Titan Meets Titanic

STOCKTON RUSH AND HIS TEAM AT OCEANGATE made history on July 10, 2021, when they reached the Titanic — at a depth of approximately 12,500 feet — in Titan, the only submersible of its kind. The dive proved that this unique cylinder-shaped, carbon fiber and titanium five-person submersible can explore this wreck and was a […]

STOCKTON RUSH AND HIS TEAM AT OCEANGATE

When Should the Rescue Begin?

DIVING INHERENTLY CARRIES AN ELEVATED LEVEL OF RISK because humans cannot survive underwater without specialized equipment. When things go wrong, an effective rescue is vital for a favorable outcome. Most rescue diver courses teach students basic techniques to apply after something goes wrong, but better courses also provide techniques to prevent incidents from occurring in […]

Pool Operation: Know Before You Go

WHEN IT COMES TO THE OCEAN, we know when to go and when to stay away. If it is standard practice to check conditions before a dive, shouldn’t we ask a few basic questions before diving into a pool? Years ago I ran a pool at an athletic club and someone asked, “Why do we […]

woman swimming in the pool

Going Up

Every night as the sun slips below the horizon, countless aquatic creatures begin migrating up from the deep in what is quite possibly the greatest show on Earth. Seeking nourishment in shallow water, zooplankton must risk a perilous journey upward, avoiding a gauntlet of predators while remaining in the safety of darkness and then returning […]

Short but Beautiful Lives

MY FELLOW DIVERS WERE ECSTATIC AFTER A TWILIGHT DIVE on the Okinawa wreck near Pompano, Florida, in early June 2019. I was shooting wide angle and hadn’t paid much attention to small creatures during the dive, but they had found the holy grail for macro photographers: nudibranchs — in this case, regal sea goddesses (Felimare […]

sea goddess

Mexico’s Sardine Run

Although striped marlins (Kajikia audax) are slower than some of their billfish cousins, their 50-mph speed is plenty fast for me. I try to swim alongside this stealth bomber of the sea as it works a baitball to separate individual sardines from the silvery mass. While getting outpaced by sailfish and black marlin might be […]

More Than a Sore Shoulder

I REMEMBER SITTING AT MY COMPUTER while thinking about all the ibuprofen I had been popping for the past 18 hours and wondering why I still had the dull, aching pain in my shoulder. Could this be more than soreness from carrying gear back and forth from our shore entry point or exertion from a […]

hyperbaric chamber

Fred Buyle

A STATEMENT ON FRED BUYLE’S WEBSITE briefly explains his approach to underwater photography: “To take his pictures and videos, Fred uses a simple formula: the water, available light, a camera, and one breath of air, nothing more, nothing less.” I would add to that list an extraordinary eye for composition and a passion for placing himself […]

A Sense of Purpose

Hometown: Phoenix, Arizona Years Diving: 34 Favorite Dive Destination: Little Cayman is special because of the conservation work our team has done through the Grouper Moon Project and the time I’ve spent there with my family. Why I’m a DAN Member: Diving around the world with REEF and conducting conservation research in the field means that having support from […]

Chasing Weeds

How many times have you noticed the line of weeds out of the corner of your eye and driven past, around, or through it without a second glance on your way to a dive? In our case, most of the time. On a calm day off Jupiter, Florida, a wide weed line at the edge […]

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