Issue #16 The art of diving
We sent artist and marine campaigner Francesca Page to Cocos Island in the Eastern Pacific and she returned with some stunning and highly original work. We also publish 20 of the best entries in our photo competition – more exceptional underwater art. Plus lots more which celebrates the art of diving! Order your copy now or subscribe for a year from just £9.99
*£9.99 for a digital-only subscription including all content plus 80+ digital back issues. £22.99 for all digital content plus 4 x art-quality quarterly print magazines for £22.99. Available worldwide (international shipping extra).
Alfie Minnaar swaps the warm and congenial climate of Gili Trawangan for the harsh and frozen landscape of Siberia. Taking lessons from an ice diving instructor at the Dive School of Hard Knocks, he learns a very important lesson about buoyancy control when you’re not diving in board shorts and a rash vest, the etiquette of Siberian saunas, and why smoked pig’s fat is chief among ice diving’s culinary delights. Follow Alfie’s amazing adventure under the Russian ice, accompanied as always by his unique style of brilliant photography.
Think of Australian scuba diving and the words that will automatically spring to mind are ‘great’, ‘barrier’, and ‘reef’ – but the Great Barrier Reef is very, very long, and much of the diving concentrated further north around popular tourist destinations such as Cairns. Further south, however, the reef is much less visited by tourists, so Chloe Smith headed off to southern Queensland to dive the recently sunk HMAS Tobruk, have close encounters with the local zebra sharks, and enjoy a tot or two of Bundaberg’s locally brewed rum…
We could have called it ‘Top 20 Photos’, but there were so, so many glorious photographs submitting during our Original DIVE Photo competition that ‘Spoilt for Choice’ was a more appropriate title. Wading through them all was a wonderful experience, but settling on just 20 was not. Nevertheless, with the help of fellow judge Alex Mustard, DIVE’s editor-in-chief, Graeme Gourlay, whittled the pile down to the 20 that you can find in the pages of DIVE this Autumn, for your viewing pleasure.
Could you imagine diving a wreck better than the SS Thistlegorm? One way to do it would be to travel back in time to dive on the Old Lady before hordes of tourist divers arrived and wreaked havoc within her holds. Another would be to dive deeper, in colder water, in much more difficult conditions, and explore a Second World War freighter where time, uninterrupted by the passage of recreational divers, has stood still. René B Andersen dives the challenging, magnificent wreck of the SS Sao Paolo, and brings us some awesome imagery of its interior.
300 nautical miles and a 24-hour boat ride out to sea, the wild diving of Cocos Island is by turns high-energy, nerve-wracking and most splendidly awesome. Once the haunt of pirates, the diving is often so fantastic that divers complain about ‘only’ seeing 30 hammerheads on a single dive! What better way to capture the raw magic of this remote and majestic seamount, than to send artist Francesa Page to visit with a blank canvas and an ocean of inspiration.
Diving takes us all around the planet; it opens our eyes and can be a life-changing experience for many residents of the so-called ‘western world’. But for the folks that make it all possible, from the dive guides and boat crews to the admin staff and chefs, scuba diving tourism is not just a passion for the underwater world, but a way of life that many tourists never get to see. Louise Murray talked to the locals who guided her around the Philippines, and here is part of their story.
Nobody really knows exactly why they choose this particular location, but the oceanic whitetip sharks that congregate at Cat Island in the Bahamas have become a welcome sight both for tourist divers and shark conservationists. Tom St George took his camera to pay a visit to the nomadic, and often very misunderstood, ‘sea dogs’ of Cat Island.
In the beginning, there were incandescent filament bulbs. They shone ever so brightly, often for just a fleeting moment before leaving you alone, stranded, underwater, in the dark, where nobody can hear you scream, because you’re chewing on a regulator mouthpiece. And then, a scientist said ‘let there be LEDs’, and the world became a brighter place, with fewer dark corners, and shone for much longer, and took less time to charge. DIVE’s Senior Correspondent, Mark ‘Crowley’ Russell, had a look at just a few of the myriad lights that illuminate our dives.
All this and much, much more can be yours for just £22.99 in the UK for a full print and digital subscription which will see DIVE’s quarterly print magazine delivered directly to your door, and an app subscription that will let you follow us anywhere, any time, as long as there’s an Internet connection. We’ll deliver our art-quality magazine anywhere in the world that has postal service (sorry about the extra charges, but it’s them, not us), just subscribe using the links below. Don’t forget to like us on Facebook@DigitalDive, follow us on Twitter@DiveMagazine and Instagram@DiveMag, and check out our YouTube Channel for our latest updates and podcast