The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific

You know how you feel when you've just finished a really good book and want to tell everyone you know about it? That is how I feel about THE SEX LIVES OF CANNIBALS. During the first few chapters I was laughing out loud so much and reading passages to my husband so often that he mentioned he wouldn't even have to read the book. However since he formerly lived in the Marshall Islands, this book hits home to him and he could hardly wait until I was done to grab it from my hands.

Maarten and Sylvia have no idea what they're getting themselves into when Sylvia agrees to a two-year contact to work on Tarawa, a remote island in the equatorial Pacific islands also known as Kiribas (The Gilbert Islands).

This was LOL funny in so many places! Maarten's turn of a phrase is so clever that he makes one laugh in the face of a nearly intolerable situation living on this remote island - part of which is so crowded it rivals Hong Kong in population density. The 20th century wasn't kind to these islanders. Their unique culture juxtaposed with the creations of the 20th century is very nearly ruining their culture. But Troost is able to find nearly everything funny (even though one wonders if he felt it was that funny at the moment) including the bowel habits of the natives. On the back of the book in Maarten's brief bio, it is revealed that he and is wife are living in California. One can only hope that he is becoming the writer for a sit-com. He makes other authors of humor/travel memoir seem dull in comparison. If I would compare him to anyone it would be Erma Bombeck-the way he is able to find hilarity in even the most mundane things.

This book deserves to be a bestseller and hopefully by word of mouth it will be.

underwater.com.au | Article | Incredible Fiji

Incredible Fiji

Contributed by Scuba Diver Australasia
Dive Fiji, Scuba Diver AustralasiaStory & Photographs Michael Aw

Blue Lagoon, Castaway, Savage Islands, Anacondas ... names that evoke impressions of aquamarine water, waving coconut palms, white sand beaches, secret gardens, hidden lakes, swift rivers, waterfalls, high mountains and raw adventure. In reality they are titles of Hollywood movies and they were filmed in Fiji. The familiar links between all these movies are obvious – Fiji is a remote outpost, white sand beaches and boats are essential aspects of life. In fact, the boat 'The Bloody Mary' which features in Anacondas has been transformed into a fully-fitted bar at the Lagoon Resort Hotel in Pacific Harbour!

Cast across the expanse of the South Pacific Ocean, the Fiji archipelago comprises 322 islands surrounded by lush coral reefs, warm azure waters and abundant marine life. For avid scuba divers, surfers, sky divers and the sun worshippers who simply wish to day dream beneath coconut palms, Fiji is the destination of dreams but watch out for those falling coconuts, they are the islands number one killer! Wonder if Fijian law provides life sentencing for felonious coconut palms?"

Fiji and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Dive by Abigail Smigel on DeeperBlue.net - Fanatical About FreeDiving, Scuba Diving, Spearfishing & Technical D

Fiji and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Dive by Abigail Smigel on DeeperBlue.net
Fanatical About FreeDiving, Scuba Diving, Spearfishing & Technical Diving

2 November 2006 By Abigail Smigel

When determining your next scuba trip destination, there are several factors to keep in mind. One, does the location provide ample underwater scenery and critters to be worth countless hours of travel to your destination of choice? Two, is the destination affordable enough not to refinance the home for the fourth time? Three, are there activities above water that can be enjoyed while off-gasing? And four, does any of this really matter as long as you're getting out of the hustle and bustle of the nine-to-five and entering the hustle and bustle of a coral reef? If the answer to all of these questions is 'No,' and for that matter, if the answer to any of them is 'No,' then stop reading right now. Find yourself an online Sudoku magazine to entertain yourself. If the answer is 'Yes,' then you are probably envisioning a past or potential future trip to Fiji."

Diveaway Fiji - Scuba diving on the Coral Coast: Diving in your later years……

Diveaway Fiji - Scuba diving on the Coral Coast: Diving in your later years……

Today I had a great experience! I took Helen and her daughter on a PADI Discover Scuba Dive! Helen is a 72 year old lady who suffers from post viral fatigue syndrome. We had to make a few adjustments of our dive plan, rather than doing a backwards roll entry into the water we made a slow shore start, and then during the dive we would swim a few meters then stop kneel down and look at the fish and coral."

