Words by Matthew Bossons The Underwater Archaeology Society of British Columbia (UASBC) will host its yearly conference, commonly known as ‘Shipwrecks,’ on April 15 at the Squamish First Nation’s Chief Joe Mathias Centre in North Vancouver. According to organizers, the event will be the society’s first conference to focus exclusively …

Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease is spreading rapidly, decimating Atlantic and Caribbean coral colonies within weeks of infection – and scientists still don’t know what’s causing it Words and Photography by Nicole Webster While humans are battling a relentless pandemic, the corals of the Atlantic and Caribbean are suffering …

By Natalie Gibb A quick googling of “scuba diving reels” results in over 1,330,000 results. There’s an overwhelming number of options, and one might assume that if a commercial dive gear company makes the effort to design and manufacture a reel or spool, that it would be good. Sadly, this …

Editor’s note: Among other Zen practices, Steve is an ardent disciple of the metric system. For those of you who aren’t, try an online surface gas consumption calculator such as www.divebuddy.com/calculator/sac.aspx Q: Sandra, Open Water Diver In your book Six Skills, what made you mention the importance of breathing? How is that a special …

Diving virgin shipwrecks of the treacherous St. Lawrence Estuary, where conditions change without notice…what could possibly go wrong? Words by Kevin Brown and Sébastien Pelletier Each year, two technical diving clubs – Les plongeurs d’épaves techniques du Québec (PETQ) and Plongeurs techniques de l’Outaouais (PTO) – get together to …

No fanfare. No quest for glory. Just the unshakable conviction that a fetid pond would open onto the heavens Words and Photography by Cristina Zenato The foul smell from the little pond reaches my nose as I settle the tanks on the water’s shallow rocky edge. It is created …

Words by Vic Verlinden Despite bad weather, entanglement hazards, and a deteriorating subject (not to mention a pandemic), a dedicated team continues to document this historically important wreck off the Irish coast. A new book of photos gives a fresh, never-before seen picture of the wreck.  When I contacted …

The gargantuan wreck of cargo ship Zenobia is regarded as one of the world’s best dives, but it doesn’t come without its hazards Words and Photography by Tobias Friedrich The Zenobia is considered one of the best wrecks in the world. And rightly so. You could make a hundred dives …

Since fall 2018, NOAA and the US Navy have been working with a number of scientific partners to study sound within seven national marine sanctuaries Words by Rachel Plunkett Have you ever travelled to a new city and noticed how different it sounds from home? Perhaps instead of hearing …

Exciting and astonishingly beautiful, the cenotes and caves of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula have carved out a booming industry, and offer a truly unique perspective for divers Words and Photos by Natalie Gibb Flooded caves. For the uninitiated, they are the stuff of nightmares, conjuring visions of terrifying black tunnels …

By Steve Lewis (Originally published in Fall 2022 issue). Participate in DIVER’s survey here. When it comes to the nuts and bolts of making it through to the safe and comfortable side of an emergency, scuba diving is way different to most other outdoor adventures. It’s not like back-country …

By Natalie Gibb Where I live in Mexico, the caves are shallow, delicately decorated, and welcoming. The caves are so shallow, in fact, that most of the time decompression status is not an issue. The water is so clear and warm that divers can swim for hours following the …

A team of divers (including DIVER magazine Editor Russell Clark, columnist Jill Heinerth and contributors Maxwel Hohn and Tiare Boys) supported by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society (RCGS), the Shipwreck Preservation Society of Newfoundland & Labrador and Ocean Quest Adventures have confirmed the discovery of a WWII-era B-24 Liberator …

To accompany our Fall issue’s incredible feature by Becky Kagan Schott, the Seiko short film can be seen in all it’s underwater glory, right here: Built from the start for superior operation in the most hostile environments, Seiko diver’s watches were an immediate favorite for high-intensity exploration, becoming essential …

By Steve Lewis If you dive a Closed Circuit Rebreather (CCR), there’s a good chance that during the next few months, you’re going to be hearing more and more about mouthpiece retaining straps. Even if you don’t dive a CCR, you’ll probably notice the campaign and by the time …

Words and Photography by Drew McArthur Over the last ten years or so, diving sidemount has become all the rage. After decades of lurking in the depths of cave systems around the globe, it’s almost like one day it crept out of its hole and became seduced by fame …

By Natalie Gibb Claustrophobia. Darkness. Danger. These are some of the words I often hear associated with cave diving, but if you talk to actual cave divers, most speak about the activity in entirely different terms. They’ll talk about rooms filled with delicate stalactites, hanging from the ceiling like …

