DIVING NEWS
Team effort cracks Tasmanian cave puzzle
A Tasmanian cave-diving team has made the long-sought link between Australia’s deepest and fourth-deepest-known caves – and broken the national cave-depth record in the process. Read more...
Dragonfish secrets of dental invisibility
Its name might mean “shiny loosejaw”, but its prey don’t see the danger until it’s too late. The unusually crystalline nanostructure of deep-sea dragonfish teeth is unique, rendering them virtually invisible, according to US researchers who have been analysing these teeth for the first time. Read more...
Diver hit by dhoni prop
A German scuba diver is reported to have been seriously injured after being struck in the leg by the propeller of a dhoni near Paradise Island Resort at Lankanfinolhu in the Maldives. Read more...
‘Highly protected’ English seas review welcomed
Timed to coincide with World Oceans Day (8 June), the UK Government has launched a review into introducing an elevated level of protection for England’s marine life and habitats in the form of Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs). Read more...
Deptherapy shows it can be trusted
Scuba diving rehabilitation charity Deptherapy says it has become the first volunteer-managed and run charity ever to receive the “Trusted Charity Mark” from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO). Read more...
Maldives manta returns from the dead
A male manta ray called Babaganoush, well-known to Maldives marine biologists and divers, has reappeared in Baa Atoll’s Hanifaru Bay six months after sustaining what were believed to be fatal injuries from a speedboat strike. Read more...
Cave-diver died in open water
Galway-based cave-diver and rescuer Michal Marek died on Sunday (12 May) following an open-water dive off Malin Head in County Donegal, in the north of Ireland. Read more...
Vescovo becomes deepest diver – by 16m
The fourth of Victor Vescovo’s Five Deeps Expedition submersible missions has resulted in the US explorer becoming the deepest diver in history. Read more...
Black Sea wreck art treasures investigated
Paintings by one of Imperial Russia’s best-known artists, Ivan Aivazovsky, are reported to have been found on a 19th-century shipwreck in the Black Sea near Crimea. Read more...
Diver’s death inspires fund-raiser
A fund-raising page has been set up in memory of scuba diver Richard Sanders, who died while diving at the National Dive & Activity Centre inland site near Chepstow on 11 April. Read more...
Cave-diver gets his day in court
A judge has overturned an appeal and set a trial date of 22 October for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who accused British diver Vernon Unsworth of being a paedophile during the Tham Luang cave-rescue operation in Thailand last year. Read more...
Brits compete in underwater rugby worlds
British men and women are set to compete for the first time in this summer’s Underwater Rugby World Championships in Graz in Austria. Read more...
Double jeopardy for sea creatures
The news that a million animal and plant species face extinction as a result of climate change and pollution, revealed in a UN biodiversity report, has made international headlines. But a study led by Rutgers University in the USA and released at the same time, has indicated that it is sea creatures that are being hardest hit by global warming. Read more...
Lusitania owner gifts wreck to museum
A museum that has been given ownership of passenger liner RMS Lusitania has called on the Irish government to make it easier for licensed divers to recover artefacts from the famous shipwreck. Read more...
Divers find extinct mammals in Black Hole
Cave divers have discovered the skulls and bones of extinct bears and wolf-like animals in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula – and the discovery has been described as ground-breaking by palaeontologists. Read more...
Speedboat driver turns himself in
A speedboat-driver alleged to have struck and killed a scuba diver in Melbourne, Australia yesterday (5 May) has given himself up to police. Read more...
Hit-and-run speedboat kills diver
A scuba diver has died in Melbourne, Australia, after being struck by a speedboat. The incident occurred in Port Phillip Bay off the Mornington peninsula today (5 May). Read more...
What scares off great whites?
More evidence has emerged that it’s the killer whale, not the great white shark, that is the ocean’s apex predator. It seems that when orcas put in an appearance, white sharks have learnt to beat a discreet retreat. Read more...
Honour for Stanton, film-rights for Netflix
Rick Stanton, the UK cave-diver who with John Volanthen led the Tham Luang cave-rescue team in Thailand last June, has received the George Medal from Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, in an investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace. Read more...
Fake gold-wreck finders get jail term
Executives of a South Korean company have received prison sentences, after hoodwinking investors into paying for gold to be salvaged from a shipwreck they claimed to have located. Read more...
Bali island could be manta nursery
The sheer numbers of juvenile manta rays in the waters of Nusa Penida, a small Indonesian island off Bali’s south-eastern coast, suggest that the area could be a nursery for the threatened species. Read more...
AP Diving sets divers three challenges
With the UK diving season now under way in the year that AP Diving celebrates 50 years in business, the Cornwall-based dive-gear manufacturer would like to remind scuba divers about the three “AP 50th Challenges” it is running. Read more...
Canada: MPAs to mean what they say
You might assume that if a part of the seabed is designated as a marine protected area, or MPA, damaging activities such as oil and gas exploration, mining, dumping, dredging and seabed trawling would be banned there. However, that is not necessarily the case in many parts of the world. Read more...
Equatorial corals have best survival chance
It appears that the last resort for scuba divers seeking healthy coral reef if ocean-warming continues unchecked will be Equatorial waters, which include countries such as Indonesia, the Maldives and Kenya. Read more...
‘MoD extremely frustrating’ says Goodwin Sands SOS
The fight by protesters to prevent dredging of potential wreck-sites on the Goodwin Sands off Kent has taken another turn. Read more...
Diver shows sand tigers have favourite wrecks
Scuba divers have long enjoyed diving the many wrecks along North Carolina’s Atlantic coast, especially because itinerant sand tiger sharks are frequently seen on them. But since a well-known underwater photographer posted two images of one of the sharks online, scientists have been taking a closer interest. Read more...
Diver dies in Scapa Flow
A 50-year-old scuba diver has died following an incident in Scapa Flow in Orkney. Read more...
Australian WW2 sub victim found in 700m
The Australian ore-carrier Iron Crown, sunk by a Japanese submarine during World War Two, has been discovered by marine archaeologists in deep water in the Bass Strait between Victoria and Tasmania. Read more...
Scuba instructor denies molestation claims
A diving instructor has retaliated to reports aired in the Malaysian national press that he had molested two female tourists during a Discover Scuba dive in Semporna, Borneo on 31 March. Read more...