Climate Change: 25 Things You Can Do - Gaiam Community

Climate Change: 25 Things You Can Do - Gaiam Community

An action-inspiring excerpt from “Stop Global Warming: The Solution Is You!” by “An Inconvenient Truth” producer Laurie David.

:: By Laurie David

Start with one thing and convince one other person to do it, too. Start with your friends and family. Then reach out to people who don’t agree with you. Talk to that relative you always fight with at Thanksgiving dinner. (In my house, we barely make it past the soup course before the debates begin.)

1. Bring your own reusable cup to Starbucks.

2. Forward an article to ten people and then they forward it to their ten friends, the next thing you know you’ll have seriously helped to get the word out and influenced public opinion along the way. Just because something is printed in the newspaper doesn’t mean anyone sees it. Often, really critical articles are buried inside the paper."

Read the full list :

Climate Change: 25 Things You Can Do - Gaiam Community

Egypt Stops Reef Fish Exports

Egypt have cancelled a decree which allowed companies to collect reef fish and export them to Europe and other markets .

According to the Hurghada Environmental Protection and Conservation Association (HEPCA), the previous decision had a devastating effect on nature and on the coral reef condition in the whole area. HEPCA launched a huge campaign against this decision and lobbied with other agencies, enthusiastic individuals, and major media representatives.

As a result of the decision HEPCA have ceased legal actions against the Minister's old decree.

Further Reading: http://www.hepca.com/

Technical Diving in Depth by B. R. Wienke

A long-awaited and much-needed title has just been released by BPC. "Technical Diving in Depth" by Bruce R. Wienke is the most complete and comprehensive reference work published to date on technical diving.

It contains a mixture of technical topics, with each one self-contained and developed in relationship to diving. The topics span many disciplines and focus on a number of technical arenas.

Topics Include:
Thermodynamics, pressure and density, mechanics, gas kinetics, free and dissolved phase transfer, energy and matter interactions, nucleation and cavitation, bubbles and surfactants, oxygen dose, gas mixtures, buoyancy, gauges and tanks, compressors and regulators, maladies and drugs, statistics, risk and probability, binomial distributions, waves, transport, currents, geology, oceanography, geophysics, solar energy and radiation. References and Appendix are also included.

Targeted Audience:
Technical diver, commercial diver, diving instructor, underwater researcher, doctors, hyperbaric technicians, physiologist, physicist, chemist, mathematician, engineer or biologist.

Diving in Fiji

Diving in Fiji Blog by Richard

"Nudibranchs and Sea Snails by Helmut Debelius

A beautiful book containing over 1020 color photos, depicting gastropods from the West Coast of the US to the Red Sea to South Africa.

Half of the book is devoted to gastropods with shells and half of the book concerned with those without shells(nudibranchs) all live and in their natural habitat. There is nothing so brightly colored as a nudibranch and to see one 'swim' is pure joy. A must have for divers, aquarists and those who love nature."

Study Shows Southern Ocean Saturated with Carbon Dioxide

May 18, 2007 — By Deborah Zabarenko, Reuters

WASHINGTON -- The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is so loaded with carbon dioxide that it can barely absorb any more, so more of the gas will stay in the atmosphere to warm up the planet, scientists reported Thursday.

Human activity is the main culprit, said researcher Corinne Le Quere, who called the finding very alarming.

The phenomenon wasn't expected to be apparent for decades, Le Quere said in a telephone interview from the University of East Anglia in Britain.

"We thought we would be able to detect these only the second half of this century, say 2050 or so," she said. But data from 1981 through 2004 show the sink is already full of carbon dioxide. "So I find this really quite alarming."

The Southern Ocean is one of the world's biggest reservoirs of carbon, known as a carbon sink. When carbon is in a sink -- whether it's an ocean or a forest, both of which can lock up carbon dioxide -- it stays out of the atmosphere and does not contribute to global warming.

