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 …

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 …

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 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 …

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 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 …

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. …

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 …

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 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 …

  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 …

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 …

“Old things become new with the passage of time” – Greek Proverb Words by Maria Fotiadi, Erikos Kranidiotis, Stelios Stamatakis The mines of Lavrion: a vast complex of tunnels, covering more than 46 square miles (120km2), that has produced unimaginable quantities of silver, lead and copper throughout the centuries.  Mining …

By Natalie Gibb I cave dive every day. Flooded caves are one of the most difficult dive environments on the planet, and my job requires monitoring a variety of factors all at once: navigation, control, my buddy, and host of factors such as dive time, depth, time to surface, no-deco …

Words by Kevin Brown Our exploration of the abandoned cold water mine started first with a plunge into the archives. While the Outaouais region Quebec owes its development largely to heavy mining, our industrial heritage has not had much historical value placed on it, and very little documentation exists …

By Natalie Gibb Not all caves are claustrophobic or extremely technical. If you have seen beautiful images of underwater caves and think they look amazing, but are unsure about the riskiness of the sport, this article is for you.  Although diving in flooded caves is exciting, the correct mindset …

By Natalie Gibb from Under The Jungle Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that I would like cave diving. Cave diving just sounds scary, and with no frame of reference, I couldn’t visualize swimming through a flooded cave. I had nightmare visions of being trapped in …

DIVER Photographer Maxwel Hohn shares five preparation tips for your cave course I just completed my TDI Full Cave Diver certification in Puerto Aventuras, Mexico. I’ve wanted to do this course for some years now, as it can help you become a better overall diver, and for me, leads …

The rescue of the century took place June 23, 2018 in Thailand. The lives of twelve Thai boys and their coach were saved by a group of scuba divers, throwing diving into the global limelight, and captivating the world. One of the rescue divers sat down and told us …

The rescue of the century took place June 23, 2018 in Thailand. The lives of twelve Thai boys and their coach were saved by a group of scuba divers, throwing diving into the global limelight, and captivating the world. One of the rescue divers sat down and told us …

Words by Jill Heinerth There is a stone embedded in the pavement of my old Florida home, the embossed message reads “Gravity Sucks.” It is a humble reminder that I find my grace underwater. Frankly, I am a bit awkward on land, having flipped my van, crashed my motorcycle, …

Cave divers don’t get more passionate or curious than DIVER’s newest subterranean columnist… By Natalie Gibb Most people have never considered diving underground into a flooded cave. It’s not an activity that shows up on their radar. The fact that I do this for a living makes meeting people …

A couple of hours northwest of Stockholm, Sweden offers up a dive site extraordinary for its location and blend of natural and manmade features. Known as the Tuna-Hästberg mine, it’s a vast web of water-filled passages tens of kilometres long, radiating in all directions far beneath the earth’s surface. …