Month: December 2018

The Wildlife Trusts has carried out its first-ever UK marine review for 2018, to provide some positive news as the year draws to a close.

A diver lost his life after getting into difficulties during a boat-dive in South Africa on 27 December. The 65-year-old man, on holiday with his family from Krugersdorp in the north of the country, had been diving from a charter-boat off Shelley Beach, on the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal.

Leading underwater photographer Saeed Rashid has teamed up with Oonasdivers to offer a new residential workshop at Red Sea Diving Safari’s Marsa Nakari village in the southern Egyptian Red Sea.

John Volanthen and Rick Stanton, the cave-divers who located the Wild Boars youth football team and their coach during the Tham Luang cave-rescue in Thailand last summer, and were instrumental in organising and carrying out their rescue, have both been awarded the George Medal in the New Year Honours list.

For tropical diving that’s so warm you don’t need a wetsuit, but are then at risk of sunburn and stings, this new diveskin from Waterproof might be the solution.

Malta’s reefs, wrecks, caves and calm waters offer some of the best diving in the Mediterranean for divers at all levels, with much of it shore-based, says Ultimate Diving, and we know from the DIVER Awards what a reader favourite it is.

Fish don’t appreciate low-visibility conditions any more than scuba divers do, it seems. According to scientists in Australia, they become anxious and more cautious when sediment degrades water quality – and the result can be stunted growth and poor health.

The convoluted movements of vast slicks of coral larvae that drift at the surface following a mass spawning event have been tracked by Australian marine agencies.

An American doctor and his son have both died in a boat-diving incident off Baja California in Mexico.

Season’s greetings to all our Divernet readers!