The new research, published in the latest edition of the journal Science, indicates that the Southern Ocean has been saturated with carbon dioxide at least since the 1980s.

This is significant because the Southern Ocean accounts for 15 percent of the global carbon sink, Le Quere said.

GLOBAL WARMING SPURS WINDS

Increased winds over the last half-century are to blame for the change, Le Quere said. These winds blend the carbon dioxide throughout the Southern Ocean, mixing the naturally occurring carbon that usually stays deep down with the human-caused carbon.

When natural carbon is brought up to the surface by the winds, it is harder for the Southern Ocean to accommodate more human-generated carbon, which comes from factories, coal-fired power plants and petroleum-powered motor vehicle exhaust.

The winds themselves are caused by two separate human factors.

First, the human-spawned ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere over the Southern Ocean has created large changes in temperature throughout the atmosphere, Le Quere said.

Second, the uneven nature of global warming has produced higher temperatures in the northern parts of the world than in the south, which has also made the winds accelerate in the Southern Ocean.

"Since the beginning of the industrial revolution the world's oceans have absorbed about a quarter of the 500 gigatons (500 billion tons) of carbon emitted into the atmosphere by humans," Chris Rapley of the British Antarctic Survey said in a statement.

"The possibility that in a warmer world the Southern Ocean -- the strongest ocean sink -- is weakening is a cause for concern," Rapley said.

Another sign of warming in the Antarctic was reported Tuesday by NASA, which found vast areas of snow melted on the southern continent in 2005 in a process that may accelerate invisible melting deep beneath the surface.

Source: Reuters

DAN Incident Report Now Available FREE to All Divers

Important industry report now made available to divers around the world as a public service by DAN.

A 34-year-old male freediver was attacked by a shark while spearfishing in Hawaii. He received a nonfatal bite to the shoulder while swimming back to shore towing a bag of fish. He was able to stand and strike the 12-foot (4-meter) shark with his speargun as it returned. He was assisted from the water by local residents. – From the 2006 DAN Annual Diving Report


Know someone who’s had a similar close call? Interested in reading about more incidents? Are you convinced that you can learn a great deal by reading about divers’ missteps?

The DAN Diving Report, compiled and published annually by DAN Research, is now available to the public at no cost: Simply go to the DAN website and download it. Formerly available free to DAN Members only, the report is now posted where dive professionals, researchers, journalists and all scuba divers can view it with just a few clicks.

You can now view DAN accident and fatality reports from 2001 to 2006. The Diving Report for 2007 is in progress, slated for release later this year.

The latest issue, The Annual Diving Report: 2006 Edition, presents information on Project Dive Exploration, scuba diving injuries and fatalities, based on data collections during 2004. Beginning with the 2005 report, DAN has added sections on breath-hold diving, including summary data and thumbnail case reports.

Want More Info? The entire report is available free of charge.

To download it, go to: http://diversalertnetwork.org/medical/report/index.asp

When you need information, DAN is here for you.

Vatu-i-ra - Bird Island - dive in Bligh Water, Fiji - scuba diving on deep walls and reefs.

Vatu-i-ra - Bird Island - dive in Bligh Water, Fiji - scuba diving on deep walls and reefs.:

"Vatu-i-ra is a small, uninhabited island about 20km off the north east coast of Viti Levu in Fiji. It is also known as 'Bird Island' because of the huge population of seabirds on the island. There is a rocky hill and thick vegetation making it an interesting shore excursion.

There are also many dive sites near the island and along the Vatu-i-ra Channel including the following:
Bligh Ridge
Pacific Garden
See & Sea
Greg's Point
Nikonos
E-6
High 8
North and South Lighthouses"

Vatu-i-ra - Bird Island - dive in Bligh Water, Fiji - scuba diving on deep walls and reefs.:

underwater.com.au | Directory | Fiji

underwater.com.au | Directory | Fiji:

"Fijian is a fusion of people and culture. A melting pot of Melanesians and Polynesians of people of the Indian sub-continent, the English and Europeans.

More Fiji info »"

underwater.com.au | Directory | Fiji