CORAL Publishes Marine Recreation Standards

CORAL publishes first ever regional standards for diving, snorkeling and boating activities.

In areas of high volume tourism, repeated direct contact with the reef poses an immediate threat. Hundreds of boat groundings and hundreds of thousands of tourist interactions each year reduce sections of coral reef to rubble. Human contact also reduces coral’s resilience to other stressors such as rising sea temperatures and diseases.

CORAL's "Voluntary Standards for Marine Recreation in the Mesoamerican Reef System" (PDF 668 KB) provides detailed requirements for environmentally friendly and safety conscious marine tourism businesses in the areas of diving, snorkeling, and boating and can be used by a variety of different groups such as:

• Concerned tourists to help them choose sustainable and safe marine excursions
• Marine Tourism Businesses to evaluate their own practices
• Non Governmental Organizations and Governments as a basis for creating standards in their area
• Bulk purchasers such as cruise ships to select sustainable and safe business partners

Download your copy of the "Voluntary Standards for Marine Recreation in the Mesoamerican Reef System" (PDF 668 KB)

FVB Dive ME Guide

Look at the FVB Dive ME Guide here:

http://www.bulafiji.com/diveme/online_brochure.html

Here you will find an "e-brochure" about Fiji diving and it's awesome!

“Any country with coral reefs like this has a national treasure that should be protected. Fiji is on of the lucky countries.”
Roger Steene: Author, photographer and marine naturalist.

“We dropped into the blue and descended to a sandy ledge at 100ft where a hammerhead shark was sighted. Schools of barracuda and jack inhabit the channel where a large coral pinnacle is washed by 100ft plus visibility. From bottom to top there were intense pockets of filter feeders: crinoids, giant gorgonian fans, black coral, and massive soft coral trees. The diving is timed to hit enough current to engorge the soft corals and cluster the fish together. That’s what makes these reefs so vibrant and alive.”
Stephen Frink: professional underwater photographer.

---

• Click here to view our online Dive ME Guide
• Click here to Download the pdf Version
  

New Book! A Diver's Guide to the Art of Underwater Photography

FiNS Magazine Associate Editors Andrea and Antonella Ferrari have just released a new book titled The Art of Underwater Photography. The book showcases first-rate underwater images from the Ferraris and contributors around the world, as well as setting out the Ferrari’s personal philosophy of the art behind creating outstanding marine images...

The book offers eight very enjoyable chapters covering topics such as motivation, equipment, technique, mindframe, artistic and media influences, housings, strobes, macro, wide angle, portraits, topside dive integral photography and much much more.

The illustrations are spectacular and also include the works of world class photographers such as: Doug Perrine, Charles Hood, John Scarlett, Alex Mustard, Eric Cheng, Tony Wu, Stephen Wong, Takako Uno and many more. There are over 300 amazing photographs and each is extensively captioned explaining the technique used, the equipment, location, creative goal and more.

About the Ferraris

Andrea (born 1957) and Antonella (born 1960) Ferrari have been happily married since 1986 and have no children. He is a movie journalist and film critic by profession and she works in the same publishing company as a technical printing advisor.

They live in the cold, foggy countryside south of Milan, Italy, in an old and beautifully restored farm going back to the eighteenth century, with their beloved third English Bull Terrier (yes, they're addicted to that lovely breed!), which comes by the name of Undaunted (he's Scottish) but has been rechristened Glen (he likes it better). They share a true love of nature and of course are just crazy about diving and the sea.

After having published two major photographic books on land wildlife in the early '90s (Wild Edens and Venezuela - In the Kingdom of the Jaguar) they finally turned their attention to underwater marine biology and photography.

Andrea and Antonella Ferrari have published several ground-breaking and very successful photographic books and hundreds of magazine articles on travel and marine life.

Their books - published in Italy, France, Germany, Holland, Spain, Great Britain, Malaysia, the Unites States of America and Japan - include Malaysia Diving Guide (1997) Malaysia - An Underwater Paradise (1998), Layang Layang - The Island of Dreams Come True (1998), Top Nature and Dive Resorts of Borneo (2001), Reef Life (1999), Sharks (2000, with a foreword by Doug Perrine and contributions by Valerie Taylor, Marty Snyderman and Howard Hall), A Diver's Guide to Underwater Malaysia Macrolife (2003) and the spectacular coffee-table photographic volume Oceani Segreti (2004), which has been awarded the prestigious World Grand Prize at the Underwater Image Festival at Antibes.

