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

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  • us Ksso

  • # CMAS 3* VDST / N4
  • Qualifications:

    PADI Ice Diver, CMAS Nitrox 1, Photography

  • Dived in: 法属波利尼西亚, 洪都拉斯, 牙买加, Netherlands Antilles, 美国, 墨西哥, 葡萄牙, 西班牙, 多米尼加共和国, 埃及, 泰国, 希腊, 塞浦路斯, 法国, 印度尼西亚

Fish mondays : the Pufferfish (& the Fugu)

by Ksso on February 08, 2011

The Pufferfish ( scientific name : Tetraodontidae) is a fairly common fish that can be encountered especially easily on the US , Australian and western African coasts. The Puffer fish can be also referred ad balloonfish, blowfish, bubblefish, globefish, swellfish, toadfish, toadies, honey toads, sugar toads, and sea squab and represents a family of about 121 species within 20 genera.The blowfish eat mostly crustaceans and mollusks whose shells they crush with their four teeth (thus the scientific name).Puffer fish are generally believed to be the second–most poisonous vertebrate in the world, after the Golden Poison Frog. One of its best known representant is the japanese Fugu fish which...

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Discovery Channel : Special forces combat diving

by Ksso on February 07, 2011

Military operation is nothing near usual diving. In this documentary follow the 6-weeks training course of special forces as they are transformed from combat swimmer to combat diver.This documentary aired on Discovery Channel.

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How nets kill to protect our fears

by Ksso on February 06, 2011

Shark Angels - on Shark Nets from Shark Angels on Vimeo.

Very striking video made by the "Shark Angels" about the rampage done by nets. The most appalling thing is that those net don't only target sharks but dolphins, turtles and other harmless animals die there too.Again, it's a recall that actually few types of sharks are dangerous: of the existing 368 species of sharks, only 20 are dangerous to humans. Of them, four account for almost 60-70 shark attacks registered annually worldwide.If you were as appalled as I was by those images, go ahead and sign the petition at removethenets.com .

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Common hand signals

by Ksso on February 05, 2011

If you haven't been diving for a while, before getting back in a suit it's always a good idea to review the basic hand signals used for communicating underwater.... you know, just in case you need them ( and to make sure you don't thumb-up your dive buddy ... (thumb-up means we're going up now)).There are more gestures than that and you should think while on the boat to reassess those that may be used during the dive to point on the rare fish you may run into.Common Hand Signals for Scuba Diving

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Whales in Hawaii

by Ksso on February 03, 2011

View Kailua-Kona, HI in a larger mapSee this blue dote on the map above ? Feel free to zoom-in ... there's Hawaii and more precisely Kona. Steve is a dive instructor there and just shared on his blog that there is a peak in whale activity in that region. If you're fascinated by these giant mammals, seems like Hawaii and Kona is the place to be.

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Dive western Bali - Geko dive

by Ksso on February 03, 2011

Indonesia is an amazing place to dive containing 10 - 15 percent of the world's coral reefs. Indonesia consists more than 17,000 islands and becomes the largest archipelago in the world with at least 80,000 kilometers of coastline.View Larger MapAmongst those island, Bali stands out by the variety of its landscapes and the kindness of the Balinese people (and their super-yummy local dishes).I went on a vacation there for 2 weeks in 2006 and we chose the western side of the island. The southern coast is traditionally more touristic as it is closer to the airport and Kuta, the capital city, looks like a giant night club. If you want some quiet time you definitely need to avoid this side of...

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Thousands of sharks spotted off Palm Beach

by Ksso on February 02, 2011

Pilot Steve Irwin a pilot with "Island Marine Services" based in Fort Pierce. As he was flying his helicopter on tuesday 100 yards away off Palm Beach he spotted this massive amount of sharks schooling together. He pulled his iPhone and took the video embedded above.Apparently it is this time of the year when sharks are migrating towards warm water.

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Can I still go dive in Egypt's Red Sea ?

by Ksso on January 31, 2011

That's a question that has been widely asked over the last few days since the riots started in Cairo. Currently the situation in Cairo is pretty tense, American Airlines has stopped all flights to Cairo, expatriate workers are flying back to their country of origin and the situation is getting really tense in the capital city.Yet, don't forget that Cairo is not anywhere near the dive spots of the Red Sea. Actually chances are that your flight is scheduled to land at Hurgada or Sharm-El-Sheikh airports.Since Pascal is due to fly there next monday, we've been monitoring daily the status of the area, and as of today all the dives are still scheduled and all the training session are still...

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Stop eating shark fin soup

by Ksso on January 28, 2011

Gordon Ramsay produced a documentary that aired Sunday 16th January, 9pm on Channel 4 in UK. If you're not familiar with Gordon, he's a pretty famous chef with a strong propension of using the "F" word and popular for his show "Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares".In this documentary he covers the use of shark fin that serve as base ingredient for a popular meal in Asia, the shark fin soup.This documentary came as a shocker for me highlighting a few facts:

Sharks are an endangered species - the population dropped by over 60% in less than 10 years and may disappear at this rate within the century (with terrible consequencies for the balance of our ecosystem) ...

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10 dive spots in Thailand may be closed down

by Ksso on January 27, 2011

On January 18th, DMCR( Department of Marine and Coastal Resources ) director-general Kasemsan Jinnawaso has announced to the press that he has recommended 10 diving sites inside marine national parks be closed so damaged coral reefs can recover.The tsunami on Dec 24th 2004 did intense damage on the coral reefs, and intense scuba diving (especially of unexperienced divers) does not help the corals to recover.Corals grow extremely slowly, only a couple of cm a year, and thus the spots may have to be closed between 5 to 10 years. This will obviously impact the turism on the short-term, but safeguarding the marine life should be the number #1 priority !.However, the final decision would still...

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