DIVING NEWS

Wreck site identified in Cyprus

An extensive field of broken amphoras scattered off Akrotiri on the south coast of Cyprus has been confirmed as the remains of a 6th or 7th century AD shipwreck. Read more...

Australian divers ID iron sailing ship

At the start of the year Australian scuba diver Marc Payne discovered the wreck of what he believed was the Herschel, one of the early iron sailing ships built in England in the mid-19th century. Read more...

Thorfinn captain downplays naval rescue

Long-established Truk Lagoon diving liveaboard Thorfinn was reported by the US Navy to have run aground off the coast of Chuuk in Micronesia during a storm on 1 December. It stated that the USNS Salvor, which had been conducting salvage training in Chuuk’s Weno Harbour, responded to the vessel’s distress calls and came to the rescue. Read more...

Iconic WW1 warship Scharnhorst located

The wreck of the German armoured cruiser SMS Scharnhorst, the flagship of Rear-Admiral Graf von Spee’s East Asia Squadron during World War One, has been discovered in the South Atlantic by British underwater archaeologist Mensun Bound. The discovery has provided new evidence for how the Royal Navy won 1914’s Battle of the Falkland Islands so decisively. Read more...

Kolay finds British minesweeper at 82m

HMS Duchess of Richmond, a paddle-steamer that served as a Mediterranean patrol-boat during WW1, has been discovered and dived at a depth of 82m in the Dardanelles approaches by Turkish shipwreck-hunter Selcuk Kolay. Read more...

13th ship lucky for miracle diver

A Russian scuba diver has survived two days spent drifting in the cold waters of the Sea of Japan, according to a report in the Siberian Times. Read more...

Is wreck-find Vasa’s sister-ship?

Scuba-diving archaeologists have discovered two large 17th-century warships off Vaxholm in Sweden’s Stockholm Archipelago - and believe they might have found the sister-ship of the vessel that has become a Swedish icon, the Vasa. Read more...

Woman dies in Red Sea liveaboard fire

The diving liveaboard Red Sea Aggressor 1 sank after catching fire in the early hours of 1 November. One female guest died in the blaze, but the other 18 guests and 12 Egyptian crew managed to escape uninjured from the vessel. Read more...

Drink up! WW1 Baltic booze recovered

A Swedish salvage team has recovered hundreds of bottles of rare brandy and herbal liqueur from the 77m-deep WW1 wreck of the cargo ship Kyros. Read more...

Whatever next? It’s the floating reef!

The world’s first floating reef – that’s the claim for an unusual project being undertaken off the eastern Australian city of Gold Coast to attract more scuba divers to the area. Read more...

Underwater cameraman Andy Jackson dies

Yorkshire diver Andy Jackson has died of a heart attack at the age of 60. Known to many divers since the 1980s for his North Sea wreck-diving exploits, he had gone on to make his living filming UK marine life for TV programmes including Spring-, Autumn- and Winterwatch and The One Show. Read more...

More diver discoveries in Greece

Three shipwrecks spanning eras from the pre-Christian to mediaeval have been discovered off the small Aegean island of Kasos, according to Greece’s Ministry of Culture & Sports. Other scattered artefacts found, including cannon, suggest that the remains of more modern wrecks also lie in the area. Read more...

Norway club divers make ‘incredible find’

The wreck of an 18th-century merchant ship has been discovered off the coast of southern Norway - and the local scuba diving club that found it is set to receive a “record-breaking finder’s reward”. Read more...

Two inquests highlight solo-diving dangers

Two inquest reports, one into the death of a rebreather diver in Tasmania and the other that of a British freediver in Greece, have highlighted the potential dangers of diving alone. Read more...

HMS Urge mystery solved 77 years on

A British submarine wreck from World War Two has been discovered two miles off Malta’s east coast by marine archaeologists, lying at a depth of 130m. Read more...

Vulcan finds deepest-ever warship wreck

Only recently the Vulcan Inc deep-wreck team announced the first-ever discovery of two Japanese WW2 aircraft-carrier wrecks, and now they have released video footage of another breakthrough – the location of the deepest warship wreck ever to be found. Read more...

Dive Show visit leads to free Indonesia trip

BSAC Advanced Diver and Instructor June Paver got a shock at DIVE 2019 at the NEC, Birmingham last Sunday (27 October) when she heard that she had won the show’s Grand Prize Draw. Read more...

Mystery of the black mantas

Why are some mantas black? And why are black mantas so unevenly distributed around the world? What is said to be the first study into black pigmentation in a marine species has concluded that it probably results from random evolutionary processes such as genetic drift. Read more...

Scuba charity wins Queen’s Award

The charity Scuba Diving for All (SDA) has received the UK’s highest honour for voluntary groups – the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service. Read more...

Divers can help combat White Syndrome

DIVING NEWS Divers can help combat White Syndrome Picture: UNAM / BARCO LAB. ...
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Virtual dive on Iceland’s Milkmaid

To mark the 360th anniversary of Iceland’s oldest identified shipwreck, an Australian digital archaeology specialist has collaborated with maritime archaeologists in Iceland to produce a 360° virtual dive-tour that includes a recreation of the ship. Read more...

VISIT BIRMINGHAM – DIVE THE WORLD!

A world of dive-travel opportunities will be on offer to visitors to DIVE 2019, at NEC Birmingham this coming weekend (26/27 October). Read more...

Divers welcome lifting of Sharm flights ban

Divers have welcomed the lifting of restrictions on direct flights between the UK and Sharm el Sheikh airport in Egypt, announced by the Government yesterday (22 October). Read more...

Which CCR?

Choosing a closed-circuit rebreather will be among topics on the agenda when the TekDeck returns to DIVE 2019, at NEC Birmingham this weekend, for a compelling programme that also features sessions on gas planning, becoming a tech instructor and sidemounts. Read more...

Pearl Harbor attack carriers located

The first Japanese WW2 aircraft-carrier wrecks ever to be found have been located in the depths of the Pacific Ocean. They were discovered through sonar scanning by the US Vulcan team aboard their research vessel Petrel and then explored – though their ROV was badly damaged in the process. Read more...

Doctor dies on Bonaire CCR dive

An Australian rebreather diver has died on what was reported to be a 90m solo dive off the island of Bonaire. Read more...

Right-whale whispers detected

North Atlantic right whale mothers dial down their normal loud calls when communicating with their calves - to avoid attracting predators. The discovery has been made by a US research team working in the whales’ calving grounds off Florida and Georgia. Read more...

Coral ‘signs of hope’ in the Maldives

Corals in the Maldives are showing some resilience, adaptability and even recovery from climate-change effects, according to marine biologist Dr Jean-Luc Solandt, following a reef-monitoring diving expedition, the latest in a series undertaken over each of the past nine years. Read more...