Community

Share your thoughts, experiences or questions and participate in discussions over our favorite topic : SCUBA diving!

Inspiring Ted Talk by Sylvia Earle

by Ksso on September 23, 2013

I stumbled on this TED talk by Sylvia Earle and if you haven't seen it already you need to take a few minutes of your time and get inspired. Earth and the oceans are our life support system - we need to learn everything we can about it and we need to take care of it.

Sylvia is an amazing explorer. Wikipedia reads : Earle has led more than 100 expeditions worldwide involving in excess of 7,000 hours underwater in connection with her research.[13] From 1998 to 2002 she led the Sustainable Seas Expeditions, a five-year program to study the United States National Marine Sanctuary sponsored by the National Geographic Society and funded by the Goldman Foundation. An expert on the impact of oil...

North Sea Deep Sea Diver Recalls Moment He Almost Died at 300 Feet!

by Paul Smart on September 09, 2013

Interesting read....

Website was down earlier but seems fine now!

A North Sea diver has described the dramatic moment he almost died on the ocean floor.

Deep-sea diver Chris Lemmons was stranded nearly 300ft underwater with no air line after the connection which had been supplying him with oxygen was severed.

But thanks to a heroic effort by the vessel’s master and fellow divers, the 33-year-old was rescued and resuscitated – more than 30 minutes after getting into trouble.

http://www.energyvoice.com/2013/09/offshore-europe-deep-sea-diver-recalls-moment-almost-died-300ft/

The Mantis Shrimp is making the buzz!

by Ksso on September 02, 2013

No one can remain untouched by the beauty of the Mantis Shrimp - with all the colors and the big eyes it's an awesome subject for underwater photographers, especially when bearing eggs. This little fellow can be found mainly in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the Pacific Ocean - if you're diving in that area make sure you'll look for it.

Despite the amazing colours and big intriguing eyes, it turns out the Mantis Shrimp is a terrible and very aggressive predator!The main feats of this species lies in two very different characteristics:

An incredible vision with extremely sophisticated eyes: each eye has 2 lobes enabling depth of vision on a per-eye basis, eyes are totally independent...

Diveboard updates : Explore !

by Ksso on August 26, 2013

We gave a lot of love to the shops pages recently, but that doesn't mean we're not busy making the rest of Diveboard better.

Pascal just released today the kind of updates I love best: little touches here and there that totally change how a page is perceived.

By being supersized, the right pane of the explore has all of a sudden taken a whole new dimension, with the text becoming super easy to read and the pictures totally changing the way this thing looks. Plus the pics are now picked amongst the nicest one uploaded - dramatically changing the experience on this page.

Try it out and see how it goes! ...

Becoming a PADI Instructor: Gases (Part 1)

by Phil on July 17, 2013

Welcome back to my "Becoming a PADI Instructor" Blog Series yet again...are you getting sick of me yet? Let's talk about Gases!

Dalton's Law

Dalton's Law states: the total pressure exerted by the mixture of non-reactive gases is equal to the sum of the partial pressures of individual gases. What the heck does that even mean? For the sake of simplicity and examples throughout this series we'll consider air 21% oxygen and 79% nitrogen (Ignoring traces of Neon, Krypton, Hydrogen, Xenon Radon, Carbon Monoxide, Argon, and Carbon Dioxide).

Think of 1 bar / atmosphere as 100% of a gas mixture. In air you have 21% Oxygen + 79% Nitrogen = 100% of Gas Mixture. In terms of partial pressures it is...

Becoming a PADI Instructor: Bouyancy

by Phil on July 11, 2013

Welcome back to my "Becoming a PADI Instructor" Blog Series! Let's talk about buoyancy!

Let's start with an interesting tidbit of information. I've said it myself and I've heard other say it when people ask "What is Scuba diving like?", we often respond "It's like being an astronaut floating around weightless in space!" and everyone gets really excited. The excitement is real but the weightless statement is not. Even underwater earth's gravity continues to pull down on you as if you were on the surface. This is why you can still feel whether you are upside down or right-side up underwater. An astronaut does not have these feelings. ...

Mako shark attacking a PelagicView dredge

by Ksso on July 11, 2013

Super impressive video unexpectedly shot a few days ago next to Ocean City, MD. Fishermen were looking for thuna and stuck a Gopro to their line. They ended up shooting a Mako shark feasting on the bait !

The images show the mako catching up the bait moving at 7 knots (~ 12kmh) and giving a fairly good view on the shark's pointy teeth.

Becoming a PADI Instructor: Physics

by Phil on July 08, 2013

The Physics of Diving (Heat / Light / Vision / Sound)In this section of my "Becoming a PADI Instructor" Blog Series, I am going to be focusing on the Physics of Diving. This section and the Physiology section is where I'll probably be spending the majority of my time as I was told by most of the instructors I've talked to that if I have those two sections down well the rest should be fairly easy. I'm mostly using the PADI Encyclopedia of Recreational Diving and IDC-Guide for my research. Otherwise I'm using Google to find academic resources to get a greater understanding of things I want to learn more about.

Water & Heat ...

Octopus riding a turtle

by Ksso on July 06, 2013

Spotted on reddit and.... totally AWESOME ! Maybe octopus are secretly playing quidditch riding turtles and blasting pufferfishes and chasing nautiluses ... this totally needs more investigation.

Alternatively this may be an alien .... :)

Instant slushies and coldwater free flows

by Chris W on June 30, 2013

This morning as I was quickly clicking through my feed of links to articles, videos and blogs automatically scraped from the web for me I came across this gem of wisdom on the LifeHacker website : http://lifehacker.com/turn-soda-into-a-slushie-with-no-special-equipment-615649907

The video demonstrates how cooling carbonated drinks while sealed in their containers to near to their freezing point, then releasing the pressure turns the still liquid contents into instant frozen slush.Firstly - Thats really cool! (pun intended)... But secondly - it also works as a great visual reminder perhaps why we need to be aware of the dangers of cold-water freeflow. ...