 |
|
| A Passion for Diving • Christina Zenato |
Text and photography by ADM staff Jeff Toorish
|
| As Michael Ramer prepares for his first shark feed, Cristina quietly offers encouragement and coaching. Her confidence is remarkable and she instills that confidence in Michael and others around her. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| ARUBA • Reefs and Wrecks |
| Text and Photography by Curt Bowen |
| Miles of white beaches and cobalt blue waters grace the poolside of mega hotels; bustling casinos are located at most large resorts, with a few open twenty-four hours a day; and five-star restaurants are available to nourish the senses and the taste buds. Aruba boasts an international cuisine, including the local Caribbean-style seafood restaurants. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Browning Pass • Shaped and Sheltered by the Gods |
| Text by John Rawlings • Photography by Curt Bowen and John Rawlings |
| The rich waters of the strait abound in life – to move your hand in the water is to move dozens of animals - and when such conditions are found in narrowly restricted areas such as Browning Pass the colossal amount of life leaves divers in absolute awe. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Bugfest by the Sea |
| Text by Jennifer Graham • Photography by Curt Bowen |
| "The lobsters are plentiful" "It looks like a good season" “I know where to find the biggest bugs you'll ever see in these waters" says Captain Jeff Torode, as we board the Aqua View, a custom built glass bottom catamaran, one of 3 dive charter boats of the South Florida Dive Headquarters, located at the Guy Harvey Dive Outpost, and head out for the first of our many dives into the Atlantic Ocean in search of our host, the “Florida lobster”! |
|
|
|
 |
|
| BVI • British Virgin Islands |
| Text and Photography by Curt Bowen |
| It could be you staying on a private 880-acre island surrounded by cobalt-blue Caribbean waters, secluded barefoot-soft beaches, towering rocky cliffs, and lush tropical vegetation. Imagine sipping your favorite cocktail as afternoon breezes gently cool your skin, and breath-taking sunsets play out in glorious Technicolor all around you. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Clayoquot Sound - Gateway to the North Pacific |
| Text and photography by ADM Photojournalist John Rawlings |
| Slowly swimming alongside the rocky base of the islets, I am once again struck by the shear abundance of invertebrate life. As the beams of my canister lights dart across the wall like sabers, their glow highlights thousands of tiny animals going about their daily business. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Cloud Sponges of Nootka Sound |
| Text and photography by ADM Photojournalist John Rawlings |
| Cloud sponges can be found from the Bering Sea southward to Mexico, usually in extremely deep water. In the waters of British Columbia, however, they can frequently be found at shallower depths, beginning at some sites around 80 FSW and appearing in denser numbers as the diver goes deeper. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Cold-Water Gorgonian Corals – Poseidon’s Candelabras |
Article by ADM Chief Staff Writer John Rawlings
Photos by John Rawlings and Calvin Tang
|
| British Columbia, Canada, is blessed with several locations at which divers can reach such coral gardens. The primary species found there is Paragorgia pacifica, often commonly referred to as “Pink Candelabrum Gorgonian” |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Critter Heaven • The Southern Gulf Islands of British Columbia |
| Text and Photography by John Rawlings |
| Thetis Island is a tiny, emerald green jewel – a perfect location for getting away from it all as well as diving! The island was named after H.M.S. Thetis, a British 36-gun frigate that surveyed the area between 1851 and 1853. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Curacao • Depths Unexplored |
| Text and photography by Curt Bowen |
| The shallow reef that the open water divers were enjoying was pristine, filled with large corals and thousands of small fish. Beyond the shallow limits of the recreational reef lay a wonderland of man-made objects strewn around like matchbox toys on a mountainside. An underwater junkyard of trucks, cars, boats, metal hoppers, beams, and poles covered with years of marine growth and inhabited by millions of tiny reef critters. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Dancing with Dragons • Kamodo Islands |
| Article and photography by Tony Karacsonyi |
| What should I do if I see a dragon? ‘Run’, they replied. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Emerald Sea Royalty • Puget Sound King Crab |
| Article and photography by ADM Chief Photojournalsit John Rawlings |
| Puget Sound King Crabs, Lopholithodes mandtii, are members of the Anomura group. One manner in which this particular group of crustaceans can be readily identified is that they have a pair of antennae outside the eyes that they use to recognize and communicate with other individuals within their species. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Giant Pacific Octopus |
| Article and photography by ADM Chief Photojournalsit John Rawlings |
| On this particular day we were aboard a charter boat, the "Misty Fjord", in search of one of the most famous of Puget Sound critters, the Giant Pacific Octopus. Our destination was "Sunrise Wall", a beautiful site in the South Sound noted for Octopuses of great size. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| God's Pocket - Vancouver Island |
| Article and photography by Doug Ebersole |
