Alert Diver Category: Features

WHEN I STARTED DIVING, I fell in love with colorful coral reefs and marine life. If you had told me that Antarctica would someday become a favorite destination, I might have laughed and said I’d never …

THE CAYMAN ISLANDS CONSIST OF THREE ISLANDS — Grand Cayman and Little Cayman; Cayman Brac, however, is not as well-known among dive aficionados despite the island’s infrastructure and …

If you like the idea of a liveaboard adventure with remote, open-ocean diving where your dive boat is likely the only one on the reef, you’ll love a trip to Flower Garden Banks. It remains one of the best-kept secrets for wilderness diving in the continental U.S., where you can expect rare encounters such as a longlure frogfish on a sponge, scalloped hammerhead sharks feeding or a whale shark swimming by.

THE LONG, STRANGE TRIP OF THE Spiegel Grove began in 2001 over beers at Sharkey’s Bar in Key Largo, Florida. Several Bibb and Duane shipwrecks project organizers were musing about what they would do …

Located in the Bay Islands of Honduras, Roatán is a tropical gem nestled in the turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea. The largest of the Bay Islands, Roatán sits about 30 miles off the Honduran coast between Utila and Guanaja. Its fringing reef system makes up the southernmost edge of the Mesoamerica Reef (the world’s second-largest reef system) and is arguably Roatán’s biggest attraction.

I SUSPECT THAT MY LOVE FOR SABA was set in motion the first time my father threaded King Kong onto our home projector. It was the original black-and-white film from 1933 — and if you’ve never viewed it, you should. I watched, enthralled, from my comfy beanbag chair as a ship carrying a film crew motored through […]

La historia de la búsqueda del submarino japonés I-52 es uno de dos descubrimientos separados por el tiempo y el propósito. En 1944, en la oscuridad de la noche en el océano Atlántico, un grupo de buques antisubmarinos de la Marina de los Estados Unidos estaba en busca de una reunión clandestina entre tripulaciones navales alemanas y japonesas. Sobre la base de la información obtenida por los servicios de inteligencia, pretendían sorprender y hundir los dos submarinos que supuestamente intercambiarían información militar. Medio siglo más tarde, el I-52 aún yacía sobre el lecho marino sin haber sido descubierto, pero esta vez la búsqueda era en la oscuridad de la profundidad del océano en busca de una posibilidad, no destrucción.

WHILE THE WORLD WAS STILL MOSTLY LOCKED DOWN with travel restrictions, my social media feed was alive with gorgeous photos from the Maldives. The Maldives opened sooner than most foreign dive destinations, so there was ample photographic inspiration for our trip in May. The online coverage included the whale sharks, manta rays, tiger sharks, and […]

View Andy and Allison Salmon’s bonus photo gallery that accompanies their feature on diving Central California.

“Pura vida!” our dive guide, Sergio, exclaimed with a relaxed smile. Eight dive buddies, Sergio, and I just had an incredible experience: A 35-foot-long whale shark swam a few feet over our heads at one of the better-known dive sites at Cocos Island, Costa Rica. It silently came and went, seemingly carefree, like a giant spotted apparition sliding out of sight into the deep blue.