the Japanese scientists, indicate that light bursts also serve another purpose that of courtship.

T. danae is thought to be abundant in the tropical and subtropical oceans of the world. The largest reported measured 2.3m (7.5ft) in length and weighed nearly 61.4kg (134.5lbs). Who knows, further studies might help us to develop animals that produce electricity in this energy conscience world.

Source: BBC