| Every square inch of this vertical wall is covered with life and in all the colors of the rainbow! Anemones, starfish, crustaceans, nudibranchs, octopus were everywhere. After a surface interval highlighted by topside photography of bald eagles, we did a drift dive at Inside Seven Tree. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Greenland • Diving with the Pros |
| Article by Morten Beier and David Davies |
Ilulissat is the place for icebergs. Every day between 40 and 100 million tons of inland ice shears from the glacier to crash into the sea. Well, it used to. Nowadays the glacier moves so fast, probably due to the global warming, and splinters on land resulting in smaller icebergs in much greater quantities.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
| Guadalupe Island - A brush with White Death |
| by C.J. Bahnsen |
| No mere “Shark Week” could have prepared me for the overreaching immensity of my first carcharodon carcharias rising from below…3,000 pounds and 15 feet of shark nearing our titanium-reinforced aluminum cage. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Lake Baikal, Have You Ever Dived in The Deepest Lake in The World? |
| Article and photos by Andrey Bobkov |
| From what one expects a lake to be. It is a tectonic crack that is, according to limnologists (lake scientists), constantly getting wider and deeper, experiencing multiple earthquakes, that play their significant role in the in-lake water circulation: |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Malpelo Island • The "Mount Everest" of shark and large pelagic diving |
Text by Peter Schneider
|
| The island itself is a national park and a 20 mile zone around the island is declared as a no fishing zone. In 2006, the UNESCO declared Malpelo as a world heritage site. But the true beauty to Malpelo is beneath the waves. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Oceans Filming |
| Text by Aldo Ferrucci |
| Our target is to shoot giant cuttlefishes during their breeding, few meters far from the shore, in Whyalla bay, 300 km from Adelaide. Before entering the water we ask ourselves if the information that Australian researchers gave us are correct. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Papua New Guinea - The land of the Unexpected |
| Text and Photography by Gaby Zimmermann Nenadal |
| New Ireland is known for big fish and fish schools; they are best observed on the outer reefs and channels. Two dives not to be missed are Albatross Passage and Planet Channel. On an incoming tide and running current grey and whitetip reef sharks, |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Philippines • Puerto Galera - Sabang Bay |
| Text and Photography by Tom Isgar |
| “The Coral Triangle, the global centre of marine biodiversity, is a 6 million km2 area spanning Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste and the Solomon Islands.... Within this nursery of the seas live 76% of the world’s coral species, 6 of the world’s 7 marine turtle species, and at least 2,228 reef fish species.” |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Secrets of the Seahorse |
| Text and Photography by David Harasti |
| Seahorses are bizarre and fascinating little marine creatures that belong to a family called ‘Syngnathidae’ which includes seahorses, pipefish, seadragons, and pipehorses. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Tahsis BC - Gateway to Nootka Sound |
| Article by John Rawlings |
| The first aspect of the site that immediately draws your attention as you descend down through the jumble of rocks on a gradual slope is that virtually everything is completely covered with a literal blanket of brilliant red and pink Strawberry anemones, making Mozino Point one of the most amazingly colorful dives to be found anywhere. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| The Great Wild Dolphin Safari |
| Article and photos by Joseph C Dovala |
| I barely had time to remove my strobes and get the camera ready before the proverbial “Tharsheblows” rang out. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Underwater Basket-Weaving 101 |
| Article and photos by ADM Chief Staff Writer John Rawlings |
| Gazing intently beneath us, I also began to see blotches of white – not the huge swaths of billowy white affiliated with huge clusters of Plumose anemones, but small dots everywhere across the bottom and the rocks. I realize that we have found our quarry – Basket Stars – and not just a few, either…. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Unicorns of the Sea |
| Text and Photography by Doug Ebersole |
| At some point, every scuba diver dreams of diving with a whale shark (Rhiniodon Typus). Like many divers, I traveled the globe for years searching for them but to no avail. I always seemed to hear the same old thing – “you should have been here last week”. In my mind, whale sharks were the “unicorns of the sea”. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Washington's Hood Canal |
| Text and Photography by John Rawlings |
| Today, Hood Canal is welcoming another group of explorers. They are researchers and divers with a deep and abiding love for the body of water now known fondly as “the Hood.” |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Where White Sharks Fly |
| Text and Photography by Chris Fallows |
| This began my fascination with these amazing animals--the ultimate of predators--and made me want to study them more. In the back of my mind, I wondered what, if any, sharks lived at Seal Island, and I decided to find out. |
|
|
|
 |
|
| Wolf Eel • The Ugly Man of the Sea |
| Text and Photography by John Rawlings |
| Get any group of divers together in the Pacific Northwest and ask them to reach a consensus on what the requirements are for a really GREAT dive, and invariably one of the things they will ultimately agree on is that a wolf-eel will somehow be involved. |
|
|
|
