My Top Five Dive Sites 2008

Okay, hopefully you've got the chart count down music going round your head......

Coming in at Number 5, its the Birmingham Sea Life Centre

Not a sandy beach in site and no turquoise waters - the canals don't count - but that didn't stop me getting tropical in landlocked Brum when I joined the team of window cleaners tasked with keeping the tanks clean.

And while I know the city centre can sometimes be a dangerous place, but it’s not every day you get headbutted – by a 42-stone Green Sea Turtle.

Read the full story of my exploits and watch the video here.

At 4, the Plymouth wrecks of HMS Scylla and the James Egan Layne

The Leander class frigate that once was the Scylla is the UK's first artificial reef. Now four years she is now covered with fantastic growth with anemones and sea squirts - a damn sight prettier than that gloomy grey war paint she used to have. While the owners have cut massive holes allowing you to penetrate her, that just felt a little bit rude (actually it was too bloody dark inside on the day we dived).

The neighbouring James Egan Lane was thrilling inside - well it had to be because it was the only way to shelter from the surge that ripped over the wreck on our dive. The silhouette of the Liberty ship's intact bow is said to be a fantastic underwater view and its recommended to lie on the seabed with one leg either side of the bow and look up. I had to give up after the surge left me feeling like a stubborn bottle of champagne being repeatedly battered against the hull until I broke. Inside there are loads of bits of old cargo and ship stuff to see but this whizzed by the eyes like an episode of the Generation Game on acid. Still a roller coaster thrill though.

A later entry at Number 3, Superman's Flight in St Lucia.

Beneath the majestic Piton Mountains lies Superman's Flight, a drift dive of some excitement. The beautiful Petit Piton plunges into the Caribbean and continues its slope to the sea bed 1,600 feet below.

Some say that the site got its name because the powerful current that sweeps you along makes you feel like the Man of Steel. But in reality the Pitons made a brief appearance in the sequel when Christopher Reeve flew between the two while wooing Lois Lane.

It's a good job he stayed in the air, because the Man in the Cape may have forgotten about Margot Kidder once he saw the beauty beneath the waves.

The reef is full of soft corals and loads of fish. I've never seen so many trumpetfish in one spot. (Still couldn't get a decent pic though). A stunning reef dive, my pics don't do it justice.

And falling a place to Number 2, the Whale Shark dive.

The reef, lazy sunny afternoon, Whale Shark. Who knew! Can't say much more than my earlier post other than to quote the words of the famous Jack Burton when asked what he expected to find: 'You never can tell!'

Which means we have a new Number 1. The Farne Islands.

Round of applause please

Some might say it wasn't a dive, that at two metres I was snorkeling. Well Pah to them!

For the sheer thrill of up close and personal interactions with sea life, June with the seals in the Farnes is going to take some beating.

It’s amazing how we travel the globe looking for the ultimate in diving experiences but the best of the year was in British waters (okay, considering the seven hour drive I could have to Egypt quicker).
Yes I was only in two metres of water (we did hit 18m for about two minutes) but who's going to complain when you could across the seal playground.

Resting on the top of the rock known as Hopper we enjoyed a 40 minute seal show as they swam, nibbled and rubbed their noses into my camera port. I grinned so much I thought my reg would fall out. A dive everyone should do.

Coming tomorrow

Before the sun goes down on 2008 and before I get too drunk toasting a new dawn, its only right to join the hundreds and thousands of other Top XXX lists seen filling the gaps between the TV adverts and offer my opinions of the best diving of the past 12 months. Log on tomorrow to see My Top Five Dives of 2008.

Hope after shark attack

THE hunt for a Great White believed to have killed a swimmer has been called off after his family said he would not want the animal destroyed.

Brian Guest, 51, a keen diver, and campaigner for the protection of sharks, was attacked as he was snorkeling with his son south of Perth on Australia’s west coast, on Saturday.

Mr Guest’s son Daniel, 24, was reported to have said: “Dad and all the family sort of knew that one day this or something similar may happen and it was always dad’s wish that if it happened the creature not be destroyed.”

Mr Guest had previously made clear his love of the water and said that he did not think sharks should be killed to reduce the risk to swimmers.

So that is the needless slaughter of one shark prevented. If only some Australian politicians could be so forward thinking.