Andrea and Antonella have also recently been honored as associate editors of Singapore-based FiNS dive magazine, on which they author a regular column on underwater critters.

To learn more and/or order the book visit:




Source: FINS

Digital Camera Questions

Digital Camera Questions

By Ikelite

Many of the digital cameras require the strobe setting to be in a special position with just the 'lightning bolt' symbol showing in the window to activate the flash consistently. 'Auto Flash' settings may leave the camera to decide if the light level is low enough to require flash, resulting in no fill flash in your pictures. Read the camera instruction manual for correct information pertaining to your camera. This special position may be referred to as 'Internal Flash Active', 'Flash On', 'Forced' or 'Fill Flash' in the instructions."

More here at Ikelite Digital Camera Questions

Fabulous Fiji

Fabulous Fiji

"Ready for an exotic diving trip? Planning your next getaway and can't decide where to spend those hard-earned dollars? Let's go down under to experience the kaleidoscope of colorful scenery in Fiji's teeming underwater world.

Begin the day in a swimsuit, grab a quick cup of coffee, then slip on a wetsuit (usually still damp from the previous day's activity), and load pounds of gear onto your body. Air tank on, mask in place, you take a giant stride off the stern platform of the dive boat. It's such a relief to be in the water again; all the heavy gear becomes lighter as you slowly descend through the clear, warm water. Drifting down, you look around for any chance encounters with cruising sharks or manta rays. Once at the bottom or agreed-upon depth, you establish your buoyancy control and check in with your dive buddy that everything is OK.

If this is your first peek into tropical Pacific waters you won't believe the color and profusion of marine life. Fiji's reefs are some of the most diverse and untouched in"

Fabulous Fiji

UnderwaterPhotography.com Photo Course

Welcome to the #1 online underwater photography course. Here's a few of the reasons to enrol...

• $69 Lifetime subscription
• Updated regularly as underwater photography evolves
• Suitable for beginners and advanced
• Great preparation for a practical resort course
• Interactive

Thousands of underwater photographers have already taken the course and satisfaction is guaranteed. If you don't learn, you get your money back!

You can view chapter 2 FREE
take the test! a quick quiz

Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification

No sunglasses required for fish supper

Fishermen are always looking for a tasty catch - but it is the fish that have a natural advantage when it comes to spotting dinner, according to new research from The University of Manchester.

In a paper published this month in the Biophysical Journal, Dr Nicholas Roberts reports how individual light sensitive cells within the retina of goldfish are able to detect polarised light.

It's believed this type of polarisation vision improves visual contrast and can help an animal catch its prey more easily.

Researchers say this latest research is important because it is the first direct experimental evidence of a polarisation detection mechanism in any normal vertebrate eye.

Dr Roberts says: "Vision is the primary sense of many animals and the way they see their world is of fundamental importance to understanding aspects of their behaviour.

"Numerous animals have amazing visual abilities, which allow them to see the world in very different ways. One such ability is polarisation vision.

"Just as fishermen wear Polaroid sunglasses to help improve contrast, many different animals - including fish - have evolved to do the very same thing without the need of sunglasses. It is a surprisingly common ability throughout the animal kingdom."

Journal Reference: Biophys J. 2007 Nov 1;93(9):3241-8.

Photo Credit:US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Fiji In Living Color - Scuba Diving Magazine

Fiji In Living Color - Scuba Diving Magazine

June 2007

Text by Buck Butler

At two passages in the soft-coral capital of the world, strong currents make for eye-popping reefs.

In still waters, normally brilliant colonies of Dendronephthya soft coral retract into protective, knobby fists, and a reef that's a Jolly-Rancher-colored spectacle in normal conditions becomes a mundane rockscape. But when currents push fast-moving water over a soft-coral reef, these assemblages of tiny animals unfurl their jewel-toned branches to feed on the nutrients that ride those currents. Put your mask close to a soft coral tree to find each colony of Dendronephthya plumping itself up, taking on water to filter for food until its translucent membrane practically glows. Then, for a more expansive view, move two fin-kicks away from a soft-coral-covered wall when the current is running--the stronger the better--and you will find one of the most spectacular sights under the sea.

If you want to find soft corals, pack your gear for the 300-plus islands of Fiji. And if you want to find reefs washed by swift currents and everything that means--forests of soft corals, thriving hard corals, a mind-boggling diversity of species and tornadoes of schooling fish--look at a map of Fiji and find the places where water accelerates through narrow passages with every tidal change. In that fast water, divers sometimes have to kick hard just to stay in one place, and soft-coral sites literally come to life.

