To make a great underwater film you need to get up close and personal with the creatures of the sea. Sometimes it just may happen that the creatures get, well, way too close and personal.
David Malvestuto and Warren Murray were diving in the waters near Carmel, California. Suddenly a giant Pacific octopus, which had been camouflaged and gone unnoticed by the men, started to move. Murray spotted the movement and turned towards the octopus and assumed it might swim away.
The octopus, however, had different plans. It wrapped its tentacles around Murray’s camera, hands and arms and would not let go. A golden opportunity for some film making:
For many of us, South America is the big unknown at least when it comes to diving. If you are looking for an opportunity to get your flippers wet in South American waters, here are some great dive sites from Ecuador, Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina.
South America. An orthographic projection of NASA’s Blue Marble data set (1 km resolution global satellite composite). Image generated by custom Python code with orthographic projection formulas from MathWorld. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Source: gosouthamerica.about.com
The coastline of South America offers some of the most diverse and interesting terrain in the world, ranging from the warm and pleasant waters around the equator through to one of the closest land points in the world to Antarctica. This means that there is a wonderful variety of scuba diving to enjoy around the continent, including some of the most spectacular and memorable diving spots in the world. Whether you are a scuba diving novice or are looking for a challenging trip, the coast of South America will have a great destination for you.
Sometimes you would love to take your own scuba gear with you to a far away destination but you are afraid of the hassle and cost. Here are a few pointers that will help you along the way.
UPS Worldport Air Hub at Louisville International Airport (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A good starting point is to figure out why you want to take your own scuba gear with you. That should help you also in deciding what to take with you. Here are some common reasons and items to pack:
Comfort and convenience: Your own regulator’s mouth piece has been molded to fit your teeth, your mask never leaks unlike most rental masks you’ve tried, you want to use your own dive computer because that way you can download the log to your PC, …. Whichever items give you the comfort or convenience you want, if what you should pack and, to keep cost and the hassle to minimum, nothing else.
You are not sure if the gear you need is available where you go: underwater camera, yoke or DIN adapter (which you may need if you are taking your own regulator set with you), gloves,…
Safety: You are concerned that rental gear might malfunction or that you would be at risk because you are not familiar with the gear. If this is your motivation, then your packing list should include at least your BCD, regulator set and weight belt.
Because you just want to: In this case, you probably would like to pack all you have and then the kitchen sink. In this case, you may want to consider the cost: On most airlines it is the weight that matters so you may want to leave the heavier items behind.
Now that you know what to pack, you have a few options on how to get your scuba gear to the destination:
Carry-on: Good for few small items and you can be relative certain that they do not get lost or delayed on the way.
Checked luggage: Check your airlines web pages for rules about extra weight and extra pieces of luggage. Some airlines have special pricing for scuba gear that will save you some money.
Air-cargo, couriers, shipping,…: There are a plenty of other options that come handy especially if you are traveling long distance with lots of gear.
A Singapore Airlines Cargo Boeing 747 loading at Copenhagen Airport (Kastrup) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If you want to check in scuba gear as luggage you may want to keep a few things in mind when preparing for the trip:
Early on, figure out the total weight of your luggage, the number of pieces and the size of each piece.
This lets you to compare the total price or, in other words, the price of the ticket plus extra fees between airlines.
Also, keep an eye on the absolute maximum limits for checked luggage set by the airline. These are limits that you cannot exceeded; not even by paying extra. If you have more luggage, consider using air-cargo or a similar option.
Palau, a Pacific island nation will become a marine sanctuary says President Tommy Remengesau Jr. while addressing a United Nations meeting.
Palau President Tommy Remengesau (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This move will enable Palau to preserve “a pristine environment” and to find an alternative path to economic growth through promotion of snorkelling, scuba diving and ecotourism.
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