Earlier this year the Australian Marine Conservation Society launched a campaign to target plans by the Queensland Government to define a directed, commercial shark fishery in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef that would see the slaughter of thousands of sharks. The fins of many of these animals end up exported to the international shark fin trade.

This comes at the very time when shark populations are facing a critical period for their survival and shows a remarkably short-sighted view considering the GBR is the premier dive spot we all want to visit and seeing sharks is a diver's dream.

Maybe it's time for the dive community to vote with its fins and boycott Australia. If the people of Indonesia can set the example (see earlier post) why can't the Australian Government follow suit? A question for the Hon Peter Garrett, MP Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts perhaps?

Hope for our coral reefs

As the year ends with economic doom and gloom, today brought us divers one bit of bright news. It appears that coral reefs battered by the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 are recovering much quicker than expected.
Surveys taken immediately after a massive undersea earthquake triggered the tsunami and sent it sweeping along the Indian Ocean coastline, showed that up to a third of reefs were damaged.
According to the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, examinations of 60 sites along a 497 miles stretch of Indonesia's Aceh province showed the reefs were bouncing back.
Digging beneath the headline statement, it appears the chief reason the reef has recovered so quickly is because local people had responded to the conservation effort.


Marine biologist Rizya Legawa surveys coral reefs off Aceh province, Indonesia. (WCS Andrew Baird)

Dr Stuart Campbell, co-ordinator of the WCS's Indonesia marine programme, said fishermen had stopped using illegal techniques such as dynamite and villagers had transplanted corals into areas that were hardest hit.
"The recovery, which is in part due to improved management and the direct assistance of local people, gives enormous hope that coral reefs in this remote region can return to their previous
condition and provide local communities with the resources they need to prosper," he said.


Coral reef transplantation site is seen off Weh island, Aceh, Indonesia. (WCS Rian Prasetia)

Which goes to show, mankind was the problem, but by listening to the conservation effort, man can also be a solution.
And the humbling lesson of the day - if people in poverty-stricken parts of the world that have just experienced a cataclysmic natural disaster can provide a helping hand to mother nature, then there is no reason why us westerners cannot make an effort as well.
Simple things like thinking about what fish we eat and perhaps not shopping in supermarkets which are still selling endangered species would be a start.
And the good news for us divers? The more coral reefs and the greater understanding of their worth equals more and better dive destinations.

Raising the Dead

We've all heard the story in some way shape or form.
A cave dive to extreme depths to recover the body of a lost diver, the tragic outcome when things went wrong, the video showing the diver's final moments being put on the internet for all to see.
Thanks to Phillip French's gripping new book Raising the Dead, the full story of the death of Dave Shaw in Bushman's Hole, South Africa and of deep diving, where even the smallest breakdown in judgment or equipment spells trouble, can be told for the first time. And it makes a gripping read.
As much as it is a story of a heroic deed that went terribly wrong, it is also a tale of friendship, deep water daredevils and diving pioneers, and of the human spirit's desire to break free from the hum-drum and quest for exploration.



Dave Shaw had spirit in spades, but it was to sadly lead to his death.
The book details his tragic journey that started when he first learned to dive in his mid-40s. In just a short space of time underwater, he had become one of the world's most daring cave divers, taking equipment to new depths and pushing hard to expand the limits of human endurance.
His quest was to meet a tragic end when, in January 2005 he ventured 270m into the cold blackness of Bushman's Hole on a rebreather to recover the remains of a diver Deon Dreyer who was lost a decade before and whose body Dave had found on an earlier dive.
Recovering the body was an extraordinary feat of daring and danger and one Dave Shaw couldn't resist. At various points in the book it is hinted that the Christian Shaw felt a higher purpose was at work and even said he had dreamed about recovering the body.
But when a friend suggested it was a good thing he was doing, Shaw replied: "Let's face it, we're doing this for the hell of it."
Renowned dive instructor Don Shirley who followed his friend to the depths nearly lost his life and spent the next ten hours struggling to survive. The latter part of the book is as much about his desperate battle for life as it is about the death of his buddy.
My interest in the story was first piqued by Tim Zimmermann in his article of the same name in the Observer newspaper's Sport Monthly pull-out three years ago. That first introduced me to the term 'The Martini Effect', where the author equated the effects of nitrogen narcosis with supping glasses of Jame's Bond's favourite tipple on an empty stomach.
French introduces us to another, the 'Wah-wah' effect, or deafening noise that some divers hear when using air at greater depths and successfully manages to explain the technological and physiological aspects of deep diving with a clarity that helps break down the barriers of the science for both divers and non-divers alike.
Despite an ending that will come as no surprise to readers, it was still a gripping read and the conclusions it makes about Dave's death alone in the darkness reveals how fragile our existence is deep underwater and how the simplest of decisions can have far reaching consequences.
And it is easy to see the allure that such exploration and adventure has for divers. I was lucky enough to dive the Cenotes in the Yucatan, Mexico (more on that another time) and that short foray underwater and underground was a captivating experience.