Where can you find a regularly occurring perfect storm of these conditions and some of the most visually engaging reefs in the world? Fiji's Somosomo Strait and Vatu-i-Ra Passage.

Read full article here: Fiji In Living Color - Scuba Diving Magazine

Fiji Scuba Diving - A Perfect Active Vacation

Fiji Scuba Diving - A Perfect Active Vacation

"Fiji scuba diving is amongst some of the most awe-inspiring in the world.

An archipelago of over 300 islands spread over an area larger than 200,00 square miles. Fiji offers hundreds of diving sites to please even very discriminating divers.

Wreck dives, drift dives and night dives amongst other Fiji scuba activities are sure to provide great activities for novice through to experienced drivers."

Ecotourism benefits nature and reduces poverty - earth - 12 December 2007 - New Scientist Environment

12 December 2007
Magazine issue 2633

Ecotourism, sometimes criticised as the voyeuristic indulgence of rich first-worlders, really does benefit the environment and the people who live in protected areas. A review of four marine conservation initiatives shows that they have helped reduce poverty and created tourism-based jobs, says Craig Leisher of Nature Conservancy, an environmental group in Arlington, Virginia.

The report, Nature's Investment Bank, co-authored by Leisher and published on 29 November, is based on interviews with more than 1000 people in four recently protected marine zones in Fiji, Indonesia, the Philippines and the Solomon Islands. In every case, the conservation schemes had boosted fish catches and helped create new jobs.

'In some sites, the scale of improvement was dramatic,' says Leisher. 'In Fiji, for example, local incomes doubled over five years following introduction of a protected fishery.' In Indonesia's Bunaken National Marine Park, meanwhile, ecotourism schemes created many new jobs in restaurants and hotels and ..."

Read full article at:
Ecotourism benefits nature and reduces poverty - earth - 12 December 2007 - New Scientist Environment

Top Ten Scuba Diving Trips

GoArticles.com

"The Fiji Islands make the list also. They are called the Soft Coral Capital of the World and are a favorite of undersea photographers."

GoArticles.com

2008 issue of Diving Almanac and Yearbook (D.A.Y.)

The 2008 issue of Diving Almanac and Yearbook (D.A.Y.) and Diving Pioneers & Innovators: A Series of In-Depth Interviews are two great new diving books available to International Training members.

“Diving Almanac and Yearbook is the definitive general reference books on diving, and I have had a copy on my desk since the inaugural issue in 2006,” said Steve Lewis.

Lewis, director of product development for International Training explained that D.A.Y. has sections on diving history, world records, a who’s who of diving, statistics, listings of dive sites by country and much more an easy-to-read, illustrated 616-page format. “For anyone even remotely interested in knowing a little more about diving and the dive industry,” he said. “This is the best desktop reference I know of.”

The second publication is Bret Gilliam’s lavishly illustrated coffee-table book on diving’s history. It features a foreword by Stan Waterman, and takes readers through a series of lively and insightful interviews with the likes of Bob Ballard, Peter Benchley, Dick Bonin, Ernie Brooks, John Chatterton, Mike deGruy, Al Giddings, Howard Hall, Michele Hall, Bob Hollis, Paul Humann, Greg MacGillivray, Bev Morgan, Chuck Nicklin, Ron & Valerie Taylor, Zale Parry, Wes Skiles, Stan Waterman, and Bret himself.

“The book is worth owning for its beautiful, full-color photographs alone,” explained Lewis. “But in Bret’s usual style and flair the text is written with wit and insight, making it the perfect special present and an exciting read for anyone who dives, but most especially anyone with an interest in the history of underwater image making from the early days of scuba to the present.”

International Training has worked out exclusive distribution agreements with Porbeagle Press, publisher of D.A.Y. and with New World Press and Bret Gilliam for Diving Pioneers & Innovators: A Series of In-Depth Interviews.

Contact Headquarters to order copies for your customers now at 1-888-7778-9073 or worldhq@tdisdi.com. Or contact your local International Training representative to place your pre-holiday order.

To find out more about International Training’s innovative educational programs, and other dive business opportunities visit www.tdisdi.com

Scuba Diving International (SDI) is the sport diving certification branch of the world’s largest technical diving agency, Technical Diving International (TDI). Also included is Emergency Response Diving International (ERDI), the only global public safety certification agency.

Material posted and distributed through DiveNewswire