Issue #24: Bringing the ocean to you
We talk to divers who are making a difference … stopping shark fishing with tourism, documenting the biodiversity of the Coral Triangle, transforming their images into art and dedicating their lives to the marine world. Be inspired, bring the ocean alive. 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).
Hundreds of thousands of people around the world enjoy scuba diving, but there are those for whom diving becomes a way of life, a dedication to the underwater realm that outweighs all else. One such person is Valentina Cucchiara, who learned to dive almost by accident but went on to become an instructor, tech diver, cave diver, explorer, cinematographer and photographer – and who dedicates much of her time, unpaid, to ocean conservation. Mark ‘Crowley’ Russell spoke to her to find out what drives her unwavering passion for the ocean.
Another woman who has dedicated her life to the ocean is Madison Stewart – aka ‘Shark Girl’ – who visited Lombok in Indonesia to film the local shark-finning trade and the infamous Lombok fish market. Since that first heartbreaking encounter, Madison has tried to persuade the fishers that money from living shark tourism is better than the meagre income from the environmentally destructive trade. DIVE’s local correspondent and expert photographer Alfie Minnaar caught up with Madison as she tries to make a difference.
They are the biggest fish that has ever lived in our oceans, bigger than buses, bigger than ‘The Meg’. So big that the Vietnamese call them ‘Sir Fish’ – and yet, for all their size, we know very little about them. The most comprehensive scientific book about whale sharks has just hit the shelves of academia – we feature an exclusive edited extract from the book about why whale sharks grow to such a large size, and talk to co-editor and Marine Megafauna Foundation co-founder Dr Simon J Pierce about how much more we have to learn.
Alan J Powderham has been diving in the heart of the Coral Triangle for almost twenty years, and has combined his passion for the world’s richest and most vibrant reefs with his love of underwater photography to create a stunning work of art with his book At The Heart of the Coral Triangle. DIVE’s publisher, Graeme Gourlay, spoke to Alan about the work involved in producing his magnum opus, why 36 frames of film was often better than a memory card, and how rebreathers make all the difference to capturing the perfect underwater shot.
In the day and age of perfect filters and automatic colour correction, anybody with a smartphone and a plastic bag can take photographs underwater. But underwater photography is a skill that not even the most expensive camera can buy, and expert underwater photographers produce work that goes well beyond capturing images within frames. Czech biologist, scientist and expert underwater photographer, Michal Štros, has taken underwater imaging to a next-level art form, and we present some of his beautiful images on our art-quality glossy magazine’s pages.