Raising the Dead reminded me very much of to Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air about death and disaster on Everest and deserves similar success. Go get a copy.

Save the Whale Shark

Whey-hey! I've finally done my bit for marine conservation after finding a great website creating an online photo-identification library of whale sharks.

I know it's only a small step.

But being a frustrated adventurer (no guts) and discovering too late in my life (now have a credit card and mortgage) that I should've studied marine biology at university (instead of something far less worthwhile) it's a big deal for me.

The ECOCEAN Whale Shark Photo-identification Library is a visual database of whale shark (Rhincodon typus) encounters and of individually catalogued whale sharks from around the globe.

By analysing the unique skin spotting patterns behind the gills of each shark it's possible to distinguish individual animals. The information can then be used by marine biologists to research the lives of these majestic creatures.

And I've contributed an encounter # 15122008134247

I was diving the White Knight reef, north of Sharks Bay, Sharm El-Sheikh, in Egypt's Red Sea in July (08), when dive guide Saffy spotted the shark at about 40m.

There had been rumours that whale sharks were about but I didn't really think I'd see one in the Red Sea. When we did my eyeballs filling the lens of my mask, but I managed to ping off a few shots on my camera.

I've now added three images to the database where they'll be more use than the "Guess what I saw while diving?" bragging that they have so far been used for.

I'll let you know whether we've captured a new whale shark on camera or sited one that has already been identified.

Whatever the outcome, I hope it will go someone to helping us to understand and protect these magnificent creatures.

And, I'll never moan about diving the house reef again. You never know what you could find.

Taking the Plunge!

Okay. Well, here goes. My first blog.
I've agonised about how I would kick start this blog for so long, that I didn't think I'd ever get started.
I was looking for a sparkling, award-winning start to my blogging career, but in the end I've just decided to go with it now and wait for the scintillating prose (oh I do hope so) to come some other time.
So who am I? My name is Mark. I'm in my mid-30s and live in the most landlocked place in the UK. which is unfortunate as I have a deep love for the oceans borne out of my passion for scuba diving, one so strong I'd dive in a puddle if it were deep enough.
I started my diving career five years ago and I'm now PADI Divemaster helping to teach people how to dive - although not in puddles.
In my day job I'm a journalist (my other great love) covering the crime beat for three major newspapers. I know the two couldn't be further apart, but I'd already got the credit card and mortgage by the time I realised I wanted to be an ocean-going explorer and adventurer (or beach bum, whichever came first).
So, back to this blog. This is a way for me to unite my two passions and write about a subject I truly love.
In the end, it's going to be a mixed bag of things.
Hopefully it will become a place to share stories about our diving adventures, discuss the best places to dive, and the ones to avoid, look at dive gear (grrrrrrrr), have a laugh at some of our underwater exploits, and feature the discoveries being made beneath the waves.
Perhaps more importantly though, it will be a place to discuss marine conservation and focus on the pressing ecological issues affecting the undersea world.
By looking at research being done by marine biologists around the globe we can further our own understanding and also, as an online community, campaign for government and industry to change the practices the threaten the very future of our seas and the life in them.

Phew! There you go. It wasn't so hard after all.

I know it's a kind of mission statement, but I hope it appeals. As I stated at the beginning, nothing sparkling I know, but I hope you stick around to see what comes up in the next few weeks and months.

I'm thick-skinned (the day job taught me that) so please fell free to comment, criticise, poke fun at, whatever you like because only by participating can we all have a good time on those afternoons when we're stuck behind a desk desperately wanting to be beneath the waves.