By Steve Lewis What kind of dive turns your crank? Cold water wildlife, tropical reefs, shipwrecks, caves… what’s your poison? Personally, I love cave diving more than anything else. As a kid, caves fascinated me and since then it’s simply grown to become an obsession of sorts. But when …

The SeaLife SportDiver is not the first of its kind, but given their track record at producing user-friendly camera systems and the iPhone’s current image making capabilities, is now the time to start using your phone underwater? Words by Russell Clark We have, in the past, featured underwater iPhone …

Words and Photography by Jill Heinerth In 1992, Editors Valerie Grey and Joe Prosser published the NSS Cave Diving Manual, which guided my education as a cave diver. Even before my first training class began, I knew I would seek out the location on the back cover of the book. …

On a spring afternoon a call comes in to the police station citing an armed robbery has been committed at a local bank. The suspected criminals have fled the scene and EMS is in route. The last reported sighting of the suspects being seen was in a truck heading …

By Natalie Gibb Fourteen years ago, the cave diving scene in Mexico looked a lot different than it does today: large, gruff men lounged on the tailgates of their pickup trucks, balancing backmount double tanks against the walls of their truck beds while they regaled each other with tales …

Aleš Procháska – Rebreather Designer / CTO & Co-Founder of Divesoft How long have you been diving? It’s been over 20 years. I took my first diving course in 1998. What moment made you become a diver? When I was a child, I read The Silent World by Jacques …

Words by Steve Lewis I can’t recall what the original meeting was about. Probably something to do with training schedules or core standards or perhaps what flavour wings we’d order later that evening at ‘beer night’, but I do recall the head of the agency running up the stairs, swinging …

Words and Photography By Jill Heinerth Nine-tenths of a mile (1.4km) inside a submerged lava tube in the depths of the Monte Corona Volcano, cave diving explorer Sheck Exley faced what should have been certain death. It was 1983 when he and his dive partner Ken Fulghum hoped to …

Words by Steve Lewis What a strange year 1994 was; not as famous as 1984 perhaps, and certainly not even close to the strangeness of 2020, but memorable in its own sweet way.  The movie Forrest Gump was released in 1994 and—at the other end of the interest spectrum—it was …

Words by Natalie Gibb Are you cave diving as much as you would like? Unless you are fortunate enough to live in a location with local cave diving, it’s safe to say that the answer this year is a resounding “No!” Even in less apocalyptic times, cave divers can …

By Natalie Gibb I read an uniformed and rather prejudiced opinion on Facebook the other day. Actually, I read quite a few such opinions, but this one had to do with the use of drysuits by cavern diving and cave diving guides in Mexico. “If you use a drysuit in …

He’s photographed more wrecks than we can count. After several articles for DIVER, we gave the renowned UK photographer the challenge of finding his favourite five. Words and Photography By Steve Jones I’ve visited my fair share of wrecks over the years, so shortlisting five that have left the …

An exciting week fin lovers! Fourth Element’s new Rec Fins have hit the market. The recycled dive fin is made from post consumer plastic waste. With a fully recycled plastic blade, the Rec Fins deliver great diving performance with a much lower impact on the environment. The classic 4 channel …

Exotech Company has kicked off the Kickstarter campaign for their new product – Folding Fins. Inspired by nature, Folding Fins, will allow you to take them in your luggage and across the world with a little more ease. Finding  regular fins to be unhandy and hard to fit into …

  An apocalyptic nightmare is threatening dive sites in Tulum. The project, known as the ‘Tren Maya’ in Spanish, is an ill-conceived, poorly planned project to create a train corridor along the paradisiacal Caribbean coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. It has already grossly disrupted tourism and resulted in the …

Words by Ken Merryman Strictly speaking, the term photogrammetry is the science of making measurements from photographs.  It means one can determine the true size of an object in a photo from the size of the object on the camera sensor knowing the camera lens and distance from the camera.  …

By Natalie Gibb A well-made map of an underwater cave is a beautiful thing. A cartographer must achieve a balance between the level of detail and the ‘big picture’ overview to create a usable map for cave divers. I am not an underwater cartographer, but I know a few, and …

A love letter to Newfoundland, the Truk Lagoon of Great White North, a destination that will fast become your new second home Words by Russell Clark “Sit yer-self down lads, I just cooked some of me home made moose sausages.” The first words from local legend Rick Stanley are …

Demystifying Dive Computers Words and Photography by Jill Heinerth In my previous article I looked into incident reports that fell outside of the data gathered by organizations such as DAN. In this article, I’m going to dive into the physiology of decompression, gradient factors, and conservatism strategies. When you …